ABSTRACT
The loyalty of the horse guard, moreover, served to strengthen the faith of the frontier armies. Chosen from the alae, the guardsmen represented the frontier auxilia in Rome. They kept up bonds with their fellow soldiers on the faraway frontiers, even choosing them as heirs. From 192 on, when the praetorians were picked from the legions, they, too, spoke and acted for the frontier armies. It is not true, as has been said, that once in Rome, they turned their backs on their former units, despised the ‘barbarian legions’, or failed to help the group from which they had come. When Cassius Dio became consul for the second time in 229, Pannonian guardsmen hounded him from Rome for having ruled the Pannonian army with an iron fist.
