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Explanation: The Praetorian Guard was, theoretically, the bodyguard of the Emperor of Rome. However, in practice, it was more of a secret police force - and had a nasty tendency of both demanding bribes from Emperors, and overthrowing/murdering Emperors which did not give them what they wanted.
But of course, they wouldn't make any threats, not to the honored person of the Emperor! But whenever they ask... there's the 'implication'...
Okay. That... that seems really dark.
Are these emperors in danger?
Did any Emperor decide to kill off the Praetorian guard to avoid ruling with an implication of Damocles over his head? If yes how did it go, if no why?
The Praetorian Guard weren't completely disbanded, as an institution, until the reign of Constantine I around 310 AD. At that point, though, their function as secret police was less relevant as the Emperor increasingly ignored the Senate and rarely stayed in one place, instead moving with the imperial court, and a series of other bodyguards were implemented in their place. By then the Empire itself was falling apart, though.
However, numerous Emperors with strong military backing purged the Praetorian Guard after coming to power - in whole or in part (those Emperors who came to power without strong military backing generally had no opportunity to act hostilely towards the Praetorians if they valued their head). The ones who did so were generally free of the Praetorians making such demands of them - either because they had been replaced with the new Emperor's partisans and veterans of loyal legions who were thrilled to get a cushy position far from the frontier, with extra pay, lax discipline, and an early retirement; or because the remaining unpurged Praetorians knew that the regular Legions, who were generally very loyal towards Emperors who had a long history of military service, would take a brutal vengeance against the (widely hated) Praetorians if they tried anything.
A big part of the reason why the Praetorians remained despite everything - including the fact that there were other military units who were supposed to protect the Emperor - was because the Praetorian function as a secret police was extremely useful in the cutthroat politics of the Empire. The Emperor was not a particularly special soul - the Empire was an (effective, if not nominal) autocracy, but not really a monarchy for first ~300 years of its existence. There was no special legitimacy to the occupant of the office, and the early attempts of Augustus to establish a divine mien were weakened by the fact that... every fucking major family in Ancient Rome claimed descent from half-a-dozen gods to begin with.
The Emperor was an office, and offices are always ripe for new occupants to take their place. Senators very often had their eye on claiming the position for themselves, and an Emperor who did not root out such conspirators could end up massacred by non Praetorian conspirators, like how the Emperor Galba fell, and how the Emperor Domitian almost died (Domitian was a dick though, he would've deserved it). The Praetorian Guard could, at least, pretty reliably be bribed due to the fact that they were largely not of the appropriate social status to become heavyweight politicians, and so could not benefit from putting their eyes on the higher goal of the imperial title. Senators, on the other hand, could be... more troublesome in their ambitions.
The Praetorian Guard's nominal goal was the protection of the Emperor - but they generally did so not by open combat or even suppressing riots (that was the function of another unit, the Urban Cohorts, which was, by contrast, not noted to be particularly disloyal), but by eavesdropping on Senators and other notables, secretly reading their documents, intimidating those who seemed like they might be planning something and, in extreme cases, extrajudicial abductions and executions. Secret police bullshit. Ugly stuff.
For example, the Emperor Vespasian appointed his son Titus, who was known as a merciful and generous man, to the position of Praetorian Prefect. Either because the position of chief of secret police is pretty inherently fucking damning, or because he was protective of his old man (whom he was noted to be genuinely close with), Titus reversed his previous reputation as a (by Roman standards) gentle (if somewhat party-boy) soul to a feared figure, once even having a suspected Senator conspirator's throat cut in the hallway just after the Senator left a banquet with Titus.
Titus would go on to be an extremely merciful Emperor who was widely beloved (and somewhat surprised the terrified Roman people by the change in his demeanor from his time as Praetorian Prefect), which either speaks to an immense interest in public relations and an equally immense amount of self-control and dissimulation to go from behaving as a brutal thug to behaving as a genuine, lenient, and merciful benefactor (regardless of which was 'more' him by nature); or the immensely fucked nature of even 'good men' in the role of a secret police chief.
Perhaps both.
First, thanks for the excellent write-up. Second, wow, it's honestly impressive ancient Romans could come up with a system this fucked up. Third,
The Emperor was an office, and offices are always ripe for new occupants to take their place.
One thing I don't get: De facto the office of the Emperor was obviously a thing, but de jure what was the Emperor? Like what, if anything, was the legal cover for (if I understand this right) a military dictator running the show in what is ostensibly a republic?
First, thanks for the excellent write-up.
Always happy to contribute a little entertainment! Gods know the trivia trapped in my head isn't worth much else XD
Second, wow, it’s honestly impressive ancient Romans could come up with a system this fucked up.
Oh, yeah, the whole thing is a tangled mess. Like, Rome's extremely organic development from a city-state to an Empire without a grand plan or overarching ideology or coherent ruling class gave it some very unique advantages, but also meant that the whole thing was also a fucking mess. Just an absolute rat's nest of 'temporary' solutions and conflicting ideas. Especially as a very militarized state to begin with, they had a hammer and they saw so many problems as nails.
One thing I don’t get: De facto the office of the Emperor was obviously a thing, but de jure what was the Emperor? Like what, if anything, was the legal cover for (if I understand this right) a military dictator running the show in what is ostensibly a republic?
Essentially, the Emperor held mostly traditional powers (some in novel offices, but new offices were not inherently unconstitutional) that were wholly in line with the traditional laws of the republic.
The issue that made the Emperor so powerful is that these powers were all invested in different offices, which were supposed to be held by different men - while the Emperor simply held all of them. It would be like, if you'll forgive the Americentrism, someone was elected President in the US, but then also claimed the top positions in Congress and the Supreme Court. Even if those powers were not technically autocratic, the fact that they're all invested in one person means that they have such immense political power that they are effectively an autocrat.
Most notably, the Emperor held the traditional powers of a Censor (removing and adding Senators - I imagine you can see how THAT power alone is massive), People's Tribune (giving them the power to veto and introduce legislation to the Senate), High Priest (which gave them a lot of power to start or stop the Senate on procedural issues, since the Romans were very superstitious), and Proconsular Imperium (meaning, essentially, command of the armies, also a massive power, and often causing the Emperor to be referred to as 'Imperator' - 'Commander', where the English word 'Emperor' comes from).
In addition, the first Emperor, Augustus, used the chaos of the Civil War to seize a great deal of valuable property, which was then owned by him, personally. From that point on, the Emperor's heir (whether chosen by the previous Emperor or by coup or civil war) came into possession of this vast estate, which was used, as private property at the Emperor's sole behest, to fund the Roman Empire purely as the Emperor wished it - ie the Emperor controlled probably a good fourth of the budget of the entire Empire without any outside input. This is in part because taxes were generally low, but any way you slice it, that's a huge amount of influence. Control by dangling the purse strings...
So basically, the Emperor wasn't legally unassailable, but was in a position of such immense influence that going against the Emperor meant he had a hundred different ways to make your life miserable, so he was practically in total, autocratic control of the state.
And not only that, but since that amount of power meant that few people were willing to call him out on actual oversteps of his legal authority, the Emperor could also illegally make your life miserable - or end - though this had political consequences, and Emperors who overused this would often end up fighting conspiracies from the Senate who preferred a dead Emperor to living in constant fear of their lives.
Hurting people by the rules, however unfair those rules are, is one thing - it's predictable, people have some idea of what and why it's going to happen. Hurting people by arbitrary fiat makes people nervous, and desperate.
In line with the 'same person, different offices' thing that shows how seriously, and bizarrely, the Romans took the letter of the law but not necessarily the spirit, there's an Romano-Egyptian official of the 2nd century AD who has an interesting situation that survived. He had to take over the office of his temporarily absent superior, and in doing so was required to write requests to himself (addressed as the holder of the superior office), and then approve those same requests from himself (addressed as the holder of the subordinate office) in order for his actions, in both offices, to be lawful. Very Kafkaesque.
So emperor wasn't exactly a title at first. It just kind of evolved over time. I'm going off of memory from college lectures here.
I think it took about 300 years after Cesar for the term emperor to be applied. There was Imperator but that was a title given by the soldiers and lost after they had a triumph.
IIRC the main original legal power was they could order the death of anybody in the empire. Like in the meme lots of other unofficial powers arise because of the implications.
Hey guy who can legally have me killed. We are planning on passing this law. I would love to hear if you have any objections. Because of the implications.
This isn't the case, I'm afraid. The term 'Imperator' actually predates even Caesar, and was both a specific title (to be acclaimed Imperator by one's troops was an honor) and a generic term (one could call one's commander 'Imperator' when addressing him without implying the victory title). Augustus, the first Emperor, took proconsular imperium, making him imperator of all the forces of Rome - in addition, the victory title of 'Imperator' was increasingly only recognized for members of the imperial family, with other generals accepting it being seen as an act of usurpation, making the victory title increasingly associated with the Emperor.
The Emperors could definitely not legally order the death of anybody in the Empire. Hence why things like treason trials were so important.
I mean they were his bodyguards, so if they were killed off, then the Emperor was without guard.
That's why they were in a position to extort the emperor, I guess.
Funny enough, the Emperors actually had several bodyguard units - in the city of Rome, they could theoretically call on the Imperial German Bodyguard (a genuine military unit made of foreigners - actually very loyal, because they had no local loyalties to tempt them), Urban Cohorts (riot police), and vigiles (police/firefighter combination) in addition to the Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard's advantage came in that they useful as a secret police force in dealing with politicians and other such potential conspirators. The Praetorians were sometimes called the toga'd guard (cohors togata) because they spent most of their time in togas, the equivalent of a formal suit, quietly lurking around the powerful and notable and paying close attention to potential 'disloyalty'.
Most Emperors found the Praetorians indispensable for this reason - even those who didn't let the Praetorians engage in their favorite pastimes of brutality and extrajudicial murder found the espionage angle invaluable in preventing other would-be Emperors from taking the imperial position - and the former Emperor's head. The Emperor Nerva who, after gathering sufficient evidence to prove a group of Senators were conspiring against him, invited them to sit with him before the gladiator games, and displayed to them several sharpened swords, letting them take the swords and test the sharpness for themselves in his presence.
Rather than a threat, this was a kind of bravado. By acting on this knowledge before the conspiracy came to fruition, letting the Senators, subtly, know that not only did the Emperor realize full-well what they were up to, but that he wasn't afraid of whatever they might throw at him, he effectively quashed the conspiracy, and did not need to take any further action. That's the sort of thing that the Praetorian Guard, in the hands of an exceptionally restrained Emperor, gave Emperors the power to do. In ferreting out conspiracies, knowledge itself is power, and the Praetorians, skulking little shits that they were, offered knowledge that would otherwise be hidden from an Emperor.
