The Ancients - Terror in the Teutoburg Forest

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

Its been used for nationalist propaganda across the ages and its just been dramatised for Netflix, but what do we actually know about the Battle of Teutoburg Forest? For a start, where was it? Dr Joanne Ball, from the University of Liverpool is a battlefield archaeologist. In this episode she takes Tristan through this story of the betrayal and destruction of three of Emperor Augustus’ Roman legions - under the leadership of Varus - by a Germanic alliance led by Arminius, a Germanic auxiliary officer brought up as a hostage of the Roman Empire. Together they explore the circumstances which led the Roman leaders to trust a Germanic subject against his fellow Germanic nationals. They also go through the evidence which places the ambush at Kalkriese and the battle’s extensive legacy, some of which stems from conflicting accounts of its location.Presented by Tristan Hughes (@ancientstristan)Featuring Jo Ball (@DrJEBall)Edited by Sophie Gee (@SophieGee12)

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, now you might have heard recently of a new show that has taken Netflix by storm.

It's called Barbarians, and it's all about the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where the Roman legions under Publius Quintilius Varus were annihilated by the Germans led by Arminius. And this is the subject of today's podcast, to talk through the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, one of the greatest defeats in Roman history. Now, for this podcast, I was delighted to be joined by Dr. Jo Ball. Jo is a battlefield archaeologist from the University of Liverpool and the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is one of her favourite topics. So it was great to get Jo on the show to talk through not just the backgrounds of this battle, not just the battle itself, but also its astonishing legacy. Without further ado, here's Jo. Without further ado, here's Jo. This feels like one of those moments in ancient history that is so famous and perhaps, can we argue, the most famous military defeat in the history of ancient Rome.

I'd say, apart from maybe people who study Cannae might disagree with one of the key events of the Roman Empire and a particularly devastating one for our friend Augustus, as we will see. Now, you mentioned Augustus, so let's go into the background right now. So this is the time of the early Roman Empire, the turn of the first century. And is this a time of expansion for ancient Rome? Absolutely. So Augustus Octavian, as was by the time he's looking towards turning his attention towards Germania, he's been emperor for a fair few years by now. He's beginning to settle into his role as an emperor and he's beginning to look for ways that he can expand the empire so at this point he's still thinking that he needs to keep expanding the frontiers of Rome keep trying to improve the territorial expansion of the empire he's sorted out Spain and where is

he going to look now so his eye falls for fairly obvious reasons on Germania and part of this I think is this massive area in Europe that hasn't been conquered yet. Importantly it's also somewhere that his adopted father Julius Caesar had visited and had potentially as far as we know had planned to campaign in Germania, a plan that was caught short by his assassination. But as Augustus is looking for ways to expand the empire and to improve his legacy, where better to go than Germania and follow in the footsteps of his adopted father once more. So he's prompted as well in part by the fact that Germania, it's not really a safe neighbour to have at this point. They're becoming increasingly aware that it presents a bit of a danger to them with this massive tribal unconquered landscape right on their border in Gaul.

So they're already aware that people from Germania are helping to supply people in Gaul who are potentially looking to rebel. They're also potentially sending over mercenary soldiers as well. But Augustus' hand is really forced. In about 1716 BC, sometime over that winter, there's a Germanic raid over the Rhine. It causes quite a problem over there. So while this Germanic raiding band is marauding through Gaul over the Rhine, they come into contact with the Fifth Legion and they destroy them. So known as the Lollyan disaster. It's particularly upsetting because again this is one

of Julius Caesar's key legions from Gaul. It's one of the first legions that he recruited in Gaul and it was one that he recruited non-Romans to. So it's a very iconic legion and it's destroyed. Romans to, so it's a very iconic legion and it's destroyed. They lose their legionary eagle, it's a great shame, the commander Marcus Lollius, he isn't executed, he does survive the battle and he's not punished overtly by Augustus straight away but he ends up his life in exile and in shame and what this does really is it shows that Germania is a threat. It points out to Augustus that there is this massive territory and that they are vulnerable to people crossing from Germania. So what does he decide to do? Well, he sends in his top men.

So he sends in Drusus the Elder, who is his stepson, and he's the future emperor Tiberius's brother, and he decides that he's going to send him in to Germania to try and make some inroads into provincialising this area. So he makes Drusus the governor of Gaul in 13 BC, so that he can start to plan the invasion. He starts building his forces, he develops installations along the Rhine, from which he will be able to campaign further into Germania.

And he campaigns fairly continuously over the summers between 12 and 9 BC. He travels quite far into Germany, he travels as far as the Elbe River, he founds camps and military installations there, he takes hostages from the tribes that he has conquered and he sends them back to Rome. He gets quite a lot of submissions from the Germanic tribes there. Unfortunately this is cut short in 9 BC because he falls off his horse. He's wounded doing that and he dies a few weeks later probably from something like gangrene. You have all these wonderful military commanders and they die in such stupid ways, falling off a horse. It's just, oh, but, you know, I suppose it did better than Varus in the end, as it was. Yes, no spoilers.

No, oh yeah, sorry, no spoilers. So having already started this attempt at conquering Germania, you can't really then just leave the area as it is, because you've riled up all of these tribes, you've conquered some of them, you haven't conquered some of them. So they send in Tiberius, Drusus the elder's younger brother and again he takes over this attempted conquering and campaigning in Germania. They send in a few other people afterwards so they send in Lucius Dimitris Ahenobarbus soon after Tiberius who is the grandfather of the future emperor Nero and he goes goes in in about 6 BC, he's there

till 2 BC, and we start to see in this period they're starting to not just conquer and subdue the tribes, but they're beginning to try to sort of provincialise some of the territories in Germania, they're trying to build infrastructure, so we see evidence that they're founding civilian settlements, especially there's a town or settlement that's been found archaeologically called Al Valgermes near Frankfurt. It's a civilian town, it's got a forum, it's got public statuary, it's got workshops and housing. So they're beginning to not just think of this as a military campaigning area, but they're beginning to develop it into a province in the future. They seem to

gather that there's going to be ongoing problems so they replace Ahenobarbus with one of Augustus's most experienced and trusted commanders called Marcus Vinicius and he is sent in and it seems to be because they know that there's going to be a fairly serious uprising in Germania which there is in 2 BC soon after Vinicius takes over. Unfortunately we don't know any of the details because nobody has written it down in a surviving source. One of the frustrations of trying to study Roman Germany. I'm sure it would have been very well documented by Pliny in his History of the German Wars but of course we don't have that anymore and I think other historians just went Pliny's written the definitive account why bother? So we don't know any details of this campaign but we know it was a fairly substantial conflict because Vinicius when he's withdrawn and

recalled back to Rome in AD4 he's awarded a triumph so we know that there must be fairly serious issues in Germania. They continue to campaign over there until AD6, at which point the decision is made that Germania has been pacified, that it no longer needs a constant military presence. It's pacified enough now to start moving in the administrators, to start developing it into a province. A decision that's all the more hastened by the Pannonian revolt breaking out, which leads them to withdraw all but three of the legions from Germania. And they appoint, rather than having a military commander, they appoint now Publius Quintilius Varus,

who is supposed to oversee the next phase of Roman development in Germania. So to summarise all that, that was quite a whirlwind. Yeah, sorry. There's been a lot. So before the battle and the campaign that we mainly talk about in this podcast, there's been quite a bit of Roman interaction with the ancient, well, modern Germany, ancient Germania. And it also sounds like, as you say, there was a lot of fighting at the start. There's still a lot of resistance to it.

But the Romans over time, they are starting to try and pacify it to create a province and this is where we are just before 9 AD. Varus is sent as a governor to rule over this new province. Yes so they've managed to do this essentially by picking off tribe by tribe, turning tribes against each other, allying with some to destroy others in their very crafty military way. So Augustus appoints Publis Quintilius Varus. It seems like it is a hand-picked appointment. It follows Augustus's pattern of appointing men that he knows personally and that he trusts. So Varus, in and of himself, he doesn't come from a particularly important family. He is from a patrician family, but they're one that they don't really have much prestige. His father, Sextus Quintilius Varus, had sided with Pompey against Caesar,

which had caused even more misfortune for the family. But our Varus, quite wisely, later supports Octavian and throws his hat to the ring with Octavian as soon as he can. So he becomes part of Octavian, later Augustus's, inner circle in many ways. So he's married quite early on to one of Marcus Agrippa's daughters, which shows his imperial connections, and one of Agrippa's sons-in-laws. He gives the funeral eulogy for Agrippa in 12 BC alongside Tiberius. So he's part of this kind of imperial circle. Augustus appoints him as co-consul in 13 BC and then later on Augustus marries him to Claudia Pulpra who is

Augustus's great-niece. So he's got imperial favour, he's a minor part of the imperial family and consequently he starts having a professional career. So he's appointed first the governor of Afropocontularis. Doesn't seem to do much controversial or exciting there. But soon after that, he's appointed governor of Syria. And this is really where his career starts to take off. So he's appointed in around 7 or 6 BC. He serves there till 4 BC. And the significant thing that happens while he's governor in Syria

is that there is a big Jewish revolt when King Herod dies in 4 BC. And even though Varus hasn't been sent there particularly as a military leader, he takes it on himself to very effectively put down this revolt, very harshly as well. He takes a lot of prisoners, he has a mass execution of lots of the captured Jewish rebels rebels causing an awful lot of resentment among the native population. He's also said to have taxed a lot of people and embezzled the money for himself but that might just be a slur that's put on him later. So because the Augustus has appointed him he's mainly an administrator, he's not really a great conquering soldier but he's shown with his

behaviour in Syria that he can be competent if an unexpected military crisis does happen to arise. So he's quite a good choice for Germania. He's a safe pair of hands in many ways, especially in light of the Pannonian revolt. You don't want somebody who is going to be doing military campaigning, who's going to be pushing to try and expand the territory more. You want somebody who's just going to look after it for a few years while you are busy elsewhere and while you're trying to turn it into a province. So he looks like a quite safe person when they appoint him governor in 87. Consolidation, gotcha. Exactly. And so he's got three legions with him, Varus, but it's not just Romans who he has with him. He's got some German allies too.

He has. So he's got, as well as his three legionary forces, most of which will be appointed from other provinces at this point. It's far too early for the localised recruitment we see later on in the Roman army. But he's got quite a lot of cohorts of Germanic auxiliaries. He's also got some Germanic cavalry units with him as well. In particular, he's relying on the help of a German ex-auxiliary named Arminius, who is supposed to be helping him with his integration of Germania into the Roman Empire. But it doesn't quite work that way, as we'll see. So, a bit of background, who exactly was Arminius? So, Arminius is Varus's worst nightmare, as we'll see. So a bit of background who exactly was Arminius? So Arminius is Horace's worst nightmare as it turns out again spoiler alert. So Arminius unfortunately that

isn't his Germanic name that's his Latin name we don't know his German name but if you ever hear people talking about Herman or laughing because of Herman the German that is what Arminius is known as now. So he is a native German. He's the son of the chief of the Cherusci tribe, but he's, in many ways, he's a very Roman German. So when Drusus the Elder was campaigning back in around 12 to 9 BC, and he was taking tribal hostages, Arminius is one of the tribal hostages that he takes so he would have been around eight or nine at this point. He's taken to Rome and he's brought up as a Roman nobleman would be so he's given a good education, he's taught to speak Latin essentially trying to acculturise him to a Roman way of life. This isn't an unusual thing for the Romans to do,

it's actually one of their typical ways of trying to consolidate their power in new provinces or potential provinces, is that you make friends and you bring them to Rome and you make them into Romans and then you send them back to Germania or to Britannia or wherever and they then serve your interests over there. so you almost conquer these territories without actually having to expend that much effort. So Arminius is one of these hostages that they take. They also take his brother who's called Flavus. He is educated alongside Arminius and is a perfect example of the process happening. So he seems to be the younger brother so he is not as important in the tribal system and he learns alongside Arminius though. He's sent to Rome and undergoes this

education and he is loyal to Rome for the rest of his life and he serves in the Roman army for the rest of his career and is a trusted Roman ally but his brother less so perhaps. So Arminius serves in the Roman army as an auxiliary for about five years around the turn of the first century AD and he's sent back to Germania in AD 7 around the same time as Varus is appointed as governor and it seems like that he is supposed to be an assistant, a helping force for Varus. He becomes very close to him, they become friends, ancient sources say that they're constantly at one other's side and he's clearly a very trusted advisor of Varus with a lot of

experience of how the Roman army functions and he's a great intermediary between Varus and the Germanic auxiliary troops that they have in their command. So his brother stays loyal to Rome, that's really interesting in itself.'s a loyal seemingly a loyal ally and friend of Varus in this key role as serving as intermediary between the Romans and the Germans it really does beg the question I mean why does he decide to throw it all the way as it were and do we have any idea when? So we're not exactly sure what it is that triggers Arminius to decide that he is going to rebel first against Varus and then secondly against the Roman Empire to try and kick them out of Germania. There doesn't really seem to be a

tipping point in terms of Arminius particularly although if you read some of the novelisations of this particular battle there are some very interesting theories out there as to why, including that they were lovers and that they had a lover's tiff and that's why Arminius decided to rebel, just to provide that there is no evidence for that in the ancient record. Because there's no one terrible thing that Varus does really while he's in Germany. So he proceeds to administrate the province as you would expect. It's already a process that's sort of happening anyway.

Germanic people are beginning to adopt markets. They're beginning to be happy with sort of Roman features and facilities in their settlements and having access to kind of this Roman way of life and these Roman artifacts. So there doesn't seem to be one specific thing, but there's just a general feeling that maybe Varus is trying to do this all too fast. So he's accused by historians writing about the battle in antiquity that rather than just taking a step back and letting this happen at its own pace in Germania and letting the native population decide how quickly they want to go. Instead he tries to hurry it, so he's trying to force it too quickly on the people and acting as

if the German people, that they're completely powerless, that they have no agency and they will just take this as quickly as you want to change their way of life. But the writers note they still haven't forgotten that they do have military power, that they can maybe kick the Romans if they want to, they don't have to submit to these taxes and these laws if they don't want to. And Arminius kind of picks up on that and decides to build on it essentially and spark a rebellion really. But they know they can't do this too openly because the Roman military presence, on the rhine it's too strong for them to move openly against so instead they're

going to have to come up with some way to deplete the manpower and sap the morale so that then they can build on that to try and free themselves of roman occupation so talk me through this covert operation this secret plotting how does it it all progress before we get to the great climax? So it seems to be happening for quite a while in advance of the actual battle in AD9. So possibly as early as AD7, certainly by 8, they would have been trying to put this into place. So much so that at one point there are enough people that know about it that somebody actually tries to go and warn Varys that this is going to happen and Varys just completely ignores it. He says no Arminius is my friend he wouldn't do this to me. So it's fairly widespread network

is built by Arminius as he's trying to prepare for this rebellion. So there must have been a certain degree of working out where would be the best place to do this and of course Arminius having been an auxiliary soldier himself he has the advantage of knowing how the Roman army is going to react to certain events occurring and things happening so he can then predict several steps ahead how he's going to allow for that thing so he can just lead them deeper and deeper into trouble and disaster for the Romans. So he decides that where he's going to do this is going to be far away from the Rhine so that they're not going to be able to escape there too easily or get reinforcements. So he decides what his best thing to do is to lure Varus, the legions and all of the auxiliary troops away from the Rhine so they can attack them somewhere where they are going to be isolated and when they're not going to be able to fight particularly well and he decides to do

this in the area around the Teutoburg forest and as we now know in the area around modern Osnabrück. So he gathers his warriors, he tells them to be ready for this attack, happens sometime in September. It seems to be that what he's waiting for is Varys to be trying to move back to the Rhine for the winter. So over the summer Varys has taken his forces up to a summer base somewhere in the area of the River Vesa probably around Mindon although we're not entirely sure of that and he's going to lead them from there towards the Rhine but Arminius comes up to him and says sir sir there's a rebellion out in the woods out in the woods these people I'll take you there and we can go and quell this and then you don't have to worry about it over the winter so the army diverts on

this word of Arminius but they're not going to a real well they are going to a real rebellion I suppose but they don't realize that it's Arminius that's going to be leading it and it's likely that some of the Germanic auxiliaries that are accompanying Varus's army that they're potentially in on the plot as well and so they're ready to turn when they get the signal. So the army diverts away from its route from its summer base towards the Rhine and it ends up moving towards the area, as we say, around modern Osnabrück, where they're expecting to be putting down a rebellion,

but they're not expecting particularly what happens next. It sounds like, yeah, it sounds like a brilliant strategy catching this people who Varus believes, well, who Arminius wants to believe are his friends, when actually they are the bait. They are the people who are going believes, well, who Arminius wants to believe are his friends, when actually they are the bait. They are the people who are going to be ambushed. They are the people who are going to be victim to this surprise attack. What happens next? As you say, Arminius has put together pretty much one of the great ambush plans of all history. One reason potentially why it has become so well known. So he lures the army to an area

that is very poor terrain for the Roman army to be fighting in. It's got lots of marshes, it's got forested areas, really areas that Arminius knows that they don't like to fight in. Not particularly because they can't fight in those environments but because it makes it hard for them to adopt battle array and it means that you have to string out your marching column a lot longer than you would usually, making you quite vulnerable to a surprise attack. Now Varys is said to sort of compound this because of his blind trust in Arminius so he doesn't bother to send scouting parties ahead in the terrain to check for enemies because Arminius so he doesn't bother to send scouting parties ahead in the terrain to check for enemies because Arminius says no this area is pacified when we get to the rebellion area I'll tell you

but it's fine at the moment you don't need to worry. So the Roman marching column is not maintaining combat formation you get the impression they're almost sort of skipping along with all of their weapons and stuff in the baggage train. They've got their girlfriends with them. And it sounds almost like a party in some of the more critical sources. So they enter into the Teutoburg Forest. And just as a storm hits as well, so, you know, the rain is lashing down. It's becoming muddy. They don't know where they are particularly.

And then this is when the Germans attack them. So they don't mass attack all of them at the same time. What they do is they pick off parts of the marching column at a time so they overwhelm one particular unit of it and then they withdraw back into the forest before the Romans can adopt a battle array, pretty much before they can get their heads around what's even happening. So they dart in, attack, dart out, they disorient the Roman forces, they panic them, and you've got the rain lashing down, you've got mud, you've got your camp followers that are with you panicking. It's very easy to sort of lose your cohesion at this point. But the Romans, they deal with it pretty well to start with. An ambush, it's not a great thing to happen, but it's not an unforeseen circumstance.

So it is something that they train for, and they do know about building field camps under attack. They have provisions for this and procedures. So they make a field camp that night, and then the next day they decide they're going to have to try and break out of this attack, break out of the area and try and get towards the Rhine where they assume there will be safety. So they do manage to break out of this initial attack area but they sustain fairly heavy losses as they're trying to do this

but importantly at this stage they're still a fairly coherent army, they're still cohesive, they're still functioning as a military unit despite the casualties, despite the panic and the disorientation. The problem comes a little bit later when they hit the area that's called Kalkriese in modern Germany, it's just a little bit north of Osnabrück and it's a particularly bad area for them so it's an area that can only be traversed through a very narrow sandbar and it's got a bog on one side and a big hill range on the other side and they've got to go through this very small defile and Arminius knows this and he's herded them into this in dumb ways. It culminates at a point that we now know as the Oberrash, which seems to be where the final

stages of this battle happen. So they've been herded in, they can be attacked on all sides. It's likely to some, less likely to others, we'll come onto that with the archaeology, but potentially the Germans have built some ramparts here to help them attack the Romans even more effectively without sustaining losses to themselves. So the Romans arrive at this area called the Oberesch. As I say, they're still a fairly cohesive army up until they reach this point, at which point everything seems to unravel. Maybe they had just reached a critical point in casualties, maybe they were just too tired, we don't know, but they fall to pieces here at the Oberesh. So they get really heavily attacked in this area.

The sources describe it's a place of carnage and chaos. They seem to describe what we would recognise now as combat disintegration. So they say that some soldiers, they just stop fighting, drop their weapons and just wait to be killed by the ravaging Germanic warriors. Some of them are taken prisoner, some of them are executed there but really this is the last stage of the battle proper. But there are several attempts by some units to break out from this attack, most notably some of the cavalry, but it doesn't work. They're cut down later on. So apart from maybe some small bands of survivors that do manage to sort of sneak away from this area this is really the key bit where the battle is lost by the romans it's their last chance and voris does the decent slash indecent thing and

kills himself what you were talking about there i mean the picture i got was this like correct me if i'm wrong was this kind of like last stand scene and so you've got these berserk Germanic warriors huge very tall warriors as well and let's not forget you know charging down and the morale thing of it the whole mental aspect of it you mentioned that combat disintegration how people just drop their swords and just wait to be killed I mean that's something you just cannot even imagine today. It must have been hell on earth. It must have been absolutely horrific. I mean, I can see why this did have such a big impact on the Roman psyche. And we do know that some people do survive this battle and manage to get back to safe Roman territory. So the stories that they must have told to people are, it is, as you say, hard to imagine how bad it must have been in the stories

that they could have told about it. The general revolt is so bad that some of the people who are taken prisoner at later stages in the rebellion, when they're later ransomed by the Romans, they're not allowed to go back to Italy, potentially for the stories that they're going to tell and the impact that that's going to have on citizen morale and support for augustus ideas and the roman army isn't as invincible as as they had thought and further on we actually you actually mentioned it earlier the archaeology and you mentioned all these places that we think that parts of the battle were fought i mean what has the archaeology told us about the battle location and yeah about the sites where we think it was fought? I will disclaimer this section by saying that other people have suggested that the battlefield is not located at Calcresa.

I am 100% convinced that it is, but just feel responsible to say that, you know, Calcris is the location of the battlefield, but other battlefield locations are available. So this site, it's particularly exciting for battlefield archaeology, and it's actually the site that got me into battlefield archaeology overall. So it was found in the 1980s. People had been looking for this site for an awfully long time. It's a huge part of the German self-identity. Really from about the 16th century, people had been wondering where this battle took place.

At the time when the battlefield was discovered, it had been fairly conclusively proven through the historical sources. People thought that it took place near Detwold. So it's about 70 kilometres away from Calcreta. It's due south of where they think that the Roman army encamped over the summer. And this is where it was decided that the battle had taken place. This is also where there is now a huge monument to the battle, the Hermann Stinkwell, which was built in the 19th century. So everybody was fairly happy that the battle took place there apart from the historian Theodore Momsen who kept saying yes but if it's there then why are we not finding

anything but we're finding lots of coins and Roman artifacts up near Calcutta so he suggested maybe the battle actually took place up there but everybody just went no Momsen you know love the work in general but you're wrong about this yeah so it wasn't until the 1980s that there was any real serious investigation up around Kelcreza and it was found almost by chance so there was a British army officer he was stationed at Osnabrück at the time named Tony Clunn and he liked metal detecting and so he decided that he was going to go out and metal detect in the areas that Momsen had reported coins being found and he went out and on the first day I think he found coins but he also found lead sling bullets and that was really what keyed people into thinking okay this is a military site where a military site should not be and so the archaeological authority started to look into it and fortunately they were

able to incorporate some of the methodology of battlefield archaeology fortunate because the discipline only really came into existence in the mid-1980s so Calcreasa is found within two or three years of the first battlefield archaeology in general. So it's just such a wonderful coincidence because we wouldn't know half of what we know about the battlefield if we hadn't used that methodology. So over the next few years there were excavations and surveys around this area where the lead sling bullets had been found and eventually this wonderful conflict landscape of more than 30 square kilometers has been piece by piece identified in the landscape through chart finds of artifacts and through targeted excavations and it's a

beautiful stream so you can see sort of the progress of the Roman army approaching Calcreasa and particularly the Oberes are approaching from the west, they're heading towards the east and then you see it clearly in the archaeology, this collapse at the Oberesh. They've found over 6,000 metal artefacts from this complete landscape, more than 90% of them are from the Oberesh. But unfortunately one of the defining things about battlefield archaeology is the things you find typically aren't exciting. There are some exceptions but the majority of these artifacts they're scraps of metal. Some of them can't even be identified as to what they came from they're just pins or small fragments of metal. But what they clearly paint a picture of is the carnage and looting that happened at this Oberesh site. So we can see there are lots of elements of Roman shield binding from where the

shields have been taken and the metal bits have been ripped away from the worthless wooden pieces and they've been crumpled up into balls to make it easier to transport them and some of these were dropped and missed on the site and then they have been left there until we pick them up now. There's all sorts of bits of military equipment and hobnails and projectiles. There's also camp goods so you know coins, games, medical equipment, strong boxes, keys, some quite creepy glass eyes from statues or from furniture, you know it's got this whole wonderful range of stuff that's up into strong boxes, keys, some quite creepy glass eyes from statues or from furniture. You know, it's got this whole wonderful range of stuff that up until then,

we had no idea that the archaeology of a battlefield was going to be this diverse. I mean, that's absolutely astonishing. It does really sound like sometime in history, there had been a concentration of Roman soldiers there, and perhaps it could have been the final stand of these soldiers during this famous or infamous massacre. They were fairly hesitant at first to say it must be Varus, but there were a few things that pointed to it must at least be early period, particularly the coins.

So none of the coins found on the battlefield were minted after AD 9. So that gives us an earliest possible date, but nothing appears from after that period, which is one reason why I think it is virus and not stuff from slightly later. But it's been a wonderful sight to discover. And a bit further on that, you mentioned all these bits of material that we found there. What are some of the most really exciting finds that you found from these areas i say the most iconic one is the cavalry face mask from calcruiser you will see this if you type in virus battle into google images undoubtedly this is what you will get

a picture of is quite an otherworldly very creepy iron base from the face mask of a cavalry helmet so originally it would have had a silver layer on the top that layer has been taken away but before the iron layer was taken away as well it was lost and it survived so a lot of this stuff it has survived because there was a rampart that was built at the Obrezh area, which originally is thought to be Germanic. Subsequent excavations are maybe saying that it's a Roman camp. It hasn't been conclusively proven either way. But either way, there was a turf rampart and it collapsed probably within hours, maybe a day or so of the battle.

So it preserved beneath it a partially looted section of the battlefield. So for instance there's half of a mule skeleton underneath there so you've got nothing from the half that was not below the rampart but you have the mule skeleton with its harness fittings it captured in time and one of the things that it preserved as well is this iron base of this cavalry mask which leads us to think that the Germans were probably looting this battlefield in the immediate aftermath of the battle they're going in and they're getting the most valuable things so they're getting the swords the shields the weapons the precious metals and things so they're taking the silver layer but they're a little bit worried

maybe that the Roman relief force is going to arrive on the scene sooner rather than later so it seems to be that they take the most precious things and then they scarper and they leave the site for a while and then they return to it maybe a couple of weeks later when they realize that the Romans are not coming there is no relief force that's going to come and get them and then they continue to loot the site but by this point because the rampart has collapsed it preserves a lot of the stuff underneath it and they don't bother to dig that up to get the stuff from underneath it. Yeah that's brilliant so it seems like two periods in which there's looting at the site but we're also very fortunate because this rampart has fallen over that you have these

remarkable finds surviving. It's one of those sites that work is ongoing and it's the site almost that just keeps giving. So even within the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of press attention about some new finds that have been made from the battlefield, particularly a complete set of lorica armour that was discovered in a pit at the battlefield, not associated with any human remains, although that isn't particularly surprising given the chemical composition of the soil at the site but this is now the most complete set of roman armor it's overtaken the core bridge lorica as the most complete example of roman armor and calcreza i mean even before we had elements of Lorica armour, which were very

unexpected when they turned up because it wasn't known that this type of armour was in use by this early in the imperial period. So it led to the complete revision of the date that this armour was introduced. And that's why the site is just so wonderful. Just new things keep turning up all the time. so you're telling me this new archaeological discovery literally within weeks just weeks ago they discovered the fullest set of the most iconic type of roman legionary armor which you say surpassed the core bridge lorica segmentata and core bridge is somewhere on hadrian's wall for our listeners that's astonishing that's absolutely amazing.

As you say, it seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. It is. It's wonderful. I mean, hopefully at some point, the thing that everybody is desperately waiting for is something that's inscribed with one of the legionary names. Because, as I mentioned, there is still this debate over whether this is the battlefield associated with Varus or whether it should be dated a little bit later to some of the revenge campaigns conducted by Germanicus. But if we could find something that was inscribed

with one of the legionary numbers, that would probably tell us for sure which campaign it should be associated with. But as I say, it will be with Varus when it's found. We're going back to the Romans then for a bit. Let's talk about the aftermath of this terrible clash for the Romans. I mean, it sounds like it leaves a lasting wound, not only on Augustus, but on the whole Roman psyche. Oh, absolutely. So Augustus personally seems to take this as a great loss. The biographer

Suetonius, he tells us that Augustus is plunged into, you know, almost manic grief over this, that he runs around shouting, Varus, give me back my legions, that he's devastated by this loss, and also that it sends a shockwave through the Roman world. So in the immediate aftermath, they are convinced that it's only a matter of time before these marauding hordes of Germans cross the Rhine, blitz their way through Gaul, and that they'll be at the gates of Rome within weeks. So this fear overwhelms the city. There start being suspicions against Germans. German recruits to military units

are thrown out of the military units. There's this sort of wave of anti-Germanic xenophobia follows this defeat. They begin to calm down when they realise that it's not really going to be that dangerous. But in many ways, Augustus never really gets over this defeat. He seems to be personally wounded by it. Maybe it's the beginning of him realising that he's reached the end of what he can do for the Roman Empire. Not least he you know he had decided this policy, he had appointed Varus, he had sent him in and undoubtedly he had given him instructions on what to do in Germany, it seems very likely, so that this has gone wrong, that he's made such a massive miscalculation and that Varus has brought this disaster to him. I think it was really difficult for him to bear, really. They never raise these

legionary numbers again, they're just completely stricken from the record and Augustus really abandons the idea of germania and he also cautioned tiberius his heir on his deathbed says don't expand the empire just leave it alone so yes he's very very traumatized by it i think so lasting impact augustus but also a lasting impact on the whole policy of the roman empire to stop all this expanding. You've met your match at last. And just quickly to go on the other side of the whole battle and the whole factions as it were, Arminius

and the Germans because you mentioned earlier how there was a statue erected to Arminius in like the 18th or the 19th century. It sounds like in Germany, as for the Germans for the past 200-300 years, the whole figure of Arminius and the whole battle is also significant, very significant. Yes, because after Augustus' death, there are some putative campaigns.

So Tiberius sends his nephew Germanicus pretty much as soon as Augustus is dead and can't block him from doing this. Tiberius sends a revenge campaign to Germany conducted by Germanicus who is Drusus the Elder's son so he campaigns he doesn't find it as easy as I think he thought he would either but he gets a modicum of revenge for the Romans so they go back to the battlefield they bury the exposed remains of the Varus soldiers that have been left on the battlefield, the greatest some of which have been found as well. And they sort of get enough revenge for the face of it. So they defeat the Germans in battle a few times. They recover two of the legionary eagles and they sort of squash Arminius.

So they're fairly happy from that perspective. And then they withdraw to hold the Rhine. They do raid over into Germania. They, you know, they don't abandon it completely, but this is really marks the end of thinking, well, we'll just roll into Germania and add it to the empire without problem. And that kind of feeds into the later reception of the battle, because it's used to show why Germany is different, to show, you know, nowhere else could stop Rome, but Germany could. It's sometimes referred to as the battle that stopped Rome, even though they do

go back into the area, but they stopped trying to add it to the empire so fervently. So this is really built on, particularly by nationalist causes, and not always using nationalists in necessarily a negative way. Nation building, perhaps, is better. So in the 19th century, as they're trying to build a German nation from all of these independent kingdoms, this is a great way to show whilst we are all different in the contemporary age, we are all Germans. We are all the people that Rome couldn't conquer. We have this wonderful legacy to inherit. And so Arminius, rebranded as Hermon, becomes the symbol of this. In the way that a lot of native rebellion leaders do so, Vercingetorix is being treated much the same way in France at the same time,

Boudicca in Britain, and it's not surprising to see this happening in Germany as well. But they really build on this throughout the 19th century building this massive monument at the place at the time where they thought the battle happened and it's a beautiful monument and it was one another part of its history is it was used as a navigation wayfinder for British bombing forces during the second world war and they shot at it as well. It's also quite notable that when it was built, it's facing towards France, which was their enemies at the time. And if you draw a line roughly between a monument that was erected in France to Vercingetorix, and you look at the orientation of the Arminius monument, Arminius is raising his sword towards Vercingetorix in that direction.

That's amazing how centuries after the battle was fought, it can still have this lasting impact on these modern nations. I'm sure people can imagine it was used a lot in Nazi propaganda up to a certain point. So quite early on, it's very heavily heavily used you have images of Hitler at Arminius monument the Hermann's Denkmal and you have him aping the stance of Arminius obviously trying to cast himself as a new Germanic folk hero but that disappears really once Hitler is elected into power because of course with him being elected, he has now become authority. So he has now become Rome in this equation. So he no longer wants to encourage Arminius-like behaviour. But it's somewhere that members of the Hitler Youth get

taken there to be taught about their wonderful Germanic heritage and history. So it's been quite difficult in the post-war period to kind of reclaim the figure of Arminius in particular from this kind of nationalism. But I'd say really, particularly with the discoverer of the battlefield, because it's been able to shift the focus away from these kind of nationalist issues to a fuller understanding of what happened,

not so propaganda-iant really i think it is moving away from being a nationalist symbol in a bad way but it's just a symbol of a nation instead and in more recent times we've seen all these roman films coming out i'm thinking perhaps although it's set in modern in northern britain centurion you have at the start don't you have that great ambush scene where they're led by a local guide into this narrow defile thinking that she's going to lead them when in fact there's a great ambush it really seems very similar to the arminia story in germany absolutely i mean that's a scene that i show all of my students when i'm trying to teach them about this battle because I

think it's exactly what it would be like and you can see the chaos you can see them picking off the different parts of the column and it raises it was a dangerous game that the Romans were playing in some ways inviting auxiliaries in to their army that you have on one hand you need them and they help to blunt the edges of your occupation because they have things in common with the native population of your provinces but inherent to that is you are training your potential enemies exactly on what you're going to do and you teach them very very well how you're going to fight and then you give them commands of men and then you send them out into the world and you just have to hope that they will

be kind to you with it. I mean we see multiple instances where they're not with Tacferinus in North Africa or Julius Cavillus and Julius Bindex we see this biting them every now and then but going back to say Arminius's brother is a very loyal auxiliary soldier of Rome. It completely works in his case. He loses an eye in battle for the Romans at one point. He even fights in the Roman army against Arminius during Germanicus's campaigns. They finally meet on a battlefield, a pitched battlefield, which Arminius loses, and his brother is on the other side

and never defects, never goes back to the Germanic side. He's completely won over joe that was an amazing talk through one of the most remarkable most famous defeats in roman history in ancient history in fact thank you so much for coming on the show thank you for having me and if anybody has any questions i'm always approachable on twitter i'm always on twitter far too much so thank you bring your twitter handle is joe it's at dr j e ball there we go brilliant once again joe thank you so much for joining me thank you very much for having me Thank you.