History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0143/01436.txt

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$Title{Germanicus In Germany
Part I.}
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Title:       Germanicus In Germany
Author:      Tacitus

Part I.

A.D. 13 - 16

Introduction

     When the Germans first became known to the Romans - about B.C. 112 - they
showed themselves as warlike tribes along the northern borders of Italy and in
various parts of Gaul, where Caesar afterward had frequent encounters with
them, driving them across the Rhine into their own country. But Caesar's
knowledge of them was confined to those tribes whose dwellings were near the
Rhine, beyond which he did not pursue them.

     Augustus fortified against the Germans along the Rhine, and Drusus, his
step-son, took command against them, defeating them in several expeditions
(B.C. 13-9).  As a reward, he received for himself and his posterity the
surname of Germanicus, conqueror of Germany.  He died at the age of thirty.

     His son, Germanicus, born B.C. 14, was sent, in A.D. 12, to command the
forces on the Rhine.  After quelling serious mutinies among his legions he
crossed the Rhine and attacked and routed some of the German tribes who had
been actively aggressive against the Romans.  During the following year he
defeated other tribes, and after his return across the Rhine he was persuaded
by Segestes to aid him against his son-in-law Arminius (the Latin name for
Herman), by whom Segestes was besieged and who, according to Tacitus, became
in the end the deliverer of Germany from the power of the Romans.  But before
he was able to render this service to the German peoples he had many hardships
to endure, and at the hands of Germanicus he met with severe reverses.

     Arminius had defeated Varus, who, by reason of that disgrace, killed
himself (A.D. 10), and the despatch of Germanicus to command the German
legions was ordered in the first instance to revenge the overthrow of his
predecessor.  Although it required several campaigns, the work of Germanicus
was so effectual that he withdrew in the end, at the command of Tiberius, with
advantage on his side, and, returning to Rome, enjoyed a triumph (A.D. 17).
His name is preserved in history, alike for his military talents and services,
for his attainments in literary pursuits, and his nobleness of mind.

Germanicus In Germany

     In the consulship of Drusus Caesar and Caius Norbanus a triumph was
decreed to Germanicus; the war continuing.  He was preparing with all
diligence to prosecute it in the summer, but anticipated it by a sudden
irruption early in the spring into the territories of the Cattians: for he had
conceived a hope that the enemy was divided into opposite parties under
Arminius and Segestes, both remarkable for perfidy or fidelity toward us:
Arminius was the incendiary of Germany, but Segestes had given repeated
warning of an intended revolt at other times and during the banquet
immediately preceding the insurrection, and advised Varus "to secure him and
Arminius and all the other chiefs; that the multitude, bereft of their
leaders, would not dare to attempt anything; and Varus would have an
opportunity to separate the guilty from the innocent." But fate decreed it,
and he was slain by Arminius.  Segestes, though drawn into the war by the
universal agreement of the nation in it, yet continued to disapprove of it;
his detestation being augmented by motives of a domestic nature, for Arminius
had carried away the daughter of Segestes, already betrothed to another: the
son-in-law hated, the fathers-in-law were at enmity; and those relations which
are bonds of affection between friends fomented the animosities of enemies.

[See The Wife Of Arminius: Queen Thusnelda, wife of Arminius, taken prisoner
by the soldiers of the Roman general Germanicus. Painting by H. Koenig.]

     Germanicus therefore handed over to Caecina four legions, five thousand
auxiliaries, and some tumultuous bands of Germans who dwelt on this side the
Rhine; he led, himself, as many legions, with double the number of allies, and
erecting a fort in Mount Taunus, upon the site of one raised by his father, he
pushed on in light marching order against the Cattians; having left Lucius
Apronius to secure the roads and the rivers, for, as the roads were dry and
the rivers within bounds - events in that climate of rare occurrence - he had
found no check in his rapid march, but on his return apprehended the violent
rains and floods.  He fell upon the Cattians with such surprise that all the
weak (through sex or age) were instantly taken or slaughtered.  The young men
swam over the Adrana and endeavored to obstruct the Romans, who commenced
building a bridge; then, repulsed by engines and arrows and having in vain
tried terms of peace - after some had gone over to Germanicus - the rest
abandoned their cantons and villages and dispersed themselves into the woods.
Mattium, the capital of the nation, he burned, ravaged the open country, and
bent his march to the Rhine; nor durst the enemy harass his rear, which is
their custom whenever they have fled, more from craft than fear.  The
Cheruscans had purposed to assist the Cattians, but were deterred by Caecina,
who moved about with his forces from place to place; and the Marsians, who
dared to engage him, he checked by a victory.

     Soon after arrived deputies from Segestes, praying relief against the
violence of his countrymen, by whom he was besieged; Arminius having more
influence with them than himself, because he advised war, for with barbarians
the more resolute in daring a man is the more he is trusted and preferred in
times of commotion.  To the deputies Segestes had added Segimund, his son; but
the young man hesitated from self-conviction; for the year when Germany
revolted, having been created priest at the Ubian altar, he had rent the
fillets and fled to the revolters: yet, induced to rely upon Roman clemency,
he undertook the execution of his father's orders, was graciously received,
and conducted with a guard to the Gallic bank of the Rhine.  Germanicus
thought it worth while to march back, fought the besiegers, and rescued
Segestes with a numerous train of his relations and followers, in which were
ladies of illustrious rank, and among them the wife of Arminius - the same who
was the daughter of Segestes - with a spirit more like that of her husband
than her father; neither subdued to tears, nor uttering the language of
supplication, but her hands folded within her bosom, and her eyes fixed upon
her teeming womb.  There were, likewise, carried off the spoils taken at the
slaughter of Varus and his army, and given as booty to most of those who then
surrendered.

     At the same time appeared Segestes himself, of vast stature, and
undaunted in the consciousness of his fidelity.  In this manner he spoke:
"This is not the first day I have approved my faith and constancy to the Roman
people: from the moment I was by the deified Augustus presented with the
freedom of the city I have chosen my friends and enemies with reference to
your interests, and that not from hatred of my country - for odious are
traitors even to the party they prefer - but, because the interests of the
Romans and Germans were the same, and because I was inclined to peace rather
than war.  For this reason, before Varus, the then general, I arraigned
Arminius, the ravisher of my daughter and the violator of the league with you.
Put off, from the supineness of the general, and seeing there was little
protection in the laws, I importuned him to throw into irons myself and
Arminius and his accomplices: witness that night - to me I would rather it had
been the last!  More to be lamented than defended are the events which
followed.  However, I cast Arminius into irons, and was myself cast into irons
by his faction: and now, on the first opportunity of conferring with you.  I
prefer old things to new, peace to turbulence; and at the same time I might be
a fitting mediator for the German nation, with no view of reward, but to clear
myself of perfidy, if they would rather repent than be destroyed.  For the
youth and inexperience of my son I implore pardon.  I admit my daughter has
been brought into this state by constraint; it will be yours to consider which
should preponderate with you - that she is the wife of Arminius or the
daughter of Segestes." The answer of Germanicus was gracious: he promised
indemnity to his children and kindred, and to himself, as a retreat, a place
called "Vetera," in the province; then returned with his army, and by the
direction of Tiberius received the title of Imperator.

     The account circulated of the surrender of Segestes, and his gracious
reception, affected his countrymen with hope or anguish as they were severally
prone or averse to the war.  Acting upon a temper naturally violent, the
captivity of his wife and the child in her womb subjected to bondage drove
Arminius to distraction: he flew about among the Cheruscans, calling them to
arms against Segestes, against Germanicus; nor did he refrain from invectives
- "An excellent father! a great general; a valiant army, whose many hands had
carried off one bit of a woman!  That before him three legions fell, three
lieutenants-general; for his method of carrying on war was not by treason nor
against pregnant women, but openly, against armed hosts.  That the Roman
standards were still to be seen in the German groves, there suspended by him
to his country's gods.  Segestes might live upon the vanquished bank; he might
get the priesthood restored to his son; but the Germans would ever regard the
fellow as the guilty cause of their having seen between the Elbe and Rhine
rods and axes and the toga.  That to other nations who know not the Roman
domination, executions and tributes were unknown; and as they had thrown them
off, and as Augustus (he who was enrolled with the gods) had retreated without
accomplishing his object, and Tiberius, his chosen successor, let them not
dread an inexperienced stripling and a mutinous army.  If they preferred their
country, their parents, and their ancient possessions, to masters and new
settlements, they should follow Arminius, who led them to glory and liberty,
rather than Segestes, who conducted them to infamous servitude."

     By these means not the Cheruscans only were roused, but the bordering
nations; and Inguiomer, paternal uncle to Arminius, a man long in high credit
with the Romans, was drawn into the confederacy.  Hence Germanicus became more
alarmed, and to prevent the war falling upon him with unbroken force, sent
Caecina with forty Roman cohorts to the river Amisia, through the territories
of the Bructerians, to effect a division in the army of the enemy.  Pedo, the
prefect, led the cavalry along the confines of the Frisians; he himself,
embarking four legions, sailed through the lakes; and at the aforesaid river
the whole body met - foot, horse, and fleet.  The Chaucians, upon offering
their assistance, were taken into the service; but the Bructerians, setting
fire to their effects and dwellings, were routed by Lucius Stertinius,
despatched against them by Germanicus with a band lightly armed.  And amid the
carnage and plunder he found the eagle of the Nineteenth legion lost in the
overthrow of Varus.  The army marched next to the farthest borders of the
Bructerians, and the whole country between the rivers Amisia and Luppia was
laid waste.  Not far hence lay the forest of Teutoburgium, and in it the bones
of Varus and the legions, by report, still unburied.

     Germanicus, therefore, conceived a desire to pay the last offices to the
legions and their leader; while the whole of the army present were moved to
deep commiseration for their kinsmen and friends, and generally for the
calamities of war and the condition of humanity.  Caecina having been sent
before to explore the gloomy recesses of the forest, and to lay bridges and
causeways over the watery portions of the morasses and insecure places in the
plains, they enter the doleful scene, hideous in appearance and association.
The first camp of Varus appeared in view.  The extent of ground and the
measurement of the principia left no doubt that the whole was the work of
three legions.  After that a half-decayed rampart with a shallow foss, where
their remains, now sadly reduced, were understood to have sunk down.  In the
intervening portion of the plain were whitening bones, either scattered or
accumulated, according as they had fled or had made a stand.  Near them lay
fragments of javelins and limbs of horses.  There were also skulls fixed upon
the trunks of trees.  In the adjacent groves were the savage altars, where
they had immolated the tribunes and centurions of the first rank.  Those who
survived the slaughter, having escaped from captivity and the sword, related
the sad particulars to the rest: "Here the commanders of the legions were
slain; there we lost the eagles; here Varus had his first wound; there he gave
himself another, and perished by his own unhappy hand.  In that place, too,
stood the tribunal whence Arminius harangued.  How many gibbets he erected for
the execution of his captives; what trenches he dug; and how, in proud scorn,
he made a mock at the standards and eagles."

     The Roman army which was on the spot buried the bones of the three
legions six years after the slaughter: nor could anyone distinguish whether he
buried the remains of a stranger or of a kinsman; but all considered the whole
as friends, as relations, with heightened resentment against the foe, at once
sad and revengeful.  Germanicus laid the first sod used in raising a tomb,
thus rendering a most acceptable service to the dead, and showing that he
shared the sorrows of the living, a proceeding not liked by Tiberius; whether
it were that upon every action of Germanicus he put a malignant construction,
or that he believed that the impression produced by the sight of the unburied
slain would dampen the ardor of the army for battle and inspire them with fear
of the enemy.  He also said that "A general invested with the office of augur
and the most ancient religious functions ought not to have put his hand to the
ceremonies of the dead."

     Arminius, retiring into pathless places, was pursued by Germanicus, who,
as soon as he reached him, commanded the horse to advance and dislodge the
enemy from the post he had possessed.  Arminius, having directed his men to
keep close together and draw near to the wood, wheeled suddenly about, and to
those whom he had hid in the forest gave the signal to rush out.  Then the
Roman horse were thrown into disorder by the assault of a new army, and the
cohorts sent out to support them, broken in upon by the body of troops that
fled, had augmented the consternation, and were now being pushed into the
morass - a place well known to the pursuers, but dangerous to those
unacquainted with it - had not Germanicus drawn out the legions in order of
battle.  Hence the enemy became terrified, our men reanimated, and both
retired without advantage on either side.  Germanicus, soon after, returning
with the army to the Amisia, reconducted the legions, as he had brought them,
in the fleet; part of the horse were ordered to march along the sea-shore to
the Rhine.  Caecina, who led his own men, was warned that, though he was to
return through well-known roads, yet he should with all speed pass the
causeway called the Long Bridges.  It is a narrow causeway, between vast
marshes, and formerly raised by Lucius Domituis.  The rest of the country is
of a moist nature, either tough and sticky from a heavy kind of clay or
dangerous from the streams which intersect it.  Round about are woods which
rise gently from the plain, which at that time were filled with soldiers by
Arminius, who, by short cuts and quick marching, had arrived there before our
men, who were loaded with arms and baggage.  Caecina, who was perplexed how at
once to repair the causeway decayed by time and to repulse the foe, resolved
to encamp in the place, that while some were employed in the work, others
might begin the fight.

     The barbarians, having made a vigorous effort to break through the
outposts and fall upon those employed in the works, harass the troops, march
round them, and throw themselves in their way.  A mingled shout arose from the
workmen and the combatants; all things equally combined to distress the
Romans-the place deep with ooze, sinking under those who stood, slippery to
such as advanced; their bodies were encumbered with their coats of mail, nor
could they hurl their javelins in the midst of water.  The Cheruscans, on the
contrary, were inured to encounters in the bogs: their persons tall; their
spears long, so as to wound at a distance.  At last the legions, already
giving way, were saved from defeat by the approach of night; the Germans not
feeling fatigue on account of their success, without refreshing themselves
with sleep, even then diverted all the courses of the springs which rise in
the neighboring mountains into the plains; thus the ground being flooded, and
the work, as far as they had carried it, overturned, the soldiers had all to
do over again.  Caecina, who had served forty years, either under others or in
command, was experienced in the vicissitudes of war, prosperous or disastrous,
and thence undaunted.  Weighing, therefore, all probabilities, he could devise
no other expedient than that of restraining the enemy to the wood until he had
sent forward all the wounded and baggage; for between the mountains and the
marshes there stretched a plain large enough to admit a small army.  To this
purpose the legions selected were: The Fifth, for the right wing, and
Twenty-first, for the left; the soldiers of the First legion to lead the van
of the Twentieth to oppose the pursuers.

     It was a restless night to both armies, but from different causes.  The
barbarians, with festive carousals, songs of triumph, or horrid cries, filled
the vales below and echoing wood.  Among the Romans were feeble fires, low
broken murmurs; they leaned, drooping here and there, against the pales, or
wandered about the tents, more like men wanting sleep than quite awake.  The
general, too, was alarmed by direful visions during his sleep; he thought he
heard, and saw, Quintilius Varus, rising out of the marsh, all besmeared with
blood, stretching forth his hand and calling upon him, but that he rejected
the call, and pushed back his hand as he held it toward him.  At break of day
the legions, posted on the wings, whether from perverseness or fear, deserted
their post and took sudden possession of a field beyond the bogs; neither did
Arminius fall straight upon them, though they lay open to assault; but when
the baggage was set fast in the mire and ditches, the soldiers about it in
disorder, the order of the standards confounded, and - as usual at such a
time-each man acting hastily for himself, when the ears are slow to catch the
word of command, he then commanded his Germans to charge, exclaiming
vehemently, "Behold! Varus and his legions again subdued by the same fate!"
Thus he cried, and instantly, with a select body, broke through the mass, and
chiefly against the horse directed his weapons.  Floundering in their own
blood and the slippery soil of the marsh, they threw their riders, overturned
all they met, and trampled on those that were on the ground.  The greatest
distress was around the eagles, which could neither be carried against a
shower of darts nor be planted in the slimy ground.  Caecina, while he
sustained the fight, had his horse shot and, having fallen, would have been
overpowered had not the First legion come up to succor him.  Our relief came
from the greediness of the enemy, who ceased slaying, to seize the spoil. And
the legions, as the day closed in, by great exertion got into the open and
firm ground.  Nor was this the end of their miseries; a palisade was to be
raised, an intrenchment digged; their instruments, too, far throwing up and
carrying earth, and their tools for cutting turf, were almost all lost. No
tents for the soldiers; no remedies for the wounded.  While dividing among
them their food, defiled with mire or blood, they lamented that mournful
night; they lamented the approaching day, to so many thousand men the last.

     It happened that a horse which had broken his fastenings and, as he
strayed about, become frightened by a noise, had run over some that were in
his way.  This raised such a consternation in the camp - from a persuasion
that the Germans had forced an entrance - that all rushed to the gates,
especially to the postern, ^1 as the farthest from the foe and safer for
flight.  Caecina having ascertained that there was no cause for alarm, but
unable to stop them or hold them back, either by his authority or prayers or
even by force, prostrated himself on the threshold of the gate; and thus at
length by appealing to their humanity - for if they proceeded it must be over
the body of the general - he blocked the passage, and the tribunes and
centurions satisfied them the while that it was a false alarm.

[Footnote 1: There were four gates to a Roman camp.  Livy says so in express
terms: "Ad quatuor portas exercitum instruxit, ut, signo dato, ex omnibus
portubus eruptionem facerent." The several gates were the praetorian; the gate
opposite to it, at the extremity of the camp, called the decuman; and two
others, called the right and left principals, because they stood on the right
and left sides of the camp, fronting the street called Principia.]

     Then assembling them in the court, and desiring them to hear him with
silence, he warned them of their difficulties, and their duty under them:
"That their sole hope of safety was in their valor, but that must be guided by
counsel; that they must keep close within their camp till the enemy, in hopes
of taking it by storm, came up nearer to them; then make a sudden sally on
every side, that by this sally they might make good their way to the Rhine;
but if they fled, more forests, deeper marshes, and the fierce attack of the
foe still remained to them; but that if they conquered, honor and renown
awaited them." He reminded them of all that was dear to them at home, and the
rewards to be obtained in the camp, but suppressed all mention of defeat, He
next distributed horses, first his own, then those of the tribunes and leaders
of the legions, to all the bravest warriors, without any flattery, that these
first, and afterward the infantry, might charge the enemy.

     The Germans were in no less agitation from hope, eagerness, and the
opposite counsels of their leaders.  Arminius proposed "To let them march out,
and to beset them again in their way when they got into marshes and difficult
passes." Inguiomer advised measures more resolute and acceptable to barbarians
- "To invest the camp; it would be quickly captured; there would be more
captives, and the plunder uninjured." As soon therefore as it was light, they
level the ditch, cast hurdles into it, attempt to scale the palisade, there
being but few men on the rampart, and those who were, standing as if paralyzed
by fear.  But when they were hampered in the fortifications, the signal was
given to the cohorts; the cornets and trumpets sounded at once, and instantly,
shouting and charging, they poured down upon their rear, telling them
tauntingly "that there were no thickets, no marshes, but equal chances in a
fair field." The enemy, expecting an easy conquest, and that the Romans were
few and half-armed, were overpowered with the sounds of trumpets and glitter
of arms, which were then magnified in proportion as they were unexpected; and
they fell like men who, as they are void of moderation in prosperity, are also
destitute of conduct in distress. Arminius fled from the fight unhurt,
Inguiomer severely wounded.  The men were slaughtered as long as day and rage
lasted.  At length, at night, the legions returned, and though distressed by
the same want of provisions and more wounds, yet in victory they found all
things - health, vigor, and abundance.