Lindsay Powell
speaker
197 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Lindsay Powell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I think you're right. There are certain things that stand out because they, in a sense, typify or embody some of our stereotypes, what we think we know about ancient history. And the word itself, Praetorian, somehow hits you in the face as being really powerful and important. And we use the expression Praetorian Guard.
as if it's somehow like, I don't know, dare I say, like the Waffen-SS standing outside the Reichstag or something. But in a sense, that's what the Praetorian Guard, if we use the modern expression, did in ancient Rome. Except, of course, they were called the Cohortes Praetoriae, so they were actually cohorts. Praetorian cohorts.
So we, in fact, in our translation, have even changed some of the imaging, if you like. We think of them as being a bit like the horse guards. They just stand there looking pretty. But their function was much broader than that. They weren't just a security detail. They did other things. But you're absolutely right. I think that they're one of the very iconic aspects of Roman history, particularly.
I think you're right. It's important to understand where we get our information from. So a lot of the time, we rely very much on classical sources. And depending on the period you're studying, it might be Appian, for example, talking about the late Roman Republic and into Augustus. Or it might be Tacitus, it might be Cassius Dio, who are writing...
quite a lot later than some of the events we're going to be describing. And you have to understand that they're writing, one, they have an agenda. They're telling the stories to convey a particular narrative that they've structured for their book.
And in Tacitus' case, it's basically the abuse of power and how powerful men corrupt and corrupt the society which was before them essentially a good society. And he was trying to get back to a republic. So he's writing about, in the 90s, AD. So already Augustus is a century behind him. And he would not have known people who lived probably in his day.
So he was getting his, if you like, anecdotal information from second or third sources. The written sources that he was relying on were going to be things like official documents, Acta Diorna, this type of thing, the Proceedings of the Senate, or other chronicles that were available. And so we have some of those in the case, as I say, that's Tacitus.
So there'd be Cassius Dyer writing another 100 years after him. So he's writing about his world, trying to understand it by looking backwards. So you have to be careful when you look at these things. Is he interpreting what he knows now and explaining the time before him in now terms? So what that means is you've got to be careful.
And there's a good example of this is that Cassius Dio writes about how the Roman army was in 5 AD. And his account is different than Tacitus writing in 23 AD in terms of numbers and deployments and these types of things. And people agonize over, you know, how could they reconcile some of these things? And that's part of the joy of being a historian. You should delve into these things.
And then there's another level where you've got things like inscriptions and there are inscriptions and some very remarkable depictions of Praetorians in different parts of Europe. And what you try to do is take all these piece parts and, like a detective, make sense of them. And like a detective, there are different ways you can look at things.
And you'll read in some books that they're very definitive and emphatic. Say, based on Cassius Dio, there were 10,000. And some of us will say, well, there were 10 cohorts. Somebody else will say nine. And it's because one is taking Cassius Dio and the other is taking Tacitus. And they may not actually be in conflict. Because we don't know what necessarily the period they're talking about.
So, as I say, you have to read ancient history, all ancient history, with an open mindset to this extent that you have to be willing to say that it's not the absolute truth. The truth in the sense that it can be absolute. It's more a case of that person writing in his time, making sense of what an earlier age was. And maybe he's relying on documents which themselves are flawed and so forth.
But to the listeners, I'm just saying that very often it's a surprise when you read one historian's interpretation and find another interpretation based on the same evidence. And the question is, how on earth can that be? And I think it's just, well, that is the state of knowledge that we have.
And it's quite possible, as we've seen at Fishbourne, that something else can come out of the ground that can completely change history. Knowledge as it stands and knowing full well that what you're writing about today will in due course be changed. And I think that's part of the fun of studying history of all periods, not just the ancient world. It's a living, changing subject.
And you can contribute to it in terms of the interpretations of things. And some things which are considered to be accepted wisdom can be challenged at some later date.
Well, the last time I was here was with the Ermine Street Guard. So I was actually a legionary in the first century. And we actually have a local member who lives not very far away from here. And it's always a joy to perform here. We had proper displays and that would have been quite a while ago.
The evidence, again, you have to draw from a number of different strands. It seems to be that the term cohortis praetoriae, the praetorian cohorts, was used quite early. So we're talking in 300s, 200s BC. And it seems to be that the general idea is that the consuls, who are the two chief magistrates of Roman society, are the people who will lead the legions to war.
So they have a personal bodyguard. And it seems very unstructured. It's almost a case of like they pick the best troops to defend this person, who theoretically is not a, shall we say, a Wellington controlling the troops from a hill at the Battle of Waterloo. No, these people are probably engaged in the fighting. So there's a real risk to the commander and his deputy.
So they are going to have some kind of advantage. hand-picked bodyguard. Beyond that, we really don't know much. We know that people, for example, like Scipio Africanus, who was in Hispania, I think it was Citerior, fighting where the Romans fought for 200 years before they finally conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula, had cohortes praetoriae with him.
And again, it's very difficult from the sources to work out what exactly what the ranks were and the number of men and the terms and conditions which they were employed. But the general sense is that these men were legionaries. They had no particular skill sets as such.
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