Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Evocati

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

EVOCA'TI. Veterans who had served their time, but enlisted again as volunteers. They were not subject to the common military duties of the gregarian or legionary soldier, but seem to have held a superior rank, and to have acted in the capacity of centurions, whose costume and badges of distinction they enjoyed; being represented on sepulchral monuments with the vinerod (vitis) in one hand, a sword on the left side (parazonium), and a roll of paper, indicating, perhaps, their carte of discharge, in the other; as shown by the annexed figure (Evocati/1.1), from a sepulchral marble, which also bears the inscription AUR . JULIANUS . EVOK. Cic. Fam. iii. 6. Caes. B. G. vii. 65. B. C. i. 17.

2. The same title was subsequently conferred upon a body of young men selected from the equestrian families, and formed into a corps, by the emperor Galba, to which the duty of keeping guard at the doors of the imperial bed-chamber was entrusted. Suet. Galb. 10.

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