PRAETO´RIUM
PRAETO´RIUM in its primary sense was the tent of the
general (
praetor), the headquarters in the camp
(Mommsen,
Staatsrecht, ii.3 74) [
CASTRA Vol. I. p. 373]. Hence we
find it used for the palace of a provincial governor, not only when his
official title was praetor (as in
Cic. Ver.
4.28, 65), but also when the
residence of a proconsul or even of a procurator as meant: (cf. John 18.28):
for the palace of a foreign prince, as Prusias (
Juv.
10.161), or Herod (Acts 28.35). It was used also for any large
country-house (
Juv. 1.75;
Mart. 10.79;
Suet. Aug. 72,
Tib. 39,
Calig. 37), but it would not
rightly be used of a house at Rome, however “palatial” it might
be. It is no doubt the case (as Professor Mayor points out in his note on
Juv.
l.c.) that the original idea of head.quarters
on active service is retained. The
villa was
the whole property, dwellinghouse, gardens, farm, &c.; the house
itself, as the head-quarters of the owner, was the praetorium. The word may,
however, also be applied (as Bishop Lightfoot shows on
Ep. ad
Philipp. pp. 101 ff.) to a body of men forming the council of
war which met in the general's tent (
Liv. 26.15;
30.5), and later to the imperial body-guard,
the attendants on the holder of the imperium, who represented the praetor or
general of an earlier period (
Tac. Hist.
2.11;
Suet. Nero 9). A legionary is
said to serve
in legione, a guardsman
in praetorio (
Plin. Nat.
25.17;
Tac. Hist. 1.20,
4.46). These
praetoriani or praetorian guardsmen [
EXERCITUS Vol. I. p. 793] were by Tiberius
concentrated in a camp outside the Colline gate (
Tac. Ann. 4.2; Merivale,
Rom. Hist.
5.221); but this camp was not, as has sometimes been stated, called
praetorium, but
castra praetoria, castra
praetorianorum, or
castra praetorii
(
Tac. Hist. 1.31;
Plin. Nat. 3.67). These quarters of the
praetorian guard were destroyed by Constantine, when he disbanded the guard
itself; but he left the outer walls of the camp, because they had been made
part of the Aurelian Wall (Burn,
Rome and Campagna, p. 61).
[W.S] [G.E.M]
