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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He had through his father, you know, because you can trust me because, you know, I'm from the son of another Praetorian prefect. But again, it's individual ones. The cult was made of centuries and had centurions and there was a cavalry. There were lots of peace parts of these organizations, right? They're paid extremely well.
What's very significant, to go back to Augustus, one of the first things he does in 27 is to double their pay. That's the first thing he does. Not anything else. So that recognizes their importance to him personally. And one of the things that he does on his death, he gives everybody in the army a bonus, a sort of like a donative for work and service. I'm giving this money.
And the Praetorians get way more than everybody else. And of course, there's a pecking order. So the centurion of that will get much more money than the average Praetorianus. as they were called. And then the Vigilis had more money than the legionary troops did, which is quite remarkable. So the ordinary squad, the legionary, the miles, was getting really quite a low level of payback.
And one of the first things that Tiberius, of course, does, he then pays a donative to the Praetorians, recognizing exactly what his predecessors have done. And that becomes tradition.
So I'll interrupt by saying that there's a coin in the meantime. So Caligula, I actually have one. It's a brass Cistercius. It's about the size of 2p magnified by 2. A thick, heavy brass coin. And it has a banner and a toga standing on a rostrum addressing a group of troops with standards. And his arm is raised and it's ad locutio. is the slogan.
And what that means is basically to the call to arms. What I imagine, and I think this is what numismatists believe, is that this coin was probably part of the coins that were minted to be given as part of this donative, right? And what they're basically saying is, I'm your emperor, I call for your support. And of course, they're going to say yes, because he's just paid the money.
So these Adlocutio coins are very collectible. On the other side, they have a magnificent portrait of a young Caligula. Now, the coins of Claudius, who comes after Caligula, you're absolutely right. They have this interesting, they have this crenellated wall and buildings inside. And it's a strange image, in a sense, because they're actually highlighting military camp in Rome.
But then people will know the story because Tiberius is long dead. Caligula took over as his successor. And it was an equestrian prefect, leader, Cassius Caria, who led the conspiracy to kill him successfully, as it turns out. And now apparently in Rome, they've actually found the corridor that he was assassinated in, which I'm sure is very emotive when you go and see it.
The palace is where Claudius, this person who a lot of people think is a fool, turns out he's not quite such a fool after all. He is found initially by the German bodyguard. right, who are running around confused what they're going to do. And they find this man behind a curtain. And the story goes that they present this man not quite sure what to do.
And someone comes in and says, no, this is actually a member of the family. You're supposed to protect him. And then the Praetorians take over and they take him to the Praetorian camp. And in the meantime, as news is reaching the Senate, the story goes that the We'll do away with these Caesars.
Except the Praetorians have a view in this and they present their man and say, you're going to take this man, aren't you? And of course, what he does, he takes over and he, of course, pays them handsomely for the charge. And later in 1843, some Praetorians come to Britain. along with the elephants.
And it's quite fascinating to think that Colchester would have seen elephants as well, but also Praetorian cohorts too, because they were a personal bodyguard. They would go wherever he would. So you can imagine an entourage of the emperor on the move was thousands of people. Can you imagine if you're going by sea?
I mean, you've got transports and trimes, you're mentioning hexaremes and so on, moving equipment and horses and all this sort of stuff. and food if necessary. And this is how you have to imagine a trade union campaign with this large number of people or Hadrian when he goes on his tours.
We tend to think, I think these days, you know, like a US president, I'm living in the United States, and you constantly see Air Force One arriving and a man comes down and there's these guys with these curly cords in their ears and so on. And the Secret Service is quite small body, at least in public, I'm sure it's hundreds of people. But the Roman optics of that would probably be much bigger.
So there would have been an advance messenger saying, we're arriving in the city in 48 hours. And literally, thousands of people would show up. Probably just have to have a camp to go to. So they'll probably build one. I don't know how you do that in some parts of the developed empire. And there's all the personal staff and, of course, these German guards and all the rest of it.
So it's quite a production.
Well, I mentioned earlier, I think people tend to think of them as being elite. And that sort of was because they had special skills. I think the thing to think of is that these were initially predominantly veteran troops. So they were special in the sense that they had war experience and campaign experience. So they understood the rules of fighting.
But as they became a formalized organization and they begin to be recruited from Italians, they see progressively less and less combat. So, in fact, the legions, which are on the frontier dealing with all sorts of problems, internal and external, are the hard-nosed troops. And it's an interesting kind of dichotomy here, which is that you remember the film Gladiator.
And the implication is the men in black, Lorica segmentata, must be the Praetorians. And they all look very intimidating. But actually, from a sort of fighting point of view, they didn't have much practice. So in that regard, they probably were more of a decorative thing than a really fully fledged professional army dealing with the day to day.
That said, the situation where, for example, Germanicus, who in 15 AD and 16 was active trying to hunt down Arminius, the man responsible for Varus's disaster. And what's interesting there is that there are, I think, two cohorts of Praetorians who are in active service.
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