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The paper is devoted to the problem of determining the size of praetorian cohorts in the first and second centuries CE. Contrary to the ancient narrative tradition, which reports that the staff of each cohort of the Imperial Guard consisted of 1000 people, French historian M. Durry offered a number of arguments in favour of the view that their size was half as large. His hypothesis has been widely accepted in scholarship, but also had its critics who defend the reliability of ancient authors and point out the ambiguity of the conclusions that are obtained from the analysis of archaeological data and statistical calculations based on the material of the praetorian laterculi. Despite the possibility of ambiguous interpretations, the easiest way to account for the testimony of available sources is to accept the miliary status of the praetorian cohorts. The only existing obstacle is that the structure of the praetorian cohort was typical for quingenary units, but this feature is the result of the creation of the corps of imperial bodyguards from legionary soldiers in the period of the Second Triumvirate.