The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest by Peter S. Wells
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(Hardcover - First Edition)
- Pub. Date: September 2003
- 256pp
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: September 2003
- Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
- Format: Hardcover, 256pp
- ISBN-13: 9780393020281
- ISBN: 0393020282
- Edition Number: 1
- Edition Description: First Edition
Synopsis
The previously untold story of the watershed battle that changed the course of Western history.
Kirkus Reviews
Important analysis of a fierce first-century surprise attack by German tribesmen that ended Rome's designs on territory east of the Rhine and profoundly altered subsequent history. Wells (Archaeology/Univ. of Minnesota) argues convincingly that both archaeologists and historians must contribute to understandings of long-ago events. (Naturally, he believes the former are less subject to bias since histories are written by the victors.) The site of this little-known battle was not located until 1987. Since then the four-by-three-mile location has yielded a trove of relics; more than 4,000 Roman objects had been recovered by the end of 1999. The author's account of the battle consumes only a single short chapter and is admittedly heavily inferential: the surviving written accounts are scanty (and Roman); the archaeological evidence is still being uncovered and assessed. Still, Wells is able not only to reconstruct a credible analysis of the German strategy—pinning the Romans into a tight area of unforgiving forest and marshy terrain in which they could not execute their customary combat tactics—but also to explore the thoughts and fears of the combatants on both sides as the massacre commenced. In about an hour it was all over but the dying and scavenging, the burying and celebrating, the torturing and sacrificing of prisoners. Three Roman legions, some 20,000 men, were destroyed; a very few survivors escaped to spread the news. The Roman leader, Varus, a trusted ally of Augustus, probably fell on his sword when he saw the imminent defeat. The German leader, Arminius, became a folk hero: though trained by the Romans and granted citizenship, he gave the treacherous intelligence thatled the legions to the slaughter. Wells offers much background on Roman and Rhineland history, politics, anthropology, military strategy, and weaponry, supplying myriad grisly instances of the sanguinary horrors of war. Ultimately, Rome vastly underestimated the "barbarians" they faced. At times repetitive or obvious, but always literate and learned. (16 pp. illustrations, 9 maps, not seen)
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Peter S. Wells is professor of archaeology at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of The Battle That Stopped Rome and The Barbarians Speak. He lives in St. Paul.
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Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutobby Anonymous
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October 26, 2004: Arminius was not a great general, and he never achieved a place of distinction amongst Rome?s greatest adversaries such as Hannibal or Mithradates. However, what Arminius did manage to achieve was a grand deception: betraying general Varus and the Romans, who had been his benefactors, and inflicting upon them a crushing defeat that was not won by military strategy or bravery, but by subterfuge and duplicity. During a period of German nationalistic fervor, Ulrich von Hutten, in a drama which he wrote in the 1520s, agued that Arminius deserved to be regarded as the greatest general in history?greater, he proclaimed, than even Alexander the Great. To elevate Arminius to this heroic status clearly points to a form of self-delusion that only a country desperate to seek a national hero could produce. This supposed ?battle than stopped Rome,? which took place in the Teutoberg forest in the year 9 AD, did nothing more than lure unwitting Roman soldiers into a killing field where they were butchered like trapped animals. This was treachery, not generalship. Subsequent emperors continued Rome?s expansionist policies, conquering England in 43 AD and Dacia during the early part of the second century AD. The failure of Rome to completely conquer Germany has less to do with its defeat at the hands of Arminius than with the realization that other lands (i.e., England, Dacia, and the eastern territories) held greater economic and political advantages by virtue of their vast resources. In addition, Rome was near its limit regarding the amount of land area it could effectively control, and did not view further expansion into the German hinterland as beneficial. Given the pragmatic nature of the Roman state, and the systematic way in which Rome conquered and maintained its territories, all of Germany, not just the lands west of the Rhine, would have ultimately succumbed to Roman might, just as many other countries had done, if Rome had deemed the acquisition of these lands necessary. Wells argues that the failure of Rome to conquer the vast land area of Germany east of the Rhine was due to the Romans? lack of understanding of the nature of the indigenous peoples and their way of life. This hardly seems the case, as contact between the two societies over the centuries would certainly have made the Romans familiar with German tribal culture. It was due rather to the lack of economic and political advantages that could be gained from the military conquest of the region that Rome ceased to pursue her military exploits east of the Rhine, and not because of Rome?s ignorance of the northern Germanic tribes? social structure or the destruction of three legions brought about by the treachery of Arminius.
Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutobby Anonymous
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August 06, 2004: In 1979, as a boy on a visit to my Grandmother in Germany, my Father took me to see the statue of Hermann that sits on the edge of the Teutoberg Forest. At that time and later, I inquired where the location of the battle site was, to see it also. I was told that there was no location. It was like a true mystery right out of the history books. Twenty thousand men slaughtered all together in the same place with Roman armor and all the adornments and nobody knew where. No evidence was found in two thousand years. I was astounded when I saw this book on the shelf. Not only had the site been located in the intervening 25 years, but Wells gives us the most comprehensive work ever written on this battle. He doesn't go that deep into the archeological evidence. But I'm not an archeologist. Anything deeper would have been too technical and boring. Wells has woven the story together from three sources; the archeological record, Roman writers, and his general knowledge of warfare. He fills in the gaps with educated speculation. He doesn't inform us when he's doing this, so the reader has to use a critical eye. All writing about this battle is speculative though. The Germans had no writing at the time and only a handful of Romans survived. Each chapter is written like a separate article, creating some repetition. Overall, a good piece of archeological and historical detective work about a battle with repercussions that have continued to this day. Recommended for readers interested in Romans.
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