01-04-2017, 07:20 PM
(01-04-2017, 07:08 PM)Timus Wrote: I was wondering reading this thread, what would be the earliest reference to an ad-hoc picked force of legionaries ? Something along the lines of what "Caesar" describes a few times in the de Bello Civili.
By Caesar, do you mean him favoring the 10th and using them as his "bodyguard"? Or do you mean Crastinus' picked men (uncertain what type of unit that was)? Or Caesar's favoring of cohorts of evocatii?
In the 5th Cent. BC the Patrician Fabii raised an army made up solely of their own clan to fight Etruscans, they ended up nearly completely wiped out leaving only a single Fabius male to carry on the family.
Scipio Aemilianus brought with him a supplementum of 4,000 volunteers made up purely of client-supporters when he took command of the army laying siege to Numantia (the previous consuls having completely bungled the job). Some of these ended up as bodyguards in their own unit. They would probably be classified as the first true cohort of Praetorians.
