targetiers

Updated: June 27, 2025

The celerity and success with which he executed an important commission, recommended him to the favor of Jovian; and to the honorable command of the second school, or company, of Targetiers, of the domestic guards.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2

XII. By these means he tamed the people, and had them more manageable for all purposes, as they believed they were led, not by the counsels of a foreigner, but by a deity, and facts also confirmed them in this opinion, inasmuch as the power of Sertorius increased beyond all expectation; for with the two thousand six hundred men whom he called Romans, and four thousand Lusitanian targetiers, and seven hundred horsemen, whom he joined to a motley band of seven hundred Libyans, who crossed over with him to Lusitania, he fought with four Roman generals, who had under them one hundred and twenty thousand foot soldiers, six thousand horsemen, two thousand bowmen and slingers, and cities innumerable, while he had only twenty cities in all under him.

Plutarch - Plutarch's Lives Volume III.