POV : Your Life as Every Rank in the Praetorian Guard | They Killed 9 Emperors

The Praetorian Guard was created by Augustus in 27 BC to protect the emperor. Over the next 340 years, it directly killed nine of them. This video follows seven ranks inside the Guard during Nero's reign — from the new transfer earning triple legionary pay inside the Castra Praetoria to the Praetorian Prefect who controlled access to the most powerful man in the world and understood exactly what that access was worth. Covers the selection process that kept raw recruits out, the speculatores intelligence operatives running surveillance inside Rome, the full list of nine assassinated emperors and the institutional logic behind each killing, Sejanus's eight-year effective rule of Rome while Tiberius sat on Capri, the 193 AD auction where Didius Julianus bought the throne for 25,000 sestertii per man, Septimius Severus disbanding the entire Guard in a day, and why Constantine's only solution in 312 AD was to tear the Castra Praetoria down stone by stone. The problem was never the soldiers. It was the position. #PraetorianGuard #RomanHistory #AncientRome