In Our Time - Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Roman military disaster of 9 AD when Germanic tribes under Arminius ambushed and destroyed three legions under Varus. According to Suetonius, emperor Augustus hit his head against the wall when he heard the news, calling on Varus to give him back his legions. The defeat ended Roman expansion east of the Rhine. Victory changed the development of the Germanic peoples, both in the centuries that followed and in the nineteenth century when Arminius, by then known as Herman, became a rallying point for German nationalism.With Peter Heather Professor of Medieval History at King’s College LondonEllen O'Gorman Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of BristolAndMatthew Nicholls Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John’s College, OxfordProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello, in 9 AD, Germanic tribes destroyed three Roman legions in the Battle of the Tutuberg Forest. About 20,000 Roman soldiers were massacred. Rome was stunned.

The empire was supposed to expand without limit, but it had found its limit. Emperor Augustus is said to banged his head against the door and raged, shouting, Give me back my legions. As the Empire's frontier settled on the Rhine, new order slowly emerged on the German side, to trade with the Romans, creating a great power base.

And the story of Arminius, Victor at Tuttaburg, inspired ideas of what it meant to be German from the age of Luther onwards. With me to discuss the Battle of the Tutaburg forest are Eleanor Gorman, senior lecture in classics at the University of Bristol, Peter Heather, Professor of Medieval History at King's College London, and Matthew Nichols, fellow and senior tutor at St John's College, Oxford.

How much, Matthew, Matthew Nichols, how much had the Roman Empire been expanding under Emperor Augustus? A great deal, an unprecedented period of expansion and growth. We're now in about the 40th year of Augustus's reign, and even before his reign, his adopted father Julius Caesar had been expanding into Gaul, for example, and even putting a toe into Britain. So this comes after decades and decades of growth of the Roman Empire,

outwards in a series of expansion. And the expansion did several things for Rome. Can you go through it, I mean in terms of foreign policy, but also in terms of the economy and the way we go? Yes, it provided revenue because conquered provinces provided tribute and booty. They were then settled and became tax-paying provinces as the people in them were accustomed to Roman rule, settled in towns and traded and paid their taxes.

That generated a tax revenue. It also funded monuments in Rome, celebrations and triumphs, and it provided an image-making process, an ideology of expansion and power, on which the emperor's power was based to some extent. And can you tell us a bit about the legions, how, why Augustus is set of rent his clothes and bang this head against the door, and what part they played in the thinking of the emperor and the leading people in Rome?

The legions are the prime pieces on the chessboard, if you like. They are the big heavy infantry citizen regiments that are the, the key part, the linchpin of Roman military tactics, and expand and then guard the frontiers of the provinces. There are also other bodies of troops. There are auxiliary troops, non-citizens levied from subject peoples who swell the ranks. But legions of about 5,000 men each,

there are about 27 of them under Augustus are the big units that they can deploy around the map to either push back the frontiers and win new territory or to garrison existing territory. And they become politically very important. Their commanders are influential men, their waypoints on the careers are aristocratic Romans and the troops as they come to the end of their service

have an expectation of reward, of a pension of a piece of land that becomes quite hard to fulfil and becomes something that Roman emperors have to keep trying to give to them. Can you give the listeners some idea of why the legions were so powerful? I mean, not the way that they conquered so much of the known world so efficiently as down to the way they organised it. So what happened? organisation, drill, weaponry, tactics, a couple of centuries of consistent improvement and innovation

at the level of tactics and equipment. At the political level, they chimed very well with Rome at different stages of Rome's growth. So they started off being a citizen army regularly levied for campaigning seasons. They then became a professionalised force at around the start of the first century BC. By this period, they've become really persistent, long-lived, well-equipped, permanent units of troops in the field, salaried soldiers. They've developed with a very high picture of perfection, heavy infantry tactics that include standing in formation, protecting themselves and their comrades with shields,

throwing javelins at a distance, moving in for close quarter combat. And they have with them armourers, siege engineers, doctors, the whole baggage train of expertise to back up that powerful spear point. Let's talk about the commander virus. What was he doing in this region of the right at that time? His job was to organise the newly conquered territories of province, and that's a fairly well-trodden path for Rome. They subdue an area by military force,

and then they convert the people in it over time into Romans. They settle them in towns. They encourage the practice of sedentary agriculture. They tax them. They encouraged them to live under local pliable aristocracies who are their allegiance and their well-being to Rome. So Varus had gone in behind a concerted couple of decades of military conquest to try and start organising this as permanently garrison,

permanently captured territory that, like Gaul, like Spain, would become part of the Roman Empire. higher. Thank you very much indeed. Ellen, Alan Gorman. The man who led the Germanic forces Armenians had in fact served under Barrus, certainly been educated in Rome to a certain extent and served in the Roman auxiliary force. What more do we know of him? Well, we should emphasize the fact that he served in that auxiliary force. As Matthew said, these are existing forces attached to the legions. And that would have have contributed a good degree to his acculturation into Roman language, Latin language, certain

elements of Roman customs. So one of the things we see with the auxiliaries is they're part of that gradual assimilation of foreign people into Roman subjects that Matthew's already been talking about. So to a certain degree, he was Romanised. We also know that he was achieved. Can we just distinguish really in the auxiliaries and the legions? What was the distinction? He wouldn't have been a Roman citizen necessarily. We do see some auxiliaries getting citizenship, but it's not a universal or blanket practice. So these auxiliaries would have been levied from local populations.

Did they fight on the front like the legions as well? They would fight along with the legions. And Arminius is from the tribe of the Churuski, which is in the area where Varus is operating. So in addition to commanding a fighting force, would also be providing virus with important local information. In one of our sources, we're told he's therefore part of the General's Council. And that seems plausible, given that he would be somebody who has a lot of knowledge about the area.

We also know he's a chieftain among his tribe. And we see some signs of both allegiances and disagreements between Arminius and other Germans of similar status. So he has a brother who also serves in the auxiliaries and who remains faithful to Rome. So obviously that's a substantial source of conflict between these two German aristocrats. He also has a father-in-law who is part of another tribe who briefly sides with Arminius but mostly remains loyal to Rome. And that's an indication, I think, that these tribes are negotiating among themselves about the extent. of their allegiance to Rome. About how many Germanic tribes are there?

I think it's between 50 and 60 in the territory between the Rhine and the Vistula. What would Aminus have known about Beres' strengths and weaknesses as a commander? So because he was an auxiliary, he would have had quite a bit to do with the commander. One of the things we see is that auxiliaries

often have quite strong relationships with their generals. As we see, he was probably on the General's Council. So in addition to knowing what sort of information virus got, he would also know where he got

information from. Arminius is clearly one of the sources of information for virus about what's happening in the region. Arminius would know who else is feeding virus information. He would know how Roman troops deployed. As an auxiliary, he would know quite a bit about the sorts of tactics

that Matthew has been talking about and had probably learned from that himself. And he would know something about the character of the man he was dealing with. As Matthew pointed out, Varus has been sent in behind a couple of decades of military expansion, but it's clear that Varus's job is not primarily military. He's expected to be a competent military commander, but he's also expected to start enhancing the acculturation of the German regions. one of the sources calls him a man more used to the camp than the battlefield. And that's meant to be critical, but it might also point to somebody who is an OK military commander,

but has really been put in position for his negotiating power. And Arminius would know that. Thank you. Peter. Peter, Heather, let's get back to the organisation. We've had a great deal about the Roman organisation. Is there any matching organisation among the... and shamanic tribes? There's no matching organisation at all. That figure, you know,

50 to 60 primary political units between the Rhine and what's now Western Poland tells you that they're tiny. And although we don't get a lot of detailed history, the Roman sources tell you enough to know that many of them are at war with one another and sometimes there's a kind of deliberate cordon sanitaire between the different groups.

So they don't like each other. There are lots of them, they're small, and most of them don't even have kings, as the kind of situation that Ellen was describing for you tells you there isn't a king of the churisky, there isn't a single leader, you have, I suppose, oligarchic councils of chieftains.

Does this signify freedom or anarchy? Well, one man's anarchy is another man's freedom, possibly. According to Tacitus, it's freedom. Freedom is what it's all about. But of course, there's enough stratification in Germanic society, even at this date, that you're talking about free groups and lots of free groups. What was it about Aminius then? Why did he decide to turn on the people who'd been working with, serving in some of the Romans,

and how did he get these tribes to come together? It's not a singular choice, actually, on Aminius's. side. If you look at the history of Roman expansionary imperialism, you find in pretty much every territory that they move into, there's a major revolt or two, a generation or so later.

It's a bit early in Arminis' part of Germany. It's a bit later in Britain. Well, no, not very much later with Budica and Bodicea, depending on your choice of names. But everywhere, you know, Illyria, Gaul, earlier.

every part throws up a major revolt. Roman imperialism wasn't pretty. It made very large-scale demands on the populations that encompassed financial demands. And also it was brutal. I mean, they brutalized people. They moved you around.

Their arrangements for pacification were all right for some, and I suspect not all right for many. Did they take quite a few of the population? of slaves, for instance? Yes, they did. That's a regular part of campaigning, regular outcome. But we still don't quite know, I don't quite know,

why they decide to rally around Aminus. Well, what I'm suggesting, I suppose, is that there is a predisposition towards resistance to Roman imperialism, and Aminus is the catalyst for this. How does it get to be the catalyst? I suspect that he must be a particularly charismatic leader, and I suspect too that he came with a cunning plan

as to how we were going to do it because the history of Roman imperialism and revolts against it is littered with people who win the occasional battle but then get massacred by these highly efficient legionaries that Matthew and Ellen have already described they are just the kind of panzer divisions of the first century BC and AD and there's nothing in the sort of equipment or training of groups in Western Europe

that would enable them to stand up on the battlefield against these groups. But there isn't one reason or cluster of reasons or event that says this is when he was allowed to take control. I don't think the sources report anything very specific. Maybe my colleagues can help

and I don't think so. There was an opportunity here partly because Tiberius had to go away to a revolt in the Balkans in 86. so eight of the legions in Germany had been diverted down to modern Croatia, Bosnia. It's a big lump, but that's why Varus was left behind with only three.

They'd patched up a treaty with another dynamic temporary leader among the Germans called Maribodos, a king, and had said, we've done the job, we've conquered Germany, we can now divert our attention to the Balkans. But I think maybe Arminius and the Germans around him could see there was an opportunity here. Right. So why, Varus we're told, is on the move. Can you tell us a little bit about him

and what was he on the move? Where was he going from to? Well, the Roman winter quarters are at Magontiark and Mines on the Rhine and he's going east of there. Roman power over those two decades of conquest had pushed eastwards through the Rhine River system to the vasa to the elber so they're pushing eastwards. This is the territory they want to conquer and hold

and Varus is moving about in order to hurry along this process of acculturation that both Peter and Ellen have talked about and Dio tells us quite clearly he's founding cities, he's causing them to trade in marketplaces, he's making them hold peaceable assemblies, he's turning them quite quickly, and as Peter says, quite brutally,

into the sort of pastry cutter Roman citizens he wants to see in this province, and they resist that. We're told that they are treated, they feel as if they were slaves of the Romans, that they have taxes levied from them, and they feel they shouldn't have taxes levied from them. So Varus is going too hard and too fast

in territory that he holds in the end too thinly with only three legions. but does he not then he moves and then he seems to move to me what do I know you're going to tell me he moves in a strange way he goes in places where

he must know their tactics won't work deep forests swamps single file you can't get to baggage trains cluttering up the way forward and so on was he any good as a military leader

But he wasn't thought so at the time, wasn't it? He should have known, and later writers blame him very thoroughly for the worst military disaster. His name has attached to it. It's a Claudez Variana, the virus disaster. There is some sense in blaming the individual that you don't then have to blame the emperor who sent him. And it might be there's a sort of political expediency in pinning it all on virus being were told torpid and lazy and greedy and sluggish and foolish. But he no doubt makes a series of big mistakes. But he's lulled into them by Arminius's cunning plan that Peter talked about.

Arminius tells him there's a local uprising, very easy to suppress. All you have to do is lead your troops this way, my lord. And they set off to do this. And at that point, Arminius slips away and says, let me just rally my local troops to come back to support you. And he leads them into an area where, because of the experience that Ellen has told us he has, of knowing how the Roman troops work. He knows the geography, the forest, the climate, the season of the year, are all going to work against Rome at this point in the map. Can you develop that, Ellen? Gorman. They became extreme

invulnerable, these impregnable Roman legions. Can you just develop that for the listeners? I eliptically outlined it, but there's more to be said. Yes. So as Matthew indicated, they're moving, it looks like they're moving back to winter quarters on the Rhine, though it's impossible to tell exactly what was planned, but the large baggage train that Matthew mentioned seems to indicate that it's not just the army that's on the move, it's everything. It's the baggage that would support an army on the move,

but also there's reference to women and children. So it looks like families are coming along, servants. Obviously food supplies. So there's pack animals and carts. And they're moving along. And then, as Matthew indicates, Arminia suggests that they deflect slightly north in order to make a show of strength

in front of this local revolt, possibly do some fighting. And so they move north through this more unexpected terrain. It's September So it's more likely to be stormy and rainy And that's indeed what happens So they're hampered first of all by storm and rain Why are they specifically hampered by that?

They must have had storm and rain before Yes, they have had storm and rain before It does look like it was exceptionally violent And it does look from other comments Like the Romans would try and get back into winter quarters Particularly in northern Europe Before the really bad weather came along It does make moving by foot

Or moving by pack animal more difficult because they're working with paths rather than roads here. And there's a lot of talk about forests, so it looks like they end up in a dense wooded area, which of course affects their visibility, but also the capacity to stay in larger formations. And the ambush obviously causes an initial flurry of panic. It means that on the first night,

and this isn't a single battle, but rather a series of skirmishes, as Varus's army just tries to struggle west. For how long? For how long it's three days? Three days. Yes. And it looks like it was, I'm trying to remember now,

the battlefield is what is about 15 square miles, 12 square miles, something like that. So we're looking at quite a long terrain and we have to imagine these people fighting their way through day after day. There's reference to an encampment so it looks like they did try to regroup. There are references to moving the baggage

to try and make it more invulnerable or less vulnerable to attack. But gradually they were being forced up into this area where they had to move between a hill on one side and marsh land on another. And there is no reference in the literary sources, but the archaeological evidence shows us a rampart as well. Where the rampart comes from, no one knows. But this is, as you say, we'll push them into single file.

and made them very, very vulnerable to attack. There's not much even a crack fighting force can do when they've been harried for three days and they're being assailed from all sides and they have to stay in this very narrow line. And at some point, there was a sort of logistics breakdown. At some point, their capacity to rescue their wounded, tend to their wounded, regroup,

at some point this became impossible. The Germanic tribes was popping in and out of those lines. I still, I mean, being an ignoramus in this, I still don't get it while an experienced commandant didn't realize a little bit ahead of time that this was happening and turned back and find a... Is there any answer to that? Well, there isn't...

I think, now I'm ready to be corrected about this, but the impression I get is that where else is there to go? Back? Well, there is back, but he's just as vulnerable to ambush from... behind. They're trapped once, fight their way out of it into open ground. That's when they form this camp and pull in the baggage train, reorganise. So they probably think they're out of it at that point. They've survived an ambush. And our sources enjoy dramatic irony and tension, and they do tell us that he was warned. You said, why didn't he realize? And we're told that

a figure called Segestius, who is the father and or an uncle of Vaminis, tried very hard to warn him. but virus not really knowing or understanding which side to pick in this confusing mass of squabbling tribes backed the wrong horse and didn't listen to the warnings and you asked about the storm and the rain and that waterlogged the heavy Roman shields and it meant their bowstrings wouldn't work

so their weaponry was unsuited to the climate their tactics are unsuited to the terrain and they found themselves very quickly incapable of getting out of this hole can we just describe the skirmish the three days in a bit more detail so for three days there

in mud and rain and slatter there. You've mentioned single file, baggage trades, women, children are presumed, and all that sort of thing. And what's the state of affairs in those three days? So it isn't a battle really, is it? It's a long, protracted ambush. If they're defeated in detail, at no point they have numerical superiority over the Germans

who pop out of the trees. They're using light lances and light swords, which are easily wielded among branches. They're not in this heavy armour of heavy kit. So they can pop out, win a local skirmish, back into the trees before the reinforcements can come filing back down this muddy track to relocate. So it's a continuing rolling series of skirmishes. They try to make a night fort, as Peter said.

They throw up some hasty ramparts. They try and break out in the morning, which costs them a lot. And then again, they're picked off. There's a night march when more of them are picked off. And you get the sense that our sources are almost relishing this dripping forest. It's kind of a gothic, dramatic piece of writing. The pathetic fallacy of the elements conspiring against the Romans. and we have to read against a grain of that kind of very pictorial writing,

but it is very vivid. You can see that it just took away the natural advantage of these trained Roman soldiers, which is their defensive armour and their capacity to work together in composite, compact masses. That's what the opposition couldn't counter on the open field of battle. But if you lure them into these forests and into the swamps, that all ceases to be the advantage,

and then you can start taking them off a few at a time. And the disadvantage of a very heavily drilled disciplined fighting force is it does need someone to tell it what to do. And when the commander is panicking and there's signs of panic, there's a cavalry leader called Numenius Varra who just runs away, which is a sign of complete breakdown of the train of command. They don't know what to do. No one's telling them right face or whatever it might be. Right. So then there's this, which I've described, it's been described, a slaughter and a massacre.

Did that happen on the last day? Or did it happen throughout? Can you give us some idea of that? I don't think we know the casualty attrition rate. The sources clearly describe a final confrontation and massacre followed by Roman surrenders and further massacres, perhaps, of prisoners. But I take it that Roman losses had been heavy and growing across the three days. I don't think, as it were, 20,000 died on the final morning or something like that.

I doubt it's like that. But the idea was, and the news that got back to Rome is that they'd be more or less wiped out. Yes. And what was your reaction in Rome? The reaction in Rome is horror. You've got Augustus' reaction, as you described, give me back my legions and banging his head against the doorpost, supposedly. Roman imperialism wasn't used to losing. This is a huge disaster.

As far as the Romans are concerned, God, the divinities are on their side. They're destined to rule the entire planet. That's why emperors have orbs as one of their insignia. The orb is the planet. So this is not something that can happen. How do Armenia benefit from his victory? Well, in the big picture, he achieved his aim. He pushed the Romans out of his part of Germany,

he pushed them back across the Rhine, and there they more or less stayed for some centuries. But he personally didn't benefit terribly much. much from this. The Romans regrouped. They weren't able to cross the Rhine. Peter talked about the panic and horror in Rome. They thought that Aminius was about to turn up at the gates of Rome, which he didn't do. The Romans stopped him at the Rhine. They then, in AD 16 and 17, crossed back, recaptured the lost military standards, the famous Eagles, enacted some punitive raids. So he never made great territorial gains. He continued to have all sorts of family and tribal

problem so he and his brother continued to fall out about whether or not they should be loyal to Rome or loyal to their own people. He never convinced Maribodos to enter into a grand strategic German alliance. He sent virus's severed head to this king to say let's make common cause against the Romans and Maribodos sent the head on to Rome and said no thank you very much. And his family life dog to him, he was murdered by tribal rivals in AD 21. So he personally, in the medium term, didn't do terribly well out of it. But his reputation down the ages grew and grew and Tacitus gives him this rather generous

obituary and says this man beat Rome at the height of Rome's power and he was the liberator of the Germans so with a century's distance it looked like he'd achieved something very great Alan O'Gorman how did we've talked Tacitus as we mentioned what was his slant on the event Tacitus chooses to revisit the

site of the Varian disaster five or six years later Matthew mentioned the punitive raids in 16 and 17 across the Rhine and these are led by Germanicus, the adopted son of the new emperor Tiberius. And Tacitus gives us this very, very evocative picture of Germanicus coming to the site of the battlefield to pay his respects to the fallen and a few of the survivors of the disaster are with him

and he and his army basically track the signs of where Various, has been. They see the signs of the camp. They see the signs of increasing disorder. And then as they work their way up onto the higher ground, they start to see the bones and they see human heads nailed to trees. So first of all, Tacitus gives us this ghoulish description of the lonely battlefield, you know, these bones that have just weathered in the rain and possibly a bit of sun. But then he brings the battle to life through the stories of the survivors. So as they go round the field, the survivors point to the bones and they say to Germanicus, here is where they stood and fought, here is where they turned tail and fled.

Here is where Varus took his own life. And through the eyes of that survivor, Tacitus re-invokes the battle some years on. He had, he drew morals, Peter had. He was admiring, in a way, of the Germanic tribes, wasn't he? They were pure, he said. When you tell me? Yes, he makes a moral example out of them, particularly in his sort of monograph on them, the Gamania,

and they are being held up as examples of non-corrupt, freedom-loving, anti-tirony groups. This is a model for what Roman behaviour had been like in the past and ought to be again. So he is using them. as people often do with the other, as a mirror to shine back. What is it significant that he referred to their purity as a race? Yes, I mean, obviously that sentence has been received horrifically through the centuries. I think Tacitus emphasises that in his account of Germany because he wants to set it up as a land apart.

He wants to say they've never intermarried with the goals. Once you pass the rhyme, you're in another world. and this partly works with a sort of justification of the Ryan frontier. It pointedly ignores all of that acculturation that we've identified was happening. Instead, he chooses to represent them as Peter said, this complete other. And Cacetis' great theme, or one of them is the principal, Rome's ruling emperors, and he finds in them corruption and hypocrisy and vice, and he sees, he looks around to find, as Peter says, the opposite of that.

And so he sees simplicity and nobility in this purity of the German people. He feels is absent from Rome. So it's really a moral critique of Rome, as much as it is, praise of the Germans. How did the frontier develop along the Rhine then? The Romans are pushed back to the Rhine. They cross it again in the second century and again in the third, but they never hold territory for a long time across the Rhine River. they end up forming a limez, a frontier zone that runs across from the Danube region up to the Rhine, then up to the sea.

Is this the end? Is this the end of the idea of infinite empire for the Romans? Not the end of the idea. It's the end of the practice. They still keep the ideology of divine support for Roman imperialism. and actually if you look in the sort of later texts, the sort of late Roman, fourth and fifth century texts, then they take the view that any time an emperor intervenes across the frontier,

which they do on a regular basis down to 400 AD, and a group submits some kind of formal political submission, then they have been actually brought under Roman rule, that that's a different type of rule. So they make a difference between provinces, which are part of the Roman Commonwealth, and subjects who are these people beyond. But Roman imperialism doesn't give up on the idea that emperors are meant to be conquering the entire planet, and military victory remains the sort of prime imperial virtue forever.

Did the emperors start distrusting their generals after this in any more marked way? Yes. You could see this battle if you believe in turning points as a point of articulation in various ways and one of them is it's near the end of Augustus's life the last part of his life He's an emperor for any more than 45 years 40 years at this point he ends up dying in 8014

And he'd never quite settled the succession It's chopped and changed throughout the long years of his reign Eventually it passes to his stepson Tiberius And he had been forced to adopt Germanicus Who enacts these punitive raids And recaptures the lost eagles And for a while there's the darling of the people of Rome for taking revenge against Arminius.

And if you believe Tacitus, Tiberius immediately gets very jealous of him. And just at the point when Germanicus was poised to restore Roman honour, sweep across the Rhine, push up to the elba and undo all the damage, he's recalled back and sent off to a different command in the East because Tiberius can't bear to have a rival with the legions or with the people. And that does become, not without reason, a preoccupation of Roman emperors. I mean, later on after Nero's death, there are regional generals who, in succession, use their armies to propel them

to the ultimate power. There's been a bit of talk of eagles. Can you explain that a bit more for the listeners? The importance of the eagles, almost sacred nature of the eagles. What are we talking about that? So these are the legionary standards, and they do have a sacred significance. They would be the symbol in front of which

the soldiers wore allegiance to the emperor. They would often have images of the emperor affixed to them, and they were seen as sort of embodying the spirit of the legion. They also had a sort of practical significance, because you could regroup around them. So the standard bearers were often quite tenacious about hanging on to the standards

and also about getting soldiers to group around them. So they had a practical significance as well as this profound symbolic significance. So losing the standards was, you know, when Augusta says, give me back my legions, does he mean the men or does he mean the standards? What do you think you mean? Well, of course, I think he's a cold-hearted...

individual, so I'm inclined to think the standards. He'd made a huge play of retrieving the standards from Parthia some years previously, the standards that had been lost in the 50s BC. And, you know, we have poems and coins celebrating that. So for him then to lose some standards on his own watch is deeply embarrassing. Were the Romans intimidated by what had happened to them there?

I don't think they are in the long term. And when you look at the sort of longer-term history, the idea that this drew a sort of finite line around the edge of Roman imperialism is not exactly what happened. Economically, politically and culturally, you find that the regions, and maybe up to about 100 miles or so beyond the frontier,

are drawn into an intensive forms. of relationship with the Roman world. And you've got to think that all these legions are a huge demand for food, leather, livestock, timber, whatever. And these are very underdeveloped economies on both sides of the frontier. So it's very clear that the regions beyond the frontier get drawn into the supply networks. You also find that politically Rome is manipulating which ruler will come to the fore in these slightly chaos. political structures that are beyond the frontier. So the longer term history is one of intense interaction and transformative interaction.

I mean, the area beyond the frontier is transformed by its relationship with all the different kinds of demands that the Roman Empire puts on it. Did this, Matthew, did this make any difference to the way Rome organized its armist? It was, there had to be some reshuffling to things. the gaps. Armies that had been suppressing this revolt in the Balkans were brought back onto the Rhine and almost immediately mutinied and said, we've served way beyond our time of service, they could strip their shirts and showed the scars from beatings on their backs, we've not been paid for years. And this was a very serious challenge to the new Emperor Tiberius, who just

taken over after Augustus died. And steps had to be taken pretty quickly to quell that mutiny, which included giving them something to do, which was crossing the Rhine again and kicking Arminius. So there was an immediate challenge, which required a reorganisation. And then there's a process over about a century that perhaps is not visible to Romans at the time, but we can see of gradual consolidation into these frontier zones. As Peter says, they're not really lines on a map. The Rhine is a highway as much as it's a moat. But we see the empire settling into a more or less stable form, with legionaries posted garrisons around the frontier. And then we see that in, for example, this island at Hadrian's Wall a little bit later on. So there is a long process of road

building, fortress building and frontier formation of which this is one part. If you look at the sort of archaeology of Western Eurasia at this time, you've got three broad zones at the time of the Roman conquest. You've got a more developed economy encompassing Gaul and the sort of Celtic regions. You've got a central European zone, which is sort of less, densely populated, less intensive agriculture, and then further east and north, you've just got a lot of trees. There's three men and a dog there, basically, as far as one can see. And Roman imperialism goes up to the edge of that most developed zone.

The different Germanic groups are all in that sort of less developed middle zone. And even Britain, the Roman sources say, actually it really wasn't worth the costs of conquest. they are perfectly capable of running broad cost-benefit equations. And I think that Augustus's injunction was very convenient as it allowed them to cover up the fact that there's quite a pragmatic decision to run that area indirectly rather than directly. Sorry, Alan.

Well, I was also wondering if this also strengthened the tendency to mystify these areas beyond the boundaries. I mean, the ethnographies tend to focus on these ideas of the unbroken forest, which as Matthew says, there are almost these gothic scenes of unbroken forest, descriptions of Britain and Northern Europe,

which focus on the way in which the land is almost permeated by the water. So it becomes this strange, exotic land, which you can't really keep a stable footing in, and whether that also is a convenient mystification, which fits in with what

Peter has been describing. Was there then, Matthew, the idea that this was a turning point, this ambush stroke battle? That idea was present in Roman thought. You asked a moment ago if it entered their psyche, and I think it did, because writers like Flores and Tacitus a century later, Dio another century after that, write about it as a great, if disastrous moment in Roman history. And it has a resonance for them like maybe the word Som or Gallipoli does for us.

It's a part of the national story and not a good part. And Tacitus and Flores both say, in some sense, it was a turning point. Flora says the empire that got as far as the ocean even crossed the ocean, stopped on the Rhine. Tacitus calls Arminius the liberator of the Germans. He never, after that, did Roman power permanently get hold of greater Germany. So the Romans see it as a great moment and maybe as a turning point. We, I think, around the table have expressed some skepticism about whether we see single turning points anymore, or whether we look at the long durée and the economic and social history.

But the Romans themselves saw it as some sort of point of inflection. and it happens so near the end of Augustus's reign that I think it's also mixed up with that point of transition too. It doesn't stop in conquering, of course, later when it's convenient. The expansion into Transylvania, Dacia and then again to Mesopotamia. And Britain.

And Britain too. So, you know, we'll conquer when it's still possible. And often when there's an emperor who needs a quick dash and some military glory. Well, exactly. A little flash forward, about 15, 1600 years. I'm sure you can do this, Alan. How did this play at the time of Luther?

The Reformation, as it were, anti-Rome, the Germans against the Romans again. This is really basic stuff, I'm sorry, but still you can tackle it. Thank you very much. Yes, well, as you've already summarised, the classical past of Germans standing up against aggressive Roman invaders was ripe for parallels among the German humanists and particularly with the fairly recent discovery of Tacitus's text on Germany, which really only sort of crops up in the 15th century.

And so on the one hand, it's an ancient text. It provides ancient validation for German identity. On the other hand, there's the excitement of the new about it. It's a new ancient text. We haven't had this before. And there's this sense that it uncovers Germany's past, that the Germans now finally have an ancestry. We already talked about that process.

problematic statement about the purity of the Germans. What it provides German humanists with is this sense that Germany is something that is a unit which is different from Rome. And the issue of purity and chastity and love of freedom becomes assimilated to resistance to the corruption of the Roman church. So is this, we won't mention turning point in your presence, but is this too much? to say that it changed the mood, the tone, the temper, the future of Europe in any way? Well, it's a moment that comes back and has all sorts of resonances and meanings later on. We just talked about the 16th century.

We could look at what happens in the 19th century when Arminius becomes a proto-nationalist figure for the Germans as well. And I think Peter has some thoughts about that too. Yes, I think it's a very, if you take the history of, I mean, I'm a medieval historian, not a classicist, my colleagues. Take a medieval viewpoint on this. What's very interesting is that the strategic centre of economic and demographic power shifts in Western Eurasia, from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe. By the time of Charlemagne and beyond, Northern Europe predates on the Mediterranean,

not vice versa. And I do think that these transformative relationships that kick off around the frontier world of the Roman Empire are what begins that process of actually turning what was a very undeveloped backwater between the Rhine and the vistula at the start of the first millennium into the epicenter of empire by the later part of it. Do we have an agreement on that going? Yes. Okay. Well, thank you all very much indeed.

Thank you, Alan de Gorman, Peter Heather and Matthew Nichols. Next week is the Valadelladalid debate of 1550 when Spain had second thoughts about its right to conquer the American. and enslave its people. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. The transformation in the Germanic world in the Roman centuries between the start of the first century when this battle happens

and the year 400 when you start to see the unraveling of the Western Empire. It's very dramatic and it's very dramatic. Archaeologically, it's very dramatic in the historical sources. Archaeologically you see development of much more intensive agricultural regimes, which means lots more food and lots more people. And it's quite likely that supplying the legions, all these men suddenly deposited on the Roman frontier who needs supply, is one of the things that's kick-starting that transformation.

You also see the transformation of the political culture. So these 50 or 60 primary political units give way to, more like 10 larger confederations. They're not, you know, they're a bit ropey. They're not massively stable, but they don't disappear. I mean, the thing that's striking about Arminius's coalition is that it's gone within 10 years, and it never comes back. But the coalitions of 300 years later, you can defeat massively on the battlefield,

and they're still there in the aftermath. Different leaders, but the structure is still there. And that's a very striking difference. and again the sort of interaction with the sort of opportunities and dangers of Roman imperialism. The fact that they'll pay leaders money who'll enter into diplomatic relations with them, that's important. The fact that you can rally people around against Roman imperialism, which is arbitrary and violent all the way through the period. These are all the kind of factors that are feeding into that transformation. And great cities on the Rhine-like Cologne, which becomes a very important,

regional centre and is adorned with some magnificence or trier which becomes an imperial capital later on in the Roman Empire. Where Romans writ runs, these centres of urbanism and centres of trade and tax and law that Vara's apparently was trying to get going do take hold and do last. I think if I had more to say I'd return to Tacitus but then I always would. And we've spoken a couple of times about the obituary of Arminius and that he that Tacitus calls Arminius the Liberator of Germany. You asked for a moral, but I think Tacitus is asking more of a question, because he doesn't just say he's the Liberator of Germany.

He says he is without doubt the Liberator of Germany. And when Tacitus says without doubt, he's asking you to have a doubt. How do we arrive at that Nomic conclusion? Because that's how Tacitus works. And it is because Tacitus is the ultimate ironic historian, and to call some of the Liberator of Germany right after he has said he declared himself a king

and was killed by his fellow tribesmen because they would not put up with kingship but he was also the Liberator of Germany is asking us to set two incompatible things about Arminius' political effect asking us to put those two incompatible things together so I think Tacitus is asking us to ask questions about Arminius

and in a way I wonder if he would be disappointed that the reception of his work has been the heroising of Arminius rather than the questioning of Arminius. So what do you see? Well, yes, I think that's a very neat formulation of it. And Tacitus draws our attention to this by saying not enough people really know about Arminius. The Greeks don't pay many attention

because they're really interested in Greeks. Local Germans sing songs about him, but modern to Tacitus historians don't pay this man enough attention. So I think he is shining a light on him and saying, think about this. Use this as a way of thinking about other wider themes in my work. So in fact,

Arminius becomes too Roman. To a certain degree, yes. And I mean, again, if one fast forwards to the humanists, when you see Ulrich von Huttons' little dialogue, you know, where he adds Arminius to the canon of great heroes, he wheels in Tacitus and quotes Tacitus and says

yes, and has the great heroes of antiquity, Scipio, Afrikaamus, Hannibal and Alexander judge the acts of Arminius and agree that he should become part of the canon of great heroes. And to a certain degree that the Germans are embracing him as the German hero, but to a certain degree he's becoming the classical hero.

Is there only... Sorry, I have to... Well, he becomes his great German hero in the 19th century, and we dwelled a bit with Luther and didn't quite get on to the 19th century when instead of the Catholic Church, it's the French who were in the frame as the Romans. So this play, the Hermann Schlacht

by von Kleist in 1808, where anti-Napelionic feeling is driving, the Germans to set themselves up against the Roman, stroke, Napoleonic French, and then by the 1870s in the Franco-Prussian war, Arminius is again becoming a national figure Proto-Bismarck and they make this huge statue to him at Detmold

in the wrong place on the wrong battlefield. And the caption is, Deutsche Eichkech, Meinstecker, that German unity was my strength. So this idea of the great heroic figure welding the Germans into a unified nation, of course, is enormously potent at that point in history. It's good fun because they'd started it years ago.

Yes. As German unity failed, they couldn't finish it. But then in the aftermath of Franco, oppression more. And victory, we can get the funds together to finish it off. Never mind, it's in the wrong place. And it sends a message which doesn't match with what we know of

is failure, in fact, to achieve unity and the impossibility of achieving unity among those 50 or 60 tribes. What about this phrase about them being pure? Does that linger on or is it not so much resurrected and is reinvented? Yeah, I mean, it's got an ugly history,

but it does look like there was an interest in the Third Reich. There was an interest, for example, in getting hold of the earliest manuscript of Tacitus as Germania because this was the text in which the purity of the German race was declared. But they're already worrying at that in the 19th century.

In the late 18th century, they really do the work on philology to sort out the language families in Europe and then they're thinking very much. 19th century nationalism is not like modern nationalism in the sense that what they think they're doing is recovering and why it's a valid. is that you're recovering the original organisation of people,

and that's what language families are telling you. So the different languages, Slavic, Germanic, whatever, came into existence because there was an intermarrying group of people who all spoke this language. So that really fits with the times of 19th century nationalism. And they're thinking about it, and the sort of British commentators on this, they're talking about British being a mongrel race

compared to Germanic groups on Germans on the continent. Has there been any redemption for Various, or the general? Well, we can say you had a hard job to do, and I think we can see in people like Valais Petirculus, who's a friend of Tiberius and writes this account that really blames virus, we can see maybe a bit of protesting too much that was all the fault of the incompetent on the spot rather than the strategic political setup that put him there.

But I don't think anyone would claim Varus was a particularly nice man or a particularly competent general, as I think Ellen was saying his strength before was as a provincial organising he put down revolts in Judea he helped organise Africa he was he had a reputation for smacking heads together pretty brutally

2000 crucifixions in Jerusalem is that right that's right yes so he was put in to do this and he's put in to do a similar sort of job in Germany so I don't think there's much redemption for him as a misunderstood or tragic figure I think we can say he was put into a very difficult position to be told it's okay Germany's

pacified take your three legions and sort it out was I think an impossible job yeah I think Matthew's quite right taking away the eight legions there'd been 11 you know I suspect none of this would have happened and certainly when you see Germanicus being a little bit more successful with his rights he just

has more men yeah yeah I think our producers is about to enter with reserves anyone want tea or coffee now just going to have some more water thank you a cup of tea would be great cup of coffee please tea coffee water in Melbourne You've got to be off.

I'm going to be off. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. What are you interested in? And I mean really interested in. Really into box certificates. Pencils. Crinoline mania. So much so that if you see it or hold it or just think about it,

then everything stops. And then one day, it just vanished. Each week in the Boring Talks podcast, join me, James Warrant. as I introduce a guest speaker to share their own fascination for a very niche subject. But what could it possibly be? From the personal joys of pencils and teletext to the expectant sounds of old computer games loading, every talk is a varied and surprising treat. You know that?

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