Study of the Roman army remains vital to the ongoing understanding of Roman history. More importantly, studies of the army have continued and expanded previous conversations on the relationship of the emperor to the army, armor, and equipment, and on the cultural history of soldiers themselves. In Corps du chef et gardes du corps dans l'armée romaine, editors Catherine Wolff and Patrice Faure bring together contributions from the 7th Lyon Congress, held in October 2018, to give the reader more fodder for thoughtful discussions and insights into research on the Roman army. The chapters examine topics from across the breadth of Roman military history. In particular, the volume explores the military and personal relationships between leaders’ bodies and those who guard them. More specifically, it deals with the emperor's relationship to the army, the body of the emperor himself as something to be protected, and the specific bodyguard units of the Roman army. Many of the chapters rely not just on the literary material but also on the evidence of material culture to help flesh out their topics, something Faure reminds us of in the introduction.
The volume is divided into ten parts, comprised of 29 contributions in French, English, Italian, and German, covering the period from the Republic to the Late Empire. These are coupled with a thorough, 80-page bibliography, which provides context for what has come before, as well as reflecting the state of contemporary discourse.
This review will not try to exhaustively address every section or chapter in full. Instead, it will give an overview of section contents, then focus on some in particular, or chapters within them.Footnote 1 At the same time, it remains important to break down the volume and highlight its contents as background to this review and to this superbly edited collection.
The previous volume in this series, a product of the 6th Lyon Congress in 2014, was published in 2016. Les auxiliaires de l'armée romaine: des alliés aux fédérés. Collection études et recherches sur l'Occident romain focused on the non-citizen auxiliary units that made up a significant part of the army. Along with several other recent publications, it addressed the neglect, at times, of the auxilia in more recent scholarship.Footnote 2 While that volume helped to redress an oversight in the 21st c., this volume may cause us to question if we needed another work on military elites and those they protected. Indeed, after the conversations on the auxilia, it might seem as if we are returning to a too-familiar topic. This review argues that the opposite applies and that this is still a vital subject, as we examine guard units, chiefs/leaders, and bodyguards. Perhaps one useful tie-in with the 2016 volume is that when we read about these units, we think of how many auxiliaries contributed to the singulares of governors (especially in provinces where there was no legionary presence). Ultimately, we conclude that this is absolutely a subject that should still be of much interest.
Faure's introduction highlights the importance of continuing studies on bodyguard units and highlights how far such studies have come since the days of M. Durry and A. Passerini's monographs on the Praetorian cohorts.Footnote 3 Faure gives a quick overview of the contents of each chapter and draws the reader's attention to the diverse themes on display. Indeed, whilst the contributions vary in focus, they are united by their relevance to these topics, even if the connections are not always immediately apparent to the reader. What makes this volume so useful is that, in a number of the contributions, the leader's person is of crucial importance. For this reader, it evokes the relationship between the emperor and the army as we see it in J. B. Campbell's Reference Campbell1984 work.Footnote 4 Though the words “military” or “Roman army” may appear in this review, and even seemingly dominate it, is also vital to note that several contributions cover units that are not technically military, or the bodies of personages who are not expressly military. Therefore, perhaps this world, though familiar, is not as familiar as we might expect.
Part 1 starts with a discussion of the origins of powerful war leaders, the imperatores of the chapter title, as M. Engerbeaud examines Republican-era military leaders. Engerbeaud highlights (39) the way in which these leaders often put themselves physically in harm's way. This, of course, raises the matter of why we need protective details for leaders in the first place. F. Cadiou follows up with a chapter on the antecedents of the Praetorians and mounted guard units of the Republic. Cadiou draws attention to the Late Republic's Praetorian cohorts being described explicitly as combat troops rather than purely guards of the imperatores of that period, as well as to how Augustus would later institutionalize them as his elite.
Part 2 focuses on the emperor's body and the bodies of the guards themselves. W. Havener's essay is a thoughtful discussion of the physical person of the emperor himself, with discussion ranging from physical attributes like height to imperial clothing. B. Lefebvre's essay focusing on the guards is a reminder that the soldiers’ bodies are worthy of conversation too, not only as military or war-fighting tools but also as a means by which to display the power of the person they ward. Lefebvre devotes a section to the guards’ appearance and armament (100–6).
P. Le Roux and B. Rossignol (Part 3) give us a glimpse of those in charge: the emperors and the senior officers. Le Roux's contribution highlights the nature of the Praetorian Guard, and the point is made that they had other roles in addition to their guard duties (which other units could and did, at times, take on). Le Roux makes an interesting comparison with Napoleon's guard units. Rossignol gives a brief history of the prefects, the qualifications they needed to hold office, their number, and their specific roles. Le Roux and Rossignol's chapters also cover the recruitment of these men and their career paths. Military competence is usefully highlighted as a factor in the appointment of Praetorian Prefects (149–51), and a chronological list of prefects is provided, from Augustus to Philip the Arab (who was himself a Praetorian Prefect before he took the throne).
It is in Part 4 that we come to the Praetorian cohorts specifically, with D. Redaelli examining the function and political role of the Praetorians themselves and G. Crimi offering up a new interpretation that reassesses the Praetorians after the work of Durry and Passerini. Rounding out this section is C. Heidenreich's “La vie religieuse dans les castra praetoria,” where he looks at the Praetorian camp itself and the Roman garrison units who resided there, as well as the practice of religion within the barracks.
Y. Le Bohec's two chapters, on the speculatores and statores of the Rome garrison, respectively, make up Part 5. Le Bohec raises the difficulty of understanding these two units, highlighting issues with the ancient sources and deficiencies in the amount of modern secondary scholarship. Le Bohec reexamines terminology and looks at what these soldiers did, especially give the relatively small number of them who were designated speculatores.
In Part 6, K. Geluk and G. L. Gregori's “The Germani corporis custodes: a ‘unit in motion’?” and Wolff's own “Les equites singulares Augusti” remind us of the value and importance of these units – though I might add that these are, of course, hardly “unknown” units and both have been studied in the past.Footnote 5 The value of Geluk and Gregori's conversation lies, for example, in the continuation of the onomastic discussion about the names of these men and what they might suggest about their service, or what the custodes’ composition was like (were they soldiers or were they not?). The discussion highlights the changing nature of the unit as well as of the conversation within the discipline: recruitment in early years of the unit perhaps took place amongst men of servile condition, but it evolved over time. Wolff's essay on the cavalry bodyguard evokes M. P. Speidel's Reference Speidel1994 monograph but also adds to the conversation. These chapters remind us how many questions remain, even for units which we think have already been well explored.
The papers in Part 7 focus on the singulares of governors in the provinces and officers of provincial units. We often think of the Praetorian cohorts when we think of bodyguard units; this is not without justification, but of course the governors and officers of units also had their guards. R. Haensch, F. Bérard, and A. Groslambert provide us with thoughtful chapters from the viewpoint of the provinces. Haensch highlights the work of M. P. Speidel in 1978 on the singulares, but he also notes how more recent evidence has shaped the conversation and brought new aspects to light.Footnote 6 Bérard's chapter gives insight into officers’ guards in Roman units through discussion of provincial units, including auxiliaries. Groslambert takes us to Lambaesis while exploring singulares; in particular, she focuses on the inscriptions of Anicius Faustus and his guards as a means of dating the creation of the province of Numidia.
Whilst several of the chapters revisit, expand, or elaborate on familiar territory or well-known units or concepts, Part 8 reminds us of the ongoing work in the discipline with new discoveries and reinterpretations of materials, particularly epigraphy. D. Dana's contribution looks at military diplomas from the Rome garrison, focusing on the Praetorian and Urban cohorts as well as the emperor's cavalry bodyguard, the equites singulares Augusti. Dana looks at origins and recruitment patterns, as well as the mobility of Praetorians and equites within the Empire. F. Beutler's essay looks at what a new funerary inscription for a Praetorian during Marcus Aurelius's reign adds to knowledge of the seventh Praetorian cohort's activities at Carnuntum – a useful reminder of how far even bodyguard units could move around the Empire. To round out the section, S. Morretta and R. Rea highlight 2015 excavations in the vicinity of the future Amba Aradam-Ipponio station, which revealed barracks and a monument to the service of soldiers.
P. Cosme's essay, in Part 9, on the mighty and privileged elites and their protectors highlights how it was not just military leaders or imperial leaders who were guarded. M. A. Speidel's chapter asks, “Who were Caracalla's ineffective protectors?” It is a provocative question and one not just for Caracalla's reign, but also for the reigns of other emperors who fell to assassins in spite of, or perhaps due to, their bodyguards (Speidel notes [427] that the mastermind behind the plot was the Praetorian Prefect Macrinus). For Speidel, though, the other part of that conversation concerns what and who protectores were, and what the honorific meant before it became an official title. M. Petitjean takes the conversation up to the Battle of Milvian Bridge with a chapter focusing on the guard units of the imperial comitatus. He highlights the ongoing importance of the cavalry guard and the Praetorians in this strategic reserve, the sacer comitatus of 3rd-c. emperors like Septimius Severus, as they put out fires across the Empire. Petitjean's contribution reminds us that the old guard still had life left in them and highlights how the units that would make up the Late Empire's guards, replacing the Praetorians, were not yet in the ascendancy.
It is perhaps fitting, then, that Part 10 covers the guard units of the Late Empire, and Petitjean's entry makes a nice segue from Part 9. J-M Carrié discusses the re-creation/remaking of the guard in the 4th-c. CE and the fact that the Scholae Palatinae were not necessarily a direct replacement for the defunct Praetorians (disbanded after Milvian Bridge in 312 CE). We get a more detailed conversation on the Scholae Palatinae and the protectores Augusti in S. Janniard and M. Émion's contributions, which continue the discussion of Late Imperial guards. G. Sartor examines the guards not just of emperors and officers but also of allied chieftains at the end of this section, which covers the 3rd–6th c. CE.
When the volume is viewed as a larger picture, a whole work, we see different connections begin to take shape. Perhaps its most important contribution is to humanize the guard units; for example, Geluk and Gregori's attempt to understand who the corporis custodes were in origin (Part 6), the consideration of religious practices of the Praetorian camp in Part 4, or even the implied nature of these guards. This is important if we are to think of these men not only as part of some elite force, faceless and disciplined, but also as individuals drawn from provincial legions and auxiliary units, men who, pre-312 CE, enlisted specifically in dedicated guard units like the Praetorian cohorts.
Some of the implications of individual chapters raise new questions for this reader. Something to add another intriguing twist would have been contributions on units of the Roman army who were not dedicated guard units but at times acted as such; that is, when pressed into service for specific political or military crises. I think of the cohortes urbanae or the vigiles who were definitively not bodyguard units, except to their own commanders, yet were often drawn into imperial politics; for example, when Macro, as praefectus vigilum, ousted Sejanus, perhaps using his own men rather than the Praetorians, shortly before the former's elevation to the Praetorian Prefecture.Footnote 7 At the same time, this is already a weighty volume and it is unfair to ask it to be something that it was not intended to be, a comprehensive conversation on elite units. Hopefully a future conversation will have been sparked elsewhere.
Crimi, reassessing Durry and Passerini's work whilst highlighting new questions, again reminds us of how much is still to be done. There are more questions to be asked, even with the excellent work on the Praetorians by S. Bingham and G. De la Bédoyère.Footnote 8 Beutler's chapter proves that with a discussion on new Praetorian inscriptions.
Have we learned all there is to know about the Roman army or the army's bodyguard units? Evidently not, as the contributors and editors of this volume would tell us – and I agree. The contributors prove that there is still much to learn, as well as much to say, even about topics that have been covered before. If there is a critique of the book, then perhaps it is that given the nature of such a volume, sometimes the links between chapters do not seem clear, even with the larger, overarching theme of the title. But that is an exceptionally minor quibble.
I cannot help but think, having read through the contributions, about some of the points raised in individual essays. Though perhaps not intended in this way, we can see in Speidel's question (422) regarding the absence of Caracalla's guards or, rather, their ineffectiveness, another question about how often these bodyguard units failed or how often they furnished the threats to a military or political leader's life themselves. Of course, as Le Bohec notes at the conclusion of his chapter on the speculatores of the Rome garrison, “Il apparait que la notion de ‘garde’ est ambigue.” Though it may seem obvious, this is a worthwhile point to make given the nature of soldiers in the Roman world and how often their duties did include guarding their officers, their own barracks, and of course the emperor himself. If it is true, then what makes specialist guard units so unique or different, especially if they, like other soldiers, must also fight wars?
The attempt to answer these questions is what makes this volume not only a valuable addition to the discourse on Roman military history, but also a look into the many sub-topics under the larger umbrella of the Roman army and its operations. Indeed, the volume even goes beyond the military sphere, reminding us, in several chapters, about the nature of non-military bodyguard units and how rich this conversation can be. I would even suggest that, though this book is not intended for an undergraduate audience, I will certainly be including ideas from it in my classes on ancient warfare and, more specifically, Roman warfare.
