PRETORIAN • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Pretorian

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noun

Pretorian n. A soldier of the pretorian guard.

adjective

Pretorian adj. Of or pertaining to a pretor or magistrate; judicial; exercised by, or belonging to, a pretor; as, pretorian power or authority.

Pretorian bands or Pretorian guards, or Pretorians (Rom. Hist.), the emperor's bodyguards, instituted by the Emperor Augustus in nine cohorts of 1,000 men each.

Pretorian gate (Rom. Antiq.), that one of the four gates in a camp which lay next the enemy.

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Etymology of 'Pretorian'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pretorian" Quotes from Famous Books

... respected and much reviled predikant a Pretorian high official said: "We were determined to let it drift to a rupture with England, for then our dream would be realised of a Republic reaching to Table Mountain"; but surely such a song and such a scene in the State's Model School was a thing ...

— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... enterprise, and not (if we can help it) saddle Prosper's kingdom with a standing army. For, as Bacon advises, that state stands in danger whose warriors remain in a body and are used to donatives; whereof we see examples in the turk's Janissaries and the Pretorian Bands ...

— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... charge of the villa had supplied him with whatever he needed. Her pretty face was swollen with weeping, and it was in a voice choked with tears that she had told him that her husband, who was a centurion in Caesar's pretorian guard, would arrive to-morrow or next day at Alexandria, with his imperial master. She had not seen him for a long time, and had an infant to show him which he had not yet seen; and yet she could not be glad, for her young mistress's death ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers