Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Ancient Warfare Answers where we answer your questions about ancient warfare.

Well, we try and answer your questions about ancient warfare.

Then I am Murray Dam, the assistant editor of Ancient Warfare magazine and with me is Jasper Ortage, the editor.

Now, don't forget, of course, you can follow us on Patreon if you would like to.

You can go to patreon.com forward slash ancient warfare podcast and have a look at the special

rewards that you can have. And of course, today we are answering some of the questions from

our Patreon followers, the first of which Yaspur is going to attempt to answer, which is

how did the... I was going to say answer, which is how did the...

I was going to say Patreon Guard, sorry.

How did the Patriot Guard, that's our Petroians?

Yes, exactly.

How did the Pretorian Guard become so powerful?

Right.

I think we have to go back to the first century BC and I think most of us know that this

Praetorian Guard grew out of the headquarters guard of ancient Roman generals.

But what you also have to realize is that of course the first century BC is full of civil

wars in which the army decided who had the power in the Roman

empire. And when Augustus, or the future Augustus, finally won his last war at the Battle of Actium,

then still Octavianus, and then he came to Rome and became the man with the power.

He did his best to make it seem as if he was restoring the republic with all the Republican

institutions. And part of that was, well, probably pretending is a good way to say it, that he did not have all the military power, and that Rome and Italy were not occupied territories full of Roman soldiers.

So, you know, there's this settlement, I, I think it was in 23 BC, where he says that all the

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