I just finished reading the latest issue of Les Aigles de Rome (The Eagles of Rome) a comic by the splendid Swiss artist Enrico Marini that tells the story of Arminius. Ring a bell? He was the German chieftain who defeated the Roman forces led by Quintilius Varus in the Teutoburg Forest. “Defeated” is an understatement because he annihilated almost 30,000 individuals, including legionaries, auxiliaries, and civilians. The phrase that Augustus obsessively repeated every night after receiving the news has gone down in history: Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions! Let’s take a look at the figure of Arminius.

Obviously, that is the Latin name, as noted by Gaius Velleius Paterculus in his Compendium of Roman History (curiously, this author was also a cavalry prefect and legate in Germania during the reign of Tiberius). Being a Cherusci (a people inhabiting the region between the present-day German cities of Osnabrück and Hanover), his real name would be different, although we do not know what it is; some suggest Ermanamer, but it’s not at all clear. What we do know is his father’s name, Segimer, a chieftain who, after being defeated by Rome, collaborated with them in the campaign of Drusus the Elder (stepson of Augustus), leaving his son as a hostage.

It was a common practice for some Roman nobles to adopt children of barbarian chiefs and educate them as Romans, not only to ensure that their native peoples would remain at peace but also to increase the likelihood of their alliance in the future, given their Romanized, civilized upbringing. Thus, Arminius spent his youth in the capital of his enemies alongside his younger brother Flavus, whose real name is also unknown (flavus in Latin means yellow, probably alluding to the blonde tone of his hair). Both were granted citizenship, integrated, and trained as equites (ordo equester, knights, a social class below the senatorial class that fought on horseback).

Publius Quintilius Varus receiving the Germanic chiefs (eighteenth-century engraving)
Publius Quintilius Varus receiving the Germanic chiefs (eighteenth-century engraving)/Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Flavus, unlike his older brother, remained loyal to Rome and not only lost an eye fighting for her in Dalmatia against the Illyrians but also ended up facing his own people in the future, as we will see. Arminius also had the opportunity to gain military experience by leading a unit of Cheruscan auxiliaries in the wars in Pannonia against the aforementioned Illyrians, when they revolted between 6 and 9 AD. By then, he was just over twenty years old, as his birth is estimated around 17 or 16 BC. After that campaign, he was assigned to his homeland, in Lower Germania, where Publius Quintilius Varus was the governor.

Varus, a member of a republican family that had opposed Julius Caesar’s dictatorial tendencies, had regained his family’s honor by faithfully serving Octavius, who rewarded him by giving him the hand of his granddaughter Vipsania Marcella. His career continued to rise steadily, obtaining the consulship (alongside Tiberius) in 13 BC and being sent as proconsul and legate propraetor to Syria. From there, he crushed the Jewish rebellion that began after the death of Herod the Great and amassed a considerable fortune through dubious means: He came poor to a rich province and left rich, leaving a poor province, as a maxim of the time said.

In 9 AD, he exchanged the hot airs of the Middle East for the gray skies of Germania. His greed for taxes and his inexperience with the local people quickly led to discontent. Therefore, it was considered advisable to appoint a native assistant who could advise and guide him in dealing with the tribes. The chosen one was Arminius, with whom he developed a close friendship that, however, did not withstand the reality of the situation. The young Cheruscan gradually distanced himself from Roman administration as it favored Romans over locals, and it became clear that the territory was just another military domain.

Germania in 9 AD. In yellow, the imperial province; the red line is the route of the Varus expedition
Germania in 9 AD. In yellow, the imperial province; the red line is the route of the Varus expedition/Image: Cristiano64 on Wikimedia Commons

The Germans had remained calm during the Panonian and Dalmatian uprisings, paradoxically motivated by forced recruitment for Tiberius’s expedition against the Marcomanni (a tribe in what is now Bohemia). But in the final phase of the war, agitation began to stir between the Elbe and the Rhine. The reason? Varus imposed new tributes and attempted to introduce the Roman judicial system. The Cherusci, hitherto restrained, rebelled encouraged by Arminius, who definitively renounced his Romanization by leading the uprising. But it wasn’t just them; the young chieftain managed to attract other tribes to the cause, compromising Roman control.

The Panonian campaign, aggravated by a simultaneous attack by the Getae in Moesia, forced Varus to divert substantial forces there: eight out of the eleven legions stationed east of the Rhine left Germania, leaving Varus with only three (plus two stationed in Moguntiacum, present-day Mainz, under his nephew Lucius Nonius Asprenas). Nevertheless, he considered them sufficient to march north with the goal of quelling a rebellion that Arminius had informed him about. In reality, there was no such rebellion; it was the plan that Arminius designed to lure the Romans into his territory and then fall upon them.

Because Arminius had achieved something as unusual as uniting most of the tribes under his command, including some that were ancestral enemies: Cherusci, Bructeri, Angrivarii, Marsi, Chauci, Sicambri, etc. The total number of warriors is unclear, as some factions supported the Romans and probably did not outnumber their adversaries by much. But the Romans brought with them thousands of civilians (family members, merchants, servants, prostitutes…), and their column stretched for several kilometers, making communication between units difficult and causing very limited mobility, further hindered by the supply wagons.

The battle, recreated by Otto Albert Koch
The battle, recreated by Otto Albert Koch/Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

When they entered the Teutoburg Forest in Lower Saxony, a terrain that made progress even more difficult (aggravated by the rains, turning it into a mud pit), Arminius gave the order to attack. It was not a massive attack but concentrated at various points, splitting the column into two parts: he withdrew to a swamp that prevented the legionaries from forming a defensive formation, and they ended up annihilated; the other part went to a clearing where a fortified camp was desperately erected.

Varus, who did not know or could not react appropriately, still believed that Arminius’s auxiliaries would come to his aid. It was the next day when he was informed that they were with the enemy, deciding to initiate a retreat that morning; for this, he ordered the burning of the wagons and left the wounded to their fate, relying on the Germans’ supposed mercy toward them, which deep down he knew wouldn’t happen.

The legions managed to advance, but their opponents had already been reinforced by Arminius’s auxiliaries, so they were forced to stop again and build another camp. Then came the news that the cavalry had been exterminated in their escape attempt. While they debated what to do, the Germans completely surrounded their position.

Schematic of the first day's ambush
Schematic of the first day’s ambush/Image: Cristiano64 on Wikimedia Commons

Finally, amid a fierce storm, the legionaries went out in two groups trying to get away, but the mass of warriors that fell upon them forced them to adopt the testudo, immobilizing them. There was no way out, and some officers committed suicide to avoid falling into captivity, as it meant torture (amputation of limbs, removal of eyes, and sewing of mouths, for example), before ending up on the sacrificial altar. Varus was one of those who took his own life, although the exact moment is unknown, and some believe it was the night before.

The soldiers formed small resistance groups that were progressively annihilated one by one; some legionaries managed to flee among the trees, but they were hunted down over the following days, and only a few survived. The exact number of casualties is unknown, but archaeological excavations have unearthed around sixteen thousand Roman skeletons plus another thousand Germans.

Among them was not Varus, whose body was burned except for the head, which Arminius sent to Augustus as a warning. As mentioned earlier, Augustus, temporarily half-mad, was deeply affected by this.

Situation of Germania after Teutoburg: in green, territory dominated by Rome; in pink, enemy territory; in yellow, territory of Rome's allies
Situation of Germania after Teutoburg: in green, territory dominated by Rome; in pink, enemy territory; in yellow, territory of Rome’s allies/Image: Cristiano64 on Wikimedia Commons

Four years passed, and in 13 AD, Germanicus, Augustus’s nephew, invaded Germania with a powerful army, burying the dead and regaining control of the region. But he could not capture Arminius, who in 15 AD would score another significant victory in the Battle at Pontes Longi, crushing the four legions commanded by Aulus Caecina Severus. However, the Roman managed to save part of his forces and join forces with Asprenas to block the Germans’ passage to Gaul.

Later, in a counterattack, Germanicus captured Thusnelda, Arminius’s wife, with the collaboration of a pro-Roman faction, revealing that internal dissensions among the Germans had begun, duly encouraged by his brother Flavus. Arminius never saw her again and did not meet his son Thumelicus, born in captivity (he became a gladiator and didn’t last long), refusing to accept the negotiation proposal.

By then, Augustus had died, and Tiberius ruled, determined to pacify Germania once and for all. The definitive triumph came the following year in the battles of Idistaviso and the Angrivarian Wall, where Germanicus decisively defeated Arminius, causing him thousands of casualties and effectively ending the rebellion. He even recovered two of the eagles lost in Teutoburg (the third would be recovered in the time of Claudius).

Arminius bids farewell to Thusnelda (Johannes Gehrts)
Arminius bids farewell to Thusnelda (Johannes Gehrts)/Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

However, it was a relative victory, as the difficulty of effectively controlling a territory where human and material resources were consumed excessively for the benefits obtained had become apparent. So, ironically, Tiberius ordered a return to Germanicus and established the limes, the border, at the Rhine.

And Arminius? He had survived the defeat against Germanicus by smearing his face with blood so that the enemy cavalry would not recognize him and pursue him. Discord among the Germans, leading some to propose his poisoning to Rome (Tiberius refused; he wanted to win by arms), would lead him to wage war against the Marcomanni and have problems with other leaders, especially with his father-in-law Segestes, who had been the one to deliver his own daughter to the Romans.

It was Segestes’s supporters who, wary of the power he was accumulating, assassinated Arminius in 21 AD. The man died, but the legend began, duly vindicated by nineteenth-century German Romanticism for nationalist purposes.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on July 1, 2019. Puedes leer la versión en español en Arminio, el caudillo germano que aplastó a los romanos en el bosque de Teutoburgo

Sources

Tácito, Anales | Dión Casio, Historia romana | Veleyo Patérculo, Historia romana | Sergei Ivanovich Kovaliov, Historia de Roma | Mary Beard, SPQR. Una historia de la antigua Roma | Martin M. Winkler, Arminius the Liberator. Myth and ideology | Jason R Abdale, Four days in september. The Battle of Teutoburg | Wikipedia

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