Bodyguards and Bulletproof: Security Through the Ages

Roman emperors died at the hands of their own Praetorian Guard, a lesson every autocrat since has absorbed. Medieval kings traveled with sworn retinues; Renaissance princes feasted behind food tasters and taste testers for poison.

The pistol changed everything in 1584 when William the Silent became the first head of state shot dead, and the cheap revolver of the 1890s made the assassin portable. In response came the enclosed car, the metal detector after the 1930s attempts, and the modern concentric ring of advance teams, countersnipers, and sealed routes.

Security now shapes public life itself, the ropeline and the podium replacing the open carriage..