Rome's Greatest Defeat

by Adrian Murdoch

  SEVEN

  A Second Troy

  At the end of the Second World War, Cheruscan warriors who had marched to the sound of the Reich that would last a thousand years, found themselves disarmed, disbanded and toothless. The enthusiasm that the Nazi regime had engendered for archaeology, through its massive investment in it, refused to go away. Some 130,000 tourists still ascend the Hermannsdenkmal near Detmold every year, such is its popular resonance.1 The passion for ancient history in Britain that was generated by scholars and popularisers like Mortimer Wheeler and Leonard Cottrell had its counterpoint in Germany with C.W. Ceram. His Gods, Graves and Scholars remains in print and is as popular today as it was when it was first published in 1949.2 But there is no mention whatsoever of Germanic archaeology.

  A deliberate, unthreatening gloss was placed on Arminius. School-books in Germany unduly emphasised the evidence that there is for German cooperation with the Romans. Arguments that related to the purity of the Germanic tribes and discussions of Arminius’ bloody resistance, which had been so much a part of German consciousness from the time of Frederick the Great until the dictatorship of Hitler, were played down. In an interview debating the role of pride in one’s homeland (Heimat) and nationalism/patriotism, the German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler rails against what he calls idiots who believe that ‘Arminius and Charlemagne were German and that the German nation marched from the time of the migrations into the present.’3

  Uncomfortably, German prehistory has been made to sing Schiller’s Ode to Joy and to show itself to be in harmony with the political goal of a united Europe. So sensitive a subject is it deemed to be that only two special museum exhibitions dedicated to early Germanic history have taken place in the country since the war: the blandly titled ‘Excavations in Germany, 1950–75’ in Mainz in 1975; and then nothing for twenty-seven years, when ‘People, Times, Regions’ took place in Berlin in 2002, some twelve years after re-unification.

  Germany’s prehistory had become so unthreatening that it was even the subject of humour, at the hands, of all people, the French. In the 1963 comic book Asterix and the Goths (the third book in the series), France’s relationship with Germany over the past century is caricatured – one of Asterix’s German opponents looks distinctly like Otto von Bismark – as the plucky Gaulish warrior and his indomitable friend Obelix travel to Germany to rescue their druid. Although Arminius is not mentioned by name, the plot hinges on German desires to invade both Gaul and Rome, poking fun at the fear that had defined Germany’s relationship with its southern European neighbours since the time of Marcus Lollius.

  Within Germany, however, few attempted to engage in any seriousness with the theme. Anselm Kiefer, the leading exponent of German neo-Expressionism, is the exception. He is one of the rare exceptions; throughout his career, his work has mapped out Germany’s psyche since the end of the war. He remains an artist who provokes and who is wary of any view of the world that is ‘vulgarly Manichaean’.4 One of his best-known pictures is the 1978 work Ways of Worldly Wisdom – Arminius’ Battle, a print with woodcuts of generals, politicians, philosophers and writers who eulogised Arminius. These portraits surround a fire that alludes to the furnace that engulfed Germany as a result of its nationalism, as well as the flames that burned so many books during the Nazi period. It gives a glimmer of hope, too, representing the new Germany that rose out of the ashes past.

  But Kiefer is a lone voice. Much more commonly, Arminius had become an avowedly commercial character, an innocent figure of fun, appropriated for advertising rather than politics. He was more likely to be seen wielding a salami than Nothung, to have croissants rather than horns sticking out of his helmet. The Cheruscan commander has been used to endorse almost any kind of product imaginable, from food to banking services. Even at the museum in Kalkriese today, Thusnelda strawberry jam, Varus waffles and Hermann sausage are all for sale.

  With the collapse of the Berlin Wall at the end of the 1980s and imminent German reunification, however, journalists began to reach for Arminius in greater numbers, especially whenever they wanted to sound alarm bells about German might without mentioning Hitler. In 1990, Time magazine analysed the implications of German unification for Europe by leading with the story of Arminius. A piece headlined ‘Anything to fear?’ reminds readers of the ‘curse of their history’ and suggests that it is ‘a fact they may resent, but cannot ignore’. This has remained a convention to this day. As recently as 2003, in reaction to a minor diplomatic spat between Germany and Italy, the Italian journalist and author Roberto Pazzi took the opportunity to dredge up the ancient ambivalence between the two countries that started with the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. Italy is the ‘warm maternal centre of Europe, the place where the egg of Greek civilisation had come to be hatched’; Germany is ‘barbaric’, a country that nurtured both Arminius and Charles V’s Lutheran soldiers who ‘entered the eternal city, raping and murdering nuns and priests’ in 1527.5

  But the question that the great German historian Theodor Mommsen had posed at the end of the nineteenth century was still waiting for an answer. Where had the battle taken place? As mentioned in the introduction, the search for the actual site of the conflict had become a cross between the quest for the Holy Grail and a cottage industry. Both academics and interested amateurs put forward some 700 theories that placed the battlefield pretty much everywhere in northern Germany and ranged from the balanced and believable to the simply bonkers.

  With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been obvious that Kalkriese was the site of the battle, though with other spots clamouring for attention, it had been overlooked. In 1716, a local theologian called Zaharius Goeze with a particular interest in numismatics mentioned the large number of Roman coins that had been found in and around Kalkriese. Half a century later, in 1768, there was further mention of the number of coins that had been found as farmers in the area dug turf and tilled the land. One local field was even called the Goldacker, the ‘field of gold’. Certainly the local landowners, the von Bar family, whose connection with the area stretched back centuries, had managed to amass a substantial collection of Roman gold and silver coins, the majority of which dated from the reign of Augustus. Fortunately, although the collection was stolen by Allied soldiers in 1945, it had been properly catalogued.

  When Mommsen examined the collection, he concluded that the area around Kalkriese was the site of the battle. One reads his account with a slight jolt at how accurate his conclusions were. He identified the site at the south edge of the Great Moor and north of the Wiehengebirge correctly, spotting the tactical advantages that the relatively narrow pass would have given Arminius.6 But his thoughts were conspicuously ignored, primarily because of the lack of any evidence of a battle. After all, so said the nay-sayers, hordes of coins found in northern Germany were hardly that rare an event.

  It was not until the summer of 1987, almost a century later, that Tony Clunn, a major in the British army with the Armoured Field Ambulance and keen amateur metal-detector enthusiast, was able to confirm Mommsen’s suggestion. When he started sweeping the area, no one believed that he would find anything. Not a single Roman coin or artefact had been found in the county for the past thirteen years. Undaunted, Clunn discovered the old military road marked on maps and decided to concentrate on one area of it. Soon his metal detector began to react to something under the soil. Clunn’s account of that moment is riveting:

  I cut away a square of turf, checked that first and, when I did not get a signal, continued carefully to clear out the black peat from within the hole. I rechecked the signal tone then picked up a handful of soil. No signal in the hole. Painstakingly, I sifted through the contents in my hand, but I could see nothing resembling a solid object as indicated by the signal. I sifted through again and then I saw it: black, small . . . and round! The merest glint of silver. It was a perfect silver coin, blackened with age, with the same black hue as the peaty soil: a Roman denarius. I saw the proud aquiline features of Augustus Caes
ar on one side, and on the other, two figures standing behind battle shields and crossed spears. I could hardly believe it. I stood transfixed, savouring a combination of disbelief, excitement, and the pure exhilaration of finding such a wonderful 2,000 year old artefact from ancient Rome.7

  Within a fortnight, he had recovered a total of ninety-two coins. The region’s head of archaeology, Wolfgang Schlüter, suggested that Clunn concentrate his search in the area around Kalkriese. At this stage, it crossed no one’s mind that the site of Varus’ defeat had been discovered. In fact, as Clunn turned up coin after coin over the next year, it was generally believed that what had been found was the horde of a merchant or some soldier.

  It was not until he dug up three lead, oval-shaped objects in late 1988 that it became apparent that Clunn had unwittingly stumbled on something significant. The objects were slingshots used by Roman auxiliary troops. This was enough to remove the doubt once and for all, that the area Clunn was examining did not just have a trade connection, rather there was a military link here. Even though nothing had been found, as yet, to link the site to Varus, it was time to turn the excavations over to the professionals.

  They began to dig in 1989, in a field called the Oberesch, which fortuitously turned out to be one of the main battlegrounds of the Varian disaster, if not the climax of the battle itself. The following year was one of slow realisation, as the sesterces began to drop regarding what it was they were dealing with. It was the excavations of the next twelve months that began to remove lingering doubts that what had been found was the site of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. ‘Varus wanted to be found,’ said Susanne Wilbers-Rost, now lead archaeologist at Kalkriese, but who had then just been brought on board.8

  The first artefact to bring the excavations in Kalkriese to wider national and international attention was the discovery of what at first looked like a rather unpromising, dark brown lump. On cleaning it turned out to be a stunning cavalry mask. The rapidity with which that has become the logo for the battlefield is testament to its quality and power to move after all these years. It was also regarded as an important enough find to appear on a stamp in 2001. Although several elements of German Roman history had appeared on special issues in previous years, from Drusus’ Monument in 1962 and Xanten in 1975 to one celebrating the 2,000th anniversary of the town of Cologne in 2000, a lack of any physical remnant of the battle meant that Arminius’ victory had never been celebrated, until now.

  Perhaps the most impressive knock-on effect of this discovery was the attempt the following year to put a face to the cavalry officer mask, using evidence from the mask itself and human bones found nearby. Quite rightly they captured the national imagination. Finally, a real image, not one from a relief, coin or gem, nor a visage frozen in marble, a statue staring whitely and somehow inhumanly into the middle distance. Richard Helmer, professor of medicine and expert in craniofacial identification (he identified the bones of Josef Mengele), was able to reconstruct the face behind the mask.

  The auxiliary who had worn the mask was nearing the end of his military service. A strong and powerful man, indicated by the thickness of the base of the skull that was found on the battlefield, he was 35–40 years old. He must have been looking forward to retirement. From a forensic study of the inside of the mask it was apparent that he had distinct scars on his nose and chin, the mementos of previous battles. The brown hair and eye colouring are supposition, based on a presumed Mediterranean heritage. Nonetheless the overall effect is both startling and moving as you come face to face with someone who was there, who saw what happened.

  Back in the 1990 archaeological season, the second high spot of the year was the discovery of what was thought at first to be a Roman fort. In all likelihood, it was mooted, this was a marching camp of some kind. After a couple more months, the archaeologists began to realise that the majority of the Roman finds lay in front of the wall and not behind it. The legions had been the ones who were attacked at this spot. By the end of 1992, Wolfgang Schlüter was able to make a definitive statement that this was the site of the famous battle.

  Of course there were numerous battles and skirmishes all over Germany throughout the Roman period. Without epigraphic or literary evidence from the site itself, what makes the archaeologists so sure that the battle they are still uncovering is the same Battle of Teutoburg Forest mentioned in the sources? The answer lies in the coins that have been found – more than 3,000 to date, 400 of them on the Oberesch itself. There was no doubt at all that the conflict that took place here did so during the early principate. First and foremost, all coins found, from the relatively small number of gold coins to the vast number of silver denarii coins or copper coins, can be dated to the reign of the Emperor Augustus. No coins from a later emperor have been found, which means that battle that happened here took place before AD 14.

  But is it possible to narrow it down within Augustus’ reign? He ruled for a long time and not only did he mint coins throughout, but as we have seen in previous chapters, Roman soldiers tramped pretty continually across Germany from the time of Marcus Lollius’ debacle with the eagle of the Legion V for the next thirty-one years.

  From the style and images used on the coins, as well as the mint marks, it is possible to be more accurate about the period in Augustus’ long rule from which the discovered coins date. Around a fifth of the coins found are from a specific series minted in Lyons known as Lugdunum I, which dates from 8 BC onwards. These feature images of Gaius (born in 20 BC) and Lucius (born in 17 BC), Augustus’ grandchildren, adopted as sons and heirs to the throne and celebrated throughout the empire around the time the series was minted. From a chronological point of view a terminus post quem is given, as both men died young: Lucius in AD 2 and Gaius two years after that.

  Of the coins that were excavated in the pass, none come from the previous series that the Lyons mint produced (struck in 14/13 BC) or the subsequent one, which came into circulation between AD 10 and 14. So the latest coins that have been found date to between 2 BC and AD 1, which easily gives a date for the battlefield of between 2 BC and AD 10 – exactly what one would expect to find if this was the site where Arminius won.

  The types of coins found confirm the military nature of the site and back up the evidence of the weaponry that has been uncovered. First of all, the majority of those discovered are copper coins, called asses, the currency the soldiers would most commonly use. But the overwhelming evidence is that the majority of these coins were countermarked – some 96 per cent of them. Countermarked coins were exclusively given to soldiers on certain occasions – before a campaign or on the accession of a new governor – and are a hallmark of a military zone. They rarely turned up in civilian hands. The countermarks used, ‘AVG’, ‘IMP’, ‘C VAL’ and ‘VAR’, would seem most obviously to be read as ‘Augustus’, ‘Imperator’, ‘Caius Numonius Vala’ and ‘Publius Quinctilius Varus’.

  It is the last one of these that clinches it. The ‘VAR’ countermark was only used for the few short years that Varus was governor. No other major conflict during the governorship of Varus is reported. The sheer variety of military finds suggests that a huge combined force was involved in a battle here, something that would certainly not have gone unreported. There was no doubt: part of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest had been found.

  Now that the site had been rediscovered, the inevitable desire to celebrate such an important event was tempered by the problem of how to incorporate Arminius’ victory back into modern German mythology, especially in a country that had been newly unified. Gone, inevitably, were all traces of nationalism. More-serious broadsheets commemorated the spirit of discovery, of adventure that harked back to the glory days of archaeology. So the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung headlined an article ‘Excavations in Kalkriese a second Troy’. The confusion is more apparent in the way that it was presented in the popular press. Here, the battle was the conflict between ‘David and Goliath’; it was a case of the first world being beaten by the third world a
nd the victory of the German guerrillas should be seen as an ‘early Vietnam’.9 There is no mention anywhere of conquering predecessors and the glorious German heritage.

  This more tempered and subdued tone can be seen in the frequent allusions to the events of AD 9 in historical novels throughout Europe from the 1990s onwards. That these were not now refracted through a nationalistic prism means that the history itself had a chance to shine in its own terms. In France, Anne Bernet has the prefect of Judaea taking part in the battle in her 1998 novel Les mémoires de Ponce Pilate; in Germany, Jörg Kastner has written a series of novels about the era since 1995, starting with Thorag oder die Rückkehr des Germanen (Thorag, or the Return of the German); and in Britain’s The Iron Hand of Mars, Lindsey Davis’s popular Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco is sent off to the wilds of Germany in AD 71 and ends up spending a night in the Teutoburg Forest.

  By far the best of this genre are David Wishart’s 1995 novel Ovid and Iris Kammerer’s Der Tribun (The Tribune) from 2004, both of which deal with the Battle of Teutoburg Forest directly. The former is a hugely entertaining conspiracy theory that links the exile of the poet Ovid to the loss of the three legions under Varus. As well as witty characterisations of individuals like Asprenas, what makes it stand out is the generally sympathetic portrait of the Roman governor. He is corrupted and betrayed by Arminius, but he is not wholly incompetent. A real sense is also given of the way in which the subject became one to be avoided in the polite society in Rome. In Iris Kammerer’s book, Gaius Cornelius Cinna, the great-grandson of Pompey the Great and the tribune of the book’s title, is sent on a secret mission to warn Varus of the Cheruscan conspiracy. Captured and knocked out by a Cheruscan noble, he finds, when he regains consciousness, that the Battle of Teutoburg Forest is history and the three legions have been lost. In the author’s note, Kammerer explicitly states that her intention was to reconstruct what happened and to remove the German patriotism and nationalism which has grown around the story.