Praetorian Cavalry: Real?

[hellenes]

Ive read somewhere that the Holywood "Praetorian" Cavalry were indeed Batavii horsemen in the service of Augustus...
Is this true and if it is shouldnt they look more celtic rather than Roman horsemen?

Hellenes

[Chester]

The Romans probably dressed the Celtic guards in flashy legionnary gear.

[cunctator]

Praetorian cavarly is real and appeared somewhere during Augustus reign.
They are mentioned quite often in the sources and participated prominently in the 69AD civil war. I think the first time they are mentioned is directly after Augustus death when Tiberius sends them and the germanic guard together with his son to regain controll over muntinous two legions in the quote beyond. Their exact numbers for all time periods is not known and varies between 800-1440 troopers.

Tacitus, Annales book1,24
This intelligence had such an effect on Tiberius, close as he was, and most careful to hush up every very serious disaster, that he despatched his son Drusus with the leading men of the State and with two praetorian cohorts, without any definite instructions, to take suitable measures. The cohorts were strengthened beyond their usual force with some picked troops. There was in addition a considerable part of the Praetorian cavalry, and the flower of the German soldiery, which was then the emperor's guard.

However Praetorian cavalry only appeared at the very end of EBs timeframe and weren't very significant on the battlefield during it, so the current EB unit will not stay in the mod. Thats why there stats and costs don't fit with compared to the other units. They are a placeholder and will be removed as soon as the augustan ala, the early imperial main battlefield cavalry is available.

The batavian horsemen were part of the germanis corpus custodes, the largely mounted real bodyguard of the early emperors, besides the specalutores. Most of them were Bativians, and so they got their inofficial name batavii, but soldiers from neighbouring germanic tribes were also recruited. Galba later disbanded them and either Domitian or more probably Traian created the equites singulares augusti as replacement. The new horse guard kept the popular name batavii since Traian was governour of germania inferior before he become emperor and so batavians formed the original core of the new unit and were an important element later too, but the guardsmen were now the picked from the best horsemen of all alae of the empire and nearly all ethnicities could be found within their ranks.