Ancient World Review

The Immortal Publius Quinctilius Varus (Updated)

Publius Quinctilius Varus is a tragic figure remembered only because of his disastrous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 AD), aka the Varian Disaster and "Rome's greatest defeat." I wonder what he would have thought if he'd known he would gain immortality by committing such a gigantic blunder that it would end up being named after him? There are many paths to fame and screwing up big time is one of them.

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised, Varus came from a "patrician family that had been of no importance for centuries. He owed his career to the favor of Augustus," who probably regretted his choice later on when Varus lost three legions in the forests of Germany. According to Tacitus, many of the defeated Roman soldiers were enslaved or sacrificed to the Germanic gods. Not a good end to a legionary's career.

Varus has gone down in history for his monumental defeat in Germania, but he must have been a reasonably competent man to win the favor of a capable administrator like Augustus. Up until the debacle in the Teutoburg Forest, Varus had had a fairly distinguished career:

"Varus became proconsul of Africa (?7-6 BC), and then legate of Syria. When Judea revolted after the death of Herod the Great, he marched rapidly southwards and dealt firmly with the insurgents." (OCD)

"Next heard of as legate of the Rhine army [governor of Germania] in AD 9, Varus fell victim to geography and the German tribes' resistance to Roman rule:"

According to Livius, "Varus and the three legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were somewhere near the river Weser (perhaps near modern Minden) when he learned of an insurrection in the west. He decided to return to the Rhine and make a detour through the rebellious area. The only road led through a small strip of accessible land; to the south, there were the inaccessible hills of the Teutoburg forest, and to the north, marshes made progress difficult. It was the perfect place to trap the heavy legionaries."

Filmed in 2015 at the supposed site of the disaster in Germany.

The terrain probably made it impossible for Varus to cover his flanks, but he seems to have assumed that he wouldn't have problems from the local Germanic tribes. As it turned out, this was a mistake:

"[He] was treacherously attacked in difficult country by Arminius [chief of the Cherusci], whom he had trusted. The Roman army was destroyed ... and Varus took his own life." (OCD)

Arminius apparently lured Varus into the trap by posing as a friend of Rome and informing him of the rebellion in the west. In a disgraceful act all too familiar from recent history, Augustus blamed Varus not only for the disaster, but for the failure of his entire policy in Germany:

"Varus was made the scapegoat for the signal failure of Augustus' whole German policy. He is alleged to have been grossly extortionate in Syria, torpid and incompetent in his German command." (OCD)

This just begs the question, of course. After all, if Varus was so incompetent and corrupt, why was he given command in Germania in the first place? In any case, the defeat had major repercussions for the Roman empire, which halted its attempts to conquer the Germans and limited its frontier to the Rhine, laying the foundations for many more calamities to come.

Conclusion: If you want to go down in history, you have to either achieve great things like Thomas Edison, kill someone important (like Lee Harvey Oswald), or, like Publius Quinctilius Varus, fail in such a spectacular fashion that your name lives on forever.

Tacitus' Germania: "A Most Dangerous Book"

The Germania by the great Roman historian Tacitus is "a most dangerous book," according to the thought police in the Lugenpresse. Tacitus' description of the history and culture of the ancient Germanic tribes living outside the control of the Roman empire has become a kind of ethnologic bible in Germany and everybody knows that the Germans can't be allowed to have a sense of national pride and identity. For instance, the Harvard Gazette (2008) said that Tacitus "helped to fuel Nazi propaganda" and the New York Times (2011) claimed that the book "was exactly what nationalists had been waiting for."  And many other "journalists" agree:

"Perhaps the most fateful decision in all of European history was made by Augustus Caesar, when he chose to fix the border of the Roman Empire at the Rhine. As a result, the region known to the Romans as Germania would go without the products of Roman civilization (1) —good roads and big cities and the Latin language and Christianity (2). But it would also remain vigorous and untamed enough to threaten Roman power, and finally destroy it in the fifth century A.D." Source: "Ideas Are Viruses - How Tacitus' Germania Became the Bible of German Nationalism," Slate.com (2011)

Comment: This is all crap, of course, not to mention the fact that it's obvious anti-German propaganda. The paranoia about Tacitus' history of Germania is the kind of stuff you would expect from these particular sources, however. (See the footnotes below for some of the problems with the arguments in the Slate article.)

Tacitus was the greatest historian ancient Rome ever produced. His primary concern in all of his writings was to analyze and expose the corruption of the Roman state under the emperors.

According to Moses Hadas, in his introduction to the 1942 Modern Library edition of the complete works of Tacitus (p. xii), "[i]t is a temptation to which many have succumbed to look upon the Germania as a sort of Utopia, a conscious idealization of a primitive and unspoiled people calculated to chasten and reform the decadent Romans. This view is justified in the degree that a strong moralizing strain runs through all Tacitus' work. It has been wittily remarked that no one in Tacitus is good except Agricola [his father-in-law] and the Germans."

Concerning the problems with the Slate article:

(1) The writer seems to think that the savage Germans would have become more civilized if they had been conquered by the Romans. It's hard to understand how the warlike Germans would have become less warlike by exposure to the warlike Roman culture, but it hardly matters because the author of this Slate article has his facts all wrong. In reality, the Germans were exposed to Roman civilization and learned Roman methods of warfare from them, among other things. 

Many Germans served in the legions. In one notable example, Arminius, the commander of the German tribes who wiped out three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9AD, had served in the Roman military and was apparently a Roman citizen. The Romans needed mercenary forces and, like modern Americans, they ended up providing weapons and training to some of their worst enemies.

(2) - The author of the Slate piece also got it wrong when he said that Germania wasn't exposed to Christianity. The Germans described by Tacitus were still pagans, but by the time of the invasions, many of the invading tribes were Christians, though of a "heretical" variety. The Visigoths who sacked Rome, for instance, were Arian Christians:

"Being Arian Christians, the Visigoths respected Christian sites and treasures. According to one story, a group of them refused to steal rich gold and silver vessels when told that they belonged to St Peter and on Alaric’s orders the sacred objects were carried safely through the streets to St Peter’s Church, respectfully accompanied by a throng of Christian citizens who were only too glad to find sanctuary there themselves. St Augustine told this story in City of God to help rebut allegations by pagans that the sack of Rome was the fault of the Christians, who had enraged the city’s pagan gods." Source: History Today (2010)

I have no idea how true these stories are, but I really doubt if Christians in Rome ever "respectfully" marched through the city with the invading Visigoths or that the invaders "refused to steal rich gold and silver vessels." St. Augustine is a suspect source, to say the least, and he obviously had an agenda in presenting the Visigoths as being respectful of Christian fetishes.

The "barbarians" were Christians, but their religion didn't have any effect on their warlike behavior. That's not too surprising, however. Even if they had been completely "orthodox," there is absolutely no evidence in history that Christianity has ever made people more gentle or nations more peaceful. 

Getting back to Tacitus, it's disingenuous for modern writers to blame him in any way for the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Ethnic nationalism - a sense of common tribal or racial identity - has been a common feature of all countries throughout history. Besides, even if Tacitus did idealize his pagan subjects to a certain extent in order to contrast them with the decadent Romans there's no evidence that I'm aware of that his information on the Germanic tribes is intentionally inaccurate.

According to Moses Hadas again, "More than six hundred items of information are recorded [in the Germania], of a credibility, to be sure, varying with that of Tacitus' sources. The sources were undoubtedly the best available, and included eye-witness accounts as well as written material, and Tacitus was a conscientious workman."

Modern Germans have every right to be proud of their ancestors.

Roman Legionaries In China? (UPDATED)

Comment: This theory is speculative, but the idea that Roman soldiers ended up in China isn't totally implausible. The general scenario of how it could have happened goes like this:

In 53 BC, the Roman politician and general Marcus Crassus (115-53 BC) was killed at the Battle of Carrhae when he led his army into a trap during his ill-advised invasion of Parthia, an empire which bordered on China:

"At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han dynasty of China, became a center of trade and commerce." (Wikipedia)

This map shows the location of Parthia when it was part of the Median Empire around 600 BC. Parthia is in the upper part of the yellow region just to the right of the Caspian Sea.

Crassus' invasion of Parthia was a complete disaster:

"In a slaughter known as the battle of Carrhae the Romans lost nearly their entire army and Crassus was killed. [The story is that the Parthians captured Crassus, the richest man in Rome, and executed him by pouring molten gold down his throat.] The remaining 10,000 or so Roman legionaries were captured." Source: War History Online.

The Parthians apparently used their Roman prisoners as border guards along the eastern frontiers:

"The Parthians had a standard practice of employing captured soldiers as border guards. By transferring the 10,000 legionaries to the eastern borders they prevented any realistic chance of escape for the Romans who likely would have simply accepted their new lot in life. Record of the soldiers vanish for about 17 years when the battle of Zhizhi was fought as a Chinese army under Chen Tang assaulted a border town known today as Taraz, located in Kazakhstan near the border of Kyrgyzstan." (War History Online)

According to the story, some of these former Roman soldiers and Parthian border guards fought as mercenaries at the battle of Zhizhi. They were either captured or defected to the Chinese, who were impressed by their fighting abilities and -- like the Parthians -- stationed them in a border town to guard the frontier:

"Anywhere from 100 to 1,000 or more soldiers established themselves in this town that was known by the Chinese as Liqian/Li-Jien, which is pronounced as 'legion'." (War History Online) "...It seems these Romans lived peacefully in Liqian, and 2,000 years later we have DNA evidence that over 50% of the villagers in modern day Liqian have Caucasian ancestry including green and blue eyes, increased average height and other distinguishing characteristics such as distinctly Roman noses."

If this story is true, then these Roman soldiers who fought under Crassus at Carrhae (and their descendants) had an extremely wild and strange destiny, to say the least. But is the story true?

First of all, there's no doubt that the inhabitants of the region of Liqian, China, have some kind of European ancestry. According to Wikipedia, "The area of the former Liqian city is known for the distinctive physical appearance of its inhabitants. The population has higher frequencies of traits prevalent in Europe, such as aquiline noses, blonde or light-colored hair, blue or green eyes, and relatively fair skin tones."

Who were these Europeans and where did they come from? The idea that they were Roman soldiers or their descendants isn't all that farfetched, but it's still controversial:

"A hypothesis by the sinologist Homer H. Dubs, according to which Roman legionaries clashed with Han troops during the battle and were resettled afterwards in a Chinese village named Liqian, has been rejected by modern historians and geneticists on the grounds of a critical appraisal of the ancient sources and recent DNA testings of the village people. However, this hypothesis has been supported by prominent scholars like Lev Gumilev."

It's possible that the people of Liqian are descended from Caucasoid Indo-Europeans who were living in the region long before the Romans went to war with Parthia:

"People with normatively Caucasoid traits and/or who spoke Indo-European languages lived in areas that are now part of Gansu and Xinjiang centuries before the Romans, including the Yuezhi, Wusun, Basmyls, Tocharians, and some prehistoric Siberian populations." (Wikipedia)

You can always trust the experts to mess up a good story, but I've got to admit that some of these Chinese do look like they have Roman ancestry. The people in Liqian are trying to use their supposed relationship with the Romans to boost their tourism industry and who can blame them? Whether the story is true or not is a different matter altogether.

Remote Sensing Discovers 66 New Roman Army Sites On Iberian Peninsula

Video from 2016.

"The discovery of dozens of new Roman Army sites thanks to remote sensing technology has revealed more about one of the empire's most infamous conflicts." Source: Science Daily.

"Analysis of the 66 camps shows the Roman army had a larger presence in the region than previously thought during the 200-year battle to conquer the Iberian Peninsula."

Background: "In 218 BC, during the Second Punic War against the Carthaginians, the first Roman troops occupied the Iberian Peninsula; however, it was not until the reign of Augustus that it was annexed after 200 years of war with the Celts and Iberians. The result was the creation of the province of Hispania. It was divided into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior during the late Roman Republic, and during the Roman Empire, it was divided into Hispania Tarraconensis in the northeast, Hispania Baetica in the south and Lusitania in the southwest." (Wikipedia)

Related: Roman Conquest of Hispania: Native Resistance.

The Romans under the famous Scipio Africanus drove Carthage out of the Iberian Peninsula in 206 BC. After that victory, two provinces were formally created on the peninsula:  Hispania Citerior along the eastern coast, and Hispania Ulterior along the southeastern coast and in the valley of the Guadalquivir River, the largest navigable river in Spain.

The Romans used these provinces to expand their power on the peninsula, but the conquest wasn't easy or fast. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), "both provinces were gradually extended inland in rapacious and reactive campaigns against native peoples and tribes bordering the provinces, culminating in the Lusitanian (155-139 BC) and Celtiberian (153-133 BC) wars."

These were destructive campaigns. For instance, the Celtiberians suffered something like 22,000 casualties in just one battle, according to Wikipedia. And guerilla warfare was apparently common. Next video tells the story of Viriathus, an important leader of the Lusitanian resistance against the Romans.

The resistance dragged on for a long time, but it was ultimately futile. After almost two centuries of conflict under several different emperors, Augustus completed the conquest of Iberia in the Cantabrian Wars (26-19 BC) and the Romans consolidated their new territory of Hispania in a process that involved not only military force but a strategy of cultural Romanization:

"The new Augustan conquest required three legions in northwest Tarraconensis; by the time of Vespasian they had been reduced to VII Gemina only. Twenty-two colonies were founded, and a large number of municipia created, under Caesar and Augustus, forming the basis for a Roman urban network within juridicial conventus in each province. Following the development of a municipal imperial cult at Tarraco (AD 15), there soon followed the establishment of a conventual (Tarraconensis) and provincial imperial cult (under the Flavians)." (OCD)

The Roman Military Triplex Acies

"The historical successes of the ancient Roman army had always intrinsically pertained to their ability to adopt and ‘learn’ from their enemies. One of these evolutionary measures related to the adoption of the manipular formations, circa 4th century BC. In essence, this brought forth the famed Triplex Acies, a standard combat formation of the Roman legions that entailed three lines of maniples – with the field army spread in a quincunx (checkerboard) pattern." Source: Realm of History.

The Triplex Acies was much more effective than the phalanx introduced by the Greeks or a standard single line of formation. "The Romans in particular developed their own unique take on [the single line of formation], the triplex acies ('triple line'). Actually, they copied it from the Samnite peoples of Italy with whom Rome fought a series of deadly wars over the fourth century B.C. (prior, they had used Greek style phalanxes). However, though they didn't invent it, they certainly perfected it, as this was the classic tactic that the Romans famously used against Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and so many others. This was, in effect, the formation that won Rome the Mediterranean!" Source: Deviant Art.

Related: How did the Romans swap units around mid-battle?

Roman battle tactics

The Evolution Of Roman Battle Tactics

The history of the development of the Roman army and its fighting tactics is too long and detailed to get into here. For more information, see Wikipedia's article on the Structural History of the Roman Military.

An excellent (and massive) resource for information on the legions of the empire is Legions of Rome: The Definitive History of Every Imperial Legion by Stephen Dando-Collins.

Dando-Collins, a prolific military historian and the author of the fantastic book The Great Fire of Rome, has also written a series of books which provide more in-depth information on the history of particular legions. Highly recommended.

Ancient Romans Painted Horrifying Blood-red Warnings On Wall Across Scotland

"Ancient Romans used blood red, bright yellow and stunning white paints to illustrate dire warnings on the wall [the Antonine Wall] that separated them from the rebellious tribespeople of Scotland, a new study shows." Source: Live Science (2018).

"The painted warnings — including Roman eagles with blood-stained beaks, and the slain and decapitated bodies of the defeated victims of the victorious Roman legions — were shown alongside Latin inscriptions on carved stone slabs placed along a Roman rampart in Scotland."

Note: The research here included "the two most famous stones from the Antonine Wall: the Summerston slab, which was found on a farm near Glasgow around 1694, and the Bridgeness Slab, discovered in 1868 near the town of Falkirk, at the eastern end of the Antonine Wall.

Related: Scotland: Rome's Final Frontier.

The Malaria Theory Of The Fall Of Rome

"A close inspection of remains from almost 2,000 years ago has revealed traces of malaria, hinting that a severe form of the disease was plaguing the citizens of ancient Rome." Source: Daily Mail (2016).

"Analysis of remains from three separate burial sites across Italy show traces of a virulent form of the malaria-causing parasite from as far back as the 1st century CE. (Emphasis added)

"Scientists say the findings provide more information about the evolution of the disease, with the death toll potentially hitting the Roman Empire hard."

There's no doubt that the Romans suffered from malaria outbreaks:

"Analysis of 2,000-year-old human remains from several regions across the Italian peninsula has found 'overwhelming evidence' of malaria during the Roman Empire." Source: Wired UK (2016).

"Seeming to settle a long-standing debate about the disease's pervasiveness in this ancient civilisation, the research also opens up new questions about this parasite's potential role in its collapse."

The theory here is that an ongoing malaria epidemic weakened the Roman army just when it was needed the most. The evidence for this is based on the excavation of a few ancient cemeteries where malaria-pitted bones and direct evidence of Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent form of human malaria, were discovered. One of the most important finds was made at a children's necropolis in Lugnano, Italy, where the skeletons  of around 50 infants were apparently buried within a short period of time, suggesting an epidemic. These infants are known as the Children of Lugnano.

Note: Several so-called "vampire burials" were also discovered at the Lugnano necropolis.

Video posted in 2018.

Did a malaria epidemic cause or at least contribute to the fall of Rome? The timing here is right, more or less. The Lugnano cemetery dates back to ~450 AD, around 26 years before "Odoacer deposed the Emperor Romulus," the last Roman emperor, according to Wikipedia. ( The decline of the western empire was a long drawn-out process, but the fall of Romulus (476 AD) is traditionally used to date the collapse of Rome in the West. ) It's possible that this was just a local outbreak, however.

One interesting detail about the Lugnano burials is that some of the Christian Romans interred there may have reverted to their earlier pagan traditions when confronted by this frightening epidemic:

"The disease is thought to have spawned panic: despite the fact that Romans were by then officially Christians, pagan offerings such as a raven's claw and decapitated puppy skeletons were found nearby."

Decapitated puppies. Very nice.

According to the BBC (2017), "[t]he children of Lugnano died of malaria, and it is likely that there were also many adult victims of the disease, although their cemetery has not yet been found. This would have made it difficult for farmers to collect crops and for the local army commanders to raise troops."

More evidence has surfaced over the years. The analysis of these various burials confirms that malaria was a recurring problem in ancient Rome -- and the ancient world in general -- but this was already known from the primary sources.

Malaria (and tuberculosis) are the most common diseases found in ancient literature, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised). "In the highly seasonal Mediterranean climate malaria occurs mainly in the summer and autumn and affects adults at least as much as children, helping to explain its importance for ancient doctors. It depends for its transmission on certain species of mosquitoes, and was probably absent from some regions where these vectors did not occur."

There's no doubt that outbreaks of malaria have had a dramatic effect on warfare throughout history. For example, it's possible (probable?) that Alexander the Great died of malaria contracted during his invasion of India. According to the Malaria Site, "Malaria has shaped the course of history for millennia. It has always been part of the ups and downs of nations; of wars and of upheavals. Kings, popes, and military leaders were struck down in their prime by malaria [See below]. Many great warriors succumbed to malaria after returning from the warfront and advance of armies into continents was prevented by malaria. In many conflicts, more troops were killed by malaria than in combat."

It's likely that malaria did have a major impact on events during the fall of the western Roman empire. For example, "[i]n the fourth century A.D., Alaric, King of the Goths, attacked Rome and triumphed. But his triumph was short lived for he got sick with malaria and died soon after entering the town." (Malaria site). And "[t]he invading army of Attila (452 AD) was stopped in Rome by malaria."

Note: The role of malaria in the death of Alaric and in stopping Attila is apparently still conjectural.

Video from 2016. As far as I know the consensus view that Alaric died of malaria has never been proven and the cause of Alexander's death is still a matter of debate.

How important was malaria in the fall of Rome? Outbreaks of the disease were probably a recurring factor in the period of the decline, but whether they were serious enough to have contributed directly to the collapse of the western empire is a different matter altogether. An outbreak could easily effect the outcome of a battle, but so far I haven't been able to find any specific evidence that malaria had anything to do with the defeat of any particular legion. And when you're talking about a series of battles spread out over decades, it seems unlikely that malaria played a major role in the collapse.

One of the biggest problems with the malaria theory is that malaria and other diseases were always a problem in the ancient world. It's possible that Rome was hit by a particularly nasty form of the disease in the fifth century, but according to the Daily Mail article quoted above the evidence shows "traces of a virulent form of the malaria-causing parasite from as far back as the 1st century CE," the time when Rome was growing into a major power. Nasty forms of malaria had always been around so there must have been other, more important factors involved in the collapse of the Roman army centuries later.

Roman Propaganda: The Arch Of Titus

The Arch Of Titus is a classic example of ancient Roman propaganda. The arch, with its scenes of Roman legions triumphing over Jewish rebels, was designed to glorify not only Titus, but the empire itself and by extension it's rulers. Titus, an effective and popular leader, didn't live very long and was succeeded by his brother Domitian, who was widely despised as a tyrant (the historian Tacitus hated him). By completing the Arch of Titus, Domitian was probably making an attempt to share in his brother's reflected glory.

The arch is an example of visual propaganda. The use of monumental architecture, inscriptions, sculptures, public spectacles and so on was necessary in a society where most people were illiterate. Literacy rates are higher today, but most people don't read so the use of imagery is still critical for controlling the masses.

Modern governments use various techniques to spread their message, but video is probably the most important. Some examples would be the release of "smart bomb" videos during the Gulf Wars and the staged footage of American soldiers toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein. The Romans didn't have TV or film, so they used sculpture and monuments instead. The effect, however, would have been about the same.

The Bononia/Babba Vida Fort In Bulgaria

Note: Video above shows the medieval Baba Vida fort built on the site of the old Roman Bononia fort.

"The Bononia fort located on the territory of [the] northwestern Bulgarian city of Vidin is the largest Roman fort along the lower stretch of [the] Danube river, according to an expert." Source: Archaeology News Network.

History: The city of Vidin evolved over the centuries from "an old Celtic settlement known as Dunonia," according to Wikipedia. The Romans built a fortified town, Bononia, on the site and it "grew into one of the important centres of the province of Upper Moesia, encompassing the territory of modern north-western Bulgaria and eastern Serbia."

In the 10th century, the Slavs (?) built a fort on the site known as Baba Vida, "said to be the only entirely preserved medieval castle in the country."

During the Roman period, Bononia was part of Cisalpine Gaul, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed revised). "First settled c. 1000 BC, about 500 BC the Etruscans founded Felsina there. Felsina became the chief Etruscan city north of the Appenines, but fell first to the Boii, then to Rome (196 BC)."

This was an unstable, barbarous region and the Roman limes [fortified frontier defensive installations] were located in the region north of the river. Moesia itself always "remained a military borderland", according to the OCD. "Apart from the old-established Greek cities on the Black Sea Coast and from Naissus on the upper Morava, all of [Moesia's] chief towns grew out of Roman camps on the Danube..."

The video below has some good views of the medieval Baba Vida fortress set to ultra-annoying elevator music (mute the audio).