EPISODE 2

The Lawyer

IN STIRRING POSE THE STATUE of Hermann, the German hero called by Roman authors Arminius, stands on the highest hill in a forested region of north-west Germany near the town of Detmold, a hundred miles east of the Rhine and fifty south-west of Hannover. The statue, known as the Hermannsdenkmal (Hermann’s monument), is a celebrated landmark, commanding wide sweeps of country: westwards toward the Rhine, northwards to the plain and southwards over the tangle of wooded upland which will climax in the distant Alps. The summit on which it stands is called the Grotenburg, southern outlier of the Teutoburg Forest,¹ an arc of wooded hills which begins near Osnabrück, sweeping south-eastwards to join other ranges which mark the end of the flat, agricultural lands of Lower Saxony and the beginning of the wild and wooded Hessian hill country.

The statue depicts a youthful warrior, in winged helmet, sword held aloft with Wagnerian panache. On the twenty-one-foot blade is emblazoned in golden letters: Deutsche Einigkeit meine Stärke, meine Stärke Deutschlands Macht (German unity my strength, my strength Germany’s power). Hermann’s foot rests on a Roman eagle and a fallen fasces. The monument commemorates the greatest reverse suffered by Roman arms during the first two centuries of our era; an event know as the Varian Disaster, after the defeated commander P. Quintilius Varus.

The statue is 19th-century, its inspiration nationalism rather than exactitude. The battlefield’s location was guesswork; its hero’s appearance a product of the sculptor’s imagination. Unlike Ovid’s statue in Constantsa,² its creator had nothing to go on, except that a large Roman army was destroyed by a youthful German prince of zealous character and striking looks in the ‘Teutoburg Forest’. Even his name is uncertain. Though Hermann is a possible equivalent of the Latinized Arminius, it is in fact a modern attempt to link the name with Herimannus, a Germanic god of war. We will compromise, using the name Armin. Finally, the location of the Teutoburg Forest is itself obscure. It appears in one ancient source as the Teutoburgiensis Saltus, a name not applied on the ground until the 17th century, when antiquarians based their suppositions on the accounts of four Roman historians who described the battle, none of whom was an eye-witness and only one a contemporary. The location chosen was the former Osning Range,³ though this was without archaeological proof or even place-name and folkloric support. None of the Roman accounts is compatible with a hilltop. The Grotenburg was simply a striking place to put the monument. It is in fact the site of a hillfort⁴ and the name teuto burg(Teutonic fort) appears to suggest a connection. On the other hand, Iron Age fortifications are numerous in this part of Germany. To compound the riddle, saltus is a word of vague and ambiguous meaning: woodland clearing or glade; pass, defile or valley. However, the translation ‘forest’ seemed best to match some Roman descriptions and, as we believe mistakenly, it has been accepted without question for the last 300 years.

Where was the battle fought? The fascination of this question can be imagined, especially for late 19th-century Germans, epitomizing as it did the clash between romantic and classical forces at a time of maximum interest in both: when Wagner was weaving his mighty tapestries of music and myth and Schliemann was unearthing Greek gold at Troy and Mycenae. Hundreds of sites were proposed, including at least thirty serious suggestions. For a time the Hildesheim Treasure was thought to provide a clue. In 1868 soldiers, building a rifle range into a hillside, uncovered a large hoard of Roman silver vessels of exceptional quality, still considered Germany’s most important ancient trove.⁵ Some speculated that this might have been the table service of Varus, the defeated commander, hidden as the Roman plight worsened; for the army was travelling with full baggage and Varus was a wealthy man. However, a few of the pieces have now been dated to the century following and it seems likely that the treasure was either the stock of a Roman merchant or a diplomatic consignment destined for what has been called the ‘prestige goods zone’ of Central Germany. The Teutoburg battlefield retained its secret till the late 1980s, when it was located nearly fifty miles from the statue. However, let us postpone that aspect of the detective story until the circumstances have been fully described.

Though without historical value, the Hermann Monument is of interest in its own right. It is the work of the sculptor Ernst von Bandel (1800–76) who, as a boy of six, on being told the story by his father, resolved to commemorate the Teutoburg battle in a style and on a scale appropriate to the sentiments it evoked in German hearts. It was to occupy his energies for thirty-seven years. The money was partly raised by public subscription, in part it came from his own pocket. The plinth, as high as the statue itself, is of sandstone blocks, some cut from masonry robbed from the dry-stone ramparts of the prehistoric hillfort. This was completed in 1846. There followed a decline in Bandel’s fortunes and a sixteen-year hiatus while the statue lay in part-finished sections on the workshop floor. It was decided to sell it as scrap. But in 1871 German unification created a surge of patriotism. Armin was recognized as a powerful national symbol. The Reichstag voted funds. The statue was erected during the period 1873–5, when Bandel, now in his seventies, lived in a hut on the hilltop. By this time he was going blind and frequently bumped into trees.

The figure is eighty-eight feet (twenty-seven metres) to the sword-point. It is made from sections of beaten copper, attached to one another and to a steel framework by means of 31,000 rivets and bolts. The sword weighs 4 cwt. (203kg.). The idiom is 19th-century neo-classical and owes much to David, court painter to Napoleon.⁶ David’s heroic manner would influence other monuments, most notably the Statue of Liberty;⁷ and Justice, on the Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey), London. Liberty is ten years younger and three-and-a-half times larger, though the higher pedestal and hilltop position of Bandel’s statue make it seem almost as big. Both are identical in materials and construction. The Hermann Monument was dedicated in the presence of the Kaiser,⁸Wilhelm I, in 1875. It was Bandel’s finest hour, though owing to almost total blindness he was unable to see the statue in place: a parallel with Beethoven which did not escape his admirers. He died a year later.

Today Armin’s statue still stares eastwards over treetops and hilltops toward his country’s interior; urging Germans to a unity they would fail to achieve for 1,862 years after the events of AD 9 which it commemorates. Following its gaze into Iron Age Germany, it may be possible – from the hints offered by terrain, texts, archaeology and guesswork – to assemble a setting in which to place the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

The settlement area of the Germanic peoples during the Roman period was far larger than that of modern Germany. It included Scandinavia, Holland, Western Poland and Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, today’s England, Austria and Switzerland were all at that time what may loosely be called Celtic. Germany’s approximate eastern limit was the Vistula, beyond which were the Balts and the Veneri. In German, Wend is still used to mean Slav; and we may assume that these were the westernmost Slavs of their day. Southwards, the Germans met the Sarmatians somewhere near the present Slovakian-Hungarian border. The Magyars had not yet arrived on the scene. The Sarmatian tribe nearest to the Germans was the Iazyges, moved north by the Roman army to fill a vacuum in what is now eastern Hungary. The western boundary of Germany was considered to be the Rhine, though this was a less precise dividing line than one might think. But before discussing the relationship between Gauls, Romans and Germans two reminders may be given.

First, neither Germany, Sarmatia nor Celtica resembled anything we might today describe as a country, an empire, or even a confederation. Rather, these were loose groupings of language and culture, within which individual tribes were often in rivalry or at war. Secondly, the main ethnic units (Italians and Greeks no less than Celts, Germans, Sarmatians and Slavs) were all cousins in the same Indo-European family; though 2,000 years of dispersion, wandering and varying arrival times in the West had led to major differences of life and language to the point of mutual incomprehensibility, as with their descendants today. This was especially true of the Sarmatians, whose steppe experience had given them a nomadic character distinct from the others. Thus Tacitus points to the contrast between ‘Germans, having fixed abodes, carrying shields, walking and running quickly; and the Sarmatians, who live in wagons and on horseback’.⁹ Similarly, of a southern Germanic tribe, the Basternians, he says that, ‘by the sedentariness of their habits and their housebuilding they behave as Germans’.¹⁰ In general, ancient sources portray the Germans as more advanced than the Sarmatians but less so than the Celts, who were by now building stone ramparts, minting coins and producing metalwork of finest artistry. Tacitus tells us that the Germans were ‘separated from the Sarmatians by mountains and mutual mistrust; and from the Gauls by the Rhine’.¹¹ On this point he was strongly influenced by Caesar’s account.

In 55 BC, the same remarkable year as his visit to Britain, Caesar crossed the Rhine. Neither of these feats was necessary. Both were propaganda ‘firsts’. Caesar describes the event as follows:

To cross in boats would neither have befitted Caesar’s own dignity nor that of Rome; even though building a bridge involved great difficulties because of the river’s breadth, depth and current. Ten days after the first felling of timber the bridge was completed and the army marched over. [The Suebians, on the east bank] sent word throughout their tribal areas, telling people to abandon the oppida, take the women, children and valuables into the forest; then assemble all fighting men in an appointed place at their territory’s centre, where they had decided to make a stand.¹²

However, Caesar’s stay was short. He contented himself with laying waste the villages and crops near the bridgehead and declined a major confrontation.

Then he crossed back into Gaul, slighting the bridge behind him. In total he had spent eighteen days across the river and considered he had done all which honour or interest required.¹³

In taking an army dryshod over the Rhine, where no Roman soldier had before set foot, Caesar’s objectives were not dissimilar to John F. Kennedy’s in placing an American on the moon. Both achievements beamed a warning of technical supremacy eastwards and a signal of pride and reassurance westwards. The bridge site, identified by the finding of steel-tipped timber piles in the river mud, is at Urmitz near Neuwied.¹⁴ Caesar considered it important that the Rhine should be seen as a clear geographic and ethnic frontier; and he has been accused of exaggerating its significance to fit this view. Not only must he match the river’s importance to the achievement of crossing, but he must also seek to justify intervention in Gaul in the first place. Ostensibly this had been to repel German invaders who could, he argued, have endangered Roman Provence: a nobler-sounding motive than personal ambition. By the same token he had reason to play up the differences between German and Gaul emphasizing the former’s bellicosity. The bad press given to those east of the Rhine had begun.

Caesar’s knowledge of Germany was in fact limited. Though German auxiliaries had served with him and he was sometimes drawn into Gallo-German politics, his reputation as an authority on German affairs is built on not much more than his Rhine crossings.¹⁵ Two generations later Strabo was painting a somewhat different picture: ‘The regions across the Rhine are occupied by the Germans who, though differing from the Celts in being wilder, taller and blonder, are in all ways similar; for in physique, habits and life-styles the two are very much the same.’¹⁶

Most ancient authors concur in regarding Gauls and Germans as similar. Indeed the two were often confused, both by writers and the Roman public. This may be surprising to the modern reader who, like Caesar, is keenly aware of the differences between the French and Germans. Archaeology helps explain the confusion by telling us that most of western Germany, between the Rhine and Weser and southwards to the Alps, had formerly been Celtic and strongly related to those successive cultural flowerings called Hallstatt and La Tène. This explains why many Celtic forts (like the one in which the Hermannsdenkmal stands) are found as far eastwards as the Weser; and indeed why that river belongs to a large group of Celtic river names.¹⁷

In fact the German heartland appears to have lain in the southern Baltic and north coastal areas of today’s Germany. However, in the late 2nd century BC the Germans began to move southwards into the Rhineland and Belgium, setting in motion events which would shake Roman confidence and fuel her longstanding fear of the northern peoples. Two tribes migrated from Jutland, ‘driven from their lands by a great flood-tide’.¹⁸ One, the Cimbri, moved up the Elbe into Bohemia. Turning west through the Alps, they eventually reached the Rhone, where they joined the other tribe, the Teutons, who had arrived by a more direct route. The company included families, ox carts and herds of cattle. Both tribes were seeking land and a chance to settle, but with little notion where their trek might lead.

They defeated five Roman armies in succession, before veering west to plunder southern Gaul and Spain. Meanwhile, Caius Marius seized the respite to assemble and drill veterans who had fought with him in North Africa. At length the Teutons turned back toward Italy. Marius intercepted, defeating them decisively at the battle of Aquae Sextae (Aix-en-Provence) in 100 BC, fought on the plain beneath Cezanne’s Mont Sainte Victoire, where the local village is still called Pourrières¹⁹ after the German corpses. TheCimbri were destroyed in the following year at Vercellae in Piedmont.

By Caesar’s time the main body of German migration had reached the Alps. By that of Augustus the fringe areas of their latest settlements (eastern Gaul, the Alps and Bohemia) were still unstable, with incursions into Gaul remaining common. So, in the first decade of the Christian era, we have a picture of Germany in flux: with western Germany recently Celtic and a hybridized eastern Gaul (today’s Belgium, Luxembourg and Alsace) where Celt and German mixed. Here was a Rhine far from the clear divide in which Caesar would have us believe.

To these influences must now be added the Roman. It is probable Caesar entrusted the eastward defence of Gaul to friendly Belgic tribes, paid and even placed for this purpose on the Rhine’s western bank. The arrangement seems to have continued into Augustus’ reign; the Gallic legions, numbering perhaps eight, remaining in the interior of their provinces. During this time, Roman relations with the German lands were largely confined to traders, as well as to markets on the Rhine bank and limited diplomatic contacts. These provide intriguing glimpses behind the Iron Age curtain.

Before plunging into the German forest it is worth a word on our principal source, for in the Germania of Tacitus we have a portrait of the prehistoric German people which is not only the sole survivor of its type but also the fullest account of an Iron Age society we possess. This is why, in recognition of its unique interest, renaissance scholars called it libellus aureus (the golden monograph).

Transmission was via a single medieval manuscript, uncovered in 1451 at the monastery of Hersfeld, southern Germany; demonstrating on what slender threads the bequests of ancient learning have sometimes hung. Its printing in Nürnberg, twenty years later, was a stimulus to national pride, leading ultimately to the first history of the German peoples in the 17th century. Enthusiasm must, however, be tempered on several grounds. In the first place it is unlikely that Tacitus visited Germany in person. On the other hand he did have access to sources since lost, including Livy’s Book Nine and Pliny’s twenty volumes on the German Wars. Perhaps he also drew on the reminiscences of his own father who, from the evidence of an inscription, is thought to have served as a senior official inGallia Belgica, the province abutting the Rhine.

The ethnographic treatise was an established form, traceable to the Syrian-Greek Posidonius (135–51 BC), whose work on the Celts is known only through later authors. Despite the loss of almost all studies of this kind there are clues enough to know that thegenre had its full share of truisms and that Tacitus was not always blameless in avoiding them. These included credulity (a tendency to parrot the same information from author to author) and the idea that barbarians were all the same. The latter, comparable to modern clichés about distant races,²⁰ resulted in a readiness to transfer information from one folk to another; so it is not always easy to know when Tacitus might be grafting Celtic characteristics onto Germans. Furthermore we must keep in mind the familiar prejudices of classical historians, where ingrained belief in the inferiority of barbarians is commonly contradicted by admiration for the ‘noble savage’.²¹ In obedience to this formula the German is praised for manliness, strength, hardihood, chastity, fidelity and other traits. While probably true, these were also devices by which Tacitus could castigate his fellow-Romans for addiction to soft living and loss of values which were considered to have belonged to the Republican period at its best.

There are yet other distorting features. History was seen as a form of literature, even of oratory; for it was read aloud to select groups, who expected artistry and polish. As with Ovid’s, Tacitus’ listeners would have yawned at the detail for which we yearn. Names, times, distances, instances, circumstances, all relating to places about which genteel Romans had only the haziest notion, were unpromising material for an author who wished to thrill literary audiences. What is more Tacitus was a supreme – at times extreme – prose stylist, who valued compression above explanation. It is this, among other characteristics, which makes it impossible to translate him adequately. English, though among the most telescopable of modern languages, is brought up by Tacitean Latin as sharply as a cat by a mousehole. Nor is he temperamentally simple. Had Tacitus been possessed of three feet it could be said that one was in history, one in literature and one in philosophy, for he was often more concerned with the moral than the actual. He was pessimistic and cynical, a curiously modern victim of his own conscience. Despite these difficulties, Tacitus is rightly regarded as the greatest of Roman historians and a vein of gold in the silver age of Latin letters. The Germania, dated to about AD 98, was probably his first published work and by no means his most accomplished, though students of late prehistoric Europe are lucky to have it.

Returning to the penetration of Germany by Roman traders, this was in three directions. The most obvious was from Gaul, simply by being rowed or rafted across the Rhine. A second door was opened by the conquest of the Alps and construction of a road through today’s Switzerland. This was designed as a strategic short cut from Italy’s north-west corner to the Upper Rhine, eliminating the detour via the Rhone. Symbolically, at either end of this route, were the towns named after Augustus: Augusta Praetoria(Aosta) and Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). Like many roads built for the military, it soon became a commercial link. Thirdly, there was a back door into Germany, from Italy’s north-east corner. This was the prehistoric commercial corridor, known today as the Amber Road. The yellow or honey-gold substance, familiar in Greece²² from the Mycenean period, had been brought southwards on an organized basis since the 6th century BC. Amber is the fossilized gum of extinct pines, cast up on northern shores. Its principal source was and still is the Baltic’s south-eastern corner, near today’s Kaliningrad and the adjacent Gulf of Danzig (Gdansk). Tacitus tells us it was known to the Germans as glesum,²³ adding: ‘one may guess it is the resin of trees, certain insects and even flies often being found embedded in it.’²⁴ He also grumbles at ‘the peculiarly feminine extravagance by which hard currency is lost to foreign or unfriendly countries in return for precious stones’.²⁵ Nero, eager for a caesar’s share, sent an expedition (under one Julianus, director of the gladiatorial games) to trace the ‘stone’ to its source. Pliny tells us that Julianus reached the Baltic coast and there found commercia (agencies) which dealt in the trade.²⁶ It had long been in Celtic hands, the road passing through a number of theiroppida. In due course Roman merchants muscled in.²⁷

The Amber Road is a figure of speech for what was in reality a series of tracks and waterways. These began sedately enough: up the lower Oder and Vistula and across the gently rising plain of southern Poland, via Lowicz, Lodz and Wroclaw. They then climbed the Sudeten Ranges, crossed the Bohemian Basin and rose again over the Bohemian Forest. Passing from German into Celtic territory, the Italian-bound branch made downhill toward the large oppidum at Linz. From here it dwindled into mountain paths through the Tauern,²⁸ across the middle of what is now Austria, before dropping down to Villach. Finally the steep but shorter Carnatic Alps were followed by the winding descent through today’s Udine, entering the Italian road system at Aquileia.

This route, with its several variants, has been reconstructed from finds of amber and Roman coins on its course. The coins are commonest near the Baltic Shore and Vistula mouth, where Julianus reported that the wholesalers were established. Regarding the substance itself, we are speaking of more than a few droplets scattered along the way. In trading settlements in the Wroclaw area Polish archaeologists found three tons of raw amber!²⁹

Looking eastwards across the wide Rhine toward the German interior, one has two impressions. From Basle down to the Ruhr the view is largely of hill and forest, an impression not greatly altered since antiquity. From the Ruhr northwards the vista changes to one of flat fields and tall skies. Once the Rhine has emerged onto the North European Plain there seems no obstacle save the river itself. But this sector is deceptive. Since ancient times nature has been modified almost beyond recognition, not just in agricultural development but in the measures which made agriculture possible. Here the water of half Europe trickles and oozes northwards onto a plain with insufficient tilt to promote its run-off and with a dense layer of glacial clay to prevent its drainage. Modern ploughing has pierced this pan, while centuries of effort in ditch cutting and the embankment of rivers have redeemed huge tracts of peat bog for the farmer. Indeed, nearer the delta these efforts have created an entire country – the Netherlands – pushed into the North Sea where in Roman times there was a hollow, with mud banks, lagoons, reeds, silty streams and rivers shifting uneasily in their beds.

In short, whoever might wish to penetrate prehistoric Germany faced a painful choice: between groping through broken uplands clothed in forest or of floundering in a morass; the one usually beginning where the other left off. Tacitus puts a Roman’s feelings toward this comfortless country into a five-word nutshell: ‘While there is some variety of scenery it is typically a land of fearful forest and fetid bog (silvis horrida aut paludibus foeda); with the rain heaviest toward the west and the wind worst toward the south.’³⁰

Though the northern marshes were relieved by sandy heath or deposits of gravel and the southern woodlands broken by clearings, especially in the river valleys, this verdict was substantially true. Foreigners, especially Mediterranean peoples, found the forest deeply depressing. Its extent was awesome. The largest tract, then called the Hercynian Forest, is mentioned by Caesar, who locates its western end between the Alps and the middle Rhine. From here it stretched eastwards in a broad band, from today’s Baden-Württemberg, across Bavaria, Czechoslovakia and into western Russia, branching southeastwards to cover much of the Balkans and Carpathians. This was part of Europe’s primordial, broad-leaf forest belt, which once marched without interruption from the Atlantic to the Urals, beyond which rainfall becomes too light for dense growth. Gaul and the British Isles also belonged to this zone, though by the late Iron Age there seems to have been far more clearance in the Celtic world than the Germanic.

So Germany fronted the West with the double deterrent of forest and marsh. But there were chinks in each. The waterlogged plain could be penetrated by water. From the North Sea there were three rivers, the Ems, Weser and Elbe, which led into north-west Germany’s heart. Rivers were the pass-key to the forest region also. The Rhine’s eastern tributaries were corridors up which the traveller could march or row. This was something like entering darkest Amazonia and it probably inspired comparable sentiments. Both were rain forest, both had dangerous occupants and both presented formidable barriers to outsiders, as much psychological as real. Profit had, however, found a way.

Many thousand Roman coins have been discovered in Germany. Their spread was progressive. Of more than 400 hoards only thirty are of 1st-century origin and all were within 125 miles of the Rhine and Danube. However, by the century following, coinage penetrates far into Scandinavia and across eastern Europe to the Ukraine. As trade increased the German gaze became increasingly fixed westwards and southwards. Those closest would be eager visitors to the markets on the two great rivers. It is interesting to note the kind of Latin word then entering the German language: kaufen (to buy) from cauponor (to trade); Danish øre (gold) from aureus; Münze (coin) from moneta (mint); billig (cheap) from vilis, and so on. Traders exchanged metalware and household goods for skins, livestock and slaves. Though the Germans used coins for trade with the Romans, there is no evidence of their developing a money economy amongst themselves. ‘Those nearest us value gold and silver for trading purposes and recognize and prefer certain types of Roman coin, while those further away continue to barter in the time-honoured way. Our coins which they trust most are old and familiar ones. They try to get silver rather than gold, since silver change is more convenient for everyday transactions.’³¹

The author recalls youthful experience in the Aden Protectorates and the preference which tribesmen showed for the big, clinking, Maria Theresean silver dollars,³² often wondering how an 18th-century coin from Austria-Hungary achieved such distant and enduring popularity. The ancient Germans were also fond of silver tableware. In addition to the Hildesheim Treasure, many of the best classical silver vessels have been found in Germany. Tacitus identified this with the diplomatic slush fund: ‘One may see among them silver vases, given as presents to the chiefs and their henchmen. The strength and power of these kings rests on Roman authority. We occasionally give them armed assistance; but more often money, which does just as well.’³³

Silver and coin were not the only tastes which Rome exploited. The early Germans were prodigious drinkers. Drinking-horns of two or three-gallon capacity have been unearthed.

The tribes nearest the river bank are able to get wine in the market. [Their native drink, however, is] an extract of barley or wheat, which is fermented to make something not unlike wine. Their foods are simple: wild fruits, fresh game and sour milk. Though moderate in eating, drinking is quite another matter. Ply them with booze and you may win them more easily than by fighting them.³⁴

Chemical examination of pottery vessels reveals traces of a fermented liquid of beer type, made from a mixture of malt and wild berries. Drinking and chewing the fat were evidently the main male pastimes, especially during the long winter. In this democracy of drunkenness weighty matters were discussed, with decisions emerging from an alcoholic haze.

After breakfast (armed, of course) they get down to business; and often as not the business is drinking. When it comes to a binge there’s no disgrace in making a day and a night of it. As you would expect among such devoted inebriates, rough-houses are common; and it’s not just the bad language which pours out but usually the bad blood too. And yet everything gets an airing at these carousals. Quarrels are patched up, alliances made, chiefs appointed and even questions of peace and war decided; as if this were a time to think straight on matters great or small!³⁵

Few modern historians would go as far as Gibbon in asserting (though perhaps tongue-in-cheek) that thirst motivated barbarian aggression: ‘Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley and corrupted into a semblance of wine was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. The intemperate thirst for strong liquors often urged the barbarian to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents.’³⁶

But not all Germans lost their heads at a sniff of the exotic or a sip of the alcoholic. As Caesar wrote of the Suebian tribe (said to be Germany’s biggest and strongest): ‘They allow traders to enter their territory as buyers of booty which they themselves have won in war, rather than as suppliers of outside goods. The import of wine they forbid absolutely, on the grounds that it makes men too soft and womanish to endure hardship.’³⁷

Though Caesar described a largely animal diet this is probably truer of the north. Nevertheless many Iron Age fields have been traced in Schleswig-Holstein, southern Sweden and Jutland. Further south the Germans of the forest grew crops and tended animals in clearings. Both Caesar and Tacitus speak of shifting cultivation, but also of distaste for hard work or agricultural improvement. In view of the universal admiration for their size and strength it is, however, likely that most Germans had a good if boring diet and that farming standards were not greatly below those of the less developed parts of the empire. An interest in outside foods and Roman eating habits is suggested by the borrowing of a variety of Latin food words, as well as terms for utensils and even of cooking³⁸ itself.

The foremost male garment was a cloak, of high-quality woven and dyed cloth; or a short cape, worn perhaps in summer. Beneath they wore close-fitting but often crudely shaped shirts and trousers of fur, leather or sealskin. Women dressed in woollen skirts, or ankle-length costumes resembling a friar’s habit, though of coloured wool or purple-striped linen.

Villages were open in layout, with rectangular huts of unfashioned timber, the walls filled in with wattle and daub. The loan-words Fenster (window) from fenestra and Kamin (chimney) from caminus (fireplace) suggest these features were copied from the Romans, huts being previously windowless and with only a central smoke-hole. Similarly Mauer (wall) from murus and (Dutch) Tegel (tile) from tegula, indicate that light, wooden construction was normal before the arrival of Rome. ‘It is well known’, wrote Tacitus, ‘that none of the Germans lives in cities.’³⁹ They did, however, have forts, inherited from the Celts, plus mound-and-palisade or hedge-enclosed villages of their own. Roads were tracks, notoriously circuitous owing to bog or forest. Across parts of the northern quagmire there were also what the Romans called the pontes longi⁴⁰ (Bohlenwege), made of logs laid crosswise in the mud and padded with turf or brushwood to form causeways. These covered limited stretches, probably hundreds of yards rather than miles. No trace of prehistoric tracks or causeways survives.

Culturally Germany was, like Celtica, a preliterate society. The Runic alphabet, using heavily modified Greek and Roman characters, does not appear until the 2nd century. Its use would in any case be limited, especially to religion. Technical development was modest. In metallurgy the Germans lagged behind their Celtic neighbours. Ancient authors spoke of a scarcity of iron, which shows in the rarity of swords and the smallness of spearheads. There were, of course, large iron sources in Germany, such as the Ruhr and Silesia, but ‘Iron Age’ Germans did not seem overly zealous in exploiting them. Dagger and spear were the main weapons, the latter used both for throwing and thrusting. Horses were small; this and the terrain accounting for the dominance of infantry. The Germans were rated as formidable fighters whether mounted or on foot. Caesar described⁴¹ how the infantry ran alongside the horses, clinging to their manes. Foot soldiers and horsemen fought together in wedge-shaped formations, each a hundred strong and composed of related families.

The finest Germanic technical achievement was in shipbuilding. Clinker⁴²-built vessels, first and best in the ancient world, already appear in what is now Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. Survivals include the forty-foot Hjortspring twenty-paddle boat⁴³ of the 2nd century BC and the seventy-foot Nydam boat of the 3rd century AD, with fifteen oars on each side: forerunners of the Viking longship.

Tacitus describes the Germans as monogamous and marrying for life; their existence one of chastity, without corrupting influences, with adultery rare and prostitution virtually unknown: ‘No one treats vice lightly. None says that seduction is in fashion.⁴⁴ In every home one sees children, naked and apparently in impoverished circumstances; and yet they mature to a length of limb and stature of body at which Romans marvel.’⁴⁵

He also describes a social and sexual condition of near equality. Slavery existed, but seems to have been confined to prisoners of war. Women were respected, even feared as possessing magical powers. Chiefs were elected and, as noted, tribal decisions were collectively if bibulously reached by all adult males. Military service was governed not by vassalage or compulsion but by honour. Loyalty was cemented by oath, freely sworn within family or tribe. Despite individual differences in wealth and prestige, this rude democracy, which Tacitus calls libertas (freedom), was recognized by him as their main strength and foremost weapon against Rome: ‘Nowhere have we pricked our fingers more painfully. German liberty has proved thornier than Parthian monarchy.’⁴⁶

Here Tacitus contrasts oriental absolutism, in which the subject has no voice, with the rough-and-ready egalitarianism of prehistoric Germany. In the former case, a tyrant’s overthrow might be welcomed as a liberation, or at least as no more than a change of masters. But to those who had known freedom and shared the decision to defend it, defeat would be unthinkable. This was something Augustus and his stepsons had failed to grasp. Rome’s experience was with oriental or African kingship and Celtic chieftainship, all more or less despotic and centralized; obedient to the rule that ‘the more contracted power is, the more easily it is destroyed’.⁴⁷

Nevertheless, the picture of prehistoric Germania as the home of beery liberty and fuddled democracy requires modification if we are to account for the high quality of German resistance. Differences between the accounts of Caesar and Tacitus imply that, during the intervening century-and-a-half, Germanic society was already moving away from family and tribal counsels toward more militarily efficient, supra-tribal groupings. Tacitus writes of retainers (comites):⁴⁸ young men who joined warrior bands outside their own localities, attracted by charismatic leadership and battlefield success. It is uncertain where or how these retinues lived, for villages at present excavated approximate to maxima of thirty-family size. He attributes private army formation to boredom, distaste for agricultural work and dissatisfied pride. Precedent may be sought in the migrations of the first two centuries BC, with their need for larger-than-local direction. It is a process which will end, in the late empire period, with the formation of powerful Germanic confederacies. Certainly Armin’s success in conjuring so formidable an inter-tribal force is a memorable step on this same road, suggesting that the movement had been given a decisive push by the advent of Rome and the lessons in cohesion learned from her. So, at the time of Augustus, there existed a Germanic concept of liberty as a general notion, alongside the growing influence of supra-tribal warlords with a potential for resistance far greater than that emerging from village longhouses.

Surprisingly the concept of nationhood was unknown; the quality of ‘Germanness’ recognized by outsiders long before it occurred to the Germans themselves. In calling them by one name, Germani, it may be that the Romans mistook a tribal name,Hermunduri,⁴⁹ for a national one. Alternatively they perhaps confused Herman, or a similar expression, which could have been ancient German for ‘brother’, or ‘fellow-countryman’, with that of the people as a whole; for some such word was also taken into Latin as germanitas (brotherhood), surviving in the Spanish hermano. The Germans did not use a national name until the 11th century: tiudisc,⁵⁰ which became deutsch.

Regarding appearance and character, Tacitus summarizes: ‘Their physique, as far as one can generalize, is the same: blue and wild of eye, red of hair,⁵¹ tall of body; strong but inconstant in energy and not too fond of hard work; inured to cold and hunger but not to heat and thirst.’⁵²

Josephus points to two other characteristics: ‘First they are incapable of rational thought and ready to dash into danger, however hopeless. Secondly, they hate Rome, for they know that only the Romans have ever brought them to slavery.’⁵³ In the matter of impetuosity, Josephus is following Roman tradition, in which it was usual to attribute courage without prudence to northerners and prudence without courage to southerners, only those in between possessing both. German savagery was a stock Roman cliché. Their carrying of arms is described as compulsive, their behaviour as moodily aggressive: ‘they do no business public or private, unarmed.⁵⁴ They are one minute abject, the next menacing.’⁵⁵ Caesar suggests that no conflict existed in their minds between inter-tribal banditry and warfare proper. This may be taken as a general rule for the Barbaricum, where to bear arms was universal and to use them habitual. In the absence of an external enemy, brigandage was the next best thing. ‘No shame is associated with banditry, providing it happens outside a tribe’s own territory. Indeed they look on it as training for war, which keeps the young men active and alert. When a chieftain decides to lead a raid, those who volunteer to go with him are cheered by all.’⁵⁶ Tacitus also notes a peculiar restlessness, ‘a temperamental paradox, by which they love to sleep but hate to be quiet’.⁵⁷

Treachery, turbulence, bellicosity, dishonesty, lethargy and untrustworthiness were standard accusations against Celt, Sarmatian and German alike. In Germany’s case they would prove, at least during the first two centuries of our era, an exaggeration. Though a period of migration had scarcely ended and Germany was still disturbed, she would remain a peaceful neighbour for most of the early imperial period. Contrasting the countless hillforts of Gaul, Spain and Britain with the open or lightly defended Germanic settlements, and considering the rudimentary development of tactics and weaponry, it is the Celtic character which seems the more quarrelsome. Germany’s bad reputation may merely have reflected Roman priorities. Because the Celts were nearer, their turn had come first. With Gaul’s teeth now drawn, Roman propaganda shifted toward a Germany whose teeth were still sharp.

If, however, one awards points for savagery between Celt and German the outcome might be close-run, especially in matters of ritual. The best hope for a Roman prisoner of war in German hands was slavery. Strabo gives this account of what jargon calls a ‘worst-case scenario’:

The priestess greeted the captives, crowned them with wreaths and led them to a bronze cauldron of about 120 gallon capacity. Mounting a rostrum above the vessel, one priestess cut each prisoner’s throat, making a prophecy based on the blood which ran into the receptacle. Another slit open the stomach, inspected the entrails and from them forecast a victory for their own tribal arms.⁵⁸

Prisoners were also forced to fight duels with their captors, the outcome being taken as a prophecy of victory or defeat in battles to come. German priestesses were of fearsome aspect and regarded by Roman soldiers with superstitious loathing. Plutarch described how the Teutonic horde facing Marius at Aix-en-Provence was goaded on by such furies; and how they slaughtered all who retreated: ‘Their priestesses were formidable and tall, with glaring eyes, in white robes and carrying a sacrificial knife. Marius took with his army a Syrian prophetess called Martha, to act as an antidote…’⁵⁹

Germans worshipped and sacrificed alfresco, preferably in secret places, deep in the forest: ‘consecrating groves and woods; and giving divine names to mysterious and invisible spirits’.⁶⁰ Clumps of oak, sometimes with perpetual fires burning, or islands in lakes, were favourite sanctuaries. Human sacrifice is amply attested archaeologically. More than four hundred corpses, some astonishingly preserved, have been recovered from pools and peat bogs in northern Germany and Scandinavia, often ritually drowned or buried; though it is difficult to distinguish these from victims of execution, for example for adultery or homosexual offences. The custom of consigning offerings to wells, rivers and marshes has provided the richest source of Germanic or imported artifacts and treasures, including jewellery, tableware, weapons and even ships.

Women were especially linked to divination. The prophecies of seeresses were sometimes based on the snorting and neighing of white horses, stabled in the sacred groves. The principal deities of the German pantheon are well known from legend, some even surviving into modern speech. Tiwaz, god of war (later Wodan) and Donar, god of thunder (later Thor) are among the most prominent. As elsewhere in the Roman orbit, local gods were often twinned with classical counterparts, resulting in common worship on both banks of the Rhine. The Saxons later carried the German gods to England. Thus, comparing with the French equivalents, we have Tuesday/Mardi, which shows the equating of Tiwaz and Mars; Wednesday/Mercredi, of Wodan and Mercury; and Thursday/Jeudi of Thor and Jupiter.⁶¹

What was the population of the German lands? The question of numbers, both inside and outside Roman territory, is a vexed one. Until the mid 1970s learned guesses were putting the Germans at below two million,⁶² the Britons even less, the Gauls slightly more; as distinct from the longer-civilized eastern provinces; such as Egypt, at eight million. Over the last twenty years, however, the accelerating tempo of ‘rescue archaeology’, as well as the increasing frequency of aerial survey, combined with dry summers, have revealed settlement to be far commoner than formerly supposed. Opinion is moving toward a trebling of estimates for Iron Age North-West Europe.⁶³ Six million now seems feasible for Germany, not even including Scandinavia. As mentioned, Augustus’ new, professional army was about one third of a million, with the part normally available to the German theatre numbering perhaps 95,000. Caesar estimated Suebian fighting strength alone as 100,000.⁶⁴ Nevertheless, Roman experience continued to teach that discipline, assisted by the usual barbarian shortcomings, could prevail against limitless odds. After all, the Gauls, more advanced and better equipped, had been demolished by nine legions in a few campaigning seasons. Why not the Germans?

How might such a conquest benefit Rome? Germany’s reputation as a source of metals was low. ‘The gods have denied them gold and silver,’ said Tacitus, ‘though whether to spite them or protect them I know not.’⁶⁵ Agricultural potential was considerable but presented huge problems of development. Manpower, too, was valuable but the people were intractable. From any practical standpoint the test of worthwhileness would surely read negative. Yet strategically Germany was important. Possession would complete Rome’s hold on Central Europe. Eastern Europe would then lie open. On the other hand, one must ask how well Romans understood the German character or the practical problems which the country presented. Had they grasped Germany’s size? Did they appreciate the scale of the lands beyond? These questions lead to an even more elementary question: did they have maps of the scope and accuracy to offer an overview on which strategic judgements could be based?

The entire question of Roman cartography is blurred by the survival of the wrong sort of map. First there is the Tabula Peutingeriana, now in Vienna, named after one Conrad Peutinger (1465–1547), town clerk of Augsburg, through whose hands it passed. This is a medieval copy of a 2nd-century route map of the empire which, together with surviving itineraria (road manuals), sees the Roman world much as a traveller on the Underground might see London: a series of destinations laid out in stylized pattern, with the character of the earth’s surface virtually ignored.

Secondly, there were the ‘world maps’, in the Greek tradition. Relevant to our period was the orbis terrarum, commissioned by Augustus and supervised by his minister, Marcus Agrippa. It was displayed beneath a colonnade on the east side of what is today the Via del Corso, Rome. This was the Portico of Marcellus, dedicated by the emperor’s sister, which the errant Ovid so tactlessly specified, in his Ars Amatoria, as a first-class location for picking up girls! All trace of the map is lost, but Pliny often quotes its data in hisNatural History. From this – and from the maps of Claudius Ptolemy, a century-and-a-half later – we may guess that Agrippa’s depiction of north-eastern Europe was sketchy; and beyond the Vistula virtually non-existent. The main intention of the orbis terrarumwas doubtless propagandist: to display the superimposition of Rome’s works upon the face of geography rather than geography per se.

Thirdly, there were almost certainly military maps, based on the realistic appraisal of terrain. A variety of references⁶⁶ tell us not only that the army made maps, but that it was probably the main instrument of mapmaking, as it was of exploration. We also know of the excellence of Roman surveying, though much of it concerned property boundaries,⁶⁷ which required measurement for fiscal reasons. Surveyors were part of a legion’s normal complement. Indeed the entire road system was a product of their skills; and the precision of its alignments over long distances suggests reference to accurate maps. Unfortunately none survives.

Regarding knowledge of Germany: if topographic maps were soldier-made and roadwork-based, these are two reasons why there would be no mapping of the roadless regions beyond the army’s reach. At best there would be sketch-maps embodying merchants’ accounts. Nevertheless, Augustus must have been aware of Germany’s dimensions, since the empire was ranged along two of its sides; and the third was known through the Amber Road. On the other hand, there is no certainty that ambitions ended with Germany. His view of the lands beyond was presumably coloured by the universal error which judged nearer places as relatively bigger than places further away or lesser known. Pliny, for example, gives Europe as 42 per cent of the world, Asia as 32 per cent and Africa 22 per cent (the remaining 4 per cent being ocean!).⁶⁸ It would therefore hardly be surprising if the Augustans underestimated Eastern Europe. Above all, it is doubtful whether any Roman could have evaluated the northward turn of the Baltic coast beyond the Vistula’s mouth, even had he known of it. This trivial-seeming feature is perhaps the most fateful in the entire relationship between geography and history. It means that the North European Plain, a mere thirty miles broad at Brussels and just 200 at Berlin, widens to 1,400 at Moscow. This progression is the true deterrent to an invasion of Eastern Europe and has defeated all who tried. However, realities only deter those who know of them. Almost certainly this generation of Romans was ignorant of the true extent of the eastern lands and did not have maps on which to base sound judgements regarding their potential for conquest.

What were the influences prompting Augustus toward wider ventures? The mood of the time, if correctly reflected in the early empire’s literature, leans unmistakably toward expansion on the grounds of mission, destiny and divine will. For example Pliny (AD23–79) on the role of Italy and the Latin language:

A land chosen by divine providence to unify empires so disparate and races so manifold; to bring to a common concord so many rough, discordant voices; to give culture to mankind; to become, in short, the whole world’s homeland.⁶⁹

Vitruvius argues yet more firmly of a right earned by effort, with effort attributable to vigour, vigour to climate and climate to celestial guidance:

So Italy, twixt north and south, combines the best of both with a superiority beyond dispute. She is by her wisdom able to defeat the courage of the northern and the cunning of the southern peoples. Surely then it was a divine intelligence which placed the city of Rome in so perfect and temperate a country, with the intention that she should win the right to rule the world.⁷⁰

‘The gods favour us,’⁷¹ says Tacitus more tersely; while Virgil has Jupiter himself proclaim:

On Romans I place bonds neither of time nor space.

To them empire without limit do I grant.⁷²

And again, in a celebrated expression of Roman dignity and destiny:

                                                     Rome, be this

Thy care: to hold the nations in dominion and

Impose the law of peace; to spare the humble

And to crush the proud.⁷³

What were Augustus’ own views on empire without limit? Suetonius tells us of the emperor’s reverence for Alexander the Great and of his visit to Alexandria, where he crowned the mummified body with a golden diadem.⁷⁴ One of his seals of office also bore Alexander’s likeness. His arrangements for the Forum of Augustus in Rome offer comparable hints:

After the gods, Augustus most revered those who had uplifted Rome from her modest past to her glorious present. To these he caused statues to be erected in the two colonnades of his Forum, with the inscription: ‘This have I done in order that my fellow citizens may expect that I while I live, and my successors after me, shall match the promise of these great ones of our history.’⁷⁵

Reverence for Alexander was equalled by admiration for Caesar, whose heir Augustus claimed to be. Plutarch tells us⁷⁶ that Caesar’s ambition, forestalled by his death in 44 BC, was to conquer Parthia, returning via the Caspian, southern Russia and Germany; so describing a vast arc which would settle all frontier problems to Rome’s north-east: a concept of breathtaking optimism, displaying the haziest grasp of the true extent of those lands and the difficulties they presented. This was, nevertheless, the climate of thinking which the first emperor inherited.

Underestimation of space was matched by the under-rating of people. The Germans, docile in the army, affable on the Rhine bank, tolerant of mercantile penetration, seemed to promise light resistance. Beyond Germany, in today’s eastern Poland and western Russia, lay races whose extreme backwardness rendered them of little military consequence. Tacitus describes the Fenni (Finns), then dwelling in the Moscow region, as: ‘Living in astonishing barbarism and disgusting misery, eating wild plants, wearing skins and sleeping on the ground. Nor have their infants protection against wild beasts or weather, save a few crossed branches. Beyond, the rest is fable: the Hellusii and Oxiones, with men’s faces but beasts’ bodies…’⁷⁷

Such then were the distortions of the early imperial view. If it is correct that Germany was seen as a military prospect no more daunting than Gaul, that the Eastern European peoples were considered of little account and that Asia was judged as a quarter of actuality, then a policy of indefinite expansion might have appeared less megalomanic than it does today. Viewed from Palatine Hill, conquest of the world (or at any rate the possession of all its useful lands) was a destiny which may have seemed both manifest and attainable. Nor need one doubt Augustus’ intention to carry the empire a substantial step toward it.

The pretext for a German war was not difficult to find. In 16 BC, the twelfth year of Augustus’ reign, a Roman legion commanded by Marcus Lollius had been wiped out in a foray into northern Gaul by the Sugambrian tribe, an event which became known as the Lollian Disaster. Some four years later – ostensibly in response to this affront – Roman forces in large numbers were streaming northwards from the Rhone and eastwards from the interior of Gaul toward forward positions on the Rhine where Drusus, Tiberius’ younger brother, was soon to take command. These were the brothers, Livia’s sons and Augustus’ stepsons, who not long before had made short work of the Alpine tribes by engulfing them in a deadly succession of pincer movements: a two-season conquest recorded on the tropaeum Alpium, a still-standing memorial at La Turbie, behind Monte Carlo. Now duty divided their paths. That of Tiberius lay across the Julian Alps, where he was pushing through Illyricum toward the middle Danube; that of Drusus across the Rhine, with orders to carry Roman arms to the Elbe. First he must install his legions and many auxiliary units on the Rhine’s west bank, then probe the routes to the German interior.

The historian Florus, writing a century later, tells us that Drusus built ‘over fifty forts on the Rhine alone’.⁷⁸ Perhaps half that number has been found. These were earth-and-timber transit camps for outward-bound armies, which would also serve for overwintering and as supply bases. Almost all lie under later forts and are seldom easy to trace. Some are the progenitors of great cities like Basle, Strasbourg, Mainz, Cologne and Nijmegen, whose ancient centres and cathedrals stand where, in the last decade before our era, there were leather tents and crude timber buildings within palisaded mounds of turf or mud.

The biggest of these forts were placed opposite favoured invasion routes: the Rhine’s eastern tributaries, whose valleys cut into the wooded hills of western Germany. In practice, though all exits from Germany must be guarded, few matched the cautious requirements of Roman entry. The Ruhr, Sieg and Lahn, for example, twist and turn, hemmed in tightly by hills. These were death-traps. The Neckar appears to lead eastwards but then betrays its early promise by snaking back toward the Alps. Throughout the southern half of the Rhine’s course the Main alone fulfils the invader’s expectations. Though winding, it leads the traveller to within twenty-five miles of today’s Czech border. Accordingly, opposite its discharge into the Rhine, the two-legion base of Moguntiacum (Mainz) was founded.

In the northern sector only the Lippe offered comparable benefits. Its valley is straight and open. Furthermore it was navigable for at least three quarters of its 100-mile course. This was a far greater asset than it seems today. The Romans used every known device to bring supply vessels upriver (flat bottoms, inflatable skins to reduce draught, poling, towing, dredging, lighterage, portage and so on), for this reduced the need for pack animals who in turn required fodder. Another advantage of the Lippe is apparent from its wider setting. The northernmost tributary, it flows for most of its course along the line where plain and foothills meet, entering the Rhine 130 miles from the mouth. It could thus be employed as the southern prong of a forking movement to envelop the North German Plain, whose northern counterpart would be a seaborne attack from the North Sea itself.

Drusus gave special attention to what we would today call the Dutch sector: a land much drained since Roman times and whose river system is greatly altered. The Rhine, as we now know it, begins its deltaic phase just inside the Dutch border, dividing into Waal and Lower Rhine, of which the Waal is decisively the mainstream, heading west to enter the sea at The Hook (Hoek van Holland). The smaller, Lower Rhine heads north-west via Arnhem, dividing northwards again into an even smaller branch, the Old Rhine, crooked and silted. This passes through Utrecht and Leiden, entering the sea at Katwijk, a small resort twenty miles north of the Waal mouth. Two thousand years ago this pattern was reversed. The Lower Rhine-Old Rhine was then the major channel and the Waal a minor river. So Tacitus: ‘On entering Batavian territory the Rhine divides into two: the one running without change of name or force of flow from Germany to the Ocean; and the other, on the side toward Gaul, becoming a wider but more placid stream, called theVahales (Waal).’⁷⁹ The Waal stole the water during the Middle Ages. Had it not, then Katwijk-aan-Zee rather than Rotterdam might today be Europe’s principal port.

Let us return to the Old Rhine, now the backwater, then the mighty Rhine itself. At Utrecht it is within twenty miles of the former Zuider Zee. This was a huge embayment⁸⁰ where the greedy sea had bitten sixty miles into the Netherlands. In the 1930s it was sealed by the construction of a causeway across its mouth, renamed the Ijsellmeer, and is now in large measure reclaimed.

Near Utrecht the River Vecht branches (northwards, yet again) from the Old Rhine into the Ijsellmeer. This is believed to have been the Fossa Drusiana (Drusus’ Ditch), a fifteen-mile channel cut by the Roman Army to link the Rhine to the Zuider Zee and thence to the North Sea. This ingenious feat gave Drusus a short cut to Germany. It avoided the open sea entirely, connecting into the sheltered and shallow Waddenzee,⁸¹ inside the Frisian Islands, whose long chain, bending back from the brow of Holland like a windswept plume, shields the entire coast as far as Jutland. From here the German rivers Ems, Weser and Elbe are of easy access.

The North Sea, surly but familiar, was, to the Romans, a place of dread; for it was part of exterior Oceanus atque ignotum mare (the Outer Ocean, with its seas unknown),⁸² believed to encircle the three continents. Northwards from here was only Thule,⁸³ the ‘Congealing Sea’⁸⁴ and the freezing pole. However Drusus’ Ditch would allow him to avoid such perils, putting an army and its supplies deep inside Germany. An all-land invasion would have meant that the interior tribes were alerted from the moment of crossing the Rhine. Now the Lippe column could start first, drawing the Germans westwards, while a fresh force suddenly landed by river in their rear. Such, at any rate, was the theory; and the discovery of a sheltered passage persuaded Drusus that it could be done without a mutiny, brought on by the sight of the waves.⁸⁵

The first summer was spent in coastal reconnaissance and also in clearing the Lippe and the tribes on either side of it. Depots were laid along its valley, as stepping stones on the landward invasion route. Of these, four show on aerial photographs and perhaps another four await discovery. The pattern suggests camps at twelve-and-a-half-mile intervals, each of two-legion size. A larger force could of course have used the same chain by operating a day or more apart. However the Lippe corridor is not totally trouble-free. Though it begins in open country it ends, from Paderborn eastwards, among steep, wooded hills, which eventually bring the route to a halt. The answer was to strike northwards from Paderborn, through about thirty miles of broken, forested country, until the Weser was reached near Hameln. This dangerous though short section seemed a small price to pay for an otherwise perfect route. It passed not far from the Grotenburg, on which von Bandel’s mighty statue stands.

At the beginning of the second summer both columns advanced. It is known that Drusus reached the Weser by the land route, and presumed that one of his lieutenants led the seaborne arm. The campaign was successful. It is said, however, that Drusus met one of those frightful German priestesses, ‘a woman of superhuman size’,⁸⁶ who cursed him and prophesied doom. The army retired to winter behind the Rhine, Drusus being summoned to Rome to celebrate a Triumph. North Germany had, it seems, been conquered.

Attention now switched to the middle Rhine, where Drusus’ third summer, of 9 BC, was one of mighty accomplishment. Striking eastwards from Mainz, he defeated the Suebians, then pressed on toward the upper Main. Branching left over the narrow ridge of the Thuringian Forest, he picked up the north-flowing Saale, following it down to the Elbe, near today’s Magdeburg. It was a 300-mile advance, not counting the winding of waterways and twisting of tracks. Few generals of the imperial period would match it. But on the return a fall from a horse, a broken leg and gangrene claimed him; dying in some God-forsaken camp on a night of shooting stars to the howling of forest wolves. He was not yet thirty. Augustus sent Tiberius to bring back his brother’s body. With full ceremonial and universal mourning the ashes were deposited in the mausoleum which his stepfather had already built for himself on the Tiber bank. Patriotic fervour was now attached to this German war.

The command passed to Tiberius. Finding a Germany already reeling from his brother’s onslaught and determined to keep up the pressure, the new general sent his armies forward from their various bases, criss-crossing the ravaged country almost at will for two more summers. Truculent tribes were uprooted and resettled on the Gallic side of the Rhine. Augustus forbade crossing the Elbe so as not to provoke more tribes than Rome could presently handle. Their turn would come later. Meanwhile the new province of Germania, from the Rhine at least to the Weser, was ready for formation.

But Tiberius was discouraged: Drusus dead and all the work falling on his shoulders; Julia’s sons growing up and tongues wagging that their grandfather’s favour and the likelihood of succession were inclining toward them rather than him, a mere stepson. Germany had been exhausting. Like all Romans he detested the melancholy forest and stinking swamp. Nor, though a sound and systematic commander, did he share his younger brother’s keenness for this conflict. It was said that Drusus, who set his heart on thespolia opima,⁸⁷ had horrified his staff by rushing through the thick of battle to get at the enemy’s leader. Tiberius, sombre and introverted, was of less spectacular stuff. Perhaps the Germans had proved disappointing opponents. Certainly their showing had been indifferent, with range of weaponry narrow, tactics crude, commissariat a joke, grasp of siegecraft nil, leadership limited and loyalty localized. It seemed clear that conquest was now inevitable, if not achieved already. He decided to retire to a Greek island.

His successor L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, Augustus’ nephew by marriage, continued the good work. We know principally of his operations in the south, based on the Roman province of Raetia (Bavaria). Meanwhile the Fates (or Livia) were again busy on Tiberius’ behalf. The emperor’s grandsons Lucius and Gaius died under mysterious circumstances. The third grandson, Agrippa Postumus (who would later be exiled to an island) was still a minor. Tiberius’ services were suddenly at a premium. Augustus was notoriously nervous of putting military reins into non-family hands, making nepotism a corner-stone of his policy. This so narrowed the field that there was now no other first-class runner left. He coaxed Tiberius to return from Rhodes; and since nothing soothes the sulker more than the knowledge that he is needed, Tiberius allowed himself to be persuaded.

So, two years later, he was back, preparing a new offensive across the Rhine. Had something gone wrong? Surely the attack phase should by now be over? Surely they should already be inside Germany, organizing, building and teaching the Germans to be Romans. The fact was, however, that they had terrorized all western Germany but Romanized none of it. Sixteen years after Drusus had first taken command, the province was still being held by bullying enemies and bribing friends. Though the legions advanced at will the Roman hold on the interior was based on little substance. There were still no roads and few forts. According to Velleius⁸⁸ it was not until this first year of Tiberius’ return (AD 4) that the whole army dared winter in Germany; and then no deeper than the Lippe Valley. Seasonal withdrawal meant that each winter Rome’s enemies could dismantle last summer’s work.

In fact events had revealed a blindspot. The high command was failing to grasp the difference between this conquest and others. Nations had normally passed into Roman receivership with assets intact and functional framework in place. The task had been to improve. Here it was to build from scratch. Even essential measures for the army’s own security were incomplete. Germany needed a comprehensive fort network, strong points and signal towers linked by all-weather roads and bridges; with massive tree-felling to reduce concealment and extensive drainage and causeway building to assist movement; a strong naval presence on the internal rivers, fortified ports of entry, jetties, quays, arsenals and granaries; in short the infrastructure for a big garrison on a long stay. Tiberius’ error was not in shirking responsibility but in continuing to see it as a fighting general rather than as a planner, builder and engineer. With hindsight it seems clear that the priority was not more victories and Triumphs, but a military highway linking Rhineland with interior. This was a project which must await Adolf Hitler.

In AD 5 the pincer movement was applied for a third time. Again the army marched up the valley, again the navy sailed up the rivers and north-west Germany was said to be subdued. It is probable that on this occasion Tiberius met the young prince, Armin of the Cherusci. Many German-speaking officers would soon be needed for the so-called ‘Bohemian campaign’, planned as stage two of the German War, with its simultaneous drives eastwards from the Rhine and northwards from Vienna. However, this was not to be. In the mountainous central Balkans, 200,000 men, outraged by the greed of Roman tax farmers, were suddenly in arms. Extirpation of the Illyrican Revolt would involve Tiberius for three years and draw in fifteen legions. As a commander of auxiliary cavalry, Armin served with distinction in this costly and unnecessary war. It was on its completion that he was posted back to Germany to assist the next governor, P. Quintilius Varus.

Varus was another of the emperor’s relatives, in this instance the husband of a great-niece. A jurist by training, he had been consul with Tiberius in 13 BC. Since then he had governed Africa and Syria, two of the choicest provinces. In the latter he is mentioned by Josephus as intervening in one of the Jewish uprisings and crucifying two thousand insurgents. That he lined his pockets at those provinces’ expense was seemingly kept from Augustus. It is from his governorship of Africa that we have the only known likeness. A coin issue from the mint of Carthage carries on its reverse a profile of Varus, whose weak and smirking face reveals no hint of a soldierly disposition.⁸⁹

The colonel and senator C. Velleius Paterculus, who dashed off a potted History of Rome to celebrate his own consulship in AD 30, is the only contemporary chronicler. Ironically, where many an historical masterpiece sank without trace, his enthusiastic if naïve effort survived in its entirety. It is of no great value until the final third, which deals with the events of his own day. Velleius may be taken seriously in military matters, since he served nine years as commander of Tiberius’ cavalry and of one of his legions, both in the German and Balkan theatres. He must have known both Varus and Armin personally and has left precious portraits, together with a brief account of the fateful circumstances of which his beloved army was to be the principal victim.

Varus was sent to govern Germania in the year of Ovid’s exile, by an over-optimistic Augustus, who either saw the German conquest as a fait accompli, or had lost patience with his cautious generals and believed it should be. Now that the imperial stepsons had supposedly done their work it was time to implement the lex provinciae.⁹⁰ This was the system by which Roman law was adapted to the traditions of each new territory, the inauguration of a province being normally accompanied by the formulation of its particular code. Who better to send than a lawyer? It would also be Varus’ task to introduce the reluctant but cowed Germans to the blessings of Roman taxation and a way of life in which the bearing of arms was superfluous. Of course, as governor, Varus would automatically be commander of the German legions. Because of the drain on manpower caused by the Illyrican Revolt these were presently reduced to three: XVII, XVIII and XIX. It was normal to phase down the military presence after a province had been won. However, for Germany at this stage, the establishment was dangerously low. On the other hand, these were legions Varus did not expect to use, except for policing and other peacetime work.

By now Ovid had arrived in Tomis and begun the composition of his Tristia. Six months from Rome in postal terms, he could only guess at events in Germany. Naturally he assumed a ‘best-case scenario’, the usual outcome when the legions marched:

Already wild Germany may have followed

All the rest in kneeling to the caesars …

But I, obliged to live apart, see nothing

Of such celebration; and can only

Go by rumour’s distant echoes.⁹¹

Turning to the actual scenario, Velleius writes as follows:

Quintilius Varus, of a well-known rather than aristocratic family, was of mild and quiet temperament, somewhat ponderous both in mind and body; and more at home in the camp than on the battlefield. During his spell as governor of Syria he had shown no aversion toward cash: for that episode began with a poor man’s arrival in a rich province and ended with a rich man’s departure from a poor one.

When given the German command he went out with the quaint preconception that here was a subhuman people which would somehow prove responsive to Roman law even where it had not responded to the Roman sword. He therefore breezed in – right into the heart of Germany – as if on a picnic, wasting a summer lording it on the magistrate’s bench, where he insisted on the punctilious observance of every legal nicety.

Meanwhile the Germans, a race combining maximum ferocity with supreme guile (and being born liars besides) fawned upon Varus, making much of their lawsuits, marvelling at his jurisprudence and flattering him regarding his civilizing mission; until the poor fellow came to think he was still handing down verdicts from the judge’s seat in the Roman forum; quite forgetting he was in fact field commander of an expeditionary force deep within darkest Germany.⁹²

Vain, pedantic and gullible, Varus had spent years presiding over servile provinces which Rome had inherited from others. Now, overconfident and under-armed, incapable of comprehending that Drusus and Tiberius might have done their work with less than total thoroughness, he held court in the heart of Germany and spent a summer on the bench instead of building forts and roads. Tragically he allowed his army to be accompanied by a large number of women and children, with servants and a cumbrous baggage train; giving the impression of not being on a war footing or even in a state of preparedness at all.

Though Varus’ force was less than half that of recent invasion armies it was enough for self-protection, amounting perhaps to 35,000 men, including auxiliaries. Among these he was doubtless comforted by the presence of a large German brigade, of proven loyalty to Rome. All around was evidence of a defeated people, cringing and eager to please. But, as in the Balkans three years earlier (and in Africa five years hence),⁹³ the danger would not be immediately after conquest but later, when the realities of taxation, disarmament and other restrictions had begun to sink in. As then, success or failure could depend on how tactfully these medicines were ministered. Unfortunately Varus tended to arrogance as well as self-deception.

Here was a difficult job and the wrong man to do it; a mismatch so total it reminds us in an odd way of Ovid. Both were directed, in that same year to places which suited their temperaments least. Both were sent from safety and comfort to an unstable and frightening frontier region. Was Augustus entirely unaware that Varus had acted so venally in Syria and Africa? Is it possible he had found out; and determined that his next governorship would be of a more bracing and less lucrative kind? Can one detect Livia’s hand in this spiteful appointment?

Dio (the Greek historian Cassius Dio of Nicaea), writing in the early 3rd century, takes up the story:

The Romans had by now established themselves in parts of Germany, wintering there and founding cities.⁹⁴ On their side the barbarians had begun to accept Roman ways: holding markets and peaceful meetings. But they had not forgotten their ancestral customs. Nor had they lost their sense of freedom, or of what may be accomplished by arms. When Varus became governor he tried to force the pace of change, dishing out orders as if to slaves and squeezing money as if from docile subjects. However, in view of powerful regiments on the Rhine and within their borders, the Germans bided their time, pretending obedience and drawing Varus far into Cheruscan territory, near the Weser; while always behaving peaceably and amiably. The outcome was that he failed to keep his legionaries together, detaching many to different duties.⁹⁵

‘Cheruscan territory’: this was Armin’s own tribe, thought to have occupied today’s Minden-Hannover-Brunswick area, between Weser and Elbe. According to Roman accounts, they had been defeated at least twice during the previous twenty years. However, as the currents of conflict swirled more savagely about them, we may imagine the usual fragmentation into resistant and collaborationist factions; a process which was no respecter of families. Under circumstances of which we know little, Armin (following his father, Sigimer, the tribe’s leader) had thrown in his lot with the invaders, become a Roman officer and received a knighthood from the emperor. This was clearly a sweetener, for the cultivation of German friends was a priority at that time. Now, covered in glory and with the highest possible commendations, Armin returned to his tribe as Varus’ deputy and liaison officer. He was still only twenty-five years of age. Velleius resumes the narrative:

Onto this stage now strode a young German nobleman of firm purpose and astute mind; a high-flier, far above the usual run of barbarian intelligence: Armin, a prince of the Cheruscan tribe, whose face and eyes seemed to shine with the light of some inner zeal. He had served with the Roman army for some years, earning Roman citizenship and a knighthood to boot. Here was the type of man who would be quick to spot in Varus the perfect dupe, for none is more credulous than the incautious; and a sense of security is the surest recipe for calamity.⁹⁶

It now becomes clear that Armin’s devotion to the Roman cause was only skin deep; and beneath that skin there festered earlier hatreds. Bending before Drusus’ and Tiberius’ onslaughts had been one thing; dancing attendance on this military ignoramus was another. As a teenager he had thought Rome invincible; yet later, in the Balkans, he had seen brave people make a bid for freedom and almost win. What is more, when it came to rebellion, Germania had a telling advantage over Illyricum. There the mountains could be surrounded and in time reduced. Here desperate men could, in the last resort, retreat indefinitely north or east, beyond even Rome’s long reach.

None the less it needed nerve to take on a superpower. This must not be a rash rebellion which ignites from a riot, but one which was meticulously planned and stealthily fostered; in the event by one man’s will. Despite Varus’ ineptitude, the odds were daunting. How could the young Armin unite warring tribes when even his own family was divided? He had married a girl named Thusnelda against her father’s will. His father-in-law, Segestes, hated him and was to warn Varus repeatedly that he could not be trusted. This was dismissed as jealousy; for how could Armin, whom the emperor himself had knighted, behave in so un-Roman a manner?

To consider the problem from another direction: empires are seldom as powerful as they seem. They are based on bluff, on making their subjects think them stronger than they are. Had Armin sensed this secret? Might an obscure German princeling puncture the imperial bubble, as Japan would one day prick the British balloon at Singapore?

Velleius continues:

At first Armin confided in a few of his compatriots only, but as time passed the circle widened. He argued that Rome could be beaten. More to the point he gave substance to his words by organizing a plan of action and fixing a date for its execution. Segestes, Armin’s father-in-law, warned Varus of what was afoot and urged him to have the plotters clapped in irons. But by now the Fates were taking a hand, controlling all Varus did and lulling his suspicions; as they often do to those whose fortunes they are about to topple.⁹⁷

A plot was hatched along the following lines. As summer ended and the army began to fall back toward the Lippe, an ‘uprising’ would be invented to divert the column away from the established route with its lifeline of fortified camps and depots, with its bridges ready-built and trees ready-felled. When the Romans had been lured some distance into unfamiliar and unfavourable terrain, the German auxiliary brigade would abscond. Finally, at an advantageous moment, the deserters (shadowing at a distance) plus all other dissidents and malcontents who could be mustered, would close in on the Roman column and destroy it.

Dio:

The plot’s ringleaders were Armin and [his father] Sigimer, constant companions with whom Varus often feasted. As a result he became more and more confident and completely off his guard. Then came news of an uprising designed to inveigle him through ostensibly friendly territory toward the supposed trouble spot. At first Armin and Sigimer went with him, but subsequently excused themselves on the grounds that they were going to mobilize more assistance. When each district had butchered the soldiers in its vicinity they all closed in on Varus, by now in almost inextricable forest. Then, at the very moment of showing themselves as enemies, the conspirators struck a terrible blow.⁹⁸

Dio now depicts the final phase of this débâcle: the three or four-day running fight known to posterity as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Not only did Varus follow the course which treachery had devised but the Roman response was hindered by a catastrophic change in the weather, favouring an enemy to whom slithering mud and rough ground were familiar conditions.

The slopes were uneven and creased with gorges. Felling trees, clearing a trail and improvising bridges, the Roman column advanced. It included large numbers of carts and pack animals, as if this were a peacetime journey. There were, besides, numerous women and children, with a big retinue of servants behind them, all tending to make the column longer and more scattered. A hurricane began, bringing drenching rain. The tops of trees snapped off and fell among the marchers. The ground was slippery and treacherous.

Now the savages began to close in, appearing through the dense forest suddenly and from all sides at once. At first it was hit-and-run, with spears hurled from a distance; but when they could see that many were being wounded and there was no serious counter-attack, they began to press closer. By now the column was in chaos, with soldiers, wagons and civilians all jumbled up: impossible to organize into defensive formations and being whittled away piecemeal.

A halt was called and – insofar as a suitable place could be found on a forested hillside – camp was established for the night. Here they reorganized, burning most of the carts and abandoning inessential equipment.

On the second day things went better. Despite losses, they broke through to open country. But on the third morning the column plunged once more into forest and began to take the heaviest casualties yet. There was no room to deploy the cavalry among the trees, or use infantry and cavalry in unison.

On the fourth day the hurricane struck again and the rain returned in torrents. It was difficult even to stand. Wet bowstrings, slippery spears and sodden shields deprived them of effective use of their weapons; while the Germans, more lightly armed, fared better. As word spread that the Romans were weakening, the enemy’s ranks began to be swelled by fence-sitters and plunder-seekers; his strength growing as the Roman bled away.⁹⁹

The crisis was now at hand. Neither Dio nor Velleius makes clear its tactical character or reveals the place and circumstances, though à propos of the battle’s finale Tacitus uses the words in medio campo; ‘in midfield’, as it was formerly translated. A more recent reading¹⁰⁰ proposes a specialized meaning for campus, as the space in the centre of a camp, normally used as a gathering place or parade ground. This could suggest that Varus’ men spent the last night crouched within the shallow mounds of a temporary fortification and that an inner redoubt¹⁰¹ was improvised in the muster-area to which the perimeter’s defenders could retire to join the senior officers, fighting back to back in a final stand. Dio describes the end:

By now Varus and all his senior officers were wounded. Fearing they were about to be taken alive or that slaughter was imminent, they steeled themselves to face the terrible alternative. When the soldiers heard that their commanders had taken their own lives, resistance collapsed, some killing themselves, others throwing away their arms and inviting anyone to kill them who wanted. Every man and animal was cut down without returning a blow.¹⁰²

Some were in fact taken prisoner. Velleius summarizes:

And so a Roman army, in bravery, discipline, dash and battle-worthiness the best we had bar none, was entrapped through its general’s fecklessness, its enemy’s trickery and its own wretched luck. Hemmed in by bog, bush and ambush it was exterminated almost to a man by the very enemy it was used to slaughtering like swine.

Varus found more pluck to die than he did to fight. Following the example of his father and grandfather,¹⁰³ he ran himself through with his own sword. V. Numonius, the cavalry commander, deserted the field, leaving the infantry unprotected, and tried in vain to break through to the Rhine. The body of Varus, partially burned, was further mangled by the enemy; his head cut off and dispatched to Maraboduus, who sent it on to Augustus. Despite the ignominy it was honoured by burial in the family tomb.¹⁰⁴

Here Velleius, one of Augustus’ staunchest propagandists, is making Varus the scapegoat for the emperor’s miscalculation. As for Armin’s cruder but shrewder propaganda sense: the head, sent to Maraboduus, King of German Bohemia, was a way of saying, ‘See! It can be done! Rome can be defeated! Join our resistance movement!’ Maraboduus, fearing resumption of the Bohemian plan, preferred to keep his options open. Nevertheless, in forwarding the consignment to Augustus he was doing Germany a service; for with the decomposing head of Quintilius Varus the message from the Teutoburg Forest reached its ultimate recipient.

This defeat would henceforth be known as clades Variani, the Varian Disaster. It wiped out twenty years’ effort east of the Rhine. At a stroke it cost a province, its governor, his staff and perhaps 30,000 men, women and children; including three crack legions and their eagles. All garrisons within Germania were massacred. In all forts so far excavated on the Lippe, evidence of intensive activity, with coins, abundant to AD 9, ends in the sardonic silence of a layer of ashes. However, one of these, Aliso,¹⁰⁵ held out for a short time. Haggard and wild-eyed, a few of Varus’ survivors stumbled in. Armin was not far behind. Soon the last fort in Germany was surrounded by an exultant mob ‘brandishing the impaled heads of slain Romans on spears before the rampart’.¹⁰⁶ At night, when perhaps the Germans were drunk, the garrison made a break for freedom and fought its way back to the Rhine with the grievous tidings.

The sombre dispatches burst on the emperor like a bomb; his over-reaction resembling that of three years earlier, to the Illyrican revolt,¹⁰⁷ when he foresaw the imminent invasion of Italy; confirming him as a man of alarmist and emotional temperament, hardly in line with the serene public image:

On hearing of the disaster Augustus rent his clothes and mourned deeply, not just for the dead soldiers but also as an expression of fear for the endangered German¹⁰⁸ and Gallic provinces, and because he expected the enemy would march on Rome. No citizens of military age worth mentioning were left. Moreover there were many Gauls and Germans in Rome, both in his bodyguard and on other business. These he sent away: the bodyguard to certain islands, the civilians out of the city.¹⁰⁹

A panic recruiting drive now followed, in Italy and the capital itself. This was by lot, with draft-dodgers punished by confiscation of property and even death. Freed slaves were enrolled and veterans recalled. The new units were sent to stand between Italy and Germany. Nevertheless the three lost legions would not be replaced. Their numbers, henceforward considered unlucky, were omitted in perpetuity from the army list.

Suetonius allows us a more personal glimpse of the emperor’s distress:

When the news arrived Augustus had night watches posted throughout the city in case of disturbance and prolonged the terms of all provincial governors.¹¹⁰ He was said to be so stricken he refused to cut his hair or shave for months and would often bang his head against doors, shouting: ‘Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!’ Each year he observed the anniversary of the disaster as one of grief and mourning.¹¹¹

Augustus was now seventy-two and had ruled for thirty-six years. Though he displayed private and public grief, the débâcle would not, as far as we know, be mentioned in official documents or pronouncements, least of all in his own Accomplishments.¹¹² Like the Balkan setback, this was a responsibility which could not be offloaded. Having stripped the senate of military powers and kept all decisions and appointments to himself, he could hardly complain of having been ill-advised. As Tacitus would put it, ‘Augustus so arranged it that the emperor must bear the blame or praise for Rome’s distant wars alone.’¹¹³ He had sent a civilian into a savage land; a governor with neither tactics nor tact, a commander who had never commanded and a judge incapable of judging men. Nepotism and distrust of career generals had cost Augustus dear.

Armin did not march on Italy. It is probable that his coalition fell apart the moment Rome’s presence was removed. Far from uniting a nation, he could not even resolve his private feuds; and it was owing to them, twelve years later, that he was murdered. In view of Roman prejudice, Tacitus’ tribute is remarkable:

Without doubt the liberator of Germany. A man who took on the Roman nation, not in her infancy but at the summit of her sovereignty. In war without defeat, he lived thirty-seven years, twelve in power. Even now¹¹⁴ his fame is sung in barbarian ballads. He fell by the treachery of his own kinsmen.¹¹⁵

Armin’s power did not spread far. Nor does his name survive in German folklore. It would remain for 17th-century learning to restore it to memory and for 19th-century nationalism to equate it with unity. Armin became Kaiser Wilhelm’s answer to Napoleon III’s glorification of Vercingetorix and the Victorian cult of the misspelt ‘Boadicea’.¹¹⁶ So earnestly did such rivalries seek Roman precedent that Clemenceau would argue Gaul’s boundaries in support of French claims at Versailles.

It would be time to leave this remarkable young man who, at twenty-five years of age, defied and defeated Augustus; except that a group of events, six years later, offers a final glimpse. The postscript is by courtesy of Tacitus who, in his latest work, theAnnals,deals with Rome’s vengeance. In the last year of Augustus’ life a war of revenge was unleashed on Germany. In command was Drusus’ son, Germanicus; Tiberius’ nephew and father of Caligula, next emperor but one. Here was a young man with his father’s feverish zeal, buoyed up and urged on by popular expectation that he would restore Rome’s tarnished honour. ‘He was’, as Tacitus reminds us, ‘great-nephew of Augustus and the grandson of Antony; and in his imagination there resided the whole great picture of triumph and tragedy.’¹¹⁷

Nothing in this resumption of the German War could be closer to Germanicus’ heart than revival of the amphibious strategy by which his father had first led the eagles into northern Germany. This would also be the perfect pincer to nip the Cheruscans, prime target of revenge, though it seemed likely that Armin himself would by now have fled eastwards or into Scandinavia. In Tacitus’ view the objective was ‘rather to expiate the shame of Quintilius Varus than extend the empire’,¹¹⁸ but the inferences of Germanicus’ dispatches and conduct are that he saw the restitution of a lapsed province as his sacred duty.

Like his father, he would spend three summers in Germany. It is the second of these, AD 15, which is of special interest: for not only did he rediscover the site of the Teutoburg battle, but also there are vivid descriptions both of the sea passage and the bog war, which compensate in some measure for the sources’ silence on similar aspects of his father’s and uncle’s campaigns.

So, with Germanicus, the North German War returns to its starting place; what are now the Netherlands; and particularly to that part of them which the Romans called the Batavian Island, the largest piece of relatively dry land, between the Old Rhine and the Waal. The rest of the huge delta was water or reedy fen, though with ridges left by former river courses and the natural levees of existing ones, along which ran prehistoric paths and tracks. Native settlement was mainly on mounds (in Dutch, Terpen) elevated and enlarged by centuries of tipping. Here were small plots, a few animals, plus a living to be made from fishing and fowling; for this vast wetland must have been a bird haven whose like northern Europe has long forgotten. The Romans copied the local method of mound-making, or founded their buildings on wooden stakes, hammered into the mud. Place names with the syllable wijk,¹¹⁹ Latin vicus¹²⁰ (village), show how numerous Roman settlements were eventually to become.

Now, throughout the winter, scores of small shipyards sprang up along the muddy shores of the Batavian Island. With timber floated down from the German forest, thousands of soldiers instructed by hundreds of sailors laboured to cobble together the shallow-draught troopships and supply vessels for the coming campaign. We have statistics for the year following, when eight legions, their auxiliaries, horses and supplies embarked in a thousand newly built ships. The scale suggests how terrible Rome’s revenge would be. Why, one may ask, were new ships built before each season? The answer must be that Germanicus had no option but to use green timber, which warps rapidly, rendering ships useless within a few months. Tacitus’ celebrated narrative of the seaborne operation concerns the return journey only. His account of the overland arm of the expedition, which deals with both the outward and inward journey, is no less sensational. Here a vanguard detachment, partway up the Lippe Valley, encountered a group of Bructer,¹²¹ perhaps thirty miles south of the Teutoburg region. They engaged and the Germans fled. To the Romans’ surprise and intense excitement, a search of the captured impedimenta revealed the eagle of Legio XIX, lost with Varus. Led by survivors of the disaster, who were acting as guides, they pressed on:

Now they were approaching the Teutoburg saltus where the remains of Varus and his legions were said still to be lying unburied. On they marched across the gloomy plain, chilling both to look at and to think about. Varus’ first camp was wide in extent, with its tent plots marked out for men and officers, suited to the size of three legions. Then a half-ruined dyke and shallow ditch showed where the last remnant had taken cover. In the parade ground area were bleaching bones, scattered where men had fallen individually, or in heaps where they had made a stand. Splintered spears and horses’ legs lay around. Human skulls were nailed to tree trunks. In nearby groves were savage altars at which they had sacrificed the young lieutenants and warrant officers. Some among the relieving force, who had survived the battle or given their captors the slip, recounted where the commanders had fallen, where the eagles were seized, where Varus was first wounded and where he died by his own tragic hand. They told of the platform from which Armin had harangued his fellow victors, of the arrogance with which he had insulted the standards and the eagles; and of the gibbets and torture pits for the prisoners.

Following the main army’s arrival the battlefield was tidied and a memorial service held: ‘And so, six years after the disaster, a Roman army buried three legions’ bones, while Germanicus laid the first sod upon the funeral mound.’¹²²

Little is known of the season’s retribution which followed. One can only guess at the extent of atrocity committed in the name of Mars Ultor (‘Mars, who has the last word’). At the end of it, in September or early October, Germanicus began the usual retirement toward the Rhine. His army now regrouped into two columns, one returning by land the other making for a pick-up point on one of the rivers, where the fleet waited.

The landward army, under the veteran commander V. Severus Caecina, was crossing stretches of log causeway, improved during previous campaigns but now badly deteriorated. The route was seemingly along the line where the wooded hills and the plain met; a place of danger and difficulty owing to the excessive run-off from the adjacent high ground and the concealment which its trees afforded. ‘All around was vile, heaving bog and clinging mud, veined with small streams.’ The legionaries struggled to repair the causeways. At this worst of moments the worst happened. Not only did a large force of Germans appear through the trees above, but their leader – it could clearly be seen – was none other than Armin himself: not skulking beyond the Oder or a refugee across the Skagerrak, but here in person, uncomfortably close to the scene of the Varian Disaster and under circumstances which looked painfully similar. As his main force rushed downhill to attack, others diverted streams, flooding the area where the Romans were already stuck. Not just the place and season, but also Armin’s instinct for the psychological moment, were frighteningly familiar. The only improvement, from a Roman viewpoint, was that Caecina was no lawyer but an able and experienced soldier.

The subsiding ground made it too soft to stand still and too slippery to move. They were in heavy armour and could not balance themselves to throw their javelins effectively. To the Cheruscans, however, such conditions were normal. The legions were close to breaking point when nightfall saved them. But this would be a night of little ease.

In Tacitus’ description of the nocturnal ordeal, strongly reminiscent of the night before Agincourt,¹²³ the predicament of the two armies is suggested by contrasting sounds. However, in the apparition of Varus, Tacitus plays an even more horrific card.

As the Germans revelled, the valleys and forests echoed with their savage shoutings and jubilant chants; while in the Roman lines men huddled round fitful fires, speaking in snatches, lying down behind their improvised dykes or wandering among the tents in a sleepless daze. That night, too, the general had a most horrible dream in which he beheld Quintilius Varus, drenched in blood, rising from the morass and beckoning him.

In the morning Armin resumed the onslaught, shouting: ‘Here is Varus and his legions, trapped by fate in the same way!’ Luckily the enemy’s greed worked in our favour, for many stopped killing and started looting.

The Romans were now able to regain firm ground and dig in before the onset of the second dusk:

Without spades or turf-cutters an earthwork was somehow thrown up. The units were without tents, the wounded without dressings. As the mudcaked, bloodstained rations were passed round the men groused at the funereal dark and the end which the next day would bring to thousands.

But fortunes were about to turn. The ground was drying fast and when, next morning, Armin stormed the camp on one side, the Romans rushed out from the others and fell upon the German flanks and rear, shouting:

‘Where are your woods and swamps now? This is good ground and the odds are even!’ The enemy, who had looked for a quick kill, proved as panicky in defeat as he had been rash in success. Armin slipped away unhurt. The massacre went on as long as daylight lasted.¹²⁴

Tacitus next described the no less hazardous progress of the seaborne column, led by one Vitellius. Here two legions were marching along the coast toward their embarkation when a great northerly began both to back up the tidewater from the sea and impede the escape of freshwater from the land, increasing the flood level by the minute.

Now the entire landscape began to liquefy: wave, shore and plain merging into one so that the fluid and the firm, the shallow and the sea, became indistinguishable. Men were dragged under. Drowned packhorses, their loads and human corpses began bobbing back through the ranks. Units became muddled up, men one moment chest, the next chin deep. Here was death without glory.¹²⁵

Disaster was averted by the timely arrival of the fleet. In the season following, however, a storm caught the same operation a stage later, soon after embarkation. This time it was a southerly, driving the leaky and overladen vessels onto the East Frisian Islands.

Germanicus guided them down the Ems and out into the North Sea, that last and landless deep. At first its calm was troubled only by the whispering sails and creaking oars of a thousand ships. But soon black clouds massed in the sky, unloading hail. The wind, rising from every quarter, stirred the sea, blurred the view and plagued the steering. Then all heaven broke loose. The south wind, drawing its strength from Germany’s drenched land, deep rivers and unending clouds, caught and scattered the vessels to the open sea or onto islands made savage by sunken shoals. Horses, pack animals, baggage, even weapons were thrown overboard to lighten the leaking ships as the sea overrode their gunwales. Some went down. Others were thrown ashore on remote islands where (apart from a few who ate the horse carcasses washed up with them) they starved to death.¹²⁶

It was during this third campaigning season of AD 16 that Tacitus offers a last, sardonic snapshot of Armin. On one occasion Roman and Cheruscan forces were separated by the Weser, with neither having the superior strength to cross. Armin’s brother Flavus, still a serving Roman officer, was brought forward to parley across the water. The two brothers faced each other from opposite banks. Flavus had lost an eye fighting under Tiberius in the Balkans. Noting his scarred face, Armin asked how he had come by the wound. Flavus explained. And what had he received in compensation? ‘A pay-rise and some decorations,’ said Flavus. ‘The wages of slavery are low,’ was Armin’s sneering retort. The conversation then degenerated into abuse and threats; and the two brothers had to be restrained from floundering across the river at each other’s throats.

Germanicus could never quite trap Armin, but he did succeed in catching his wife Thusnelda and their infant son. They were taken to Rome and paraded in Germanicus’ Triumph, while her father, Segestes, watched the show from the VIP seats. So Rome sundered tribe and tribe, brother and brother, father and daughter; and through these sad vignettes¹²⁷ one glimpses the other side of the coin of conquest.

The German War was twenty-eight years old, outlasting by two years the emperor who began it. With Augustus’ death in AD 14 Rome’s imperial ambitions reached a watershed; for his testament, read to the Senate after the funeral, signalled a memorable downturn. This was Augustus’ ‘advice’: a posthumous thunderclap described, in Tacitus’ famous phrase, as consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii¹²⁸ (advice that the empire should be kept within its existing boundaries) and amplified by Dio as, ‘the opinion that we should be content with what we now possessed. Under no circumstances should we seek to expand the empire. It would be difficult to defend and we might lose what we already had.’¹²⁹ This pronouncement may be variously interpreted. Prima facie it was simply an assertion that the empire had achieved its natural limits. More broadly it was a veiled admission that the German War was lost. Most broadly of all it proposed a changed relationship with the outside world; a renunciation of the military adventurism which had made Rome great; a turnabout so total that even Augustus had not dared make it in his lifetime. Only the distress and disappointment of the Varian Disaster, playing on a tired and ageing mind, can explain it. Of course, it need not be binding on future emperors. Each would insist on his own foreign policy. Nevertheless, one of Rome’s most influential imperialists had recanted; and the effect on future thinking would be considerable.

The advice was principally intended for Tiberius who, as Augustus’ successor, inherited his commitments. There may even have been a secret protocol: that the old emperor would make his posthumous declaration in order to let the new emperor off the hook. True or not, it suited Tiberius to respect his predecessor’s last wish. He too was tired. He had served nine times in Germany: enough to recognize the futility of seeking out those capable of infinite concealment and chasing those capable of indefinite retreat, through a land where every handful of grain had to be carried. Surely three more seasons’ campaigning had sufficed to avenge the loss of three legions.

Accordingly, when Germanicus wrote to Rome requesting a fourth summer, in which German resistance would be crushed for ever, Tiberius replied, ‘There have been successes enough already.’¹³⁰ With this weary comment the German venture and the dream of endless empire ended. A line was drawn under the Varian Disaster, soon to be translated into the physical line of Rhine and Danube, which would divide Roman from barbarian for more than four centuries. Not all emperors would respect it. Indeed the next two Episodes concern major excursions beyond it. Nevertheless, non-aggression now becomes the imperial norm.

Soon Tiberius would retire again, this time finally: to Capri and pastimes which would earn that charming island the nickname Caprineum¹³¹ (goatery). Small wonder, writing of this reign, that Tacitus would lament: ‘My theme is narrow and inglorious: an emperor unconcerned with enlarging the empire…’¹³² It is in this change, from a foreign policy of breadth and glamour to one of narrowness and inglory, that the significance of the Teutoburg catastrophe lies. In purely military terms Rome had survived far worse. Despite Augustus’ alarm it had not been a Second Punic War, with Hannibal at the gate and every Roman woman in mourning. None the less, the Teutoburg was more than a battle. Time would show it as the moment when the caesars first recognized unlimited goals as a fantasy and limitless miles as the reality. Of course this meant the simultaneous birth of a contrary idea: that the empire would have formal frontiers; for if expansion were to halt there must be halt lines.

All in all it is hardly surprising that when retired generals write about history’s decisive battles, the clash in the Teutoburg Forest is almost always given an airing. Without this defeat, argues Major-General Fuller, Germany would have been a Roman province. It follows therefore that:

Had Germany been for four centuries thoroughly Romanised, one culture, not two would have dominated the western world. There would have been no Franco-German problem, no Charlemagne, no Louis XIV, no Napoleon, no Kaiser Wilhelm II and no Hitler.¹³³

Even more fundamentally: had an emperor’s niece married a soldier rather than a lawyer; had the German tribes been progressively defeated and recruited to the Roman side, the empire would have disarmed what were in the long term to be its worst enemies and might therefore still exist. The imaginary consequences run on and on.

Returning to more realistic speculations: of the many theories regarding the Teutoburg battle site, that proposed by the eminent 19th-century Romanist, Theodor Mommsen, always seemed the likeliest. He reasoned that to pay for services and bribe chieftains, Varus’ column must have carried substantial sums in gold and silver coin; and that this would be the most detectable and dateable element of the looted baggage. He therefore plotted all Augustan coin-finds in north-western Germany to determine whether a significant number appeared to radiate from a central spot. On these grounds Mommsen pointed to the Wiehengebirge as the probable location, at the northern extremity of the upland area designated the Teutoburg Forest by 17th-century antiquarians.

On flat ground, a little to the north of these Wiehen Hills, was an area between the villages of Bramsche and Venne, known since the 17th century to be rich in Roman coins. Most of the finds had been accumulated by the local landowning family, the von Bars of Barenaue Castle, whose collection consisted of one aureus (gold), 179 denarii (silver) and two asses (copper). Mommsen examined it and was struck by the fact that all the coins were dateable to between 194 BC and the first decade of our era. This seemed to verify proximity to the battlefield. However, since the two villages are in the adjacent plain and Dio’s descriptions favoured densely forested upland, Mommsen stuck to his choice of the Wiehen Hills, only three or four miles to the south.¹³⁴

Mommsen’s theory soon came under attack. It was argued that he had been wrong to base his findings on gold and silver coins, which could be evidence of a diplomatic mission or a merchant’s purse. The quantity of copper coins was insignificant. These were the soldier’s everyday spending money; and a battlefield, with thousands of Roman casualties, should be expected to yield them in large numbers. Further, the von Bar collection had been gathered sporadically, without record of provenance; and was therefore challengeable. Part had been sold to a dealer in 1884 and dispersed without trace; the remainder reportedly looted by Allied soldiers, occupying the property in 1945. Even more damaging was the complete absence of military accoutrement. It will, of course, be obvious that, while gold and silver have always found favour with the accidental finder, small, scattered, scarcely visible objects of baser metal have often awaited the coming of the metal detector.

In 1991 press reports, promising some resolution to the long search, were followed by publication of a more substantive account by a group of North German scholars, behind whose guarded opinions exciting conclusions seem to lie.¹³⁵ It concerned the first phase of an investigation into the same part of Lower Saxony, some ten miles north-north-east of Osnabrück, which began in 1987. Earlier that year Major J. A. S. Clunn, a British officer in the Osnabrück garrison, had begun to conduct solo searches in the vicinity of the Barenaue estate, uncovering a hoard of 160 Roman coins. Though this was not proof of military presence, his second discovery (in the spring of 1988) of three pieces of lead slingshot, provoked further attention and provided the starting point for a large-scale effort. A systematic survey yielded 162 silver coins, plus three glass beads of a type associated with Roman children’s games. The dating of the last coin, though disputed, is probably AD 4. All this was intriguing but still inconclusive. During the next two years, however, the evidence sharpened dramatically. Over a hundred copper coins were discovered, many minted at Lyons between 8 and 3 BC. Two silver coins could be dated with certainty to AD 9, the year of the Varian Disaster. Most thrilling of all, some copper pennies were counterstamped with the letters VAR. Provincial countermarking with the monogram of a governor is well attested for this period and almost always associated with monies issued as bonuses or soldiers’ pay. VAR points unerringly to the German governship of P. Quintilius Varus, AD 7–9.

A convincing series of military finds now accompanied the coinage. Especially noteworthy were two bronze hauberk clasps of serpentine design, one scratched and the other punched on the back with the inscriptions: ‘the Century of Terentius Romanus’ (or ‘Romanus, of the Century of Terentius’) and ‘M. Aius of the 1st Cohort, Century of Fabricius’. Besides this there was a silver-dipped, iron face mask, of considerable individuality and realism, part of a ceremonial helmet. In addition a rein-guide was identified, thought to be from a yoke joining draught animals. Other finds included a spear tip, a Roman pickaxe head, rings, buckles, pins and many small metal components from uniforms or equipment. But it is the first four items, plus the beads, which must be stressed; for the clasps are of legionary, the sling shots of auxiliary, the face mask of cavalry and the rein-guide of wagon-train origins, while the beads suggest families and civilians; all verifying Dio’s picture of a large, combined, cumbrous army or its remnant, perhaps still partially burdened with baggage and dependents.

The objects were found scattered over an area of three-and-three-quarter miles from east to west by 1,000 yards from north to south, randomly and in what had been the topsoil, as if lost or trampled into the surface vegetation. Because so many clues were won from relatively few archaeological incisions, and despite the likelihood that the battlefield was picked clean by the victors, the presence of thousands of people may be inferred. Abundant coins of the later Republic, peaking during Augustus’ reign and ending abruptly at AD 9, debar the earlier campaigns of Drusus and Tiberius, and cast strong doubt on the revenge expeditions of Germanicus (AD 14–16) as sources of the lost articles.

Geography adds comparable weight. Kalkriese Hill, northern outlier of the Wiehen Range, on the extreme edge of the Teutoburg Forest, descends some 350 feet to the North German Plain, where it meets a marsh still called Grosses Moor (big fen). Between this last slope and first bog a sandy strip affords dry passage for east-west traffic, doubtless the location of a prehistoric pathway and carrying today’s B218 between Engter and Venne. It is by now beyond question that this was the Roman line of march. In the Middle Ages soil from drainage ditches, cut into the morass, was laid down on much of the sandy strip to promote cultivation, further concealing but also preserving the battlefield’s secrets.

Here, then, was a natural ambush corridor between densely forested hill and quaking fen. At its narrowest, adjacent to Niewed Manor, the dry passage is 120 yards wide; with only the modern road, a fringe of trees and the width of a small field separating slope from quagmire. Below the imported topsoil is yellow sand and in it archaeological investigation has revealed the substantial remains of a sandy, sod-capped ridge, perhaps four feet high; running parallel to the foot of the hill for several hundred yards, believed to have been thrown up by the Germans, both for their own protection and to retard the Romans by reducing the bottleneck to a mere sixty yards. Numerous coins and fragments of military equipment have been found on and around this improvised dyke, suggesting a desperate struggle across it. Though not yet certain what stage of the attritional process this represented, it was already difficult to deny the Niewed Field as the focal point of a brilliantly executed ambush. However, in 1994, another vital piece was added to the puzzle. Near the adjacent foot of the Kalkrieser Berg, Professor W. Schlüter discovered a mass grave, with bones placed in a pit and turves laid over them, resembling convincingly the Tacitean description of Germanicus’ visit to the battlefield; so pointing to this vicinity either as the battle’s climax, as one of its peaks, or as the place where, in Major Clunn’s view,¹³⁶ the remnant of an already depleted Roman force was finally annihilated.

The findings could point to the following scenario, generally compatible with the written sources. In the autumn of AD 9 Varus was tricked into a westward march in the general direction of today’s Osnabrück in order to quell a fictitious disturbance, instead of the usual south-westward journey back to the Lippe. This took his column along a natural route, following the northern front of the foothills where they meet the plain. A trap was prepared at the narrowest part of this corridor where the army would be squeezed between upland and wetland by a convergence of tribes and German deserters.

The surprise of these findings is their incompatibility with Dio, whose setting is decidedly forest: an army caught ‘in almost inextricable woods’, ‘unable to deploy the cavalry because of trees’, and so on. Tacitus (a century after the event but a century before Dio) is our sole source for the expression Teutoburgiensis saltus;¹³⁷ and it is possible that the discrepancy originated from his peculiar use of saltus. It now seems unlikely that Tacitus intended it in its usual sense of ‘clearing in the forest’. Livy had employed the word quite differently in relation to Thermopylae: Thermopylarum saltum ubi angustae fauces coartant iter¹³⁸ (the pass of Thermopylae, where a narrow gap constricts the road). Was Tacitus echoing this usage? Had propaganda sought to ennoble the Varian Disaster by choosing a loaded word, associated in historical writing with the Spartans’ defence at Thermopylae, an event of legendary heroism; and was Tacitus simply repeating what had become the standard description? In either case the parallel with doomed heroes and the topographic resemblances are clear, for both battles were fought in constricted terrain or natural gaps. In this event – and in view of the recent discoveries – a more correct reading of Tacitus might not be Teutoburg Forest but Teutoburg Corridor; meaning the sandy, east-west passage where the line of foothills met the North German Plain. By contrast Dio seems to have lighted on the meaning of saltus as a glade, leading to his enhancement of the forest aspect, adding to the theatricality of his account and helping to excuse defeat. His description led successively to mistranslation by the humanists, the renaming of the Osning Range as the Teutoburgerwald, the placing of Bandel’s statue in its midst (some forty-seven miles from the newly discovered site) and the misdirection of all battlefield theories southwards, into wooded hill country.

By contrast, the recent findings point to a setting where sloping forest met open marshland, strongly reminiscent of the place where Caecina was ambushed by the remontant Armin, seven years after the Teutoburg battle. Why (if Tacitus is to be believed) did the German leader then cry out, ‘Behold, Varus and his legions, trapped in the same way!’? This too suggests a similarity of predicament and terrain. Velleius Paterculus, author of the only contemporary account, was seemingly accurate in describing Varus as ‘hemmed in by bog, bush and ambush’.

Such is the strengthening evidence for locating the Varian Disaster in the Osnabrück rather than the Detmold vicinity; and indeed, Germany’s learned have already largely abandoned using the expression, ‘Battle of the Teutoburg Forest’, in favour of the less tendentious ‘Varus Battle’.

The Varian Disaster, which cost Rome Germany, also cost Germany Rome; or at least the benefits of Mediterranean civilization. Both sides had much to learn from the encounter, but as the Germans returned to the forest it was not Roman ideas on urbanization, road-building, the peaceful arts or the rule of law that they took with them. Despite Quintilius Varus’ season on the bench, German enthusiasm for the practice and principles of Roman law was totally feigned. In fact absence of the appropriate loan words from Latin into German suggests a disinterest in theoretical or abstract concepts of any kind. Fascination was with Roman tactics and weaponry. In due course it would go further. As time passed the Germans would recognize that the empire’s secret lay in diplomacy and the ability to make common cause. These gifts they would one day mimic: not to the extent of achieving nationhood, but sufficiently to win wars. In this sense the exhortation to unity emblazoned on Armin’s sword at the Hermannsdenkmal was not many centuries from realization. Small wonder that a 4th-century Roman continues to call them ‘Germanos hostes truces et assiduos formidantes’ (the Germans, our ferocious and implacable foe).¹³⁹