Chapter I: The Northern Frontier of Italy (3)

Nevertheless the defeat of the Augustan policy, as the peace with Maroboduus and the sufferance of the Teutoburg disaster may well be termed, was hardly a victory of the Germans. After the battle with Varus the hope must doubtless have passed through the minds of the best, that a certain union of the nation would accrue from the glorious victory of the Cherusci and their allies, and from the retiring of the enemy in the west as in the south. Perhaps in these very crises the feeling of unity may have dawned on the Saxons and Suebians formerly confronting each other as strangers. The fact that the Saxons sent from the battle-field the head of Varus to the king of the Suebians, can be nothing but the savage expression of the thought that the hour had come for all Germans to throw themselves in joint onset upon the Roman empire, and thus to secure the frontier and the freedom of their land, as they could alone be secured, by striking down the hereditary foe in his own home. But the cultured man and the politic king accepted the gift of the insurgents only in order to forward the head to the emperor Augustus for burial; he did nothing for, but also nothing against, the Romans, and persevered unshaken in his neutrality. Immediately after the death of Augustus there were fears at Rome of the Marcomani invading Raetia, but apparently without cause; and when Germanicus thereupon resumed the offensive against the Germans from the Rhine, the mighty king of the Marcomani looked on inactive. This policy of finesse or of cowardice dug its own grave amidst a Germanic world fiercely excited, and drunk with patriotic successes and hopes. The more remote Suebian tribes but loosely connected with the empire, the Semnones, Langobardi, and Gothones, declared off from the king, and made common cause with the Saxon patriots; it is not improbable that the considerable forces, which were evidently at the disposal of Arminius and Inguiomerus in the conflicts with Germanicus, flowed to them in great part from these quarters.

[Sidenote: Fall of Maroboduus.]

Soon afterwards, when the Roman attack was suddenly broken off, the patriots turned (17) to assail Maroboduus, perhaps to assail the kingly office in general, at least as the latter administered it on the Roman model.[23] But even among themselves divisions had set in; the two nearly related Cheruscan princes, who in the last struggles had led the patriots, if not victoriously, at any rate bravely and honourably, and had hitherto constantly fought shoulder to shoulder, no longer stood together in this war. The uncle Inguiomerus no longer tolerated his being second to his nephew, and at the outbreak of the war passed to the side of Maroboduus. Thus matters came to a decisive battle between Germans and Germans, nay, between the same tribes; for Suebi as well as Cherusci fought in both armies. Long the conflict wavered; both armies had learned from the Roman tactics, and on both sides the passion and the exasperation were alike. Arminius did not achieve a victory properly so called, but his antagonist left to him the field of battle; and, as Maroboduus seemed to have fared the worst, those who had hitherto adhered to him left him, and he found himself confined to his own kingdom. When he asked for Roman aid against his overpowerful countrymen, Tiberius reminded him of his attitude after the battle of Varus, and replied that now the Romans in turn would remain neutral. His fate was rapidly decided. In the very following year (18) he was surprised in his royal abode itself by a prince of the Gothones, Catualda, to whom he had formerly given personal offence, and who had thereupon revolted from him with the other non-Bohemian Suebi; and, abandoned by his own people, he with difficulty made his escape to the Romans, who granted to him the asylum which he sought--he died many years afterwards, as a Roman pensioner, at Ravenna.

[Sidenote: End of Arminius.]

Thus the opponents as well as the rivals of Arminius had become refugees, and the Germanic nation looked to none else than to him. But this greatness was his danger and his destruction. His own countrymen, especially his own clan, accused him of going the way of Maroboduus and of desiring to be not merely the first, but also the lord and the king of the Germans--whether with reason or not, and whether, if he wished this, he did not perhaps wish what was right, who can say? The result was a civil war between him and these representatives of popular freedom; two years after the banishment of Maroboduus he too, like Caesar, fell by the dagger of nobles of republican sentiments near to his person. His wife Thusnelda and his son born in captivity, Thumelicus, on whom he had never set eyes, marched at the triumph of Germanicus (26th May, 17) among the other Germans of rank, in chains to the Capitol; the old Segestes was for his fidelity to the Romans provided with a place of honour, whence he might look on at the public entry of his daughter and his grandson. They all died within the Roman empire; with Maroboduus the wife and son of his antagonist met in the exile of Ravenna. When Tiberius remarked at the recall of Germanicus that there was no need to wage war against the Germans, and that they would of themselves take care to do what was requisite for Rome, he knew his adversaries; in this, at all events, history has pronounced him right. But to the high-spirited man who, at the age of six-and-twenty, had released his Saxon home from the Italian foreign rule, who thereafter had been general as well as soldier in a seven years' struggle for that freedom regained, who had staked not merely person and life, but also wife and child for his nation, to fall at the age of thirty-seven by an assassin's hand--to this man his people gave, what it was in their power to give, an eternal monument in heroic song.

Footnotes.

[1: Dio, li. 23, expressly says this as to the year 725: τέως μὲν οὖν ταῦτ᾿ ἐποίουν (_i.e._ so long as the Bastarnae attacked only the Triballi--near Oescus in Lower Moesia, and the Dardani in Upper Moesia), οὐδὲν σφίσι πρᾶγμα πρὸς τοὺς Ῥωμαίους ἦν· ἐπεὶ δὲ τόν τε Αἷμον ὑπερέβησαν καὶ τὴν Θρᾴκην τὴν Δενθελητῶν ἔνσπονδον αὐτοῖς οὖσαν κατέδραμον κ. τ. λ. The allies in Moesia, of whom Dio, xxxviii. 10 speaks, are the coast towns.]

[2: When Dio says (li. 23): τὴν Σεγετικὴν καλουμένην προσεποίησατο καὶ ἐς τὴν Μυσίδα ἐνέβαλε, the town spoken of, doubtless, can only be Serdica, the modern Sofia, on the upper Oescus, the key to the Moesian country.]

[3: After the campaign of Crassus the conquered land was probably organised in such a way that the coast went to the Thracian kingdom, as Zippel has shown (_Röm. Illyricum_, p. 243), and the western portion was, just like Thrace, assigned in fief to the native princes, in place of one of whom must have come the _praefectus civitatium Moesiae et Triballiae_ (_C. I. L._ v. 1838), who was still acting under Tiberius. The usual assumption that Moesia was at first combined with Illyricum, rests only on the circumstance that in the enumeration of the provinces apportioned in the year 727 between emperor and senate in Dio, liii. 12 it is not named, and so was contained in "Dalmatia." But this enumeration does not extend at all to the vassal-states and the procuratorial provinces, and so far all is in due keeping with our assumption. On the other hand, weighty arguments tell against the usual hypothesis. Had Moesia been originally a part of the province of Illyricum, it would have retained this name; for on the division of a province the name was usually retained, and only a defining epithet added. But the appellation Illyricum, which Dio doubtless reproduces _l.c._, was always in this connection restricted to the upper (Dalmatia) and the lower (Pannonia). Moreover, if Moesia was a part of Illyricum, there was no room left for that Prefect of Moesia and Triballia, or in other words for his kingly predecessor. Lastly, it is far from probable that in 727 {27.} a command of such extent and importance should have been entrusted to a single senatorial governor. On the other hand, everything admits of easy explanation, if small client-states arose in Moesia after the war of Crassus; these were as such from the outset under the emperor, and, as the senate did not take part in their successive annexation and conversion into a governorship, this might easily be unnoticed in the Annals. It was completed in or before the year 743 {11.}, seeing that the governor, L. Calpurnius Piso then waging war against the Thracians, to whom Dio (liv. 34) erroneously assigns the province of Pamphylia, can only have had as his province Pannonia or Moesia, and, as at that time Tiberius was acting as legate in Pannonia, there is left for him only Moesia. In 6 A.D. there certainly appears an imperial governor of Moesia.]

[4: The official title of Cottius was not king, like that of his father Donnus, but "president of the cantonal union" (_praefectus civitatium_), as he is named on the still standing arch of Susa erected by him in honour of Augustus in the year 745-6 {9-8.}. But the position was beyond doubt held for life, and, under reservation of the superior's right to confirm it, also hereditary; so far therefore the union was certainly a principality, as it is usually so termed.]

[5: We know this road only in the shape which the emperor Claudius, the son of the constructor, gave to it; originally, of course, it cannot have been called _via Claudia_, but only _via Augusta_, and we can hardly regard as its terminus in Italy Altinum, in the neighbourhood of the modern Venice, since, under Augustus, all the imperial roads still led to Rome. That the road ran through the upper Adige valley is shown by the milestone found at Meran (_C. I. L._ v. 8003); that it led to the Danube, is attested; the connection of the making of this road with the founding of Augusta Vindelicum, though this was at first only a market-village (_forum_), is more than probable (_C. I. L._ iii. p. 711); in what way Augsburg and the Danube were reached from Meran we do not know. Subsequently the road was rectified, so as to leave the Adige at Bautzen, and to lead up the Eisach valley over the Brenner to Augsburg.]

[6: The locality "in which the Bessi honour the god Dionysos," and which Crassus took from them and gave to the Odrysians (Dio, li. 25), is certainly the same _Liberi patris lucus_, in which Alexander sacrificed, and the father of Augustus, _cum per secreta Thraciae exercitum duceret_, asked the oracle respecting his son (Suetonius, _Aug._ 94), and which Herodotus already mentions (ii. III; compare Euripides, _Hec._ 1267) as an oracular shrine placed under the protection of the Bessi. Certainly it is to be sought northwards of Rhodope; it has not yet been discovered.]

[7: That the battle at Arbalo (Plin. _H.N._ xi. 17, 55) belongs to this year, is shown by Obsequens, 72, and so the narrative in Dio, liv. 33, applies to it.]

[8: That the fall of Drusus took place in the region of the Saale we may be allowed to infer from Strabo, vii. 1, 3, p. 291, although he only says that he perished on the march between Salas and Rhine, and the identification of the Salas with the Saale rests solely on the resemblance of name. From the scene of the mishap he was then transported as far as the summer camp (Seneca, _Cons. ad Marciam_ 3: _ipsis illum hostibus aegrum cum veneratione et pace mutua prosequentibus nec optare quod expediebat audentibus_), and in that camp he died (Sueton., _Claud._ 1). This camp lay in the heart of the barbarian land (Valerius Max. v. 5, 3) and not very far from the battlefield of Varus (Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 7, where the _vetus ara Druso sita_ is certainly to be referred to the place where he died); we may be allowed to seek it in the region of the Weser. The dead body was then conveyed to the winter-camp (Dio, lv. 2) and there burnt; this spot was regarded, according to Roman usage, also as the place of burial, although the depositing of the ashes took place in Rome, and to this is to be referred the _honorarius tumulus_ with the annual obsequies (Sueton. _l.c._). Probably we have to seek for this place at Vetera. When a later author (Eutropius, vii. 13) speaks of the _monumentum_ of Drusus at Mentz, this is doubtless not the tomb, but the elsewhere mentioned Tropaeum (Florus, ii. 30: _Marcomanorum spoliis et insignibus quendam editum tumulum in tropaei modum excoluit_).]

[9: What we learn from Dio, lv. 10, partly confirmed by Tacitus, _Ann._ iv. 44, cannot be apprehended otherwise. Noricum and Raetia must have been put under this governor as an exceptional measure, or the course of operations induced him to pass beyond the limit of his governorship. The assumption that he marched through Bohemia itself, which would involve still greater difficulties, is not required by the narrative.]

[10: To a connection in rear of the camp on the Rhine with the port Boulogne we might perhaps take the much disputed notice of Florus, ii. 30, to refer: _Bonnam_ (or _Bormam_) _et Gessoriacum pontibus iunxit classibusque firmavit_, with which is to be compared the mention by the same author of forts on the Maas. Bonn may reasonably have been at that time the station of the Rhine-fleet; Boulogne was in later times still a fleet-station. Drusus might well have occasion to make the shortest and safest land-route between the two stations for the fleet available for transport, though the writer, probably bent on striking effect, awakens by his pointed mode of expression conceptions which cannot be in that form correct.]

[11: As to the administrative partition of Gaul there is, apart from the separation of the Narbonensis, an utter absence of accounts, because it rested only on imperial ordinances, and nothing in reference to it came into the records of the senate. But the first information of the existence of separate Upper and Lower German commands is furnished by the campaigns of Germanicus, and the battle of Varus can hardly be understood under that assumption; here, doubtless, the _hiberna inferiora_ appear, viz. that of Vetera (Velleius, ii. 120), and the counterpart to it, the _superiora_, can only have been formed by that of Mentz; but this was not under a colleague of Varus, but under his nephew, who was thus subordinate to him in command. Probably the partition only took place, in consequence of the defeat, in the last years of Augustus.]

[12: The _praesidium_ constructed by Drusus _in monte Tauno_ (Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 56), and the φρούριον ἐν Χάττοις παρ' αὐτῷ τῷ Ῥήνῳ associated with Aliso (Dio, liv. 33), are probably identical, and the special position of the canton of the Mattiaci is evidently connected with the construction of Mogontiacum.]

[13: That the "fort at the confluence of the Lupias and the Helison," in Dio, liv. 33, is identical with the oftener mentioned Aliso, and this must be sought on the upper Lippe, is subject to no doubt; and that the Roman winter-camp at the sources of the Lippe (_ad caput Lupiae_, Velleius, ii. 205), the only one of the kind, so far as we know, on German ground, is to be sought just there, is at least very probable. That the two Roman roads running along the Lippe, and their fortified places of bivouac, led at least as far as the region of Lippstadt, the researches of Hölzermann in particular have shown. The upper Lippe has only one confluent of note, the Alme, and as the village of Elsen lies not far from where the Alme falls into the Lippe, some weight may be here assigned to the similarity of name. To the view, supported among others by Schmidt, which places Aliso at the confluence of the Glenne (and Liese) with the Lippe, the chief objection is that the camp _ad caput Lupiae_ must then have been different from Aliso, and in general this point lies too far from the line of the Weser, while from Elsen the route leads directly through the Dören defile into the Werra valley. Schmidt, who does not adhere to the identification of Aliso and Elsen, remarks generally (_Westfälische Zeitschrift für Gesch. und Alterthumskunde_, xx. p. 259), that the heights of Weser (not far from Elsen), and generally the left margin of the valley of the Alme, are the centre of a semicircle formed by the mountains in front, and this highlying, dry region, allowing an exact look-out as far as the mountains, which covers the whole country of the Lippe and is itself covered in front by the Alme, is well adapted for the starting-point of a march towards the Weser.]

[14: This and not more is what Velleius says (ii. 110): _in omnibus Pannoniis non disciplinae_ (= military training) _tantummodo, sed linguae quoque notitia Romanae, plerisque etiam litterarum usus et familiaris animorum erat exercitatio_. These are the same phenomena as are met with in the case of the Cheruscan princes, only in increased measure; and they are quite intelligible when we bear in mind the Pannonian and Breucian _alae_ and _cohortes_ raised by Augustus.]

[15: If we assume that of the twelve legions who were on the march against Maroboduus (Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 46), as many as we find soon after in Germany, that is, five, went to form the army there, the Illyrian army of Tiberius numbered seven, and the number of ten (Velleius, ii. 113) may fairly be referred to the contingents from Moesia and Italy, that of fifteen to the contingents from Egypt or Syria, and to the further levies in Italy, whence the newly raised legions went no doubt to Germany, but those thereby relieved went to the army of Tiberius. Velleius (ii. 112) speaks inaccurately, at the very beginning of the war, of five legions brought up by A. Caecina and Plautius Silvanus _ex transmarinis provinciis_; firstly, the transmarine troops could not be at once on the spot, and secondly, the legions of Caecina were of course the Moesian. Comp. my commentary on the _Mon. Ancyr._ 2d ed. p. 71.]

[16: Velleius (ii. 118) says so; _adsiduus militiae nostrae prioris comes, iure etiam civitatis Romanae eius equestres consequens gradus_; which coincides with the _ductor popularium_ of Tacitus, _Ann._ ii. 10. Such officers must have been of no infrequent occurrence at this time; thus, there fought in the third campaign of Drusus _inter primores Chumstinctus et Avectius tribuni ex civitate Nerviorum_ (Liv. _Ep._ 141), and under Germanicus Chariovalda _dux Batavorum_ (Tac. _Ann._ ii. 11).]

[17: The effigy of Varus is shown on a copper coin of the African town Achulla, struck under his proconsulate of Africa in the year 747-8, B.C. 7-6 (L. Müller, _Num. de l'ancienne Afrique_, ii. p. 44, comp. p. 52). The base which once supported the statue erected to him by the town of Pergamus has again been brought to light by the excavations there; the subscription runs: ὁ δῆμος [ἐτίμησεν] Πόπλιον Κοινκτίλιον Σέξτου υἱὸν Οὐάρ[ον] πάσης ἀρετῆ[ς ἕνεκα].]

[18: The report of Dio, the only one which hands down to us a somewhat connected view of this catastrophe, explains the course of it sufficiently, if we only take further into account--what Dio certainly does not bring into prominence--the general relation of the summer and winter camps, and thereby answer the question justly put by Ranke (_Weltgeschichte_, iii. 2, 275), how the whole army could have marched against a local insurrection. The narrative of Florus by no means rests on sources originally different, as that scholar assumes, but simply on the dramatic accumulation of motives for action, such as is characteristic of all historians of this type. The peaceful dispensing of justice by Varus and the storming of the camp are both known to the better tradition, and that in their causal connection. The ridiculous representation of the Germans breaking in at all the gates into the camp, while Varus is sitting on the judgment-seat and the herald is summoning the parties before him, is not tradition, but a picture manufactured from it. That this is in utter antagonism to the description by Tacitus of the three bivouacs, as well as to sound reason, is obvious.]

[19: The normal strength of the three _alae_ and the six _cohortes_ is not to be calculated exactly, inasmuch as among them there may have been double divisions (_miliariae_); but the army cannot have numbered much over 20,000 men. On the other hand, there appears no reason for assuming a material difference of the effective strength from the normal. The numerous detachments which are mentioned (Dio, lvi. 19) serve to account for the comparatively small number of the _auxilia_, which were always by preference employed for this duty.]

[20: As Germanicus, coming from the Ems, lays waste the territory between the Ems and Lippe, that is, the region of Münster, and not far from it lies the _Teutoburgiensis saltus_, where Varus's army perished (Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 61), it is most natural to understand this description, which does not suit the flat Münster region, of the range bounding the Münster region on the north-east, the Osning; but it may also be deemed applicable to the Wiehen mountains somewhat farther to the north, parallel with the Osning, and stretching from Minden to the source of the Hunte. We do not know at what point on the Weser the summer camp stood; but in accordance with the position of Aliso near Paderborn, and with the connections subsisting between this and the Weser, it was probably somewhere near Minden. The direction of the march on the return may have been any other excepting only the nearest way to Aliso; and the catastrophe consequently occurred not on the military line of communication between Minden and Paderborn itself, but at a greater or less distance from it. Varus may have marched from Minden somewhat in the direction of Osnabrück, then after the attack have attempted from thence to reach Paderborn, and have met with his end on this march in one of those two ranges of hills. For centuries there have been found in the district of Venne at the source of the Hunte a surprisingly large number of Roman gold, silver, and copper coins, such as circulated in the time of Augustus, while later coins hardly occur there at all (comp. the proofs in Paul Höfer, _der Feldzug des Germanicus im Jahre 16_, Gotha, 1884, p. 82, f.) The coins thus found cannot belong to one store of coins on account of their scattered occurrence and of the difference of metals, nor to a centre of traffic on account of their proximity as regards time; they look quite like the leavings of a great extirpated army, and the accounts before us as to the battle of Varus may be reconciled with this locality. As to the year of the catastrophe there should never have been any dispute; the shifting of it to the year 10 is a mere mistake. The season of the year is in some measure determined by the fact that between the arrangement to celebrate the Illyrian victory and the arrival of the unfortunate news in Rome there lay only five days, and that arrangement probably had in view the victory of 3d Aug., though it did not immediately follow on the latter. Accordingly the defeat must have taken place somewhere in September or October, which also accords with the circumstance that the last march of Varus was evidently the march back from the summer to the winter camp.]

[21: Tacitus, _Ann._ i. 9, and Dio, lvi. 26, attest the continuance of the state of war; but nothing at all is reported from the nominal campaigns of the summers of 12, 13, and 14, and the expedition of the autumn of 14 appears as the first undertaken by Germanicus. It is true that Germanicus had been proclaimed as Imperator probably even in the lifetime of Augustus (_Mon. Ancyr._ p. 17); but there is nothing to hinder our referring this to the campaign of the year 11, in which Germanicus commanded with proconsular power alongside of Tiberius (Dio, lvi. 25). In the year 12 he was in Rome for the administration of the consulate, which he retained throughout the year, and which was still at that time treated in earnest; this explains why Tiberius, as has now been proved (Hermann Schulz, _Quaest. Ovidianae_, Greifswald, 1883, p. 15), still went to Germany in the year 12, and resigned his Rhenish command only at the beginning of the year 13, on the celebration of the Pannonian victory.]

[22: The hypothesis of Schmidt (_Westfäl. Zeitschrift_, xx. p. 301)--that the first battle was fought on the Idistavisian field somewhere near Bückeburg, and the second, on account of the morasses mentioned on the occasion, perhaps on the Steinhudersee, near the village of Bergkirchen, which lies to the south of this--will not be far removed from the truth, and may at least help us to realise the matter. In this, as in most of the accounts of battles by Tacitus, we must despair of reaching an assured result.]

[23: The statement of Tacitus (_Ann._ ii. 45), that this was properly a war of the republicans against the monarchists, is probably not free from a wish to transfer Hellenico-Roman views to the very different Germanic world. So far as the war had an ethico-political tendency, it would be called forth not by the _nomen regis_, as Tacitus says, but by the _certum imperium visque regia_ of Velleius (ii. 108).]