Next to the Greeks and Romans, the German people are the most important
branch of the Indo-Germanic race; for in mediæval and modern times they
exercised the same influence on humanity and its civilisation as the
Græco-Latin branch did in antiquity.
The name “German,” by which they are designated in the writings of the
Romans, cannot be satisfactorily explained with regard to its derivation
and significance. Formerly it was thought to be derived partly from the
old German word _ger_--that is, spear--partly from _wehre_ (defence) and
partly from the word _wirre_ (disorder), which passed into the French
language under the form of _guerre_, so that on the whole it had much
the same signification as warrior; but all these derivations are so
opposed to the etymological laws of the language, that they are no longer
admitted by any German philologists. Some learned men have tried to
connect the name “German” with the old German word _erman_, _hermann_,
_irman_, _irmin_, the true meaning of which can no longer be ascertained;
others were of opinion that it was not a native name at all, but given
to the Germans by the Romans; for in the Latin language there is a word
_germanus_, which means brother or countryman, which could, it has been
thought, be so twisted and turned about that it received the sense of
a Roman designation of the German people. Again it was thought to be
derived from a Celtic word which designated the Germans as “criers,” on
account of the terrifying war cry with which they entered into battle.
Scholars do not agree as to the derivation of the name _Deutsch_ which
first appeared in the tenth century after Christ, although that it is of
Germanic origin is beyond doubt. According to the one conjecture it is
derived from the old German word _diutan_, that is, to point out or to
explain, and signifies those who speak the same language; according to
another, the Gothic word _thiuda_, that is, people, is the true root of
the word _Deutsch_, and originally this had the signification of “people
of the same nation.”
The term _Teuton_ which is often used in poetry instead of the word
_Deutsch_, was only the name of an individual tribe, and this practice
has its origin in the fact that the ancient Romans sometimes applied the
name of Teuton to the other German races.
From the earliest times which are open to research, the German
peoples already consisted of two principal races--the Scandinavian or
northerners, and the true Germans in the strict sense of the word.
From the earliest times the former had lived beyond the Baltic, and
the latter on the mainland of central Europe. The two races are still
distinguishable from each other by their various dialects, those of the
peoples of each branch being more closely allied to one another, than to
those of the other branch.
Each race was divided into many different tribes, which the Romans
designated by special names; the distinction between them was not
maintained, but in consequence of the migrations which they undertook
during the time of the Roman Empire, the individual nations became
separated and by new union formed new nations.
In this manner arose the Alamanni, Franks, Hessians, Thuringians,
Bavarians, and others. One of the three races, the Goths, disappeared
entirely in these national movements; towards the end of the period
of antiquity they went for the most part to Spain and upper Italy,
intermingled with the non-Germanic races there, and in consequence
assumed Roman characteristics.
Only a very few Germanic people such as the Frisians have remained
in their original seats. Therefore it will be more to the purpose to
describe the locality of the peoples named when they are mentioned
individually in the course of the narrative. In the olden times the
frontiers of the German land were the Vistula, the Danube, the North
Sea, and the Baltic. Of the external conditions, the character and
morals of the Germanic peoples, detailed accounts are given in the works
of the Roman historians, of which the following are the most worthy
of attention. With regard to their physique the Germans especially
astonished the Romans, in that they were very tall and had blue eyes
and reddish golden hair. They were also famed for their great physical
strength and the endurance with which they were able to bear all
exertions and privations, hunger and great cold, although they stood heat
badly.
The land was only cultivated in places, the greater part being covered
by forests and marshes. The dwellings were isolated so that there were
no villages or towns, but each person lived in the centre of his fields.
The occupations of the Germans were agriculture, cattle raising, hunting,
and war. The two former were carried on by slaves or serfs, who either
did the work as menials or were apportioned certain fields which they
managed and for which they paid their masters a fixed yearly tribute of
corn, cattle, and linen. When he was not at war or hunting, the warrior
passed the time in lounging, eating, drinking, and playing; for like all
fighting and at the same time uncivilised nations they loved the change
from the exertion of strife and hunting to complete inactivity. Banquets
and orgies were their favourite entertainments, but nevertheless their
food and drink was very simple. As a rule the former consisted of wild
fruit, meat, and milk, the latter of a kind of barley beer; only some of
the nations living on the frontier had wine which they bought from their
neighbours.
The Germans loved drinking to excess. The Roman historian Tacitus says:
“To drink night and day continuously is no shame for them, and if
one would accede to their desires in this, they would be more easily
conquered by this vice than by arms.” It is said that they were so
passionately devoted to dice playing that often when all was lost the
German staked his own personal liberty. Their clothing was very simple
and coarse--a kind of mantle which simply consisted of the fur of some
animal killed in hunting was for the most part the only bodily covering.
Their weapons formed the principal adornment of the men and were
therefore worn at all assemblies. Young men were not allowed to wear them
until the national assembly had declared them fit to do so. A shield and
a spear were the principal weapons for fighting at close quarters as well
as at a distance; on the other hand a coat of mail and a helmet were only
very seldom assumed by the Germans. For a man to leave his shield behind
him in battle, was with them, as with the Spartans, a terrible disgrace,
and resulted in the warrior to whom this had happened being excluded
from the national assembly and public sacrifices; many avoided this
indignity by committing suicide. In war some of the Germans were mounted,
although their chief strength lay in their infantry.
The Romans praise the ancient Germans for all those moral qualities which
are characteristic of every brave nation in a half-civilised condition,
such as bravery and hospitality. The Germans seem to have early
distinguished themselves from other nations by three merits: polygamy
was never one of their customs; they set a high value on the virtue of
chastity; they distinguished themselves by their fidelity and devotion
towards those whom they had chosen as leaders.
The high position which women occupied amongst them as compared with
other barbarians was also characteristic. The wife was not treated as a
slave; and amongst all German nations, maidens were considered better
hostages for a treaty than men, as in the former case they considered
themselves more bound to keep their word. The female sex was very highly
honoured; many women--as, for example, the Veleda living in Vespasian’s
time--played the part of alrunas, that is to say omniscients or
prophetesses, an important rôle, and these prophetesses exercised a great
influence over the counsels and decisions of their people.
The administration was not exactly democratic, except among the Frisians;
even in the times when the people and every individual still took part
in the government, we often find traces of the later free monarchy. The
Germans had elected leaders in war and a chief appointed for life, who in
peace had to manage their affairs with limited authority. All the freemen
constituted the national assembly, which deliberated on and decided all
general questions, determined on the life or death of a criminal, and
selected the presidents for the tribunals of the individual cantons.
The national assemblies were held on certain days either at the new or
the full moon; with the Frank nation generally only once a year and
that in March and, later on, in May. There were certain nobles who, as
a rule, though not always, were chosen in preference to others, and who
deliberated on and decided the less important affairs among themselves;
whether they obtained this position on account of their birth or their
personal distinction must remain undecided.
The king was chosen from among them and was not the lord, as is usual
with the leaders of warlike semi-barbarous races, but the representative
of his tribe, and was therefore not only chosen for his bravery but for
his distinction. The army consisted of all the freemen. Besides this
so-called _heerbann_ (militia), at times when no war was being carried
on by the whole tribe, individual bodies of troops were formed, who
attached themselves to a brave leader for some special undertakings. They
constituted his following, and fought under his leadership for fame and
booty. The greater the following of a noble, the greater the influence
which he held in the national assembly.
Justice was carried out by a chosen judge who was called “graf” (count),
from the word _grau_--grey, _i.e._, the eldest, and who had a number of
householders as assistants. Punishments were considered as compensations,
and decided according to that principle; even murder was atoned for by
the judge deciding the damages to be paid to the relations of the person
slain.
The Romans only give us very superficial information concerning the
religion of the ancient Germans. That they acknowledged many gods is
about all we can determine with certainty. If, as is generally done,
the legends of the ancient Scandinavians written in the Middle Ages are
added to the Roman reports, two detailed accounts are obtained concerning
the gods and myths of the Germans; but it is very doubtful if the older
inhabitants of Germany proper, who alone are spoken of in the Roman
histories, had one and the same faith and worship as the Scandinavians.
According to the usual theory, the principal god of the Germans was Woden
or Odin; as the god ruling over all, the “All-father”; and as the founder
of the German race he was called Tuisko. Next to him came his elder sons,
the god of thunder, Thonar or Thor, whose memory is still preserved in
the word Thursday, and the god of war, Tyr or Tir from whose name the
word Tuesday is derived. Woden’s wife and the goddess of marriage was
Freia, to whom Friday was dedicated. Another wife of Woden was Hertha, or
the goddess of the earth. Besides these the Scandinavians honoured the
god of poetry, Bragi; Balder, the hero of the gods distinguished for his
beauty; the goddess of youth, Iduna; the Norns or goddesses of fate and
other divinities.
The Scandinavians had just as many poetical myths concerning the life
and fate of the gods as the ancient Greeks. Besides the gods, they
believed in two unseen worlds of giants and dwarfs. They also believed
in immortality, and depicted the life after death in their own fashion.
For example, they thought that those who fell in battle lived in the
palace of Valhalla with Woden, and spent their time fighting, hunting,
and drinking, and at their banquets were attended by the Valkyries, or
goddesses of battle, who spun the web of the battle with terrible songs.
The Romans tell us more about the worship and the priests of the Germans
living in Germany than about their gods. The German priests were held
in great respect, but they did not form a special class like the Druids
or the priests of the Gauls. Their singers, like those of the Gauls,
were not priests but poets and singers of battle songs. The Germans had
no images of their gods, and they did not honour them in temples but in
sacred groves in which the priests offered up sacrifices for the people.
Among the victims there were captive foes. The will of the gods and the
future were interpreted in different manners, preferably by the neighing
of sacred white horses which were kept in the groves of the gods.
If we turn back from this general observation of the Germanic nations
to their wars with Augustus, we find the Romans in hostile contact with
them on the Rhine and the Danube. Since the time of Cæsar some German
tribes--of which the Ubii in the region of Cologne and the Vangiones,
Tribocci, and Nemetes between Schlettstadt and Oppenheim, were the most
important--had settled on the left bank of the Rhine and had begun to
adopt Roman customs.[b]
THE GERMAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE AGAINST ROME
Augustus had no liking for war; he was wont to say that laurels were
beautiful but barren, and it was his glory and pride that during his
reign the Temple of Janus at Rome was repeatedly closed, and that the
Parthians voluntarily restored the ensigns and prisoners captured
from the army of Crassus. His mind was not set on the augmentation
and extension of the empire but upon the founding and consolidation
of monarchical institutions, his wars in Spain and the Alpine regions
were undertaken for the purpose of protecting and safeguarding the
frontiers of the empire, and the war in Dalmatia and Pannonia was purely
defensive. On the Rhine alone he indulged in schemes of conquest; there
Cæsar’s Gallic campaigns were to be continued, and the martial honours of
the Julian race and name enhanced.
[Sidenote: [16-11 B.C.]]
As long as Gaul was not completely tranquillised, and stubborn tribes
defended their hereditary liberties in the Alpine valleys, the Germans
were treated with consideration. The imperator Augustus even confided the
safety of his person and of the Capitol to a German troop of horse, as
the divine Julius had done before him, and Vipsanius Agrippa settled the
Ubii, who were hard pressed by the Suevi, on the left bank of the Rhine
and founded the “Agrippine Colony,” the parent city of Cologne. Even the
attack made by the eastern dwellers on the lower Rhine on the camp of M.
Lollius, who had made an inroad into their territory because they had
seized and crucified some Roman spies, went unpunished. But when the new
division of Gaul into provinces had been accomplished, and the Alpine
districts had been reduced to submission to the sway of Rome, Drusus the
gallant and daring stepson of Augustus conceived the project of extending
the borders of the empire beyond the Rhine and advancing further along
the road which the great Cæsar had trodden.
After providing for the protection of the river by strongly fortifying
the ancient confederate towns from Basel (Augusta Rauracorum) to Cologne
(Colonia Agrippina)--to wit, Strasburg (Argentoratum), Speyer, Worms,
Mainz, Bonn, etc., and creating fresh bulwarks and _points d’appui_ both
for defence and attack by founding the “Old Camp” (Castra Vetera) where
Xanten now stands, and other castella, he next attempted to secure the
northern districts. He induced the Batavians, who inhabited the marshy
lowlands from the Rhine and Vaal to the North Sea, and their neighbours
on the east, the Frisians, who occupied the seacoast as far as the Ems,
to enter into friendship and alliance with the Romans; and then, by
constructing a navigable canal which bears the name of “Drusus-Furt” to
this day, he connected the lower course of the Rhine by means of the
Yssel with the inland lake of Flevo, which at that time communicated
with the sea by a navigable river of the same name, but which has since
been widened out by the floods into an open bay, the Zuyder Zee. He then
sailed into the German ocean with the fleet built on the Rhine, and,
skirting the Frisian coast, came to the mouth of the Ems, where the
legions fought some skirmishes with the Bructeri and Chauci. The fleet
was here exposed to a great danger, for the ebb of the tide drew the
waters of the channel away from the ships and left them high and dry.
They were only saved from destruction by the aid of the Frisians who
had accompanied the Romans by land with an army. When the incoming tide
floated the ships once more Drusus returned to Batavia.
The hardihood of the enterprise, unsuccessful as it was, seems to have
alarmed the Germans. The tribes between the Rhine and Weser therefore
entered into an alliance for the defence of their country against the
enemy who menaced it. The Chatti refused to join this league, and their
neighbours the Sugambri consequently went to war with them, just as
Drusus, who had spent the winter in Rome, reappeared on the Rhine and
crossed the boundary stream at the “Old Standing Camp” (at Xanten).
He subjugated the Usipetes, and having made a bridge over the Lupia
(Lippe), he traversed unopposed the country of the Sigambri, which was
denuded of its fighting men, and attacked the Cherusci on the left bank
of the Weser. Scarcity of provisions and the approach of winter forced
him, however, to retreat. On his return march the Germans attacked him
fiercely on all sides. Pent in a narrow gorge and hard beset, he and his
army would have been irretrievably lost had not the Germans, thinking the
enemy already vanquished, ventured upon the final massacre with savage
eagerness and without any order or method. The victory of which they
thought themselves certain passed over to Roman strategy. The Germans
were beaten and had to look on while the Romans built the castellum of
Aliso which they garrisoned and used as a _point d’appui_ for later
undertakings. The emperor refused the title of imperator, by which the
army hailed their general, but granted his victorious son an ovation and
triumphal honours.
[Illustration: DRUSUS
(From a bronze in the Louvre Museum)]
[Sidenote: [11-9 B.C.]]
To secure a strong base for his campaigns of conquest Drusus, after a
personal interview with his imperial father, had great fortifications
constructed the next year on the German river. The banks of the Rhine
were lined with more than fifty castella, of which the most important,
situated opposite the standing camp of Mogontiacum (Mainz), grew into a
town in course of time; Bonn was connected by a bridge with the right
bank of the royal stream, the high angle between the Rhine, the Main,
and the Lahn was guarded by a series of lines on the Taunus which still
proclaim their first framer in their name of “Drususgraben.” They formed
the basis of that great frontier rampart which in later days divided
Roman territory from free Germania.
After these preparations Drusus undertook his third campaign against
middle Germany. Assisted by the warlike Nervii and other Gallic
auxiliaries and allied with the Frisians, who supplied him with
necessaries, the bold leader advanced northeastwards along the
right bank of the Main, defeated the Chatti in a sanguinary pitched
battle, penetrated across the Werra and through the Hercynian forest
(Thüringerwald) into the country of the Cherusci, and reached the western
bank of the Elbe, passing through tracts which no Roman had ever trod,
to tribes which had never heard the Roman name. Dion repeats a legend of
how, when Drusus was preparing to cross this distant stream, he was met
by a woman of superhuman stature, who addressed him in Latin, saying:
“Whither, O Drusus, thou insatiable one? It is not allotted to thee by
fate to see all this; turn back, already thou standest at the term of
thy life and of thy deeds!” He hastened back on account of the approach
of winter, but he was never to see the Rhine again. He died on the way
back; of sickness according to some, according to others from the results
of a fracture of the leg caused by the fall of his horse. He died in the
thirtieth year of his age, in the arms of his brother Tiberius, who had
hastened to meet him. His body was borne with great pomp and mourning
through Gaul and Italy to Rome, where it was committed to a funeral pyre
on the Field of Mars and the ashes interred in the imperial vault. An
altar in the neighbourhood of the Lippe, a statue in military attire,
together with an empty sepulchral monument at Mainz (the remains of which
are said still to be preserved in the “Eichelstein”) around which the
legions every year celebrated the anniversary of his death with funeral
games, and a triumphal arch on the Appian way, were intended to preserve
for all time the memory of the brave and beloved prince who was the first
of all the Romans to press forward to the Elbe. The title of “Germanicus”
Conqueror of the Germans, which Augustus had bestowed upon him, passed
over to his son.
[Sidenote: [9 B.C.-5 A.D.]]
The place of the heroic Drusus was taken by his brother Tiberius. The
latter, in accordance with his character, chose the paths of cunning,
treachery, and prudent negotiation, and by these means gained more than
his knightly brother had won by force of arms. It was through his agency
that the German tribes, including even the Sugambri who had at first
refused, sent a number of distinguished chiefs with proposals of peace
to the emperor when he was staying in Gaul. In defiance of honour and
justice they were arrested and carried in custody to Gallic cities, where
they took their own lives. By this perfidious deed the Romans gained
their end. Tiberius took advantage of the consternation of the Germans to
lead his legions straight over the Rhine. At variance among themselves
and deprived of their chiefs and leaders, the German tribes could
offer no permanent resistance to the invader. Victoriously the general
traversed the devastated districts, and by the might of his legions
and the terror of the Roman name succeeded in making the inhabitants
bow amazed and hopeless to superior might (though not till after forty
thousand of them, Sugambri for the most part, had been carried away and
settled on the left side of the beautiful river). A Roman governorship
was then established between Rhine and Weser.
The events of the next few years are shrouded in obscurity. The triumph
that Tiberius celebrated for his German victory was likewise the
beginning of the imperial displeasure which kept him for seven years
at Rhodes. During this period rumour is silent on German affairs; one
campaign only is mentioned, that of Domitius Ahenobarbus, a haughty,
arrogant, and overbearing man. He crossed the Elbe, the eastern bank of
which he adorned with an altar to Augustus; assigned dwelling-places
in south Germany, between the Main and Danube, to the German tribe of
the Hermunduri; and began the construction of the “long bridges,” those
causeways of piles between the Rhine and Weser, which were to facilitate
the junction of the legions across the bogs and marshes which abounded
in that insecure ground. Both Domitius and his successor Vinicius
won triumphal honours by their exploits, but we have no information
concerning the particulars of their achievements. The fact that Augustus
expressly forbade the crossing of the Elbe would seem to indicate that up
to that time such enterprises had been unsuccessful.
At Rome it was resolved to have recourse to the old and tried methods of
craft, subornation, and treachery, instead of to the force of arms; and
that master of guile, Tiberius, accordingly betook himself to the Rhine,
accompanied by the servile flatterer, Velleius Paterculus, at that time
leader of the cavalry. In pompous bombast the latter vaunts the exploits
of his hero, that he may at the same time gather some of the beams of
this glory about his own head. In two campaigns the tribes between
Weser and Elbe were subjugated, the gigantic Chauci, and the Longobards
“savage with more than German savagery,” and the fleet meanwhile sailed
along the coast of the North Sea and joined hands with the land forces.
[Sidenote: [5-9 A.D.]]
But in spite of these vaunted achievements Roman dominion struck no
root in those parts; their ancient freedom suffered but a temporary
eclipse and quickly returned when once the legions were withdrawn.
The adroit prince was all the more successful in binding the tribes
between the Rhine and Weser to Rome. The strength of the army,--which
had permanent bases at Xanten and Aliso,--and the arts of subornation,
cunning, and treachery, which Tiberius employed with masterly skill,
did not fail of effect upon the divided and contentious Germans. Roman
influence established itself more and more strongly, especially when
Sentius Saturninus, an upright and able man who combined the austerity
of a strict commander with the genial manners of a consummate statesman,
occupied the post of Roman governor. He was able to win over the
simple and primitive people to appreciate the manners and advantages
of civilised life by displaying to them in an attractive form “the
superiority of Roman ways and arts.” The Germans began to “realise their
own rudeness,” and to take pleasure in “a world of strict order, rigid
law, and manifold arts and enjoyments.” The standing camps of the army
became markets where foreign merchants offered the wares of the south for
sale, where the children of nature made the acquaintance of the charm
and sweetness of a wealthy civilisation. A brisk traffic familiarised
the natives with Roman speech and manners, Roman law met with increasing
recognition and regard, German youths already fought in the Roman ranks
and prided themselves on their foreign weapons and their rights as
Roman citizens. The characteristics of German nationality would have
been gravely compromised if the Romans had succeeded in extending their
dominion across the Rhine and the Danube, if the German princes, such as
Arminius and Marboduus, whom they enticed into their service had remained
loyal and devoted to them. But they had now to learn that the love of
liberty and the fatherland was not yet extinct.
Marboduus, chief of the Marcomanni, a powerful tribe belonging to the
Suevian confederation, which was entrusted with the charge of the
frontier southwards from the Main, was sprung of a noble race and
possessed a strong frame and a bold spirit. As a young man he had won
the favour of Augustus during a two years’ stay in Rome, and had so
thoroughly assimilated foreign culture “that the Romans could scarcely
recognise the barbarian in him.” About the time that Drusus bore the
Roman eagles to the Elbe Marboduus returned to his native land, well
versed in Roman strategy and politics.
At the head of his own people he conceived the bold plan of leading the
Marcomanni away from their settlements on the Rhine in the perilous
neighbourhood of Rome, and winning a safe home for them farther east. By
force or treaty he gained possession of the mountain-girt land of the
Boii (Bojenheim or Bohemia), and made this “mighty stronghold of nature”
the centre of a tribal confederacy which was to be extended to the
northern bank of the Danube, and to impose a limit on the expansion of
the world-empire of Rome. With a valiant army practised in Roman tactics
at his disposal, and surrounded, like the imperator, with a bodyguard,
Marboduus was able in a few years to make the Marcomannian league a power
in the land, and to inspire the Romans with justifiable apprehension.
For however the wary and prudent prince might at first demonstrate in
his outward behaviour his friendship and devotion to Rome, whatever
facilities for access to his country and traffic with his people he might
give to the Roman merchants and traders, yet his self-confidence grew
with the consciousness of power, and from his bearing and determined tone
it was manifest that he was aware of the position he held. His kingdom
soon became the refuge of all the persecuted and disaffected.
At Rome it was felt impossible to look on passively at the growing power
of the Marcomannian state on the Danube. A simultaneous attack from east
and west was to work its destruction. While Tiberius was assembling a
large force at Carnuntum to proceed up-stream, Sentius Saturninus was to
advance from the country of the Chatti by way of the Hercynian forest.
This well-concerted scheme was, however, destined never to be executed.
The revolt of the Pannonian tribes obliged Tiberius to lead his legions
to the lower Danube, and Augustus hastened to keep the Marcomannian
chieftain fast among his mountains by a peace on favourable terms, lest
he should increase the impending danger on the Adriatic by joining the
enemy. We have already spoken of the terrible war by which the country
along the lower Danube was at once conquered and reduced to a desert.
When Germanicus brought to Rome the news of the victorious issue of the
three years’ conflict, a mood of unbounded jubilation took possession
of the capital. The people vied with one another in celebrating these
triumphant achievements with festal banquets and monuments. But the
holiday was quickly transformed into a day of mourning, the thanksgivings
into anxious prayers, when the terrible news of the disasters in Germany
smote upon the bustle of the city like a bolt from the blue.[c]
THE BATTLE OF TEUTOBURG FOREST
[Sidenote: [9 A.D.]]
It has already been mentioned that, in the years 4 and 5 A.D., Tiberius
had achieved some successes in northwest Germany. According to Velleius
these successes consisted in the subjugation of the Caninefates,
Hattuarii, and Bructeri, and in the voluntary submission of the Chauci
and, more especially, of the Cherusci. It has also been observed that,
from what Velleius says we can form no clear conception of the relations
between these tribes and Rome, though from the different terms which he
employs in speaking of the two groups it seems probable that the Cherusci
and a part of the tribe of the Chauci occupied the position of allies,
and had pledged themselves to act as auxiliaries. Strabo also says τὰ
τρία τάγματα παραστονδηθέντα ἀπώέτο ἐξ ἐνέδρας.
[Illustration: EARLY GERMAN WEAPONS]
The warlike tastes of the Germans may have facilitated their acceptance
of such a position, for large bodies of them often entered the service
of belligerent nations in the train of young and martial leaders of
noble birth. Possibly the relation was similar to that which subsisted
between the Swiss and the French at the end of the Middle Ages. Certain
it is that Arminius had served in the Roman armies at the head of his
countrymen, and, like his brother, had won distinction in several
campaigns. The Bructeri, on the other hand, must have been to a certain
extent in subjection, and thus have had painful experiences of the Roman
art of government, in its system of taxation as well as in judicial
procedure and recruiting. Varus in particular (as is evident from the
whole description of his government given by Velleius and Dion) was
over hasty in his attempts at “romanising” the Germans during the summer
he spent in their territory at the head of his army. If (as Dion says
and we may well assume) a strong party, in which the nobles formed a
prominent element, had in the first instance submitted reluctantly to
Roman domination, their exasperation now spread to a wider circle and the
effects of Varus’ ill-judged measures extended beyond their borders to
the Cherusci, their neighbours on the east.
The Romans had probably come in large numbers into the territory of the
latter tribe also, and had practically treated their allies as subjects,
assuming a peremptory tone towards them and perhaps even indulging in
acts of violence. It is also possible that they had established advanced
posts there before the year 9. Their own experience and the fate of the
Bructeri must have taught the Cherusci, especially those of high rank,
what fate was in store for them, and have incited them to take the
resolution of annihilating Roman dominion in Germany. Hence it appears
that the nobles of the Bructeri and Cherusci arrived at an understanding
to the effect that Varus should be induced by the friendly reception
accorded to him by the heads of the Cheruscan nobility when he came
amongst the Bructeri to pitch his summer camp among the Cherusci, farther
on in the interior of Germany than usual and nearer to the Weser. When
he had been lulled into absolute security by the peaceful behaviour of
the inhabitants and by amicable intercourse with the nobles, the revolt
against Rome was to be set on foot and the Roman army annihilated.
Whether they at the same time conceived the plan of allowing a remote
tribe to commence the rebellion, so as to oblige Varus to go in one
particular direction to subdue it, we cannot tell, but Arminius, who was
minutely acquainted with the strategy of the Romans, must certainly have
been aware--as is shown by the tactics he employed in the year 15--that
they could not be successfully attacked in camp, but only on the march
over difficult ground. It is also possible that the original design was
to choose the return march of the Romans to the Rhine, but that the
conspirators found it impossible to wait so long after once the Roman
party, with Segestes at its head, had received some vague information
concerning their intentions; and they were therefore constrained to have
recourse to some other means in order to induce Varus to break up his
summer camp earlier than he had intended. But the question is of no great
consequence.
[Illustration: EARLY GERMAN WEAPONS]
In any case the scheme was successful, for Varus abandoned himself to
reckless unconcern, deceived less by the peaceful submission of the
people and by intercourse with the nobles, whom he frequently welcomed
at his table, than by the fact that suitors positively crowded to demand
justice of him. There is probably some connection between the endeavours
of the princes to convince him that the Germans acquiesced voluntarily in
the Roman order and the fact that they asked him for troops to maintain
general tranquillity. Thus it came about that he rudely rebuffed those
who, suspecting treachery behind the German show of amity, advised him to
be on his guard, and that in spite of frequent warnings on the part of
Segestes, moreover, he detached small divisions of his troops to convoy
the transport. Presently the news came that a remote tribe or province
had risen against the Romans. This had been done at the instigation of
the conspirators, in order that Varus might proceed from his camp in a
particular direction.
It would be of the highest importance if we could gather from our
authorities an approximate idea of who the rebels were or where they
dwelt; as it is, we are left to conjecture. We have seen which tribes
besides the Cherusci were subdued by Tiberius: the Caninefates,
Hattuarii, Bructeri, and Chauci. The first two need not be considered,
as they lived too near to the Rhine and were thus too completely within
the sphere of Roman dominion. There then remain only the Bructeri and
Chauci; and as the latter tribe was subsequently in possession of an
eagle belonging to one of the legions of Varus, and therefore must have
taken part in the battle, the ἄπωθεν οἰκοῦντες of Dion would seem more
appropriate to them than to the Bructeri.
But it does not greatly matter in favour of which we decide. One of the
two tribes that dwelt to the southwest of the Cherusci (the Marsi and
Chatti) may certainly be left out of account; for the last-named, as has
already been explained, were in no way dependent upon Rome. Of the Marsi
we may conclude that they took part in the struggle, as they too captured
an eagle, but we do not hear that they had been subject to Rome, and if
they had retired into the interior of Germany to preserve their liberties
they would not have been attacked by Tiberius in the years 4 and 5; for
his attention at that time was evidently fixed upon the northwest. And
it is plain that Varus made no attempt at a wider extension of Roman
dominion. It is just possible that it may have been a Cheruscan tribe in
the northwest or southwest; but it is on the whole more likely that the
revolt was started by a people who occupied a dependent position towards
Rome. It would therefore be in the interest of Arminius to display the
loyalty of his own tribe. But, whatever the race that revolted, the day
of departure from camp was fixed.
[Illustration: ARMINIUS]
To avoid rousing the suspicions of Varus the princes proposed to assist
him and promised to join him with their forces along his line of march,
which was exactly determined by the situation of the rebellious province
and agreed upon between him and the Cheruscan princes. The conspirators
had thus a pretext for issuing their own summons to arms without giving
umbrage to the Romans dispersed throughout the country at military
stations, and it is even possible that they induced Varus to send forth
the command to all quarters. They themselves stayed with him, not only
to sustain him in his unconcern, but also to watch him and to be at hand
if the plot should happen to be betrayed to him by the Roman party. For
this was no imaginary danger.
The evening before the start, while Varus was entertaining the princes
of the Cherusci at his table, Segestes came forward and openly charged
Arminius and his adherents with conspiracy, demanding the arrest of
Arminius and the ringleaders of the plot, and offering to be put in
fetters himself as a proof of the truth of his accusation. Varus turned
a deaf ear to these disclosures, probably because the notorious enmity
between Segestes and Arminius made him doubt the good faith of the
accuser, and the start took place next morning.
The conspirators now took leave of Varus on the pretext of putting
themselves at the head of their forces and bringing them to join him; but
in reality these forces were already stationed in readiness along the
route which Varus would have to take. In addition to this, word must have
been sent even to the Marsi and Chauci to hasten with their levies to a
particular point. Orders were then given for a general massacre of the
isolated Roman garrisons.
It has frequently been observed that the revolt cannot have been
represented to Varus as very serious; otherwise the carelessness of his
dispositions on the march is absolutely incomprehensible. The crowd of
women and children who were in the camp and accompanied the army proves
either that he intended to pitch his summer camp for a longer or shorter
period in the rebellious province after he had subdued it, or that if he
meant to send them back to the Rhine their return would not involve a
very circuitous journey.
Meanwhile the long array, marching in imperfect order and hampered by
enormous quantities of baggage, had got entangled in difficult paths
that led uphill and downhill through the thick forest, and while they
were engaged in toilsomely improving the road by felling trees, making
bridges, etc., very wet weather set in with a storm so violent that
branches were torn from the huge trees and hurled down upon the marching
men beneath. The ground became slippery, and the difficulty of getting
along amidst the roots and trunks of trees was doubled; and in this
precarious plight the army found itself suddenly assailed on all sides by
Germans. At this juncture, when he realised the treachery of the Germans,
Varus can hardly have come to any other resolution than to escape from a
tract of country so dangerous by taking the shortest road to the Rhine,
where he would be able to deploy his forces and checkmate the enemy.
It has been asserted that he could most easily have accomplished this by
returning to his summer camp, from which a properly constructed military
road must certainly have led to his winter quarters on the Rhine. But who
can tell whether Varus did not reflect that to go back by the way he had
come would involve too great hardship and loss, while a diversion of his
line of march to the river might be effected with no greater danger and
might even offer his army a more easily attainable condition of safety?
Nor need we lose sight of the possibility that he arrived at a wrong
decision.
Thus the march was continued with heavy loss, the straggling order
avenging itself by making organised resistance impossible. Nevertheless,
the army pitched its camp as best it could in the evening; though it
must have been hard to find a suitable spot in the wooded hill-country.
Here they decided to burn or abandon their useless baggage and to carry
nothing with them but what was absolutely necessary; and so proceeded on
their march in better order next day.
They came to a clearing where it was evident that they could keep the
enemy at a respectful distance; but the road presently led into the
forest again, and the Germans were about them immediately, inflicting
sanguinary losses. The Romans defended themselves, but the narrowness of
a defile into which the army got so cramped that it could not deploy,
while on the other hand a charge of mingled horse and foot miscarried
through the crowding of both arms in the dense forest. To add to their
distress the rain and tempest set in anew; they could barely keep their
feet, to say nothing of pressing forwards, and the drenched weapons of
the Romans could not be employed to advantage against a light-armed foe
equally swift to retreat or to attack. Moreover, the numbers of the enemy
increased, for those who had hitherto cautiously held back now flocked to
secure a share of the spoils; and if the Marsi were not already included
in the compact we may suppose that they appeared at this juncture and
captured the eagle which was afterwards found in their possession.
The case was desperate, and Varus had not courage to die in battle rather
than by his own hand. The report of his death crippled the last remains
of vigorous resistance in his army, though they did not neglect to bury
his body at once. Whether the cavalry under Numonius Vala now attempted
to flee or whether they had already fled we cannot tell; neither do we
know whether the legates were still alive or had already fallen. At
the last the two camp prefects seem to have taken command, L. Eggius
first, and afterwards, when he had fallen in a last desperate attempt to
break through, Ceionius. It was the latter who presently entered into
negotiations with the Germans for the surrender of what was left of the
army.
Velleius[e] states that Ceionius entered into negotiations after the
greater part of the army had perished in the fight. When he had submitted
there ensued the scenes of vengeance reported by Florus.[f] These do not
here concern us, but it is a matter of greater interest that there was
only one of the Roman castella in Germany which the Germans were unable
to take. This was Aliso, whither some fugitives succeeded in escaping.
Here the primipilar C. Cæditus assumed the chief command, and defended it
in the hope of relief until hunger forced the garrison to an attempt at
flight in which the strongest at least were successful.[d]
Terrible was the vengeance which the Germans took for the wrong done
to their liberties. Many distinguished Romans, colonels and captains,
bled on the altars of the gods; attorneys and judges were put to death
by torture; the heads of many of the fallen were affixed as trophies to
the trees round the battle-field; and those who escaped with life found
themselves condemned to dishonourable slavery. “Many a Roman of knightly
or senatorial birth grew old as a hind or shepherd to some German
peasant.”
Vengeance did not even respect the dead. The corpse of Varus, which his
soldiers had piously buried, was torn from its grave and the severed
head sent as a trophy to Marboduus, who subsequently delivered it up to
the emperor at Rome. So perished miserably this splendid army of nearly
fifty thousand men. Well might Augustus bewail himself at the news of the
disaster in the Teutoburg forest and cry aloud in his despair: “Varus,
give me back my legions!” Many families of long descent had to mourn the
loss of kinsmen or connections. The feasts and games stopped, the German
bodyguard was dismissed to the islands, Rome, usually so noisy, was still
and dumb. Sentinels patrolled the streets at night, vows to the gods and
recruiting on a great scale gave evidence of the dread that was in men’s
hearts. They feared that the terrible days of the Cimbrians and Teutons
might come again.
[Sidenote: [9-14 A.D.]]
The conquest of the Roman castella between the Rhine and the Visurgis
followed close on the heels of the defeat of Varus. Aliso held out
longest; thither the Romans had carried their women and children and
there the scattered and fugitive remnants of the army had taken refuge.
When their provisions came to an end the besieged tried to slip through
the sentries of the besiegers under cover of a stormy night. But only
the armed men succeeded in cutting their way through to the Rhine,
the greater number of the helpless fell into the hands of the victors
and shared the fate of other prisoners, and the fortress of Aliso was
destroyed. Asprenas, who was guarding the bank of the Rhine with his
two legions lest the revolt should spread to the excitable Gauls, was
powerless to lay the tempest. Thus was Roman supremacy broken down on the
right bank of the Rhine.
The dwellers on the north coast, the Chauci, Frisii, and some other
tribes, alone adhered to the alliance with Rome. Tiberius, who had
hastened up with his freshly enlisted troops, confined his efforts to
the strengthening and safeguarding of the Rhine frontier and to watching
over Gaul, and deferred to the future his revenge for the tarnished glory
of the Roman arms. He did, indeed, cross the Rhine next year to show the
Germans that the might of Rome was still unbroken; but he did not go far
from the river bank, and the strict discipline which he observed and
the hard camp life which he imposed on the legions and enforced by his
own example, bore witness that the Romans were alive to the danger that
menaced their dominion from the Germans and had learned a lesson from
bitter experience.
However much Velleius[e] may vaunt his hero, when the commander left
the Rhine in the year 12 to celebrate at Rome his triumph over pacified
Germany, he could boast of no achievement which obliterated the disgrace
inflicted in the Teutoburg forest. This was left for his nephew
Germanicus, the gallant son of Drusus, on whom the governorship of Gaul
and the supreme command over all the military forces on the Rhine was
conferred after the withdrawal of Tiberius. [Tiberius had, nevertheless,
proved himself an able commander.]
THE CAMPAIGNS OF GERMANICUS[3]
About the time that Augustus departed this life at Nola, Germanicus was
startled by the news that a mutiny had broken out among the soldiers at
the “Old Camp” (Vetera). The change of monarchs and the mourning feasts
which were the consequence had interrupted military exercises, discipline
had grown slack, and the minds of the soldiery were filled and inflamed
with all sorts of hopes and desires. Hence threatening agitations and
mutinies took place almost simultaneously among the Pannonian and German
legions. Germanicus hurried to the lower Rhine from Gaul, where he had
been busy with the taxation, to find there a refractory army which had
cast away all bonds of obedience and discipline, which complained of its
long and arduous service, demanded higher pay and presents of money,
offered the sovereignty to him with boisterous clamour, and maltreated
at the altars the emissaries of the senate who brought the news of the
change of government. The commander-in-chief succeeded in restoring
quiet and order, though with great difficulty, and not until a schism
had arisen among the rioters themselves and the ringleaders and most
audacious spirits had been hideously murdered by their fellow soldiers.
[Illustration: ROMAN EMPEROR IN THE DRESS OF A GENERAL
(After De Montfaucon)]
The Illyrian revolt was put down by Drusus, the emperor’s son. To expiate
the crimes they had committed the German legions demanded to be led
against the enemy; they believed that there was no way of appeasing the
spirits of their murdered brothers in arms but by covering their own
guilty breasts with honourable wounds. And Germanicus willingly gratified
their lust of battle by a campaign in the regions beyond the Rhine.
Germanicus was one of the last heroic figures of decadent Rome. He was
in the prime of life and combined all physical and mental excellencies
with the virtues of a valiant warrior. Noble in figure and bearing,
versed in the highest Greek culture of the age, famed as an orator and
as a poet, and endowed with admirable qualities of mind and heart, he
was the darling of the legions and the people. They honoured in him the
son of Drusus, whose noble likeness he was; the husband of the admirable
Agrippina, granddaughter of Augustus, who had borne him a number of
blooming children; the descendant of the triumvir Antony, whose daughter
his mother Octavia had been. And if his achievements in Pannonia and
Dalmatia had gained him the confidence and devotion of his comrades at
arms, the kindliness of his nature and an address in which affability was
mingled with dignity and majesty won him the hearts of all men. When he
went in disguise, as Tacitus tells, through the lines of the camp to spy
out the temper of the army, he heard enthusiastic praise of himself from
every tent, and when he came to the city he was always surrounded by a
throng of friends and dependents of all ranks. Tiberius had adopted him
in deference to the wishes of Augustus, but the talents and excellencies
of the youthful hero inspired the gloomy soul of the emperor with envy
and suspicion. [So at least Tacitus assures us. But possibly that
writer’s tendency to invent, or make partisan use of evil motives, may
have falsified the facts. Some historians believe that Tiberius trusted
Germanicus to the end.]
The people had expected that Drusus would restore political liberty,
and they cherished similar hopes of his son. The revolt of the Ubii had
its deepest root in the belief of the legions that Germanicus would not
tolerate the rule of another, and no matter how many proofs of loyalty
and devotion the latter might give, they were not enough to exorcise
the phantoms in his uncle’s distrustful soul. He seemed perpetually to
hear the address of the legions to their beloved general: “If Germanicus
desired supreme power, they were at his disposal”; and in his nephew’s
kindly and liberal nature he could see nothing but an intention to smooth
his path to sovereignty.
Germanicus undertook his campaign against the country beyond the Rhine
under favourable circumstances. After their victory over Varus the
Germans had abandoned themselves to careless security, their tribal
confederacy grew lax, their chieftains quarrelled. Segestes, full of
rancour and envy against Arminius of old, was even more wroth with the
Cheruscan prince now that the latter had abducted his daughter Thusnelda
and had taken the willing girl to wife.
_Victories of Germanicus_
The first campaign, which Germanicus with his legions and auxiliaries
began in the autumn of the same year, was consequently crowned with
success. On a star-lit night he attacked the Marsi as they were
celebrating a religious solemnity with joyous banquets, and having
craftily surrounded them massacred them without pity, destroyed a
sanctuary which they held in high reverence, and wasted their territory
for ten miles with fire and sword. Enraged at this treacherous attack,
the Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes flew to arms and vigorously attacked
the retreating Romans. But thanks to admirable leading and wary valour
they reached their winter quarters on the Rhine without serious loss.
Next year Germanicus invaded the land of the Chatti from Mogontiacum,
burned Mattium their capital, and wasted the country. He then rescued
Segestes, who, being besieged by Arminius, had appealed to the Romans
for succour, carried Thusnelda (whom her perfidious father had snatched
away from her husband and delivered over to the enemy) into captivity,
and sent the son of Segestes, Segimund by name--who, though a priest of
the Ubii, had once torn the sacred fillet and fought for freedom at his
country’s call in the Teutoburg forest--under a strong escort to Gaul.
Thusnelda, inspired by the spirit of her husband rather than of her
father, followed the victor, not humbled to tears, not with entreaties,
but with a proud look, her hands folded on her breast, thinking of the
son she bore beneath her heart and who should be born to servitude.
[Sidenote: [15 A.D.]]
Full of rage and fury at this domestic disgrace, Arminius flew through
the territory of the Cherusci and summoned all the people to revenge upon
the Romans, who were not ashamed to wage war by treachery and against
helpless women. He succeeded in combining the Cherusci and several
neighbouring tribes into a great armed confederacy, and induced his uncle
Inguiomer, who ruled over the region near the Teutoburg forest, to join
the league. Germanicus met this new danger with courage and discretion.
While he himself with four legions went down the dyke of Drusus and the
Flevo Lacus by ship as his father Drusus had once done, and sailed along
the coast, his legate Cæcina marched through the country of the Bructeri,
and Pedo, leader of the cavalry, through that of the Frisians. The three
divisions of the army reunited on the banks of the Ems and, reinforced
by the conquered Chauci, marched, bearing hideous devastation with them,
towards the Luppia, where they visited the battle-field in the Teutoburg
forest and paid the last honours to the bones of the fallen.
_Gruesome Relics in Teutoburg Forest_
When the army came into the vicinity of the Teutoburg forest, says
Tacitus, a longing came over Cæsar to pay the last duties to the fallen
warriors and their general; the whole army, mindful of their friends and
kindred, of the disasters of war and the lot of mankind, was seized with
tenderness and compassion. After Cæcina had been sent forward to spy out
the ravines of the forest and to lay bridges and causeways across the
swampy bogland and treacherous fields, the whole army entered the place
of mourning, terrible alike to sight and memory.
The camps of Varus were still standing; by the contracted wall of
circumvallation it could be seen that they had sheltered but the remnant
of the army. The bones of the fallen were bleaching on the battle-field,
here in heaps, there scattered, according as an attempt had been made
at flight or resistance; among the human bodies lay broken weapons and
the skeletons of horses; hollow skulls stared down from the tree trunks;
and in the groves close at hand could be seen the altars at which the
tribunes and centurions had been slaughtered to the gods. Some who had
escaped from the fight or from captivity pointed out the places where the
legates had fallen, where Varus had received his first wound and where he
had thrust the sword into his breast; where Arminius had addressed the
multitude, where the prisoners had been strung up, where the eagles had
been taken and flouted.
The army, filled with mingled grief and wrath, buried the bones of the
three legions six years after their defeat, and no man knew whose remains
he was covering with earth, whether those of a brother or a stranger.
Cæsar himself laid the first sod of a tumulus, the last gift to the
departed, a witness of sympathetic grief to those present. Tiberius,
however, disapproved of the interment of the bodies, either thinking that
the soldiers would be cast down and discouraged by the terrible sight, or
suspecting that in this act the general was courting the favour of the
army and of the people.
_The Return March_
After a skirmish with Arminius, in which the Roman cavalry suffered great
loss in the swampy bottom of the wood, Germanicus set out on his return
march. While he himself with his legions sailed from the mouth of the
Amisia along the coast the way he had come, accompanied by the crippled
cavalry on land, Cæcina, an experienced warrior who had seen forty
campaigns, marched with the bulk of the army on the left of the Luppia
towards the Rhine over the long causeway which Domitius had once laid
across the bog land.
This plan of operations brought the Romans into great straits. The
causeway of piles was interrupted in many places, and the forty cohorts
which Cæcina led over the slippery ground, hemmed in by impassable
ravines and morasses, surrounded by the Germans and distraught by
constant attacks, were in danger of succumbing to the fate of Varus.
Exhausted and covered with wounds in the unequal struggle by day, they
were alarmed and terrified at night by the wild war songs of the enemy
encamped on the higher ground; imagination presented to their overwrought
minds the hideous images of death which they had seen in the Teutoburg
forest. In his dreams Cæcina saw the bloody figure of Quintilius Varus
rise from the marsh and beckon him. They had lost their baggage in two
days of fruitless fighting, and with exhausted strength saw certain
destruction staring them in the face.
Then the Germans in the insolence of triumph and the wary Cæcina in
his superior military skill wrought them an unexpected deliverance. A
premature assault upon the hostile camp, attempted by the Germans against
the advice of Arminius and at the instigation of Inguiomer, was driven
back by a sudden charge of the Romans. Inguiomer left the field severely
wounded and the Germans withdrew into the mountains in disorder, pursued
by the enemy. Cæcina then led his legions rapidly to the Rhine. But
rumours of disaster had outstripped them; men believed that the army
was already annihilated, and in imagination saw the enemy rushing upon
themselves. They were in the act of making preparations to destroy the
bridges about Vetera when Agrippina hurried thither and prevented the
cowardly deed. And when the army arrived this heroic woman, standing like
a general at the head of the bridge, welcomed it with friendly greetings,
nursed the wounded, and bestowed gifts on those who had been plundered.
[Illustration: A ROMAN EMPEROR
(After De Montfaucon)]
Germanicus arrived soon after with his troops, likewise preceded by
rumours of disaster. And in truth they too had passed through great
dangers. Owing to the shallowness of the water only two legions could
be put on board; the legate Vitellius was to lead the rest along the
margin of the sea. But this latter body was overtaken by the tide, which
rose breast-high around the soldiers and put an end to all order; waves
and eddies carried men and beasts away; draught cattle, baggage, and
corpses drifted hither and thither in the water. They escaped destruction
narrowly and with heavy loss. Germanicus and Agrippina exerted themselves
to the utmost to make them forget their sorrows and hardships by
condescension and kindly encouragement, by attention and rewards; and
Gaul, Spain, and Italy vied with one another in the effort to make good
their losses in arms, horses, and money.
Moved rather by apprehension at the growing love and devotion of the
legions for their general and his family than by annoyance at the mishaps
of the German expedition, the emperor resolved to recall Germanicus
from the Rhine and despatch him to the East. This circumstance made the
general all the more anxious to bring to a glorious issue the war in
Germany which he regarded himself as bound in honour to terminate. A
fleet of a thousand ships, with flat bottoms adapted for the ebb and
flow, well manned and abundantly provisioned, was collected in the
Batavian islands. In these he voyaged with eight legions to the mouth of
the Amisia and then marched by land to the Visurgis, on whose right bank
the Germans were posted under the command of Arminius.
A brother of the Cheruscan chieftain was serving in the Roman army and
had been rewarded for his military services in Pannonia and for the loss
of an eye with pay and badges of honour. Arminius asked and obtained
an interview with him; but warmly as he exhorted him in his own name
and their mother’s to take the part of their beloved country and to
fight for their hereditary freedom and native gods, his words recoiled
without effect from the breast of the misguided and degenerate man. If
the Visurgis had not flowed between these dissimilar brothers they would
have come to blows. Thus even in the earliest times Germany exhibits the
spectacle of fraternal strife and national disunion.
Next day Germanicus led his army across the river. The Batavian cavalry,
which preceded the main body, was enticed by a feint of flight on the
part of the Cherusci into a plain encircled by wooded heights, where the
majority of them, including their gallant leader Cariobald, succumbed
to the blows of the enemy. Soon afterwards battle took place in a plain
called by Tacitus Idistavisus, that stretched from the Visurgis to the
range of hills that bordered it.
_Battling with Arminius_
Before the fight began both leaders endeavoured to inflame the ardour of
their warriors, Germanicus trying to rid his men of their dread of the
unequal combat on wooded ground and of the lofty stature and savage looks
of their adversaries, and insisting on the superiority of their armour
over the wretched weapons of the other side--their shields of wood and
wickerwork, their short spears and sticks hardened in the fire; Arminius
reminding the Germans of former victories, and then asking whether any
choice was left to them save to maintain their freedom or die before
slavery overtook them.
But bravely as the Germans advanced to the fray, victory favoured the
tactics of the legions directed by the military genius and resolute
generalship of Cæsar Germanicus. In vain Arminius strove to rally the
fight by bold rushes and cheers, the Cheruscan column was shattered
against the advance of the auxiliary troops, Gauls, Ræti, and Vindelici;
wounded and with his face disfigured with blood to evade recognition, the
German prince escaped to the mountains by the strength of his war horse.
Inguiomer also saved himself by the same artifice and the fleetness of
his steed. The rest were cut down. Many who attempted to swim across the
Visurgis met their death from the missiles of the enemy, the violence of
the stream, the hurrying crowd behind them or the yielding bank in front.
Some who hid themselves in the tops and branches of lofty oaks were shot
by the archers or killed by the felling of the trees. The slaughter
lasted far on into the night, for two miles the ground was strewn thick
with corpses. The Romans hailed Germanicus as imperator and erected on
the battle-field a stately trophy with the names of the conquered tribes
upon it.
The Germans had succumbed before the superior might of Rome, but their
spirit was unbroken; the erection of the trophy on their territory and
soil inflamed them with wrath and vengeance. High and low, young and old,
flew to arms and, led by Inguiomer and the wounded Arminius, set upon the
Roman army. Thus a second battle took place a few days later two miles to
the east of the scene of the first, near a wide dam which the Angrivarii
had thrown up as a barrier against the Cherusci.
It was a terrible battle. The Germans, sheltered by the rampart, offered
a desperate resistance, and when they were at length forced to give
ground by the slingers and archers, they ranged themselves afresh in a
wood, where they had a swamp in their rear, and the struggle was renewed
with unabated vehemence until night separated the combatants. The Germans
were at a disadvantage on account of the cramped space and their sorry
armour; “their unhelmeted heads, their unprotected breasts, were exposed
to the sword thrusts of the mailed Roman soldiers.” They nevertheless
fought with marvellous valour. Inguiomer flew to and fro in the ranks,
exhorting them to stand fast; Germanicus also took off his helmet that he
might be recognised of all men and spurred on his troops with orders to
cut down all assailants.
The Roman victory was not decisive, although a stately trophy proclaimed
that the legions of the emperor Tiberius had conquered the tribes between
the Rhine and Albis. That same summer Germanicus led his army back
without making any provision for maintaining his mastery of the country.
Some legions reached the Rhine by land, the general himself marched with
the rest to the Amisia to re-embark there. But the fleet had scarcely
reached the open sea when a violent tempest arose, lashing the waves
to fury. The ships, driven far out to sea, were dashed upon rocks and
cliffs or cast away on hidden shoals. Horses, beasts of burden, baggage,
and even weapons, were cast overboard to lighten the ships and keep them
afloat. Many went to the bottom, others were wrecked on remote islands
where the soldiers sustained life in uninhabited regions upon the flesh
of horses washed up by the sea. Germanicus’ ship was driven on the coast
of the Chauci. There he stood day and night upon a jutting crag, and
watched in dismay the tumult of nature, laying the blame of this horrible
mishap upon himself. His comrades could hardly restrain him from seeking
death in the breakers.
At length the wind went down and the sailors succeeded, by the help of
such oars as were left and outstretched garments for sails, in getting
the less damaged of the ships into the mouth of the Rhine. Of those who
were driven out to sea and shipwrecked many were picked up by boats
sent out in search of them, many more were ransomed from German and
British tribes. [Germanicus himself looked after the destitute men and
contributed to their wants from his purse.] Those who reached home
told marvellous tales of eddies and whirlpools, or sea monsters and
two-natured beasts, conjured up by their own terror and distress.
To neutralise the bad impression likely to be produced on the Germans
and the neighbouring Gauls by the news of these mishaps and to show
that the dominion of Rome on the Rhine was still unimpaired, Germanicus
undertook the same autumn another campaign beyond the Rhine. Silius his
legate invaded the land of the Chatti while he himself marched with a
great army of horse and foot against the Marsi. The only spoil which the
Romans reaped from this unworthy incursion was one of the eagles lost in
the defeat of Varus. A banished prince of the latter tribe, who had come
as a fugitive to the Romans, betrayed to them the spot where it had been
buried in a grove. Germanicus is also said to have recovered one in his
first campaign.
GERMANICUS RECALLED TO ROME
[Sidenote: [16-18 A.D.]]
This was the end of the Roman war in North Germany. In the midst of great
schemes for a fresh campaign against the Germans, which the emperor’s
brave son regarded as the glorious task of his life, he was recalled by
a letter from Tiberius to the effect there had been enough of success
and disaster; and he was to come home for the triumph the emperor had
designed in acknowledgment of his exploits. Now that the honour of the
Roman arms had been vindicated and enough done for Rome’s vengeance, the
Cherusci and the other rebellious tribes of Germany might be safely left
to their own dissensions. In vain did Germanicus beg the emperor to grant
him but one year more, promising that by then he would bring the war
to a glorious end. The answer came that he was to return to assume the
consulate; if it were necessary to continue the war his brother Drusus
might win laurels and the fame of a commander on the Rhine.
Germanicus obeyed. In the following year he celebrated at Rome his
triumph over the German tribes, in which the ensigns and weapons which
had been captured or recovered were carried through the gaily decorated
streets of the city, together with pictures of rivers, mountains, and
battles in Germany. In front of the gorgeous triumphal car in which
the stately imperator sat enthroned, surrounded by his five blooming
children, marched many men, women, and children of high rank, captive
and in fetters. Among them was Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, and her
son Thumelicus, whom she had borne in captivity. Both died in slavery
in a foreign land. From the obscure hint given by Tacitus that the son
of Arminius grew up at Ravenna and was reserved for a shameful fate,
modern inquirers and poets have concluded that the boy was brought up as
a gladiator. According to Strabo, Segimund, the brother of Thusnelda,
and his cousin Sisithacus, with his princely consort Rhamis, were of the
train in the chains of slavery. But Segestes stood in a place of honour
and looked down upon the holiday of the Romans and the misery of his
children. It was his reward for betraying his country.
END OF MARBODUUS AND ARMINIUS
The spirit of internecine discord to which Tiberius had handed the Romans
over soon came to light. The Low German league of the Cherusci in the
northwest engaged in a war with the league of the Marcomanni in the
southeast. It may be that Arminius, proud of his achievements, aimed at
the military command of the whole nation and thus come into conflict with
Marboduus the wary and ambitious Marcomannian prince, who had maintained
a neutral attitude throughout the war of the Romans and Germans. The
chieftains seem to have favoured Marboduus, the tribes Arminius; at least
we find Inguiomer, uncle of Arminius, on the side of the Marcomanni,
while on the other hand the Langobardi and Senones settled on the banks
of the Albis were in league with Arminius. In the third year after the
withdrawal of Germanicus the quarrel between the two confederacies came
to a sanguinary decision. The battle was probably fought on the Sala, and
ended in the retreat of Marboduus to Boihemum (Bohemia).
[Illustration: THUSNELDA AT THE TRIUMPH OF GERMANICUS]
Of the later history we know nothing, though we can gather from
subsequent events that the schism continued to exist, that German
blood was shed to no purpose by German hands, and that the weakness
bred of discord gave the Romans an opportunity of harassing the
country of the Germans again from the south. Marboduus, enfeebled by
attacks from without and desertions within, turned to Tiberius for
help, but the latter preferred to foster the dissensions and to let
the stately political fabric Marboduus had built up perish of its own
disorganisation. The German duke was induced to cross the Danube and
appeal for the assistance of the Cæsar Drusus, who had a standing camp
farther down the stream. The latter delayed him so long with promises and
negotiations that the German army, seduced by factionaries and agitators,
deserted its commander, and left him no choice but self-inflicted death
or surrender to the Romans. He chose to live rather than to perish
gloriously. He was carried to Ravenna, where he lived for eighteen years
on the allowance granted him by the hereditary enemy of his country.
Colonies of soldiers were settled in Moravia.
A like fate befell Catualda, prince of the Gothi, who had been the
principal agent of the fall of Marboduus, but was driven away by the
Hermunduri when he attempted to take his place. The Romans harboured the
fugitive, who fled to their protection, and assigned him a residence at
Forum Julii in Gaul.
[Sidenote: [18-19 A.D.]]
The soldiers of Marboduus who were settled in Moravia had Vannius set
over them as king by the Romans. Popular with the people at first, he
enriched his kingdom by plunder and tribute; but presently, weakened
by a hostile party in his own land, succumbed to the attacks of his
enemies the Hermunduri and Lygii (in Silesia). Defeated after honourable
fight in a pitched battle, he fled wounded to the Romans, who assigned
dwelling-places to him and his following in Pannonia. His two nephews,
who had been the prime agents of his fall, shared his abandoned kingdom
and secured Roman protection by faithful loyalty and devotion to the
ruling race. Thus by artifice and stratagem and by the dissensions of her
enemies, Rome gained more than by the force of arms.
Arminius met his end about the same time. We have no information
concerning the death of the hero beyond the brief words with which
Tacitus[g] concludes the second book of his _Annals_: “Arminius, striving
after royal power after the withdrawal of the Romans and the banishment
of Marboduus, had his fellow countrymen’s love of liberty against him;
and while, attacked in arms, he was fighting with varying fortune, he
fell by the treachery of his kinsmen. Incontestably he was the deliverer
of Germany. He did not, like other kings and commanders, fight the Roman
nation in its weakness, but at the period of its greatest strength. Not
invariably fortunate in battle, he remained unconquered in war. He had
accomplished thirty-seven years of life and twelve of military command.
He is still sung of by the barbarian tribes. To the annals of the Greeks
he is unknown, for they admire nothing that is not their own; among the
Romans also he is not sufficiently honoured, for we extol the old and
disregard the new.” A splendid tribute from an alien but noble pen, which
honoured virtue and greatness of soul even in an enemy.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[3] [The remaining events of the German campaigns belong to the epoch
of Augustus’ successor, Tiberius; but they are presented here in the
interests of an unbroken narrative, and a finished picture.]
[Illustration]