Riding for Caesar: The Roman Emperor's HorseguardCaesar praised them in his Commentaries. Trajan had them carved on his Column. Hadrian wrote poems about them. Well might these rulers have immortalized the horse guard, whose fortunes so closely kept pace with their own. Riding for Caesar follows these horsemen from their rally to rescue Caesar at Noviodunum in 52 B.C. to their last stand alongside Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. Written by one of the world's leading authorities on the Roman army, this history reveals the remarkable part the horse guard played in the fate of the Roman empire. Whether called Batavi, Germani corporis custodes, or equites singulares Augusti, the horse guard figures in Roman history from Caesar to Constantine. Drawing on literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence, much of it only recently unearthed, Speidel traces the growth of the guard from a troop of 400 under Julius Caesar to a force of 2000 in the third century. He shows how one-man rule depended on the horse guard's presence, in peacetime and in war. The book offers a colorful picture of these horsemen in all their changing guises and duties - as the emperor's bodyguard or his parade troops, as a training school and officer's academy for the Roman army, or as a shock force in the endless wars of the second and third centuries. Speidel describes the riders' recruitment from German tribes and Danubian peoples and their honored position in Rome, where they retained their native spirit and fighting techniques and lived in their own forts. Chosen for courage, strength, good looks, and their ability to swim rivers in full battle gear, these horsemen reappear here in their full splendor, as recorded in written accounts and art monuments. |
Contents
1 FROM CAESAR TO NERO | 1 |
THE SECOND CENTURY | 25 |
3 THE ROUGHSHOD THIRD CENTURY | 42 |
4 TALL AND HANDSOME HORSEMEN | 61 |
5 ARISTOCRATIC OFFICERS | 79 |
6 WEAPONS AND WARFARE | 87 |
7 LIFE IN ROME | 108 |
8 GODS AND GRAVES | 121 |
10 DEATH AT THE MILVIAN BRIDGE | 133 |
CONCLUSION | 139 |
TIME CHART | 141 |
FURTHER READING | 145 |
NOTES | 146 |
180 | |
191 | |
9 TRAINING FAITHFUL FRONTIER ARMIES | 128 |
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Common terms and phrases
alae altars Arrian Augustan History Aurelius auxilia auxiliary B.Afr Batavi Batavians battle Bellen bodyguard Caesar Caligula Campestres Caracalla cavalry centurions Claudius cohorts commander Commodus Constantine cuirass Dacian Danube decurion Dessau Domaszewski Domitian Durry E.Birley emperor empire enemy Epona equites singulares Augusti escort evocati field army fighting forts frontier armies Galba Galerius German horsemen Germani corporis custodes gravestones Hadrian hastiliarii helmet hence Herodian Hist horse guard horse guardsmen Horsmann Hyginus imperial inscriptions Josephus killed legionary legions Lower Germany Marcus Maurice Maxentius Maximinus murder Nero Onasander Paneg Pannonian parade Parthian Passerini 1939 perhaps Plate Pliny praetorian horse praetorian horsemen promotion provincial rank recruits Rhine riding Roman army Rome Rome’s scholae second century senate Septimius Severus served shows skill soldiers spear speculatores Speidel Suetonius Suleviae Tacitus Tacitus,Ann third century Tiberius Titus training officer Trajan Trajan’s Column tribes tribunes troopers troops under-officers units Vegetius veterans Viator weapons