No Armor Custom

[fsultana]

Could someone explain the Republican no armor custom that existed? Were any exempt from the law and did it exist throughout the Empire or just within Rome herself?

[Epictetus]

I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to, but Pliny's Natural History mentions a law by Pompey, enacted after the death of Claudius, that prohibited arms in the City of Rome.

Cicero's speech in favour of Milo probably refers to this:

What is the meaning of our retinues, what of our swords? Surely it would never be permitted to us to have them if we might never use them. This, therefore, is a law, O judges, not written, but born with us,... namely, that if our life be in danger from plots, or from open violence, or from the weapons of robbers or enemies, every means of securing our safety is honourable. For laws are silent when arms are raised, and do not expect themselves to be waited for, when he who waits will have to suffer an undeserved penalty before he can exact a merited punishment.

Is this what you are thinking of?

[john m roberts]

The city of Rome had a prohibition against the bearing of weapons within the pomerium, the sacred boundary marked out by Romulus with his plow. It followed roughly the line of the ancient city wall. By the 1st c. BC, it was honored more in the breach than in the observance.

[fsultana]

Yes, this is the law I'm talking about.

I was wondering if this was actually honored and prevented the bearing of arms within the city or not, and how far this custom extended, ie were soldiers, guards or even the Praetorian Cohort expected to follow it?

[Epictetus]

Sort of. Traditionally men under arms were never under the official authority of a commander within the city except for a triumph. For this reason they met in the Campus Martius outside the pomerium. The King Servius probably had something to do with this with the centuriate reform. Likewise, the Praetorian camp was built by Tiberius outside the city wallls. But this doesn't necessarily mean that on occassion (normally times of great unrest) men under arms weren't deployed in the city.