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Rh (Gallia cisalpina) was added to the previous nine, and thus the number of judicial and provincial departments corresponded to the annual number of praetors, pro praetors and proconsuls. The proportion, however, was not long maintained: new provinces were added to the empire—Bithynia in 74, Cyrene about the same time, Crete in 67, Syria in 64—and one or more new law courts were instituted. To keep pace with the increase of duties Julius Caesar increased the number of praetors successively to ten, fourteen and sixteen; after his time the number varied from eight to eighteen.

The praetors were elected, like the consuls, by the people assembled in the comitia centuriata and with the same formalities. They regularly held office for a year; only in the transition period between the republic and the empire was their tenure of office sometimes limited to a few months. The insignia of the praetor were those common to the higher Roman magistrates—the purple-edged robe (toga praetexta) and the ivory chair (sella curulis); in Rome he was attended by two lictors, in the provinces by six. The praetors elect cast lots to determine the department which each of them should administer. A praetor was essentially a civil judge, and as such he was accustomed at or before his entry on office to publish an edict setting forth the rules of law and procedure by which he intended to be guided in his decisions. As these rules were often accepted by his successors, the praetor thus acquired an almost legislatorial power, and his edicts, thus continued, corrected and amplified from year to year, became, under the title of the “ perpetual ” edicts, one of the most important factors in moulding Roman law. Their tendency was to smooth away the occasional harshness and anomalies of the civil law by substituting rules of equity for the letter of the law, and in this respect the Roman praetor has been compared to the English chancellor. His functions were considerably modified by the introduction of the standing jury courts (quaestiones perpetuae). Hitherto the praetor had conducted the preliminary inquiry as to whether an action would lie, and had appointed for the actual trial of the case a deputy, whom he instructed in the law applicable to the case and whose decisions he enforced. The proceedings before the praetor were technically known as jus in distinction from judicium, which was the actual trial before the deputy judge. But in the standing jury courts (of which the first—that for repetundae—was instituted in 149), or rather in the most important of them, the praetors themselves presided and tried the cases. These new courts, though formally civil, were substantially criminal courts; and thus a criminal jurisdiction was added to the original civil jurisdiction of the praetors. Under the empire various special functions were assigned to certain praetors, such as the two treasury praetors (praetors aerarii), appointed by Augustus in 23; the spear praetor (praetor hastarius), who presided over the court of the Hundred Men, which dealt especially with cases of inheritance; the two trust praetors (praetors fideicommissarii), appointed by Claudius to look after cases of trust estates, but reduced by Titus to one; the ward praetor (praetor tutelaris), appointed by Marcus Aurelius to deal with the affairs of minors; and the liberation praetor (praetor de liberalibus causis), who tried cases turning on the liberation of slaves. There is no evidence that the praetors continued to preside over the standing courts after the beginning of the 3rd century, and the foreign praetor ship disappears about this time. Even the jurisdiction of the city praetor seems not to have survived the reforms of Diocletian, though the office itself continued to exist. But of the praetorships with special jurisdiction (especially the ward praetorship and the liberation praetorship) some lasted into the 4th century and were copied in the constitution of Constantinople. Besides their judicial functions, the praetors, as colleagues of the consuls, possessed, though in a less degree, all the consular powers, which they regularly exercised in the absence of the consuls; but in the presence of a consul they exercised them only at the special command either of the consul or, more usually, of the senate. Thus the praetor possessed military power (imperium); even the city praetor, though attached by his office to Rome, could not only levy troops but also in certain circumstances take the command in person. As provincial governors the praetors had frequent occasion to exercise their military powers, and they were often accorded a triumph. The city praetor presided over popular assemblies for the election of certain inferior magistrates, but all the praetors officiating in Rome had the right to summon assemblies for the purpose of legislation. In the absence of the consuls the city praetor, and in default of him the other praetors, were empowered to call meetings of the senate. Public religious duties, such as the fulfilment of state vows, the celebration of sacrifices and games, and the fixing of the dates of movable feasts, probably only fell to the praetors in the absence of the consuls. But since in the early times the consuls as a rule spent only the first months of their year of office in Rome, it is probable that a considerable share of religious business devolved on the city praetor; this was certainly the case with the Festival of the Cross-roads (compitalia), and he directed the games in honour of Apollo from their institution in 212. Augustus in 22 placed the direction of all the popular festivals in the hands of the praetors, and it is not without significance that the praetors continued thus to minister to the pleasures of the Roman mob for centuries after they had ceased almost entirely to transact the business of the state. (For the praetor as provincial governor see .)

A full account of the praetorship will be found in Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht (1887), vol. ii. and P. Willems, Le Droit public romain (1883); T. M. Taylor's Constitutional and Political History of Rome (1899) will also be found useful. There is a monograph by E. Labatut, Histoire de la préture (1868).

PRAETORIANS. In the early Roman republic, (q.v.) meant commander of the army: in the later republic praetor and propraetor were the usual titles for provincial governors with military powers. Accordingly, the general's quarters in a camp came to be called praetorium and one of the gates porta praetoria, and the general's bodyguard cohors praetoria, or, if large enough to include several cohorts, cohortes praetoriae. Under the empire the nomenclature continued with some changes. In particular cohortes praetorian now designated the imperial bodyguard. This, as founded by Augustus, consisted of nine cohorts, each 1000 strong, some part of which was always with the emperor, whether in Rome or elsewhere. In 23 his successor Tiberius concentrated this force on the eastern edge of Rome in fortified barracks: hence one cohort in turn, clad in civilian garb, was sent to the emperor's house on the Palatine, and large detachments could be dispatched to foreign wars. The men were recruited voluntarily, in Italy or in Italianized districts, and enjoyed better pay and shorter service than the regular army: they were under praefecti praetorio (usually two; later, sometimes three, rarely only one), who during most of the empire might not be senators. This force was the only body of troops in Rome (save a few cohortes urbanae, a fire brigade, and some non-Roman personal guards of the emperor), or, indeed, anywhere near the capital. Accordingly it could make or unmake emperors in crises—at the accession of Claudius in 41, in 68–69, and again late in the second century. But its normal influence was less than is often asserted. Moreover, its prefects, since they were two and liable to be disunited, and since they could not be senators, neither combined with the