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