Germani custodes corporis

[Conal]

I have seen a few recreations of these in late Roman service .. page boy haircut and a spatha type sword held by the scabard over the shoulder and the hilt behind the head, long tunic.

Is there an original illustration or aret they re-constructed from a literary description?

Thanks in anticipation.

[Urselius]

I don't think the unit, Germani Corporis Custodes, survived the Julio-Claudians.

The ethnic origins of Late Roman guards are not often explicitly recorded. Taking hair-styles or clothing styles as evidence of ethnic origin is probably unsafe; Victorian lancers of the British Army, though they wore czapskas, were not Poles. Also we know that Roman authors criticised certain youths, often attached to chariot-racing affinities, for adopting Hunnic hair and clothing styles.

Long hair is shown worn, notably with Roman shaven faces, by guards on the Missorium of Theodosius, and in the mosaic of Justinian at St Vitale, Ravenna. Ostentatious sword over the shoulder swagger might be connected with the spatharii or spatharocandidati.

[Conal]

This links to the illustration I am alluding to. Scholae Palatinae perhaps?


http://warandgame.wordpress.com/2008/05 ... -custodes/

[Urselius]

The illustration may have been inspired by a Byzantine manuscript, but I cannot think of the specific instance. The neck torc is shown on the St Vitale mosaic. The sword is not Late Roman, I'd put it no earlier than 700 AD, probably a good deal later. Bar-shaped guards on swords are shown on the Stilicho and Honorius ivories, but the type of elongated quillons shown in the illustration are much later in date.

[Conal]

A similar image is portrayed in the Osprey Byzantine Armies 880 etc ... and in Roman Military Clothing 3 ..... I am hoping there must be an original out there somehwere.

[Urselius]

I've just discovered a literary reference. In Choniates (trans. Magoulias) a public trial hearing was attended by the emperor Andronikos I Komnenos (1182-1185), an altercation broke out and his "bodyguard" are recorded as "taking their double-edged SWORDS OFF THEIR SHOULDERS" and making to attack some of the judges, who Andronikos had denounced. Who the bodyguards were isn't stated, but given the conservatism of imperial ceremony they might have still been called spatharocandidatoi. I suspect that any members of the entourage carrying scabbarded swords were carrying 'swords of state' and that the guardsmen were carrying naked swords sloped against their shoulders, so as to be instantly available to protect the emperor.