Praetorian Clothing

Praetorians on guard in the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill went about their protective duties clothed in the classic Roman toga, which lent the Guardsmen an air of tradition, while the toga itself would serve to hide their belted sidearms under its voluminous woolen folds.  By appearing unarmed in this fashion, the Guard paid lip-service to the old Republican custom forbidding armed soldiery within the pomerium, the sacred city-limits of Rome. In normal uniform, the tunic of a Praetorian Guardsman, judging from surviving artistic evidence, would have been a varying shade of white or beige, like the color worn in legionary units.  Red, popularly considered the typical color of Roman soldiers, seems to have been limited to centurions and other persons of significance.  In the 1st c. BCE, Julius Caesar, for example, distinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul by wearing a bright red cloak.

Undyed wool is typically a natural off-white color, thus requiring no effort to obtain nor maintain its homely shade.  However, the pigment required to produce red dyed wool would have been more expensive and harder to procure in quantity.  Red tunics would help to distinguish centurions in battle, and even conceal bloodstains.  Purple, a traditionally royal hue requiring a frightfully expensive dye, seems most likely to have been reserved for the Emperor and his family.  No evidence survives for use of other colors, although the possibility of blue and green tunics cannot be ruled out.

On the Column of Antoninus Pius, there can be seen an interesting but isolated depiction of Praetorians wearing what appears to be a scalloped undergarment of some kind, beneath their lorica segmentata which is also depicted in an atypical fashion.  The scalloping may be indicative of a special tunic cut, or more likely a simple case of artistic excess on the sculptor's part.

Domitian's Cancellaria Relief (mentioned above) also shows a unique example of Roman soldiers -- Praetorians in this case -- wearing what appear to be ankle-length woolen socks, open at the toe and heel.  It also confirms that Praetorians dressed much as other Roman regulars did, by wearing the paenula, focale, and cingulum.<br>Praetorian infantry wore the standard military boot, the caliga, but Suetonius in an anecdote referring to Gaius Caligula's eccentricities says that the mad Emperor dressed "in speculatoria caliga."  Caligula clearly intended to show fellowship with his Guard by affecting their dress, and Suetonius like his contemporaries found this to be odd.  The clear implication from this reference is that Guard speculatores, the elite mounted bodyguard, wore a peculiar type of military sandal.  However, no example of the speculatoria caliga survives.