invasion of Macedonia, and even of Italy. The danger was serious; the
insurgents might, by crossing the Julian Alps, stand in a few days once
more before Aquileia and Tergeste--they had not yet forgotten the way
thither--and in ten days before Rome, as the emperor himself expressed
it in the senate, to make sure at all events of its assent to the
comprehensive and urgent military preparations. In the utmost haste
new forces were raised, and the towns more immediately threatened
were provided with garrisons; in like manner whatever troops could be
dispensed with were despatched to the threatened points. The first to
arrive at the spot was the governor of Moesia, Aulus Caecina Severus,
and with him the Thracian king Rhoemetalces; soon other troops followed
from the transmarine provinces. But above all Tiberius was obliged,
instead of penetrating into Bohemia, to return to Illyricum. Had the
insurgents waited till the Romans were engaged in the struggle with
Maroboduus, or had the latter made common cause with them, the position
might have been a very critical one for the Romans. But the former
broke loose too early, and the latter, faithful to his system of
neutrality, condescended just at this time to conclude peace with the
Romans on the basis of the _status quo_. Thus Tiberius had, no doubt,
to send back the Rhine-legions, because Germany could not possibly
be denuded of troops, but he could unite his Illyrian army with the
troops arriving from Moesia, Italy, and Syria, and employ it against
the insurgents. In fact the alarm was greater than the danger. The
Dalmatians, indeed, broke repeatedly into Macedonia and pillaged the
coast as far as Apollonia; but there was no invasion of Italy, and the
fire was soon confined to its original hearth.
Nevertheless, the work of the war was not easy; here, as everywhere,
the renewed overthrow of the subjects was more laborious than the
subjugation itself. Never in the Augustan period was such a body of
troops ever united under the same command; already in the first year of
the war the army of Tiberius consisted of ten legions along with the
corresponding auxiliary forces, and in addition numerous veterans who
had again joined of their own accord and other volunteers, together
about 120,000 men; later he had fifteen legions united under his
banners.[15] In the first campaign (6 A.D.) the contest was waged with
very varying fortune; the large places, like Siscia and Sirmium, were
successfully protected against the insurgents, but the Dalmatian Bato
fought as obstinately and in part successfully against the governor of
Pannonia, Marcus Valerius Messalla, the orator's son, as his Pannonian
namesake against Aulus Caecina governor of Moesia. The petty warfare
above all gave much trouble to the Roman troops. Nor did the following
year (7), in which along with Tiberius his nephew the young Germanicus
appeared on the scene of war, put an end to the ceaseless conflicts.
It was not till the third campaign (8) that the Romans succeeded in
subduing in the first instance the Pannonians, chiefly, as it would
seem, through the circumstance that their leader, gained over by the
Romans, induced his troops all and sundry to lay down their arms at
the river Bathinus, and surrendered his colleague in the supreme
command, Pinnes, to the Romans, for which he was recognised by them as
prince of the Breuci. Punishment indeed soon befell the traitor; his
Dalmatian namesake caught him and had him executed, and once more the
revolt blazed up among the Breuci; but it was speedily extinguished
again, and the Dalmatian was confined to the defence of his own home.
There Germanicus and other leaders of division had in this, as in
the following year (9), to sustain vehement conflicts in the several
cantons; in the latter year the Pirustae (on the borders of Epirus)
and the canton to which the leader himself belonged, the Daesitiatae,
were subdued, one bravely defended stronghold being reduced after
another. Once more in the course of the summer Tiberius himself took
the field, and set in motion all his fighting force against the remains
of the insurrection. Even Bato, shut up by the Roman army in the strong
Andetrium (Much, above Salonae), his last place of refuge, gave up
the cause as lost. He left the town, when he could not induce the
desperadoes to submit, and yielded himself to the victor, with whom he
found honourable treatment; he was relegated as a political prisoner
to Ravenna, where he died. Without their leader the troops still for
a time continued the vain struggle, till the Romans captured the fort
by assault--it is probably this day, the 3d August, that is recorded
in the Roman calendar as the anniversary of the victory achieved by
Tiberius in Illyricum.
[Sidenote: Dacian war of Lentulus.]
Retribution fell also on the Dacians beyond the Danube. Probably at
this time, after the Illyrian war was decided in favour of Rome, Gnaeus
Lentulus led a strong Roman army across the Danube, reached as far
as the Marisus (Marosch) and emphatically defeated them in their own
country, which was then for the first time trodden by a Roman army.
Fifty thousand captive Dacians were made to settle in Thrace.
Men of later times termed the "Batonian war" of the years 6-9 the most
severe which Rome had to sustain against an external foe since that of
Hannibal. It inflicted severe wounds on the Illyrian land; in Italy the
joy over the victory was boundless when the young Germanicus brought
the news of the decisive success to the capital. The exultation did not
last long; almost simultaneously with the news of this success there
came to Rome accounts of a defeat, such as reached the ears of Augustus
but once in his reign of fifty years--a defeat which was still more
significant in its consequences than in itself.
[Sidenote: Germanic rising.]
The state of things in the province of Germany has been already
set forth. The recoil which follows on any foreign rule with the
inevitableness of a natural event, and which had just set in in the
Illyrian land, was in preparation also among the cantons of the middle
Rhine. The remnants of the tribes settled immediately on the Rhine were
indeed quite discouraged; but those dwelling farther back, especially
the Cherusci, Chatti, Bructeri, Marsi, were less injuriously affected
and by no means powerless. As always in such cases, there was formed
in every canton a party of the compliant friends of the Romans, and
a national party preparing in secret a renewed rising. The soul of
the latter was a young man of twenty-six years, of the Cheruscan
princely house, Arminius son of Sigimer; he and his brother Flavus
had received from the emperor Augustus the gifts of Roman citizenship
and of equestrian rank,[16] and both had fought with distinction as
officers in the last Roman campaigns under Tiberius; the brother was
still serving in the Roman army and had established a home for himself
in Italy. Naturally Arminius also was regarded by the Romans as a man
specially to be trusted; the accusations, which his better informed
countryman Segestes brought forward against him, availed not to shake
this confidence in view of the well-known hostility subsisting between
the two. Of the further preparations we have no knowledge; that the
nobility and especially the noble youth took the side of the patriots,
was a matter of course, and found clear expression in the fact that
Segestes's own daughter, Thusnelda, in spite of the prohibition of her
father, married Arminius, while her brother Segimundus and Segestes's
brother Segimer, as well as his nephew Sesithacus, played a prominent
part in the insurrection. It had not a wide range, far less than that
of the Illyrian rising; it can scarcely in strictness be called a
Germanic revolt; the Batavi, the Frisii, the Chauci on the coast took
no part in it, as little such of the Suebian tribes as were under
Roman rule, still less king Maroboduus; in reality only those Germans
rose who had some years previously leagued themselves against Rome,
and against whom the offensive of Drusus was primarily directed. The
Illyrian rising doubtless promoted the ferment in Germany, but there
is no trace of any thread of connection between the two similar and
almost contemporary insurrections; had such a connection subsisted the
Germans would hardly have waited to strike till the Pannonian rising
had been overpowered and the very last strongholds in Dalmatia were
surrendering. Arminius was the brave and shrewd, and above all things
fortunate, leader in the conflict of despair over the lost national
independence--nothing less, but also nothing more.
[Sidenote: Varus.]
It was more the fault of the Romans than the merit of the insurgents,
if the plan of the latter succeeded. So far, certainly, the Illyrian
war had an effect on Germany. The able generals, and to all appearance
also the experienced troops, had been moved from the Rhine to the
Danube. The Germanic army was apparently not diminished, but the
greatest part of it consisted of new legions formed during the war.
Still worse was its position as to leaders. The governor, Publius
Quinctilius Varus,[17] was, no doubt, the husband of a niece of
the emperor, and a man of ill-acquired, but princely, wealth and
of princely arrogance, but inert in body and obtuse in mind, and
without any military gifts or experience--one of those many Romans in
high station who, in consequence of an adherence to the old mixture
of administrative functions with those of higher command, wore the
general's scarf after the model of Cicero. He knew not how to spare
nor yet to see through the new subjects; oppression and exaction were
practised, as had been the wont of his earlier governorship over the
patient Syria; the headquarters swarmed with advocates and clients;
and in grateful humility the conspirators especially received judgment
and justice at his hands, while the net was being drawn more and more
closely around the arrogant praetor.
The position of the army was what was then the normal one. There
were at least five legions in the province, two of which had their
winter-quarters at Mogontiacum, three in Vetera or else in Aliso.
The latter had taken up their summer encampment in the year 9 on the
Weser. The natural route of communication from the upper Lippe to the
Weser leads over the low chain of heights of the Osning and of the
Lippe Forest, which separates the valley of the Ems from that of the
Weser, through the Dören defile into the valley of the Werra, which
falls into the Weser at Rehme, not far from Minden. Here therefore,
approximately, the legions of Varus at that time were encamped. As a
matter of course this summer camp was connected with Aliso, the base of
the Roman position on the right bank of the Rhine, by a road supplied
with depots. The good season of the year came to its close, and they
were making ready for the return march, when the news came that a
neighbouring canton was in revolt; and Varus resolved, instead of
leading back the army by that depot-route, to take a circuit and by the
way to bring back the rebels to allegiance.[18] So they set out; the
army consisted, after numerous reductions, of three legions and nine
divisions of troops of the second class, together about 20,000 men.[19]
When the army had removed to a sufficient distance from its line of
communication, and penetrated far enough into the pathless country,
the confederates in the neighbouring cantons rose, cut down the small
divisions of troops stationed among them, and broke forth on all sides
from the defiles and woods against the army of Varus on its march.
Arminius and the most notable leaders of the patriots had remained
to the last moment at the Roman headquarters to make Varus secure.
On the very evening before the day on which the insurrection burst
forth they had supped in the general's tent with Varus; and Segestes,
when announcing the impending outbreak of the revolt, had adjured the
general to order the immediate arrest of himself as well as of the
accused, and to await the justification of his charge by the facts.
The confidence of Varus was not to be shaken. Arminius rode away from
table to the insurgents, and was next day before the ramparts of the
Roman camp. The military situation was neither better nor worse than
that of the army of Drusus before the battle at Arbalo, and than had,
under similar circumstances, often been the plight of Roman armies.
The communications were for the moment lost; the army, encumbered
with heavy baggage in a pathless country and at a bad rainy season in
autumn, was separated by several days' march from Aliso; the assailants
were beyond doubt far superior in number to the Romans. In such cases
it is the solid quality of the troops that is decisive; and, if the
decision here for once was unfavourable to the Romans, the result was
doubtless mostly due to the inexperience of the young soldiers, and
especially to the want of head and of courage in the general. After
the attack took place the Roman army continued its march, now beyond
doubt in the direction of Aliso, amidst constantly increasing pressure
and increasing demoralisation. Even the higher officers failed in part
to do their duty; one of them rode away from the field of battle
with all the cavalry, and left the infantry to sustain the conflict
alone. The first to despair utterly was the general himself; wounded
in the struggle, he put himself to death before the matter was finally
decided, so early indeed, that his followers still made an attempt
to burn the dead body and to withdraw it from being dishonoured by
the enemy. A number of the superior officers followed his example.
Then, when all was lost, the leader that was left surrendered, and
thereby put out of his own power what remained open to these last--an
honourable soldier's death. Thus perished the Germanic army in one of
the valleys of the mountain-range that bounds the region of Münster,
in the autumn of the year 9 A.D.[20] The eagles fell--all three of
them--into the enemy's hand. Not a division cut its way through, not
even those horsemen who had left their comrades in the lurch; only a
few who were isolated and dispersed were able to effect their escape.
The captives, especially the officers and the advocates, were fastened
to the cross, or buried alive, or bled under the sacrificial knife of
the German priests. The heads cut off were nailed as a token of victory
to the trees of the sacred grove. Far and wide the land rose against
the foreign rule; it was hoped that Maroboduus would join the movement;
the Roman posts and roads on the whole right bank of the Rhine fell
without further trouble into the power of the victors. Only in Aliso,
the brave commandant Lucius Caedicius, not an officer, but a veteran
soldier, offered a resolute resistance, and his archers were enabled
to make the encampment before the walls so annoying to the Germans,
who possessed no weapons for distant fighting, that they converted
the siege into a blockade. When the last stores of the besieged were
exhausted, and still no relief came, Caedicius broke out one dark
night; and this remnant of the army, though burdened with numerous
women and children, and suffering severe losses through the assaults of
the Germans, in reality ultimately reached the camp at Vetera. Thither
also the two legions stationed in Mentz under Lucius Nonius Asprenas
had gone on the news of the disaster. The resolute defence of Aliso,
and the rapid intervention of Asprenas, hindered the Germans from
following up the victory on the left bank of the Rhine, and perhaps the
Gauls from rising against Rome.
[Sidenote: Tiberius again on the Rhine.]
The defeat was soon compensated, in so far as the Rhine army was
immediately not simply made up to its strength, but considerably
reinforced. Tiberius once more took up the supreme command, and though
for the year following on the battle of Varus (10) the history of the
war had no combats to record, it is probable that arrangements were
then made for the occupation of the Rhine-frontier by eight legions,
and simultaneously for the division of this command into that of the
upper army, with Mentz as its headquarters, and that of the lower
with the headquarters at Vetera, an arrangement, as a whole, which
thereupon remained normal for centuries. It could not but be expected
that this increase of the army of the Rhine would be followed by the
energetic resumption of operations on the right bank. The Romano-German
conflict was not a conflict between two powers equal in the political
balance, in which the defeat of the one might justify the conclusion
of an unfavourable peace; it was the conflict of a great civilised
and organised state against a brave but, in a political and military
aspect, barbarous nation, in which the ultimate result was settled
from the first, and an isolated failure in the plan as sketched might
as little produce any change as the ship gives up its voyage because
a gust of wind drives it out of its course. But it was otherwise.
Tiberius, doubtless, went across the Rhine in the following year (11),
but this expedition did not resemble the former one. He remained during
the summer on that side, and celebrated the emperor's birthday there,
but the army kept to the immediate neighbourhood of the Rhine, and
of expeditions on the Weser and on the Elbe there was nothing said.
Evidently the object was only to show to the Germans that the Romans
still knew how to find the way into their country, and perhaps also to
make such arrangements on the right bank of the Rhine as the change of
policy required.
[Sidenote: Germanicus on the Rhine.]
The great command embracing both armies was retained, and retained
accordingly in the imperial house. Germanicus had already exercised it
in the year 11 along with Tiberius; in the following year (12), when
the administration of the consulate detained him in Rome, Tiberius
commanded alone on the Rhine; with the beginning of the year 13
Germanicus took up the sole command. The state of things was regarded
as one of war with the Germans; but these were years of inaction.[21]
The fiery and ambitious hereditary prince bore with reluctance the
constraint imposed on him, and we can understand how, as an officer,
he should not forget the three eagles in the hands of the enemy, and
how, as the son of Drusus, he should wish to re-erect his structure
that had been destroyed. Soon the opportunity presented itself, and he
took it. On the 19th August of the year 14, the emperor Augustus died.
The first change in the throne of the new monarchy did not pass over
without a crisis, and Germanicus had opportunity of proving by deeds to
his father that he was disposed to maintain allegiance to him. But at
the same time he found in it warrant for resuming, even unbidden, the
long-wished-for invasion of Germany; he declared that he had by this
fresh campaign to repress the not inconsiderable ferment that had been
called forth among the legions upon the change of sovereign. Whether
this was a real reason or a pretext we know not, and perhaps he did not
himself know. The commandant of the Rhine army could not be debarred
from crossing the frontier anywhere, and it always to a certain degree
depended on himself how far he should proceed against the Germans.
Perhaps too, he believed that he was acting in the spirit of the new
ruler, who had at least as much claim as his brother to the name of
conqueror of Germany, and whose announced appearance in the camp on the
Rhine might, doubtless, be conceived of, as though he were coming to
resume the conquest of Germany broken off at the bidding of Augustus.
[Sidenote: Renewed offensive.]
However this may be, the offensive beyond the Rhine began anew. Even
in the autumn of the year 14, Germanicus in person led detachments
of all the legions at Vetera over the Rhine, and penetrated up the
Lippe pretty far into the interior, laying waste the country far
and wide, putting to death the natives, and destroying the temples,
such as that of Tanfana held in high honour. Those assailed--chiefly
Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipes,--sought to prepare the fate of Varus
for the crown-prince on his way home; but the attack recoiled before
the energetic bearing of the legions. As this advance met with no
censure, but on the contrary, thanks and marks of honour were decreed
to the general for it, he went farther. In the opening of the year
15 he assembled his main force, in the first instance on the middle
Rhine, and advanced in person from Mentz against the Chatti as far as
the upper confluents of the Weser, while the lower army, farther to
the north, attacked the Cherusci and the Marsi. There was a certain
justification for this proceeding in the fact that the Cherusci
favourably disposed towards Rome, who had, under the immediate
impression of the disaster of Varus, been obliged to join the patriots,
were now again at open variance with the much stronger national party,
and invoked the intervention of Germanicus. He was actually successful
in liberating Segestes, the friend of the Romans, when hard pressed
by his countrymen, and at the same time in getting possession of his
daughter, the wife of Arminius. Segestes' brother Segimerus, once the
leader of the patriots by the side of Arminius, submitted. The internal
dissensions of the Germans once more paved the way for the foreign
rule. In the very same year Germanicus undertook his main expedition
to the region of the Ems; Caecina marched from Vetera to the upper
Ems, while he in person went thither with the fleet from the mouth of
the Rhine; the cavalry moved along the coast through the territory
of the faithful Frisians. When reunited the Romans laid waste the
country of the Bructeri and the whole territory between the Ems and
Lippe, and thence made an expedition to the disastrous spot where, six
years before, the army of Varus had perished, to erect a monument to
their fallen comrades. On their farther advance the Roman cavalry were
allured by Arminius and the exasperated hosts of the patriots into an
ambush, and would have been destroyed had not the infantry come up and
prevented greater mischief. More serious dangers attended the return
homeward from the Ems, which followed at first the same routes as the
march thither.
[Sidenote: Retreat of Caecina.]
The cavalry arrived at the winter camp uninjured. Seeing that the fleet
was not sufficient for conveying the infantry of four legions, owing
to the difficulty of navigation--it was about the time of the autumnal
equinox--Germanicus disembarked two of them and made them return along
the shore; but inadequately acquainted with the ebbing and flowing of
the tide at this season of the year, they lost their baggage and ran
the risk of being drowned _en masse_. The retreat of the four legions
of Caecina from the Ems to the Rhine resembled exactly that of Varus;
indeed, the difficult, marshy country offered perhaps still greater
difficulties than the defiles of the wooded hills. The whole mass of
natives, with the two princes of the Cherusci, Arminius and his highly
esteemed uncle Inguiomerus, at their head, threw themselves on the
retreating troops in the sure hope of preparing for them the same fate,
and filled the morasses and woods all around. But the old general,
experienced in forty years' of war service, remained cool even in the
utmost peril, and kept his despairing and famishing men firmly in hand.
Yet even he might not perhaps have been able to avert the mischief but
for the circumstance that, after a successful attack during the march,
in which the Romans lost a great part of their cavalry and almost the
whole baggage, the Germans, sure of victory and eager for spoil, in
opposition to Arminius' advice, followed the other leader, and instead
of further surrounding the enemy, attempted directly to storm the
camp. Caecina allowed the Germans to come up to the ramparts, but then
burst forth from all posterns and gates with such vehemence upon the
assailants that they suffered a severe defeat, and in consequence of it
the further retreat took place without material hindrance. Those at
the Rhine had already given up the army as lost, and were on the point
of casting off the bridge at Vetera, to prevent the Germans at least
from penetrating into Gaul; it was only the resolute remonstrance of a
woman, the wife of Germanicus and daughter of Agrippa, which frustrated
the desperate and disgraceful resolve.
The resumption of the subjugation of Germany thus began not quite
successfully. The territory between the Rhine and Weser had indeed been
again trodden and traversed, but the Romans had no decisive results to
show, and the enormous loss in material, particularly in horses, was
sorely felt, so that, as in the times of Scipio, the towns of Italy and
of the western provinces took part in patriotic contributions to make
up for what was lost.
[Sidenote: Campaign of the year 16.]
For the next campaign (16) Germanicus changed his plan of warfare. He
attempted the subjugation of Germany on the basis of the North Sea
and the fleet, partly because the tribes on the coast, the Batavi,
Frisians, and Chauci, adhered more or less to the Romans, partly in
order to shorten the marches--in which much time was spent and much
loss incurred--from the Rhine to the Weser and Elbe and back again.
After he had employed this spring, like the previous one, for rapid
advances on the Main and on the Lippe, he, in the beginning of summer,
embarked his whole army at the mouth of the Rhine in the powerful
transport-fleet of 1000 sail which had meanwhile been made ready, and
actually arrived without loss at the mouth of the Ems, where the fleet
remained. Thence he advanced, as may be conjectured, up the Ems as far
as the mouth of the Haase, and then along the latter as far up as the
Werra-valley, and through this to the Weser. By this means the carrying
of the army, 80,000 strong, through the Teutoburg Forest, which was
attended with great difficulties, particularly as to provisions, was
avoided. A secure reserve for supplies was furnished in the camp
beside the fleet, and the Cherusci on the right bank of the Weser were
assailed in flank instead of in front. Here the Romans encountered the
levy _en masse_ of the Germans, again led by the two chiefs of the
patriot party, Arminius and Inguiomerus. What warlike resources were at
their disposal is shown by the fact that on two occasions, one shortly
after the other, in the Cheruscan country--first on the Weser itself
and then somewhat farther inland[22]--they fought in the open field
against the whole Roman army, and in both hardly contested the victory.
The latter certainly fell to the Romans, and of the German patriots a
considerable number were left on the fields of battle. No prisoners
were taken, and both sides fought with extreme exasperation. The second
tropaeum of Germanicus spoke of the overthrow of all the Germanic
tribes between the Rhine and Elbe; the son placed this campaign of
his alongside of the brilliant campaigns of his father, and reported
to Rome that in the next campaign he should have the subjugation of
Germany complete. But Arminius escaped, although wounded, and continued
still at the head of the patriots; and an unforeseen mischief marred
the success won by arms. On the return home, which the greater part of
the legions made by sea, the transport-fleet encountered the autumn
storms of the North Sea. The vessels were dashed on all sides upon the
islands of the North Sea, and as far as the British coasts. A great
portion were destroyed, and those that escaped had for the most part
to throw horses and baggage overboard, and to be glad of saving their
bare life. The loss of vessels was, as in the times of the Punic war,
equivalent to a defeat. Germanicus himself, cast adrift alone with the
admiral's ship on the desolate shore of the Chauci, was in despair at
this misfortune, and on the point of seeking his death in that ocean
the assistance of which he had at the beginning of this campaign
invoked so earnestly and so vainly. Doubtless afterwards the loss of
men proved not to be quite so great as it had at first appeared, and
some effective blows which the general, on his return to the Rhine,
inflicted on the nearest barbarians, raised the sunken courage of the
troops. But, taken as a whole, the campaign of the year 16, as compared
with that of the preceding year, ended in more brilliant victories
doubtless, but also in much more serious loss.
[Sidenote: The altered situation.]
The recall of Germanicus was at the same time the abolition of the
command-in-chief of the Rhenish army. The mere division of the command
put an end to the conduct of the war as heretofore pursued; the
circumstance that Germanicus was not merely recalled, but obtained no
successor, was tantamount to ordaining the defensive on the Rhine.
Thus the campaign of the year 16 was the last which the Romans waged
in order to subdue Germany and to transfer the boundary of the empire
from the Rhine to the Elbe. That this was the aim of the campaigns
of Germanicus is shown by their very course, and by the trophy that
celebrated the frontier of the Elbe. The re-establishment, too, of the
military works on the right bank of the Rhine, of the forts of the
Taunus, as well as of the stronghold of Aliso and the line connecting
it with Vetera, belonged only in part to such an occupation of the
right bank as was in keeping with the restricted plan of operations
after the battle of Varus; in fact it had a far wider scope. But the
designs of the general were not, or not quite, those of the emperor.
It is more than probable that Tiberius from the outset allowed rather
than sanctioned the enterprises of Germanicus on the Rhine, and it is
certain that he wished to put an end to them by recalling him in the
winter of 16-17. Beyond doubt, at the same time, a good part of what
had been attained was given up, and in particular the garrison was
withdrawn from Aliso. As Germanicus, even in the following year, found
not a stone left of the memorial of victory erected in the Teutoburg
Forest, so the results of his victories disappeared like a flash of
lightning into the water, and none of his successors continued the
building on this basis.
[Sidenote: Motives for the change of policy.]
If Augustus gave up the conquered Germany as lost after the battle of
Varus, and if Tiberius now, when the conquest had once more been taken
in hand, ordered it to be broken off, we are well entitled to ask, What
motives guided the two notable rulers in this course, and what was the
significance of these important events for the general policy of the
empire?
The battle of Varus is an enigma, not in a military but in a political
point of view--not in its course, but in its consequences. Augustus
was not wrong when he demanded back his lost legions, not from the
enemy nor from fate, but from the general; it was a disaster such as
unskilled leaders of division from time to time bring about for every
state. We have difficulty in conceiving that the destruction of an
army of 20,000 men without further direct military consequences should
have given a decisive turn to the policy at large of a judiciously
governed universal empire. And yet the two rulers bore that defeat
with a patience as unexampled as it was critical and hazardous for
the position of the government in relation to the army and to its
neighbours; they allowed the conclusion of peace with Maroboduus,
which, beyond doubt, was meant to be in strictness a mere armistice,
to become withal definitive, and made no further attempt to get the
upper valley of the Elbe into their hands. It must have been no easy
thing for Tiberius to see the collapse of the great structure begun in
concert with his brother, and after the latter's death almost completed
by himself; the energetic zeal with which, as soon as he had again
entered on the government, he took up the Germanic war which he had
begun ten years ago, enables us to measure what this self-denial must
have cost him. If, nevertheless, the self-denial was persevered in not
merely by Augustus, but also after his death by Tiberius himself, there
is no other reason to be found for it than that they recognised the
plans pursued by them for twenty years for the changing of the boundary
to the north as incapable of execution, and the subjugation and mastery
of the region between the Rhine and the Elbe appeared to them to
transcend the resources of the empire.
[Sidenote: The Elbe frontier.]
If the previous boundary of the empire ran from the middle Danube up to
its source and to the upper Rhine, and thence down that river, it was,
at all events, materially shortened and improved by being shifted to
the Elbe, which in its head-waters approaches the middle Danube, and
to its course throughout; in which case, probably, besides the evident
military gain, there came into view also the political consideration
that the keeping of the great commands as far as possible remote from
Rome and Italy was one of the leading maxims of the Augustan policy,
and an army of the Elbe would hardly have played such a part in the
further development of Rome as the armies of the Rhine but too soon
undertook. The preliminary conditions to this end, the overthrow of
the Germanic patriot-party and of the Suebian king in Bohemia, were no
easy tasks; nevertheless they had already once stood on the verge of
succeeding, and with a right conduct of the war these results could
not fail to be reached. But it was another question whether, after
the institution of the Elbe frontier, the troops could be withdrawn
from the intervening region; this question had been raised in a very
serious way for the Roman government by the Dalmato-Pannonian war. If
the mere impending movement of the Roman Danube-army into Bohemia had
called forth a popular rising in Illyricum, that was only put down
by the exertion of all their military resources after a four years'
conflict, this wide region might not be left to itself either at the
time or for many years to come. Similar, doubtless, was the state of
the case on the Rhine. The Roman public was wont, indeed, to boast
that the state held all Gaul in subjection by means of the garrison at
Lyons 1200 strong; but the government could not forget that the two
great armies on the Rhine not merely warded off the Germans, but also
had a very material bearing on the Gallic cantons that were not at all
distinguished by submissiveness. Stationed on the Weser or even on the
Elbe, they would not have rendered this service in equal measure; and
to keep both the Rhine and the Elbe occupied was beyond their power.
[Sidenote: And its abandonment.]
Thus Augustus might well come to the conclusion that with the strength
of the army as it then stood--considerably increased indeed of late,
but still far below the measure of what was really requisite--that
great regulation of the frontier was not practicable; the question was
thus converted from a military one into one of internal policy, and
especially into one of finance. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius ventured
to increase still further the expense of the army. We may blame them
for not doing so. The paralysing double blow of the Illyrian and the
Germanic insurrections with their grave disasters, the great age and
the enfeebled vigour of the ruler, the increasing disinclination of
Tiberius for initiating any fresh and great undertaking, and above all
any deviation from the policy of Augustus, doubtless co-operated to
induce this result, and did so, perhaps, to the injury of the state.
By the demeanour of Germanicus, not to be approved but easily to be
explained, we perceive how keenly the soldiers and the youth felt
the abandonment of the new province of Germany. In the poor attempt
to retain, at least nominally, the lost Germany with the help of the
two German cantons on the left of the Rhine, and in the ambiguous and
uncertain words with which Augustus himself in his account of the case
lays or forgoes claim to Germany as Roman, we discern how perplexed was
the attitude of the government towards public opinion in this matter.
The grasping at the frontier of the Elbe was a mighty, perhaps a too
bold stroke, undertaken possibly by Augustus--who did not generally
soar so high--only after years of hesitation, and doubtless not without
the determining influence of the younger stepson who was in closest
intercourse with him. But to retrace too bold a step is, as a rule, not
a mending of the mistake, but a second mistake. The monarchy had need
of warlike honour unstained and of unconditional warlike success, in
quite another way than the former burgomaster-government; the absence
of the numbers 17, 18, and 19--never filled up since the battle of
Varus--in the roll of regiments, was little in keeping with military
prestige, and the peace with Maroboduus, on the basis of the _status
quo_, could not be construed by the most loyal rhetoric into a success.
The assumption that Germanicus began those far-reaching enterprises
in opposition to the strict orders of his government is forbidden by
his whole political position; but the reproach that he made use of his
double position, as supreme commander of the first army of the Rhine
and as future successor to the throne, in order to carry out at his own
hand his politico-military plans, is one from which he can as little
be exempted as the emperor from the no less grave reproach of having
started back perhaps from the forming, or perhaps only from the clear
expression and the sharp execution, of his own resolves. If Tiberius
at least allowed the resumption of the offensive, he must have felt
how much was to be said for a more vigorous policy; he may perhaps,
as over-considerate people do, have left the decision, so to speak,
to destiny, till at length the repeated and severe misfortunes of the
crown-prince once more justified the policy of despair. It was not easy
for the government to bid an army halt which had brought back two of
the three lost eagles; but it was done. Whatever may have been the real
and the personal motives, we stand here at a turning-point in national
destinies. History, too, has its flow and its ebb; here, after the tide
of Roman sway over the world has attained its height, the ebb sets in.
Northward of Italy the Roman rule had for a few years reached as far as
the Elbe; since the battle of Varus its bounds were the Rhine and the
Danube. A legend--but an old one--relates that the first conqueror of
Germany, Drusus, on his last campaign at the Elbe, saw a vision of a
gigantic female figure of Germanic mould, that called to him in his own
language the word "Back!" The word was not spoken, but it was fulfilled.
[Sidenote: Germans against Germans.]
Nevertheless the defeat of the Augustan policy, as the peace with
Maroboduus and the sufferance of the Teutoburg disaster may well be
termed, was hardly a victory of the Germans. After the battle with
Varus the hope must doubtless have passed through the minds of the
best, that a certain union of the nation would accrue from the glorious
victory of the Cherusci and their allies, and from the retiring of the
enemy in the west as in the south. Perhaps in these very crises the
feeling of unity may have dawned on the Saxons and Suebians formerly
confronting each other as strangers. The fact that the Saxons sent
from the battle-field the head of Varus to the king of the Suebians,
can be nothing but the savage expression of the thought that the hour
had come for all Germans to throw themselves in joint onset upon
the Roman empire, and thus to secure the frontier and the freedom
of their land, as they could alone be secured, by striking down the
hereditary foe in his own home. But the cultured man and the politic
king accepted the gift of the insurgents only in order to forward the
head to the emperor Augustus for burial; he did nothing for, but also
nothing against, the Romans, and persevered unshaken in his neutrality.
Immediately after the death of Augustus there were fears at Rome of
the Marcomani invading Raetia, but apparently without cause; and when
Germanicus thereupon resumed the offensive against the Germans from
the Rhine, the mighty king of the Marcomani looked on inactive. This
policy of finesse or of cowardice dug its own grave amidst a Germanic
world fiercely excited, and drunk with patriotic successes and hopes.
The more remote Suebian tribes but loosely connected with the empire,
the Semnones, Langobardi, and Gothones, declared off from the king,
and made common cause with the Saxon patriots; it is not improbable
that the considerable forces, which were evidently at the disposal of
Arminius and Inguiomerus in the conflicts with Germanicus, flowed to
them in great part from these quarters.
[Sidenote: Fall of Maroboduus.]
Soon afterwards, when the Roman attack was suddenly broken off, the
patriots turned (17) to assail Maroboduus, perhaps to assail the kingly
office in general, at least as the latter administered it on the Roman
model.[23] But even among themselves divisions had set in; the two
nearly related Cheruscan princes, who in the last struggles had led
the patriots, if not victoriously, at any rate bravely and honourably,
and had hitherto constantly fought shoulder to shoulder, no longer
stood together in this war. The uncle Inguiomerus no longer tolerated
his being second to his nephew, and at the outbreak of the war passed
to the side of Maroboduus. Thus matters came to a decisive battle
between Germans and Germans, nay, between the same tribes; for Suebi
as well as Cherusci fought in both armies. Long the conflict wavered;
both armies had learned from the Roman tactics, and on both sides the
passion and the exasperation were alike. Arminius did not achieve a
victory properly so called, but his antagonist left to him the field of
battle; and, as Maroboduus seemed to have fared the worst, those who
had hitherto adhered to him left him, and he found himself confined to
his own kingdom. When he asked for Roman aid against his overpowerful
countrymen, Tiberius reminded him of his attitude after the battle of
Varus, and replied that now the Romans in turn would remain neutral.
His fate was rapidly decided. In the very following year (18) he was
surprised in his royal abode itself by a prince of the Gothones,
Catualda, to whom he had formerly given personal offence, and who had
thereupon revolted from him with the other non-Bohemian Suebi; and,
abandoned by his own people, he with difficulty made his escape to the
Romans, who granted to him the asylum which he sought--he died many
years afterwards, as a Roman pensioner, at Ravenna.
[Sidenote: End of Arminius.]
Thus the opponents as well as the rivals of Arminius had become
refugees, and the Germanic nation looked to none else than to him. But
this greatness was his danger and his destruction. His own countrymen,
especially his own clan, accused him of going the way of Maroboduus
and of desiring to be not merely the first, but also the lord and
the king of the Germans--whether with reason or not, and whether, if
he wished this, he did not perhaps wish what was right, who can say?
The result was a civil war between him and these representatives of
popular freedom; two years after the banishment of Maroboduus he too,
like Caesar, fell by the dagger of nobles of republican sentiments
near to his person. His wife Thusnelda and his son born in captivity,
Thumelicus, on whom he had never set eyes, marched at the triumph of
Germanicus (26th May, 17) among the other Germans of rank, in chains
to the Capitol; the old Segestes was for his fidelity to the Romans
provided with a place of honour, whence he might look on at the
public entry of his daughter and his grandson. They all died within
the Roman empire; with Maroboduus the wife and son of his antagonist
met in the exile of Ravenna. When Tiberius remarked at the recall of
Germanicus that there was no need to wage war against the Germans, and
that they would of themselves take care to do what was requisite for
Rome, he knew his adversaries; in this, at all events, history has
pronounced him right. But to the high-spirited man who, at the age of
six-and-twenty, had released his Saxon home from the Italian foreign
rule, who thereafter had been general as well as soldier in a seven
years' struggle for that freedom regained, who had staked not merely
person and life, but also wife and child for his nation, to fall at the
age of thirty-seven by an assassin's hand--to this man his people gave,
what it was in their power to give, an eternal monument in heroic song.
Footnotes.
[1: Dio, li. 23, expressly says this as to the year 725: τέως μὲν
οὖν ταῦτ᾿ ἐποίουν (_i.e._ so long as the Bastarnae attacked only
the Triballi--near Oescus in Lower Moesia, and the Dardani in Upper
Moesia), οὐδὲν σφίσι πρᾶγμα πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἦν· ἐπεὶ δὲ τόν τε
Αἷμον ὑπερέβησαν καὶ τὴν Θρᾴκην τὴν Δενθελητῶν ἔνσπονδον αὐτοῖς οὖσαν
κατέδραμον κ. τ. λ. The allies in Moesia, of whom Dio, xxxviii. 10
speaks, are the coast towns.]
[2: When Dio says (li. 23): τὴν Σεγετικὴν καλουμένην προσεποίησατο
καὶ ἐς τὴν Μυσίδα ἐνέβαλε, the town spoken of, doubtless, can only be
Serdica, the modern Sofia, on the upper Oescus, the key to the Moesian
country.]
[3: After the campaign of Crassus the conquered land was probably
organised in such a way that the coast went to the Thracian kingdom, as
Zippel has shown (_Röm. Illyricum_, p. 243), and the western portion
was, just like Thrace, assigned in fief to the native princes, in
place of one of whom must have come the _praefectus civitatium Moesiae
et Triballiae_ (_C. I. L._ v. 1838), who was still acting under
Tiberius. The usual assumption that Moesia was at first combined with
Illyricum, rests only on the circumstance that in the enumeration of
the provinces apportioned in the year 727 between emperor and senate
in Dio, liii. 12 it is not named, and so was contained in "Dalmatia."
But this enumeration does not extend at all to the vassal-states and
the procuratorial provinces, and so far all is in due keeping with
our assumption. On the other hand, weighty arguments tell against the
usual hypothesis. Had Moesia been originally a part of the province
of Illyricum, it would have retained this name; for on the division
of a province the name was usually retained, and only a defining
epithet added. But the appellation Illyricum, which Dio doubtless
reproduces _l.c._, was always in this connection restricted to the
upper (Dalmatia) and the lower (Pannonia). Moreover, if Moesia was a
part of Illyricum, there was no room left for that Prefect of Moesia
and Triballia, or in other words for his kingly predecessor. Lastly,
it is far from probable that in 727 {27.} a command of such extent and
importance should have been entrusted to a single senatorial governor.
On the other hand, everything admits of easy explanation, if small
client-states arose in Moesia after the war of Crassus; these were as
such from the outset under the emperor, and, as the senate did not take
part in their successive annexation and conversion into a governorship,
this might easily be unnoticed in the Annals. It was completed in or
before the year 743 {11.}, seeing that the governor, L. Calpurnius
Piso then waging war against the Thracians, to whom Dio (liv. 34)
erroneously assigns the province of Pamphylia, can only have had as his
province Pannonia or Moesia, and, as at that time Tiberius was acting
as legate in Pannonia, there is left for him only Moesia. In 6 A.D.
there certainly appears an imperial governor of Moesia.]
[4: The official title of Cottius was not king, like that of his
father Donnus, but "president of the cantonal union" (_praefectus
civitatium_), as he is named on the still standing arch of Susa
erected by him in honour of Augustus in the year 745-6 {9-8.}. But the
position was beyond doubt held for life, and, under reservation of the
superior's right to confirm it, also hereditary; so far therefore the
union was certainly a principality, as it is usually so termed.]
[5: We know this road only in the shape which the emperor Claudius, the
son of the constructor, gave to it; originally, of course, it cannot
have been called _via Claudia_, but only _via Augusta_, and we can
hardly regard as its terminus in Italy Altinum, in the neighbourhood
of the modern Venice, since, under Augustus, all the imperial roads
still led to Rome. That the road ran through the upper Adige valley is
shown by the milestone found at Meran (_C. I. L._ v. 8003); that it led
to the Danube, is attested; the connection of the making of this road
with the founding of Augusta Vindelicum, though this was at first only
a market-village (_forum_), is more than probable (_C. I. L._ iii. p.
711); in what way Augsburg and the Danube were reached from Meran we
do not know. Subsequently the road was rectified, so as to leave the
Adige at Bautzen, and to lead up the Eisach valley over the Brenner to
Augsburg.]
[6: The locality "in which the Bessi honour the god Dionysos," and
which Crassus took from them and gave to the Odrysians (Dio, li.
25), is certainly the same _Liberi patris lucus_, in which Alexander
sacrificed, and the father of Augustus, _cum per secreta Thraciae
exercitum duceret_, asked the oracle respecting his son (Suetonius,
_Aug._ 94), and which Herodotus already mentions (ii. III; compare
Euripides, _Hec._ 1267) as an oracular shrine placed under the
protection of the Bessi. Certainly it is to be sought northwards of
Rhodope; it has not yet been discovered.]
[7: That the battle at Arbalo (Plin. _H.N._ xi. 17, 55) belongs to this
year, is shown by Obsequens, 72, and so the narrative in Dio, liv. 33,
applies to it.]
[8: That the fall of Drusus took place in the region of the Saale
we may be allowed to infer from Strabo, vii. 1, 3, p. 291, although
he only says that he perished on the march between Salas and Rhine,
and the identification of the Salas with the Saale rests solely on
the resemblance of name. From the scene of the mishap he was then
transported as far as the summer camp (Seneca, _Cons. ad Marciam_
3: _ipsis illum hostibus aegrum cum veneratione et pace mutua
prosequentibus nec optare quod expediebat audentibus_), and in that
camp he died (Sueton., _Claud._ 1). This camp lay in the heart of
the barbarian land (Valerius Max. v. 5, 3) and not very far from the
battlefield of Varus (Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 7, where the _vetus ara
Druso sita_ is certainly to be referred to the place where he died);
we may be allowed to seek it in the region of the Weser. The dead body
was then conveyed to the winter-camp (Dio, lv. 2) and there burnt;
this spot was regarded, according to Roman usage, also as the place
of burial, although the depositing of the ashes took place in Rome,
and to this is to be referred the _honorarius tumulus_ with the annual
obsequies (Sueton. _l.c._). Probably we have to seek for this place
at Vetera. When a later author (Eutropius, vii. 13) speaks of the
_monumentum_ of Drusus at Mentz, this is doubtless not the tomb, but
the elsewhere mentioned Tropaeum (Florus, ii. 30: _Marcomanorum spoliis
et insignibus quendam editum tumulum in tropaei modum excoluit_).]
[9: What we learn from Dio, lv. 10, partly confirmed by Tacitus, _Ann._
iv. 44, cannot be apprehended otherwise. Noricum and Raetia must have
been put under this governor as an exceptional measure, or the course
of operations induced him to pass beyond the limit of his governorship.
The assumption that he marched through Bohemia itself, which would
involve still greater difficulties, is not required by the narrative.]
[10: To a connection in rear of the camp on the Rhine with the port
Boulogne we might perhaps take the much disputed notice of Florus, ii.
30, to refer: _Bonnam_ (or _Bormam_) _et Gessoriacum pontibus iunxit
classibusque firmavit_, with which is to be compared the mention by the
same author of forts on the Maas. Bonn may reasonably have been at that
time the station of the Rhine-fleet; Boulogne was in later times still
a fleet-station. Drusus might well have occasion to make the shortest
and safest land-route between the two stations for the fleet available
for transport, though the writer, probably bent on striking effect,
awakens by his pointed mode of expression conceptions which cannot be
in that form correct.]
[11: As to the administrative partition of Gaul there is, apart from
the separation of the Narbonensis, an utter absence of accounts,
because it rested only on imperial ordinances, and nothing in reference
to it came into the records of the senate. But the first information of
the existence of separate Upper and Lower German commands is furnished
by the campaigns of Germanicus, and the battle of Varus can hardly
be understood under that assumption; here, doubtless, the _hiberna
inferiora_ appear, viz. that of Vetera (Velleius, ii. 120), and the
counterpart to it, the _superiora_, can only have been formed by that
of Mentz; but this was not under a colleague of Varus, but under his
nephew, who was thus subordinate to him in command. Probably the
partition only took place, in consequence of the defeat, in the last
years of Augustus.]
[12: The _praesidium_ constructed by Drusus _in monte Tauno_ (Tacitus,
_Ann._ i. 56), and the φρούριον ἐν Χάττοις παρ' αὐτῷ τῷ Ῥήνῳ associated
with Aliso (Dio, liv. 33), are probably identical, and the special
position of the canton of the Mattiaci is evidently connected with the
construction of Mogontiacum.]
[13: That the "fort at the confluence of the Lupias and the Helison,"
in Dio, liv. 33, is identical with the oftener mentioned Aliso, and
this must be sought on the upper Lippe, is subject to no doubt; and
that the Roman winter-camp at the sources of the Lippe (_ad caput
Lupiae_, Velleius, ii. 205), the only one of the kind, so far as we
know, on German ground, is to be sought just there, is at least very
probable. That the two Roman roads running along the Lippe, and their
fortified places of bivouac, led at least as far as the region of
Lippstadt, the researches of Hölzermann in particular have shown.
The upper Lippe has only one confluent of note, the Alme, and as the
village of Elsen lies not far from where the Alme falls into the
Lippe, some weight may be here assigned to the similarity of name. To
the view, supported among others by Schmidt, which places Aliso at
the confluence of the Glenne (and Liese) with the Lippe, the chief
objection is that the camp _ad caput Lupiae_ must then have been
different from Aliso, and in general this point lies too far from the
line of the Weser, while from Elsen the route leads directly through
the Dören defile into the Werra valley. Schmidt, who does not adhere to
the identification of Aliso and Elsen, remarks generally (_Westfälische
Zeitschrift für Gesch. und Alterthumskunde_, xx. p. 259), that the
heights of Weser (not far from Elsen), and generally the left margin of
the valley of the Alme, are the centre of a semicircle formed by the
mountains in front, and this highlying, dry region, allowing an exact
look-out as far as the mountains, which covers the whole country of the
Lippe and is itself covered in front by the Alme, is well adapted for
the starting-point of a march towards the Weser.]
[14: This and not more is what Velleius says (ii. 110): _in omnibus
Pannoniis non disciplinae_ (= military training) _tantummodo, sed
linguae quoque notitia Romanae, plerisque etiam litterarum usus et
familiaris animorum erat exercitatio_. These are the same phenomena as
are met with in the case of the Cheruscan princes, only in increased
measure; and they are quite intelligible when we bear in mind the
Pannonian and Breucian _alae_ and _cohortes_ raised by Augustus.]
[15: If we assume that of the twelve legions who were on the march
against Maroboduus (Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 46), as many as we find
soon after in Germany, that is, five, went to form the army there,
the Illyrian army of Tiberius numbered seven, and the number of ten
(Velleius, ii. 113) may fairly be referred to the contingents from
Moesia and Italy, that of fifteen to the contingents from Egypt or
Syria, and to the further levies in Italy, whence the newly raised
legions went no doubt to Germany, but those thereby relieved went to
the army of Tiberius. Velleius (ii. 112) speaks inaccurately, at the
very beginning of the war, of five legions brought up by A. Caecina
and Plautius Silvanus _ex transmarinis provinciis_; firstly, the
transmarine troops could not be at once on the spot, and secondly, the
legions of Caecina were of course the Moesian. Comp. my commentary on
the _Mon. Ancyr._ 2d ed. p. 71.]
[16: Velleius (ii. 118) says so; _adsiduus militiae nostrae prioris
comes, iure etiam civitatis Romanae eius equestres consequens gradus_;
which coincides with the _ductor popularium_ of Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 10.
Such officers must have been of no infrequent occurrence at this time;
thus, there fought in the third campaign of Drusus _inter primores
Chumstinctus et Avectius tribuni ex civitate Nerviorum_ (Liv. _Ep._
141), and under Germanicus Chariovalda _dux Batavorum_ (Tac. _Ann._ ii.
11).]
[17: The effigy of Varus is shown on a copper coin of the African town
Achulla, struck under his proconsulate of Africa in the year 747-8,
B.C. 7-6 (L. Müller, _Num. de l'ancienne Afrique_, ii. p. 44, comp. p.
52). The base which once supported the statue erected to him by the
town of Pergamus has again been brought to light by the excavations
there; the subscription runs: ὁ δῆμος [ἐτίμησεν] Πόπλιον Κοινκτίλιον
Σέξτου υἱὸν Οὐάρ[ον] πάσης ἀρετῆ[ς ἕνεκα].]
[18: The report of Dio, the only one which hands down to us a
somewhat connected view of this catastrophe, explains the course
of it sufficiently, if we only take further into account--what Dio
certainly does not bring into prominence--the general relation of the
summer and winter camps, and thereby answer the question justly put by
Ranke (_Weltgeschichte_, iii. 2, 275), how the whole army could have
marched against a local insurrection. The narrative of Florus by no
means rests on sources originally different, as that scholar assumes,
but simply on the dramatic accumulation of motives for action, such
as is characteristic of all historians of this type. The peaceful
dispensing of justice by Varus and the storming of the camp are both
known to the better tradition, and that in their causal connection.
The ridiculous representation of the Germans breaking in at all the
gates into the camp, while Varus is sitting on the judgment-seat and
the herald is summoning the parties before him, is not tradition, but
a picture manufactured from it. That this is in utter antagonism to
the description by Tacitus of the three bivouacs, as well as to sound
reason, is obvious.]
[19: The normal strength of the three _alae_ and the six _cohortes_ is
not to be calculated exactly, inasmuch as among them there may have
been double divisions (_miliariae_); but the army cannot have numbered
much over 20,000 men. On the other hand, there appears no reason for
assuming a material difference of the effective strength from the
normal. The numerous detachments which are mentioned (Dio, lvi. 19)
serve to account for the comparatively small number of the _auxilia_,
which were always by preference employed for this duty.]
[20: As Germanicus, coming from the Ems, lays waste the territory
between the Ems and Lippe, that is, the region of Münster, and not
far from it lies the _Teutoburgiensis saltus_, where Varus's army
perished (Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 61), it is most natural to understand this
description, which does not suit the flat Münster region, of the range
bounding the Münster region on the north-east, the Osning; but it may
also be deemed applicable to the Wiehen mountains somewhat farther to
the north, parallel with the Osning, and stretching from Minden to the
source of the Hunte. We do not know at what point on the Weser the
summer camp stood; but in accordance with the position of Aliso near
Paderborn, and with the connections subsisting between this and the
Weser, it was probably somewhere near Minden. The direction of the
march on the return may have been any other excepting only the nearest
way to Aliso; and the catastrophe consequently occurred not on the
military line of communication between Minden and Paderborn itself,
but at a greater or less distance from it. Varus may have marched from
Minden somewhat in the direction of Osnabrück, then after the attack
have attempted from thence to reach Paderborn, and have met with his
end on this march in one of those two ranges of hills. For centuries
there have been found in the district of Venne at the source of the
Hunte a surprisingly large number of Roman gold, silver, and copper
coins, such as circulated in the time of Augustus, while later coins
hardly occur there at all (comp. the proofs in Paul Höfer, _der Feldzug
des Germanicus im Jahre 16_, Gotha, 1884, p. 82, f.) The coins thus
found cannot belong to one store of coins on account of their scattered
occurrence and of the difference of metals, nor to a centre of traffic
on account of their proximity as regards time; they look quite like
the leavings of a great extirpated army, and the accounts before us as
to the battle of Varus may be reconciled with this locality. As to the
year of the catastrophe there should never have been any dispute; the
shifting of it to the year 10 is a mere mistake. The season of the year
is in some measure determined by the fact that between the arrangement
to celebrate the Illyrian victory and the arrival of the unfortunate
news in Rome there lay only five days, and that arrangement probably
had in view the victory of 3d Aug., though it did not immediately
follow on the latter. Accordingly the defeat must have taken place
somewhere in September or October, which also accords with the
circumstance that the last march of Varus was evidently the march back
from the summer to the winter camp.]
[21: Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 9, and Dio, lvi. 26, attest the continuance
of the state of war; but nothing at all is reported from the nominal
campaigns of the summers of 12, 13, and 14, and the expedition of the
autumn of 14 appears as the first undertaken by Germanicus. It is true
that Germanicus had been proclaimed as Imperator probably even in the
lifetime of Augustus (_Mon. Ancyr._ p. 17); but there is nothing to
hinder our referring this to the campaign of the year 11, in which
Germanicus commanded with proconsular power alongside of Tiberius (Dio,
lvi. 25). In the year 12 he was in Rome for the administration of the
consulate, which he retained throughout the year, and which was still
at that time treated in earnest; this explains why Tiberius, as has now
been proved (Hermann Schulz, _Quaest. Ovidianae_, Greifswald, 1883, p.
15), still went to Germany in the year 12, and resigned his Rhenish
command only at the beginning of the year 13, on the celebration of the
Pannonian victory.]
[22: The hypothesis of Schmidt (_Westfäl. Zeitschrift_, xx. p.
301)--that the first battle was fought on the Idistavisian field
somewhere near Bückeburg, and the second, on account of the morasses
mentioned on the occasion, perhaps on the Steinhudersee, near the
village of Bergkirchen, which lies to the south of this--will not be
far removed from the truth, and may at least help us to realise the
matter. In this, as in most of the accounts of battles by Tacitus, we
must despair of reaching an assured result.]
[23: The statement of Tacitus (_Ann._ ii. 45), that this was properly
a war of the republicans against the monarchists, is probably not free
from a wish to transfer Hellenico-Roman views to the very different
Germanic world. So far as the war had an ethico-political tendency, it
would be called forth not by the _nomen regis_, as Tacitus says, but by
the _certum imperium visque regia_ of Velleius (ii. 108).]