he surrendered himself; and by his contrivance, his daughter, Thusnelda,
the wife of Arminius, also came into the hands of the Romans, she being
far advanced in pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates, more of the
spirit of her husband than of her father, a spirit that could not be
subdued into tears or supplications. She was sent to Ravenna, and there
gave birth to a son, whose life we know, from an allusion in Tacitus, to
have been eventful and unhappy; but the part of the great historian's
work which narrated his fate has perished, and we only know from another
quarter that the son of Arminius was, at the age of four years, led
captive in a triumphal pageant along the streets of Rome.
The high spirit of Arminius was goaded almost into frenzy by these
bereavements. The fate of his wife, thus torn from him, and of his babe
doomed to bondage even before its birth, inflamed the eloquent
invectives with which he roused his countrymen against the
home-traitors, and against their invaders, who thus made war upon women
and children. Germanicus had marched his army to the place where Varus
had perished, and had there paid funeral honors to the ghastly relics of
his predecessor's legions that he found heaped around him.[84] Arminius
lured him to advance a little farther into the country, and then
assailed him, and fought a battle, which, by the Roman accounts, was a
drawn one.
[Footnote 84: In the Museum of Rhenish Antiquities at Bonn there is a
Roman sepulchral monument the inscription on which records that it was
erected to the memory of M. Coelius, who fell "_Bella Variano_."]
The effect of it was to make Germanicus resolve on retreating to the
Rhine. He himself, with part of his troops, embarked in some vessels on
the Ems, and returned by that river, and then by sea; but part of his
forces were intrusted to a Roman general named Caecina, to lead them
back by land to the Rhine. Arminius followed this division on its march,
and fought several battles with it, in which he inflicted heavy loss on
the Romans, captured the greater part of their baggage, and would have
destroyed them completely had not his skilful system of operations been
finally thwarted by the haste of Inguiomerus, a confederate German
chief, who insisted on assaulting the Romans in their camp, instead of
waiting till they were entangled in the difficulties of the country, and
assailing their columns on the march.
In the following year the Romans were inactive, but in the year
afterward Germanicus led a fresh invasion. He placed his army on
shipboard and sailed to the mouth of the Ems, where he disembarked and
marched to the Weser, there encamping, probably in the neighborhood of
Minden. Arminius had collected his army on the other side of the river;
and a scene occurred, which is powerfully told by Tacitus, and which is
the subject of a beautiful poem by Praed. It has been already mentioned
that the brother of Arminius, like himself, had been trained up while
young to serve in the Roman armies; but, unlike Arminius, he not only
refused to quit the Roman service for that of his country, but fought
against his country with the legions of Germanicus. He had assumed the
Roman name of Flavius, and had gained considerable distinction in the
Roman service, in which he had lost an eye from a wound in battle. When
the Roman outposts approached the river Weser, Arminius called out to
them from the opposite bank and expressed a wish to see his brother.
Flavius stepped forward, and Arminius ordered his own followers to
retire, and requested that the archers should be removed from the Roman
bank of the river. This was done; and the brothers, who apparently had
not seen each other for some years, began a conversation from the
opposite sides of the stream, in which Arminius questioned his brother
respecting the loss of his eye, and what battle it had been lost in, and
what reward he had received for his wound. Flavius told him how the eye
was lost, and mentioned the increased pay that he had on account of its
loss, and showed the collar and other military decorations that had been
given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of slavery; and then each
began to try to win the other over--Flavius boasting the power of Rome
and her generosity to the submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the
name of their country's gods, of the mother that had borne them, and by
the holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the
betrayer to being the champion of his country. They soon proceeded to
mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud for his horse and
his arms, that he might dash across the river and attack his brother;
nor would he have been checked from doing so had not the Roman general
Stertinius run up to him and forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on
the other bank, threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle.
I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the stanzas in
which Praed has described this scene--a scene among the most affecting,
as well as the most striking, that history supplies. It makes us reflect
on the desolate position of Arminius, with his wife and child captives
in the enemy's hands, and with his brother a renegade in arms against
him. The great liberator of our German race was there, with every source
of human happiness denied him except the consciousness of doing his duty
to his country.
"Back, back! he fears not foaming flood
Who fears not steel-clad line:
No warrior thou of German blood,
No brother thou of mine.
Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck,
Her gems to deck thy hilt;
And blazon honor's hapless wreck
With all the gauds of guilt.
"But wouldst thou have _me_ share the prey?
By all that I have done,
The Varian bones that day by day
Lie whitening in the sun,
The legion's trampled panoply,
The eagle's shatter'd wing--
I would not be for earth or sky
So scorn'd and mean a thing.
"Ho, call me here the wizard, boy,
Of dark and subtle skill,
To agonize but not destroy,
To torture, not to kill.
When swords are out and shriek and shout
Leave little room for prayer,
No fetter on man's arm or heart
Hangs half so heavy there.
"I curse him by the gifts the land
Hath won from him and Rome,
The riving axe, the wasting brand,
Rent forest, blazing home.
I curse him by our country's gods,
The terrible, the dark,
The breakers of the Roman rods,
The smiters of the bark.
"Oh, misery that such a ban
On such a brow should be!
Why comes he not in battle's van
His country's chief to be?
To stand a comrade by my side,
The sharer of my fame,
And worthy of a brother's pride
And of a brother's name?
"But it is past! where heroes press
And cowards bend the knee,
Arminius is not brotherless,
His brethren are the free.
They come around: one hour, and light
Will fade from turf and tide,
Then onward, onward to the fight,
With darkness for our guide.
"To-night, to-night, when we shall meet
In combat face to face,
Then only would Arminius greet
The renegade's embrace.
The canker of Rome's guilt shall be
Upon his dying name;
And as he lived in slavery,
So shall he fall in shame."
On the day after the Romans had reached the Weser, Germanicus led his
army across that river, and a partial encounter took place, in which
Arminius was successful. But on the succeeding day a general action was
fought, in which Arminius was severely wounded and the German infantry
routed with heavy loss. The horsemen of the two armies encountered
without either party gaining the advantage. But the Roman army remained
master of the ground and claimed a complete victory. Germanicus erected
a trophy in the field, with a vaunting inscription that the nations
between the Rhine and the Elbe had been thoroughly conquered by his
army. But that army speedily made a final retreat to the left bank of
the Rhine; nor was the effect of their campaign more durable than their
trophy. The sarcasm with which Tacitus speaks of certain other triumphs
of Roman generals over Germans may apply to the pageant which Germanicus
celebrated on his return to Rome from his command of the Roman army of
the Rhine. The Germans were "_triumphati potius quam victi_."
After the Romans had abandoned their attempts on Germany, we find
Arminius engaged in hostilities with Maroboduus, king of the Suevi and
Marcomanni, who was endeavoring to bring the other German tribes into a
state of dependency on him. Arminius was at the head of the Germans who
took up arms against this home invader of their liberties. After some
minor engagements a pitched battle was fought between the two
confederacies (A.D. 19) in which the loss on each side was equal, but
Maroboduus confessed the ascendency of his antagonist by avoiding a
renewal of the engagement and by imploring the intervention of the
Romans in his defence. The younger Drusus then commanded the Roman
legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation a peace was
concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the terms of which it is
evident that the latter must have renounced his ambitious schemes
against the freedom of the other German tribes.
Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence, which he
successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated in the
thirty-seventh year of his age by some of his own kinsmen, who conspired
against him. Tacitus says that this happened while he was engaged in a
civil war, which had been caused by his attempts to make himself king
over his countrymen. It is far more probable, as one of the best
biographers[85] has observed, that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of
Arminius to extend his influence as elective war chieftain of the
Cherusci and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal dignity.
[Footnote 85: Dr. Plate, in _Biographical Dictionary_.]
When we remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades,
we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have been
bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with the tribe
by open violence, and, when that seemed ineffectual, by secret
assassination.
Arminius left a name which the historians of the nation against which he
combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to honor. It is from
the most indisputable source, from the lips of enemies, that we know his
exploits.[86] His countrymen made history, but did not write it. But his
memory lived among them in the days of their bards, who recorded
"The deeds he did, the fields he won,
The freedom he restored."
Tacitus, writing years after the death of Arminius, says of him,
"_Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes_." As time passed on, the gratitude
of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and
divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius by every tribe of the
Low Germanic division of the Teutonic races. The _Irmin-sul_, or the
column of Herman, near Eresburgh (the modern Stadtberg), was the chosen
object of worship to the descendants of the Cherusci (the Old Saxons),
and in defence of which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne
and his Christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic
belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the
'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of the
deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation until the temple of
Eresburgh was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column itself
transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where perhaps a portion of the
rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the ornaments of the Gothic
era."[87] Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors after their settlement in this island. One of the
four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity,
and was called the "Irmin street." The name _Arminius_ is, of course,
the mere Latinized form of _Herman_, the name by which the hero and the
deity were known by every man of Low German blood on either side of the
German Sea. It means, etymologically, the _War-man_, the _man of hosts_.
No other explanation of the worship of the Irmin-sul, and of the name of
the Irmin street, is so satisfactory as that which connects them with
the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the existence of other
columns of an analogous character. Thus there was the _Roland-seule_ in
North Germany; there was a _Thor-seule_ in Sweden, and (what is more
important) there was an _Athelstan-seule_ in Saxon England.[88]
[Footnote 86: Tacitus: _Annales_.]
[Footnote 87: Palgrave: _English Commonwealth_.]
[Footnote 88: Lappenburg: _Anglo-Saxons_.]
CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY
EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME B.C. 450-A.D. 12
JOHN RUDD, LL.D.
Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals
following give volume and page.
Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of
famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page
references showing where the several events are fully treated.
"Est" means date uncertain.
B.C.
450. The decemvirate instituted at Rome; the Twelve Tables of law
framed. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1.
Alcibiades born.[Est]
448. First Sacred War between the Phocians and Delphians for the
possession of the temple at Delphi.
The decemvirate abolished at Rome. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE
DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1.
Athens is now the principal seat of Greek philosophy, literature, and
art.
447. The Boeotians defeat the Athenians at Coronea; the conflict was
brought about by Athens breaking the truce arranged between the Greek
states to endure for five years, in order to combine against Persia. The
result was the loss to Athens of Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris.
445.[Est] Nehemiah begins the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.
Peace of Callias between the Greeks and Persians.
Birth of Xenophon, general and historian.
444. Ascendency of Pericles at Athens.[Est] See "PERICLES RULES IN
ATHENS," ii, 12.
The military tribunes instituted at Rome. The consulship was in no sense
abolished; until the passage of the Licinian Rogations (when it
reappeared as a permanent annual magistracy) it alternated irregularly
with the military tribunes. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE
IN ROME," ii, 1.
Thucydides exiled Athens.
443. An Athenian colony planted at Thurium, near Sybarius; it is
accompanied by Herodotus and Lysias.
442. Pericles, guided by Phidias the sculptor, adorns Athens; the
Parthenon, Propylæa, and Odeum built.
440. Samos resists the Athenian sway; is besieged by Pericles and
Sophocles; Melissus defends the city, but surrenders after a siege of
nine months.
Comedies prohibited performance at Athens.
439. Great famine in Rome; Sp. Mælius distributes corn to the citizens,
for which he is accused of wishing to be king, and is assassinated by
Servilius Ahala.
438. Spartacus becomes king of Bosporus.
Ahala impeached and exiled Rome.
437. The prohibition of comedy repealed at Athens.
Syracuse, the predominant state in Sicily, reaches the height of its
prosperity. See "DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48.
436. Commencement of the dispute between Corinth and Corcyra regarding
the city of Epidamnus, in which Athens supported the latter; this led to
the Peloponnesian War.
435. Naval victory over the Corinthians by the Corcyræans, near Actium.
432. Ambassadors from Corcyra implore the aid of Athens, which series a
fleet to defend the island against the Corinthian attack. Corinth
incites Potidæa to revolt from Athens.
431. Beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Sparta declares on the side of
Corinth and makes war on Athens. The real cause of the war--which was to
be so disastrous to Greece--was that Sparta and its allies were jealous
of the great power Athens had attained. Sparta was an oligarchy and a
friend of the nobles everywhere; Athens was a democracy and the friend
of the common people; so that the war was to some extent a struggle
between these classes all over Greece.
430. "GREAT PLAGUE AT ATHENS." See ii, 34. The physician Hippocrates
distinguishes himself by extraordinary cures of the sick.
Second invasion of Attica by the Spartans.
429. Death of Pericles, during the plague, at Athens.
Potidæa reduced by the Athenians.
Birth of Plato.
428. Attica invaded the third time.
Lesbos revolts from the Athenian confederacy; on this the Athenians
besiege Mitylene.
427. Mitylene reduced; Athens becomes master of Lesbos. Platæa, the ally
of Athens, after being besieged, surrenders to the Peloponnesians and is
destroyed.
Attica again invaded.
425. Agis begins the fifth invasion of Attica; he retires on learning
that the Athenians under Cleon had taken Pylos and Sapachteria.
Mount Æetna in eruption.
On the death of Artaxerxes I, his son, Xerxes II, succeeds him as ruler
of Persia; he reigns only forty-five days, being slain by his brother
Sogdianus, who usurps the throne.
424. The island of Cythera taken by the Athenians. Brasidas, the Spartan
general, captures Amphipolis, defeating Thucydides.
Ochus (Darius Nothus) rids himself of Sogdianus and succeeds him on the
Persian throne.
423. The Athenians banish Thucydides for having suffered Amphipolis to
be taken.
422. The Athenians send Cleon to recover Amphipolis; he is defeated by
Brasidas; both fall in the battle.
421. Peace of Nicias between Sparta and Athens. End of the first period
of the Peloponnesian War.
420. Alcibiades negotiates an alliance between Athens and Argos.
Amphipolis retained by the Spartans.
419. An Athenian expedition is led into the Peloponnesus by Alcibiades.
418. Victory of the Spartans at Mantinea.
The league between Athens and Argos dissolved.
416. The island of Melos, which had remained neutral, is conquered by
the Athenians; its inhabitants are treated with extreme cruelty.
415. The Athenians send an expedition against Syracuse under Nicias,
Lamachus, and Alcibiades; the latter is recalled to answer an accusation
of having broken some statues of Mercury in Athens; he takes refuge in
Sparta. Andocides, the orator, implicated in the same charge, is
imprisoned and exiled.
414. Syracuse is invested by the Athenians under Nicias; being hard
pressed, Syracuse appeals to the other Greek states; Cylippus, the
Spartan commander, comes with a fleet to the aid of the city. See
"DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48.
The Romans capture Bolae, an Æquian town; the division of the booty
causes a mutiny among the soldiers, who slay the quaestor and the
military tribune, M. Postumius.
413. On Alcibiades' advice the Spartans fortify a position at Decelea,
in Attica.
"DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE." See ii, 48.
412. Alcibiades visits the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, with whose aid
he negotiates an alliance between Persia and Sparta.
411. Owing to the machinations of Alcibiades a revolt is organized in
Athens, by the aid of the clubs of the nobles and rich men; its object
being to overthrow the democracy and establish an oligarchy. The rising
is successful and the "Reign of the Four Hundred" ensues; it lasts four
months; its framer, Antipho, is put to death. Alcibiades is recalled.
410. The Spartans are defeated by Alcibiades in a naval encounter at
Cyzicus. Sparta makes overtures for peace.
409. The Carthaginians invade Sicily; they reduce Silenus and Himera.
408. Alcibiades takes Selymbria and Byzantium.
Psammeticus is king of Egypt.
Roman plebs first admitted to the quaestorship.
407. Lysander, the Spartan admiral, defeats the Athenian fleet at
Notium; in consequence of this defeat, Alcibiades, who had been received
with great honor, is banished, and ten generals are nominated to succeed
him.
406. The Athenians vanquish the Spartan fleet under Callicratidas, at
Arginusae. The Athenian generals are executed at Athens for not saving
the shattered vessels and the bodies of the slain.
Dionysius the Elder becomes ruler of Syracuse.
Anxur and other towns captured by the Romans, who now first give their
soldiers a regular pay.
405. The Spartan under Lysander, who had been restored to command,
annihilate the Athenian navy at Aegospotami.
Artaxerxes II succeeds Darius II on the Persian throne.
Successful revolt of the Egyptians against the Persians; the
independence of Egypt secured.
404. Athens taken by Lysander and dismantled; thirty tyrants appointed
by him. Lysias and other orators banished. End of the Peloponnesian War.
403. Democracy is restored in Athens by Thrasybulus; he publishes an act
of amnesty. The Ionian alphabet adopted at Athens.
401. Cyrus rebels against his brother Artaxerxes, of Persia; he is
defeated and slain at the battle of Cunaxa.
400. The Ten Thousand Greek auxiliaries of Cyrus effect their retreat to
the sea. See "RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS," ii, 68.
399. Sparta and Persia engage in war.
"CONDEMNATION AND DEATH OF SOCRATES." See ii, 87.
396. Agesilaus, the Spartan general, begins his victorious campaigns
against the Persians.
The Romans, headed by Camillus, capture Veii, after a ten years' siege.
395. Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and Athens combine against Sparta; the
Spartans are defeated at Haliartus; Lysander is slain.
Tissaphernes' Persian army is defeated by Agesilaus, near Sardis.
394. The Athenian admiral Conon, in charge of the Persian fleet,
crushingly defeats that of the Spartans, under Pisander, off Cnidus.
Agesilaus is recalled from Asia; commanding the Spartans, he gains a
victory over the confederate Greeks at Coronea.
393. Conon undertakes the rebuilding of the walls in Athens and restores
the fortifications.
392. Conon excites the jealousy of the Persians; he retires into Cyprus,
where he dies.
391. Camillus banished from Rome, charged with misappropriating the
booty secured at Veii, but really on account of his patrician
haughtiness; he dies at Ardea, whither he had withdrawn.
389. Aeschines born; he was accounted in Athens second only to
Demosthenes as an orator.
388[89] (387). Brennus, commanding the Gauls, burns Rome. See "BRENNUS
BURNS ROME," ii, 110.
[Footnote 89: By the old chronological reckoning this event occurred
B.C. 390.]
387. Through the mediation of Persia, Sparta compels the Greek states to
accept the peace of Antalcidas, which leaves the Ionian cities and
Cyprus at his mercy; this enables Sparta to maintain her supremacy in
Greece.
385.[Est] Birth of Demosthenes, the famous Greek orator and general.
384. Aristotle born.
383. War of Syracuse with Carthage.
Thebes is betrayed to Sparta, during her war against Olynthus.
379. The Olynthians are forced to submission by the Spartans. Pelopidas
and his associates drive the Spartans from Thebes.
378. Athens declares in favor of Thebes against Sparta.
376. Cleombrotus leads the Spartans into Boeotia; the Spartan fleet,
under Pollis, is overwhelmed off Maxos, by Chabrias.
371. Congress of Sparta, Thebes being excluded from the treaty of peace;
Pelopidas and Epaminondas gain the great victory of Leuctra, in which
Cleombrotus, King of Sparta, is slain. Thebes becomes the dominant power
in Greece.
The Arcadian union formed. One of the first effects of the battle of
Leuctra was to emancipate the Arcadians, and a plan was formed to raise
them in the political affairs of Greece.
370. Epaminondas, the Theban general, heads his first expedition into
the Peloponnesus; he threatens Sparta, which Agesilaus saves.
369. The Thebans advance into Laconia; they restore the independence of
the Messenians. Epaminondas and Pelopidas are condemned for having
retained their command beyond the term allowed by the laws of Thebes;
they are pardoned and reappointed.
The Arcadians found Megalopolis, which they make the capital of the
Arcadian confederacy.
368. The Thebans again enter the Peloponnesus, but retreat before the
arrival of succor sent by Dionysius to the Lacedaemonians. Pelopidas,
treacherously made prisoner by Alexander of Pherae, is rescued by
Epaminondas. A congress, under the mediation of Persia, is held at
Delphi; it fails, because the Thebans will not abandon the Messenians.
The Carthaginians at war with Dionysius; but, after losing Selinus and
other towns, they make peace.