Ancient World Review

The Immortal Publius Quinctilius Varus

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, I guess, 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. Many of the defeated Roman soldiers were enslaved or sacrificed to the Germanic gods, according to Tacitus. Not a good end to a legionary's career.

Varus must have been a reasonably competent man to win the favor of a capable administrator like Augustus. "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."

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.

The Defenses Of The Lunt Roman Fort

A description of the ditches, ramparts and other defenses of the Lunt Roman Fort, a turf and timber fort located near Coventry in England can be found at The Lunt Roman Fort.

Note: "[Roman forts] were built when structures more permanent than camps were needed. As the army was constantly on the move during the early years of Roman occupation, there were always new frontiers. Forts were positioned strategically to keep the locals under control, with easy communication and supply lines. Generally, they were built about one day’s march apart (14 to 20 miles) and usually held one auxiliary unit, though some have been found which would hold smaller units, larger units or mixed units. As a rule, forts were used for auxiliary units (1) while fortresses were for legions." Source: "The Romans in Britain: Forts and Fortresses," The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy: Earth Edition.

(1) Auxiliary units were composed of allied, non-Roman subjects with a variety of skills as infantry, slingers, archers, cavalry, etc. The Roman-Britain website has a lot of detailed information about Roman auxiliaries and infantry/cavalry cohorts, among other things.

The Roman Fort Of Qasr Bshir In Jordan

"Qasr Bshir [aka Mobene] belongs to the chain of forts and watchtowers that is known as the Limes Arabicus and was meant to protect the province of Arabia against roaming desert nomads. They were not extremely dangerous or exceptionally violent, but their dromedaries made them swift, and if trouble arose, they could pillage large parts of the Roman countryside. The Limes Arabicus had to counter this threat, and Mobene was one of the fortifications." Source: Livius.

Note: According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the term limes originated "as a surveyor's term for the path that simultaneously marked the boundaries of plots of land and gave access between them. It came to be used in a military sense, first of the roads that penetrated into enemy territory and thence, as further conquest ceased, of the land boundaries that divided Roman territory from non-Roman. At this stage a whole paraphernalia of border control grew up--frontier roads with intermittent watchtowers and forts and fortlets to house the provincial garrisons which moved up to the frontier line. The term limes comes to embrace the totality of the border area and its control system."

Comment: Unlike the United States and Western Europe, the Romans understood the concept of borders.

 

Tacitus' Germania: "A Most Dangerous Book"

The Germania by Tacitus has been called "a most dangerous book." His description of the ancient Germanic tribes has become a kind of ethnologic bible in Germany and the Harvard Gazette (2008) said that Tacitus "helped to fuel Nazi propaganda." The book "was exactly what nationalists had been waiting for," according to the New York Times (2011) and many other writers 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. (See the footnotes below for some of the problems with the argument 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 was also wrong to say 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 identity - has been a common feature of all countries throughout history. Besides, there's no evidence that I'm aware of that Tacitus' information on the Germanic tribes is inaccurate or intentionally romanticized.

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.

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 an excellent series of books which provide more in-depth information on the history of particular legions. Highly recommended.

Hannibal: Rome's Worst Nightmare

"[The Carthaginian general Hannibal] was born in 247 BC, the eldest son of Hamilcar Barca. After making Hannibal swear an oath never to be a friend of Rome, Hamilcar took him to Spain in 237, where he stayed during the commands of both his father and his brother-in-law Hasdrubal (1), marrying a Spaniard from Castulo." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised).

(1) The OCD describes Hasdrubal as Hannibal's brother-in-law while Wikipedia calls him Hannibal's brother. As it turns out, there were at least four different Hasdrubals in Spain at the time. One of them was Hamilcar's son-in-law; the other Hamilcar's son. 

Rome's expansion brought it into conflict with Carthage, the other great Mediterranean power of the time. Both Hamilcar and Hasdrubal (Hasdrubal the Fair) were leaders during the First Punic War (264-241 BC). Apparently Hasdrubal [the brother-in-law] assumed the supreme command in Spain after Hamilcar's death and Hannibal took over after Hasdrubal died, reverting to his father's policy of attacking various tribes to the north. According to the OCD, Hannibal started the Second Punic War by attacking and eventually defeating a Roman city called Saguntum located on the eastern coast of Spain:

"Regarding Rome's alliance with Saguntum (Sagunto) as a threat to Carthage's position in Spain, he [Hannibal] decided to defy her, and put pressure on Saguntum. He rejected a Roman protest, and after consulting Carthage began the siege of Saguntum in spring 219, knowing that war with Rome would result, and took the city eight months later." (OCD)

Hannibal decided to invade Italy without bothering to wait for the Romans to declare war. His goal, apparently, was to weaken Rome by stripping away its allies, rather than to destroy it outright. According to the OCD, "he left his capital, Carthago Nova (modern Cartagena) in May 218, with a professional army of 90,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry (Iberians, Libyans and Numidians) and [40?] elephants, leaving his brother Hasdrubal to hold Spain... [emphasis added]"

Hannibal's famous crossing of the Alps took around 15 days and no one is sure which route he took, though new evidence surfaced a few years ago which may clear up the matter. Carthage was eventually defeated at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC by the Roman general Scipio Africanus., aka Scipio the Great, "one of the greatest generals and military strategists of all time," according to Wikipedia and every other source I've read. An excellent overview of the complex series of Punic Wars can be found at the Ancient History Encyclopedia.

Related: Carthage - The Rise And Fall.

More Revelations From The Grand Armory Of The Roman Legions At Novae

Video from 2009.

Novae was one of the few great Roman legionary fortresses along the empire's border, forming part of the defences (limes Moesiae) along the Danube in what is today northern Bulgaria. The settlement later expanded into a town in the Roman province Moesia Inferior, later Moesia II. The fortress is one of the few along the limes to have been excavated and now open to the public. At present mainly the central part of the site has been excavated and restored." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Note: The Novae fortress housed the Roman soldiers of Legio I Italica, founded by the emperor founded by the emperor Nero in 66 AD. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he Moesian Limes or Limes Moesiae is the modern term given to a collection of Roman fortifications between the Black Sea shore and Pannonia, present-day Hungary, consisting primarily of forts along the Danube (so-called Danubian Limes) to protect the Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Moesia south of the river."

Related: Somewhere on the Roman Limes in Pannonia.

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).

The Bridgeness Slab

"The Bridgeness Slab is a Roman distance slab, marking a portion of the Antonine Wall built by the Second Legion, and was created around 142 CE. It is regarded as the most detailed and well preserved of the Scottish distance slabs." Source: Wikipedia.

Note: "Some of the most impressive archaeological finds on the Antonine Wall have been the distance slabs. These ornate engravings were made by the Legions to record their achievement at building various lengths of Wall. There are believed to be many still waiting to be discovered but a significant number can be found in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow." Source: The Antonine Wall.

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.

"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.