of auxiliary troops, fully 90,000, were employed in this war. Terror was felt not only in Macedonia, but even in Italy and Rome. Augustus himself had hastened to Ariminum, to be near the seat of war; levies were raised in Italy and placed under Germanicus, son of Drusus, a youth of twenty-one years. In 7 A.D. the course of the hostilities was desultory; the rebels avoided engagements in the open field. Germanicus advanced from Siscia along the river Unna into western Dalmatia, and conquered the tribe of the Maezaei, who dwelled in the extreme west of modern Bosnia. Subsequently (7-8 A.D.) he captured three important strongholds, which seem to have been situated on the borders of Liburnia and Iapydia. The next serious event was the long siege of Arduba, in south-eastern Dalmatia, which was marked by the heroic obstinacy of the women, who, when the place was captured, threw themselves and their children into the fire. But in the following autumn the Pannonian Bato was induced to betray his cause. He surrendered in a battle fought at the stream of Bathinus (August 3) and handed over his colleague and rival Pinnes to Tiberius, who in return recognized him as prince of the Breuci. But his treachery did not go unpunished. He was caught and put to death by his Dalmatian namesake. Germanicus hastened in person to carry the news of the Bathinus to Augustus at Ariminum, and the Emperor returned to Rome, where he was received with thank-offerings. But although this victory practically determined the end of the war, Tiberius was obliged in the following year to bring his forces again into the field against the Dalmatians, and Bato, besieged in his last refuge, Andetrium (near Salona?), at length gave up the desperate cause, and was sent as a prisoner to Ravenna, where he died. When he was led before Tiberius, and was asked why he had rebelled, he replied, “It is your doing, in that you send not dogs or shepherds to guard your sheep, but wolves to prey on them”.
Gennanicus, who had taken part in the suppression of this dangerous and tedious war—the hardest, it was said, since the war with Hannibal—showed high promise of future distinction, and, like his father, was a universal favorite. Triumphal ornaments were granted to him, and he was placed first in the rank of praetorians in the senate. To Tiberius himself the senate decreed a triumph, but it was not destined to be celebrated. The people had hardly time to realize the successes of the legions of the Danube, when the news came of a terrible disaster which had befallen the legions of the Rhine.
SECT. III. — THE GERMAN REBELLION AND DEFEAT OF VARUS
The Emperor seems to have entertained few fears of the possibility of a rising in his new German province. For he named as commander of the Rhine armies a man, distantly related to himself by marriage, who had no experience of active warfare and was quite incompetent to meet any grave emergency. This was Publius Quinctilius Varus, who, as imperial legatus in Syria, had won wealth, if not fame. It was said that when he came to that province he was poor and Syria was rich; but when he went, he was rich and Syria was poor. His experiences as governor of Syria proved unlucky for him as governor in Germany. He utterly misconceived the situation. He imagined that the policy which he had successfully pursued in Syria might be adopted equally well in Germany. He failed to perceive the differences between the two cases; and to mark the weak grasp with which Rome, as yet, held the lands between the Rhine and the Albis. He seems to have felt himself perfectly sale in the wild places of Germany, under the shield of the Roman name; he imposed taxes on the natives and dealt judgment without any fear of consequences.
But a storm was brewing under his very eyes. It seemed to those German patriots, who could never brook with patience the rule of a foreign master, that the moment had come when a struggle for the liberty of their nation might be attempted with some chance of success. In this enterprise only four prominent German peoples were concerned, the Cherusci, the Chatti, the Marsi, and the Bructeri; the same who had before distinguished themselves by their opposition to Drusus. The Frisians, the Chauci, the Suevic peoples who acknowledged the overlordship of Maroboduus, took no part in this insurrection. The plotter and leader of the rebellion was the Cheruscan prince Arminius, son of Sigimer, then in the twenty-sixth year of his age. He and his brother Flavus had received the privilege of Roman citizenship from Augustus; he had been raised to the equestrian rank, and had seen military service under the Roman standard. He was not only physically brave, but it was thought that he possessed intellectual qualities unusual in a barbarian. The Romans naturally trusted his loyalty, and the insinuations of Segestes his countryman, who knew him belter, received no attention.
Sigimer, the brother, and Segimund, the son of this Sejestes, threw themselves into the enterprise of Arminius, and Thusnelda, the daughter of Segestes, married the young patriot against the wishes of her father.
It was the policy of the contrivers of the insurrection to keep the design dark until the last moment, and in the meantime to lull Varus, already secure, into a security still more complete. Of the five Germanic legions, two had their winter-quarters at Moguntiacum, the other three at Castra Vettra on the Lower Rhine, or at the fortress of Aliso on the Luppia. In summer they used sometimes to visit the interior parts of the province; and in 9 A.D., Varus, with three legions, occupied summer-quarters on the Visurgis, probably not far from the modern town of Minden and the Porta Westfalica. The camp was lull of advocates and clients, and the chief conspirators were present, on intimate terms with the governor and constantly dining with him. Autumn came, and as the rainy season approached. Varus prepared to retrace his steps westward. There can be no doubt that a line of communication connected his summer station with Aliso; and, if the army had returned as it came, Arminius could hardly have been successful in his plans. But a message suddenly arrived that a distant tribe had revolted, and Varus decided to take a roundabout way homewards in order to suppress it. This news was suspiciously opportune for the rebels. The Romans had to make their way through a hilly district of pathless forests, and their difficulties were increased not only by the encumbrances of heavy baggage and camp-followers, but by the heavy rains, which had already begun and made the ground slippery. The moment had come for the German patriots to strike a desperate blow for independence. Segestes warned Varus of the impending dancer, but the infatuated governor trusted the asseverations of Arminius. As the legions were making their laborious way through the saltus Teutoburgiensis, they were assailed by the confederate insurgents. This Teutoburg forest cannot be identified with any certainty, but it seems to have been somewhere between the Amisia and the Luppia, north-east of Aliso. It is impossible to determine how far the circumstances of the case and how far the incompetence of the general were to blame for the disaster which followed.
For three days the Romans continued to advance, resisting as well as they could the attacks of the foe, and if Varus had possessed the confidence of his soldiers and known how to hold them together it seems probable that he might have passed through the danger in safety. But both officers and soldiers were demoralized under his command. The prefect of the horse deserted his post, taking all the cavalry with him, and leaving the foot-soldiers to their fate. Varus was the first to despair; he had received a wound, and he slew himself. Others followed his example; and the rest surrendered. The prisoners were slain, some buried alive, some crucified, some sacrificed on the altars. The forces of Varus consisted of three legions (XVII, XVIII, XIX), six cohorts, and three squadrons of cavalry. The army had been weakened by the loss of detachments, which, at the request of the conspirators, had been sent to the territories of various tribes to preserve order. These detachments, taken chiefly from the auxiliary cohorts, were slaughtered when the insurrection broke out. Of the troops which were entrapped in the Teutoburg forest, numbering probably almost 20,000 men, only the cavalry escaped and a few individual foot-soldiers. The three eagles of the three legions fell into the hands of the victors. Such a disaster had not befallen since the day of Carrhae.
The peoples of central Germany from the Rhine to the Visurgis had thus thrown off the Roman yoke; the cause of freedom had been victorious. Two results, fraught with great danger to the Roman Empire, seemed likely to follow. It was to be feared that the triumphant Germans would push across to the left bank of the Rhine, arouse a revolt there, and perhaps shake the fidelity of Gaul. And seemingly it was to be feared that Maroboduus, lord of the Marcomanni, and chief of the Suevic confederacy, would declare himself on the side of the insurgents, now they were successful. But neither of these dangers was realized. The first was foiled by the bravery of Lucius Caedicius, commander of the garrison in Aliso, and the promptness of Lucius Nonius Asprenas, who commanded the two legions stationed at Moguntiacum. The first movement of the rebels after their victory was to attack