Rome's Greatest Defeat

Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest

Adrian Murdoch

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780750940160
• eBook ISBN:
  9780752494555
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In AD 9 half of Rome's Western army was ambushed in a German forest and annihilated. Three legions, three cavalry units and six auxiliary regiments - some 25, 000 men - were wiped out. It dealt a body blow to the empire's imperial pretensions and was Rome's greatest defeat. No other battle stopped the Roman empire dead in its tracks.

Although one of the most significant and dramatic battles in European history, this is also one which has been largely overlooked. Drawing on primary sources and a vast wealth of new archaeological evidence, Adrian Murdoch brings to life the battle itself, the historical background and the effects of the Roman defeat as well as exploring the personalities of those who took part.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. While this is obviously a reconstruction, it is hopefully a plausible one. For broad events see Tacitus, Annals, 1.61–2, 2.7, 2.45 and Germania, 6. See also Susanne Wilbers-Rost, ‘Kalkriese und die Varusschlacht – Archäologische Nachweise einer militärischen Auseinandersetzung zwischen Römern und Germanen’ in Philip Freeman (ed.) et al., Limes XVIII: Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies held in Amman, Jordan, September 2000 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 515–26; Claus von Carnap-Bornheim, ‘Archäologisch-historische Überlegungen zum Fundplatz Kalkrieser-Niewedder Senke in den Jahren zwischen 9 n. Chr. und 15 n. Chr.’ in Wolfgang Schlüter (ed.), Rom, Germanien und die Ausgrabungen von Kalkriese (Osnabrück, 1999), pp. 495–508.

2. Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, 2.119.1; Florus, Epitome of Roman History, 2.30.

3. Suetonius, Augustus, 28.

4. Virgil, Aeneid, 6.792–3; Eclogues, 4.9; Horace, Odes, 1.35.29–30.

5. Tacitus, Germania, 37.

6. A.A. Gill, AA Gill is Away (London, 2002), p. 179.

7. Deuteronomy, 12.3. See also 7.5 and 16.21.

8. The British view of forests is divided between those, like Rowling and Kenneth Grahame, who preserve the southern European tradition, and others, like A.A. Milne, whose Hundred Acre Wood is a sanctuary.

9. There have been two accounts of the battle specifically since the discoveries of the 1990s. Tony Clunn’s In Quest of the Lost Legions: The Varusschlacht (Minerva, 1999), updated as Quest for the Lost Roman Legions (Spellmount, 2005), and Peter Wells’ The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Armenius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest (Norton, 2003). The former is a thrilling account of the discovery of the site, much of it based on the author’s own diaries, while the latter is particularly strong on the archaeological evidence.

10. Dieter Timpe, Der Triumph des Germanicus: Untersuchungen zu den Feldzügen der Jahre 14–16 n. Chr. in Germanien (Bonn, 1968), p. 2.

11. Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, tr. Frederick Shipley (London, 1924), p. viii.

12. Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, 2.118.1, 2.117.3, 2.120.5.

13. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 7.20. For the plausible suggestion that Tacitus commanded a legion in Germany, see Herbert Benario, ‘Tacitus, Trier and the Treveri’, Classical Journal 83 (1987/8), 233–9, specifically 238–9.

14. Herbert Benario, ‘Arminius into Hermann: History into Legend’, Greece & Rome 51 (2004), 84.

15. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 56.18.2, 56.22.2a, 78.21.2.

16. Florus, Epitome of Roman History, 2.30.

17. Reinhard Wolters, ‘Hermeneutik des Hinterhalts: die antiken Berichte zur Varuskatastrophe und der Fundplatz von Kalkriese’, Klio 85 (2003), 132.

18. Colin Wells, ‘What’s new along the Lippe: recent work in North Germany’, Britannia 29 (1998), 458.

19. Tacitus, Annals, 1.60.

20. Vincent Goulding, ‘Back to the future with asymmetric warfare’, Parameters (winter 2001/2), 21–30.

CHAPTER ONE

1. Taci...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Maps
• Family Trees
• Introduction: This Savage Forest
• One: The Tangled Paths of War
• Two: A Wolf or a Shepherd?
• Three: Pore Benighted ’Eathen
• Four: This Terrible Calamity
• Five: Give Me Back My Legions!
• Six: Germany’s Might
• Seven: A Second Troy
• Appendix: The Finds
• Notes
• Select Bibliography