Herculians

Shield painting of the Ioviani

Herculiani shield painting

The Jovians and Herculians were the Imperial Guard of the Roman and later the Byzantine Empires from the late 3rd to the middle of the 5th centuries .

The Praetorians , who were stationed in their own military camp in the Castra praetoria just outside Rome , had allied themselves with the Roman Senate during the reign of Diocletian . Consequently, Diocletian, who lived in Nicomedia , Asia , about 100 kilometers from Byzantium , ordered two trusted legions to be dug up from Illyricum for the personal protection of the emperors in 284 , a practice that was sustained during the Tetrarchy . The two legions were called Jovians and Herculians. The core of the new guard was made up of parts of legions I Iovia and II Herculia .

Constantine the Great created his own palace guard after 324, the scholae palatinae . In the Byzantine Empire in 460 these were replaced by the Excubitores and in 988 again replaced by the Varangian Guard .

Web links

• The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Volume 1, Chapter XIII (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Edward Gibbon: The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Volume 1 Chapter XIII
2. ^ Emil Ritterling : Legio (II Herculia). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume XII, 2, Stuttgart 1925, column 1467 f.