Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c42.s2.t5.55

v2.c42.s2.t5.55

the *prætorian* guards, whose licentious fury was the first symptom and cause of the decline of the Roman empire, derive their institution from Augustus. That crafty tyrant, sensible that laws might colour, but that arms alone could maintain, his usurped dominion, had separated the veterans from the rest of the army, and reserved them for his own service. He established nine cohorts, each of a thousand men, and commanded by a tribune, which were stationed in the neighbourhood of Rome. Augustus, for obvious reasons, never ventured to employ more than three cohorts in the city; but Tiberius, at the persuasion of Sejanus, assembled the whole body in a permanent camp, which was constructed at the walls of the city, and gave the prætorians a decided superiority over the civil magistrates, and even over the senate. Their numbers were afterwards increased by Vitellius to sixteen thousand, and by the Severi to a much greater amount.