Teutoburg Forest, AD 9 : The Destruction of Varus and His Legions

'The archetypal image of the Roman Empire is that of an edifice stretching from Britain in the north-west to Egypt in the south-east, bound by the African desert to the south, and the two main waterways of Europe – the Rhine and the Danube – to the north. At the beginning of the Empire this was, however, not the case. At the time of the beginning of the Christian era, Augustus had reigned as Emperor for over 30 years and was presiding over a consolidation of Roman borders, in effect defining the limits of the Empire. The first three decades of Augustus'reign saw peace and prosperity along both the Rhine and the Danube as Roman influence began to spread north and east, allowing the creation of a number of new provinces such as Noricum and Pannonia. However, the Balkans erupted in rebellion in AD 6 and the Emperor immediately sent an army under the command of his stepson Tiberius to put down the insurrection, but it took even this talented general almost three years before the provinces were brought back into some state of normalcy. Watching from Germany was a young auxiliary officer named Arminius (Hermann), a member of the Cheruscan tribe. As a youth he and his brother Flavius had been sent to Rome as hostages, being given a formal Roman education in the hope that they would become advocates of Roman rule amongst the German tribes. Arminius felt that Rome could be beaten in battle and that such a victory would guarantee the freedom of the Germans as a confederation of independent tribes, led by the Cheruscans, who would – in turn – be led by him. In the meantime he had insinuated his way into a position of trust with Varus, the new governor of Germania Inferior, becoming an indispensable link between the Romans and the local tribes. Throughout AD 8 and the early part of AD 9, Arminius used his position well, ostensibly promoting Rome whilst, in reality welding the tribes together in an anti-Roman alliance, agreeing with his confederates that they would wait until the Roman garrison had moved to their summer quarters and then rise up against the invaders. Varus led the army across the Rhine as planned, pushing eastwards towards the Elbe where an encampment was established near the modern city of Minden. Here the army remained, whilst expeditions were sent out into the interior to collect taxes and tribute, whilst Arminius, under the guise of patrolling the countryside for hostile elements used the time to visit his allies and prepare for the revolt. With the arrival of September, the time soon came for the Roman troops to return to their stations along the Rhine and as they marched westwards through the almost impenetrable Teutoburg Forest, Arminius sprang his trap. In a series of running battles in the forest, Varus'army, consisting of three Roman Legions (XVII, XVIII and XIX) and several thousand auxiliaries – a total of roughly 20,000 men – was destroyed. The consequences for Rome were enormous – the province of Germania was now virtually undefended and Gaul was open to a German invasion which although it never materialized, led a traumatised Augustus to decree that, henceforth, the Rhine would remain the demarcation line between the Roman world and the German tribes, in addition to which the destroyed legions were never re-formed or their numbers reused in the Roman Army: after AD 9, the sequence of numbers would run from I to XVI and then from XX onwards, it was as if the three legions had never existed.'