Post-Script on Augustus - The Teutoburg Wald
A battle with a longer historical half-life than real world impact
- The Teutoburg Wald
There was one notable exception to the generally positive state of things during the reign of Augustus. In 9 A.D., the legions suffered one of their most infamous defeats in the entire history of the Roman Civilization. For some time, Roman troops had been slowly pushing into Germania beyond the Rhine River. The local Germanic inhabitants were divided into small warring tribes with no cities or infrastructure to speak of. While individually brave and ferocious in battle, as a group they were almost never a match for the professional legions of the Empire. As the Romans took control of more and more of Germania, they often used diplomacy to play the various tribes off against each other, in order to keep them individually weak. Sometimes, they took hostages from the leading families in the German tribes in order to enforce “good behavior.”
One of these hostages was a young nobleman from the Cherusci tribe named Arminius. Arminius was raised and educated in a Roman family, and knew how the Romans thought and fought. Outwardly loyal and friendly to his captors, he inwardly resented Roman encroachment into Germania. Using a network of informants and spies, Arminius built up a clandestine alliance within the more prominent German tribes. He then offered his services to the new Roman governor of Germania, one Publius Quinctilius Varus. Unfortunately, Varus was a political figure given command of the area because of his connections in Rome, and not for his military skills (he had none). In the late Summer of 9 A.D., Arminius offered to guide Varus and three entire legions (over 15,000 men) through the Teutoburg Forest in Northern Germania. The Teutoburg is a deep, dark, almost primeval forest, with massive trees and few large paths.
It was a perfect ambush. With Arminius leading the foolish Varus by the nose through the forest, the legions were cut off and surrounded by tens of thousands of German tribesmen. Attacked on the narrow tree-lined paths in marching columns, the legions couldn’t deploy into open formations and use their superior training and skill at maneuver warfare. For four days, howling, screaming, half-naked tribesmen rushed out of the gloom to hurl spears and cut off isolated detachments of the leaderless legions. Gradually worn down, exhausted and harried, the legions were finally overwhelmed piecemeal and killed to a man. With the end in sight, Varus fell on his sword (literally).
This was one of the worst defeats in Roman history, on par with Cannae in terms of the tactical outcome. In a traditional pitched battle on open terrain, three Roman legions ought to have been able to smash a Germanic force many times their size (as, in fact, they usually did). To lose three entire legions, along with their sacred eagle standards, was an utter humiliation. The news was so distressing that Augustus was said to wander the halls of his palace for weeks on end afterwards, hitting his head against the wall, and crying out, “Varus! Varus! Give me back my legions!”
For hundreds of years, the exact location of the battle was hotly debated by historians, but most now believe they have finally found the final resting spot of Varus’ doomed legions. In the last few decades, archaeologists have excavated a huge number of items buried deep in the forest. The findings are grisly; bodies of Roman soldiers, some still wearing their uniforms and armor, and many with prominent puncture wounds that make for no mystery as to the cause of death. Coins, bits of gear and weapons have been found all over the area. Tacitus describes a Roman army finding the remains of the battlefield several years later -
“In the centre of the field were the whitening bones of men, as they had fled, or stood their ground, strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near, lay fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to trunks of trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars, on which they had immolated tribunes and first-rank centurions. Some survivors of the disaster who had escaped from the battle or from captivity, described how this was the spot where the officers fell, how yonder the eagles were captured, where Varus was pierced by his first wound, where too by the stroke of his own ill-starred hand he found for himself death. They pointed out too the raised ground from which Arminius had harangued his army, the number of gibbets for the captives, the pits for the living, and how in his exultation he insulted the standards and eagles.”
Heads nailed to tree trunks and captured survivors burned on altars might have seemed like a good warning to leave Germania alone. Rome mostly stopped its permanent expansion beyond the Rhine, and in the long run, the sometimes serves as a foreshadowing of Rome’s eventual fall. Another famous account of Tacitus describes the German tribes and their culture, and his positive portrayal of the primitive and pure virtue of the Germans in deliberate contrast to Roman moral decadence has long been held up as a key text for understanding the Roman empire and its ultimate demise.
- A Long Historical Half-life
The fame of Teutoburg Wald, especially when pared with Rome’s Fall, has lived on for a very long time. For some reason, Roman defeats often seem more memorable than Roman victories (Alia River, Cannae, Carrhae, Adrianople, etc.), and the Teutoburg was both very vivid, and occurred under one of Rome’s most consequential and remembered emperors.
In fact, in the early modern world, Teutoburg had a surprising resurgence in popularity and fame. Humanist scholars in Germany around the time of the Renaissance rediscovered Tacitus and his account of the German tribes, and the story of Arminius defeating the mighty Roman empire caught the nascent German cultural imagination. In the 19th century, after Napoleon’s repeated thrashing and temporary subjugation of Germany, interest in German culture and history helped spark German nationalism and the eventual unification of Germany as a country. The Latinate name “Arminius” was Gothicized into German as “Hermann,” and Hermann the German became a folk hero for the German race. Many European countries (and, under the old Holy Roman Empire, Germany itself) had boasted of their ancient connections to Rome. But the new German nationalism could boast of its independence from Rome, and the fact that the Germans had been so clever and tough as a people that the greatest empire on earth hadn’t been unable to conquer the volk.
Finally, Hermann-mania became so great that a statue was constructed in Western Germany, where (at that time) the battle was thought to have taken place. The Hermannsdenkmal is a huge (81 ft) statue sitting atop a pedestal (the combined height of both is 175 ft), with Hermann holding aloft a 23ft sword. The project took the better part of four decades, and was completed in 1875.
So yes, an ancient battle from 9 AD became surprisingly relevant in 19th and 20th century nationalism, and for claims of German racial superiority. This is by no means the only time we’ll see ancient and medieval history get repurposed by modern historians and politicians, and connects to why some historians today think “classical education” and “Western Civilization” have negative connotations (I disagree, but it’s important to understand why those connotations are out there).
- Back to the Romans
The claims of German nationalism and “Hermann the German” have inflated the important of Teutoburg. While the battle was a shock to Augustus, and Rome did ultimately decide not to conquer all of Germania, there was quite a bit more to the story. Let’s go back to that Tacitus quote of the Roman army marching through the remains of the battlefield and realize that…the Romans were back in Germania.
The Romans didn’t conquer Germania, but they definitely didn’t leave the German tribes alone. Six years after Teutoburg, The emperor Tiberius launched several large punitive invasions, led by the famous general Julius Caesar Germanicus, a member of the imperial family, and father of Caligula. Germanicus marched and burned his way through much of Western Germania, and essentially hunted Arminius into central Germany. When Arminius finally did offer battle, the Romans soundly trounced the Germans, though Arminius escaped. Germanicus recovered two of the three lost legionary standards.
In truth, this story is actually much closer to the norm of Roman-German relations throughout the first few hundred years of the empire. In almost any sort of normal set-piece engagement, Roman forces were massively superior to the German tribes. Every Roman soldier was professionally trained, and vastly better equipped. During the Teutoburg ambush, some Germanic tribesmen used only wooden spear points hardened in campfires, and most had little or no armor. German warriors were often quite brave, but the technological and organizational disparity between the two sides was stark. At the Teutoburg Wald, everything had gone right for the Germans and wrong for the Romans. It was the exception, not the norm.
So if the Romans could march through Germany with near-impunity, why didn’t they actually conquer it? While 19th century German nationalists would’ve cited German hardihood and bravery, the answer actually has more to do with geography and societal development.
Much of Germany, especially in the South and West, is either mountainous or heavily forested. Unlike the Mediterranean world with its highly concentrated city-states and urban centers, the German tribes mostly lived in small villages, and often moved every few years as they practiced slash and burn agriculture. With no large capital cities to threaten, there was little physical infrastructure for Roman field armies to concentrate on. In the face of invasion, the Germans very poverty meant that they could retreat into the mountains and forests, hide from the much more powerful legions, and then rebuild their simple huts when the Romans left. Germania also offered little in the way of economic value beyond timber, furs, and amber, so any Roman occupation force would had to be very large (to garrison all the small dispersed villages), and a massive net drain on the imperial treasury.
In short, rather than being full of unconquerable ubermensch, Germany was simply not worth occupying. It was cheaper and more effective for the Romans to garrison the Rhine river, and use diplomacy and the occasional punitive raid to keep the German tribes from causing too much trouble.
When it comes to the eventual Fall of Rome, and the famous Germanic invasions, things will look different. But again, not in a way that necessarily favors those 19th century German nationalists, and not in a way that fits the stereotypical image of weak Roman decadence. After all, many of the Germanic soldiers who sack Rome will do so while speaking Latin, and often will be practicing Christians.
So in effect, the Romans did not conquer Germania for the same reason they left modern day Scotland free, the land was so poor it wasn't even worth to be conquered.