Legions of Rome

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  With a number of their cohorts detached by Varus to winter at German settlements—cohorts that had by this time been massacred by the tribes—Varus’ three legions would have numbered around 10,000 men between them. As Velleius reveals, the column also included 1,500 auxiliary cavalry and 3,000 auxiliary light infantry. In textbook fashion, Roman style, this force of some 14,500 men would have been led into the Weser Hills by cavalry and auxiliaries, guided by Germans who had been sent to lead the Roman army into Arminius’ trap. Roman road-building parties came next. In the vanguard of the column rode the commander-in-chief himself and his staff and cavalry bodyguard. Two legions probably came next, ahead of Varus’ strung-out baggage train, which included as “many wagons and beasts of burden as in peacetime.” [Ibid.]

  Knowing that a lightly protected, fully-laden baggage train heading for the Rhine on its own would have attracted Germans intent on plunder like bears to honey, Varus had refused to detach his train, which would have included some 1,800 pack mules; one for every eight soldiers was the norm. But neither did he lighten it to speed his progress. There would also have been hundreds of two-wheeled carts drawn by mules and oxen, the carts loaded down with the catapults of the three legions, as well as ammunition, tents and millstones, officers’ furniture and silver dining plate, and supplies for the march. As finds at the digs at Kalkreise would suggest, the train also carried items as diverse as medical instruments, glass gaming pieces and the small statues of officers’ household gods. [Wells, 3]

  A cavalry detachment brought up the rear, trailed—with increasing apprehension as they entered the forbidding forest of tall birch, spruce and oak—by the camp followers. The legionaries of the column were in marching order. Their personal effects were suspended from carrying poles over one shoulder: bedrolls, entrenching tools, mess equipment, bravery decorations and rations. Their javelins and two palisade stakes per man were tied to the pack poles. Their shields, wrapped in protective leather covers, were slung over their left shoulder. Their helmets, slung around their necks, rested against their chests. With this sort of load and a long baggage train they would cover 15–18 miles [24–29 kilometers] a day, marching until noon then spending the afternoon building a marching camp for the night and gathering firewood, fodder and water, repeating the process each day.

  In the Teutoburg Forest, Arminius and the tense German tribesmen “came through the densest thickets, as they were acquainted with the pathways,” then took up positions in the trees on the hillside, out of sight, and waited. Not all the tribes had answered the call to arms, and some bands that had come to the Weser Hills held back, waiting to see the outcome of Arminius’ initial attack. A black sky shrouded the area. Heavy rain, which had begun as a shower that morning, tumbled down on to the warriors and wild winds lashed the treetops. But at least the storm would mask any sound made by the hidden tribesmen and their horses, so that the approaching Romans were not alerted to their presence. [Dio, LVI, 20–21]

  Apart from Arminius and his Cherusci, the tribes waiting in the forest included the formidable Chatti, a people of “hardy bodies, well-knit limbs, fierce appearance, and unusual mental vigor,” according to Tacitus. The Chattian contingent was led by Segimerus, who was accompanied by his son. Other Chatti clan leaders also present would have been Catumerus, who was the father-in-law of Arminius’ brother Flavus, as well as Arpus and Adgandestrius; all three were future kings of the Chatti. The tribe primarily fought on foot, and always ventured forth well prepared. In addition to weapons, they went to war equipped with entrenching tools and provisions. While other tribes went forth to battle, said Tacitus, “the Chatti come out for a campaign.” A custom of the Chatti fighting man, copied by some other tribes, was to let his beard grow when he went to war, only trimming it once he had slain an enemy in battle. [Tac., Germ., 30]

  The Cauchi were also there. They had been subjected by the massive armies led through Germany by Drusus and Tiberius two decades earlier, but in AD 5, while Tiberius was leading a new campaign in Germany, their young men had again proved troublesome to Rome, until forced to surrender and disarm by Tiberius. These same young men had rearmed, and had come to avenge their past humiliations. Then there were the Bructeri from north of the Lippe, and the Usipetes and the Tubantes, as well as Cheruscan near neighbors and subservient allies, the Fosi. The Marsi tribe, which resided between the Lippe and Ruhr rivers, was there, together with other tribes likely to have sent warriors—the Tencteri, Chamavi, Angrivarii, Sugambri and Mattiaci.

  In all, some 30,000 tribesmen were present. The front-line weapon of most German tribes was a 12-foot (3.6-meter) wooden spear. Second-rank men carried the framea, the short, metal-tipped spear used for both throwing and jabbing that was common throughout Europe. Some warriors came armed merely with saplings whose ends had been sharpened and then hardened in a fire. Nobles also carried swords, copies of the Roman gladius, and large, blunt-ended broadswords.

  All tribes were equipped with flat shields. These were generally made of oak or linden planks, with the poorer warriors using woven wicker shields covered with hide. Shield shapes varied by tribe; the Chatti used a small, square shield, while others carried more substantial rectangular shields as much as 4 feet (1.2 meters) long. All Germans tended to wear a cloak fastened at one shoulder with a brooch or pin. The wealthier tribesmen sported armored breastplates and helmets, but some were entirely naked beneath their cloaks. And all the waiting Germans were now saturated by the rain.

  Varus’ men were finding the passage through the hills tough going, “felling trees, building roads, and bridging places that required it,” said Dio. [Dio, LV, 20] The rainstorm only made conditions all the more difficult, separating various parts of the column as the ground became slippery under foot and rainwater washed away earth to expose roots and logs that became obstacles for cartwheels. The wind was so strong that it broke off tree branches, which came tumbling down on to the column. [Ibid.]

  Arminius had chosen the location for his ambuscade with care. The narrow defiles and often marshy ground through the Weser Hills prevented cavalry from deploying, while the legions’ heavy infantry would not be able to use their normal battlefield formations. As far as the tribes were concerned, too, there was a religious significance to the Teutoburg, with several groves sacred to the German gods situated in the forest. It must have seemed that those gods were smiling on the German enterprise, for the violent storm was in the Germans’ favor, making conditions for the Roman column struggling over rain-soaked ground all the more trying and exhausting.

  The participating tribes had been allocated their positions along Varus’ route by Arminius, and told to await his signal to strike. The column came into sight, and slowly filled the defile opposite Arminius. According to Dio, the storm had broken the column into several straggling parties, so that various units were mixed up with the wagons and the non-combatants. This played right into Arminius’ hands. He gave the signal for the assault to begin, and, with a roar, on both sides of the defile, Germans emerged from the trees to pelt the Romans with stones, slingshot and throwing spears, while other tribesmen ran to block both the way forward and the way back.

  “At first they [the Germans] hurled their volleys from a distance,” said Dio. As missiles came at them from all directions, the Romans, completely taken by surprise, dumped their shoulder poles—which carried their supplies of javelins—and hurriedly raised shields to defend themselves against missiles. Many Romans were wounded by missiles in these early minutes of the attack. When the Germans found that the Romans were not returning fire with javelins, they moved in to launch their spears at closer range. The Romans, unable to assemble in regular formation, and “being fewer at every point than their assailants, suffered greatly and could offer no resistance.” [Ibid.]

  These were not inferior legions. Velleius Paterculus had served as a prefect of cavalry on campaign in Germany with the 17th, 18th and 19th legions. He considered them “unexcelled in bravery, the first among Roman arm
ies in discipline, in energy, and in experience in the field.” [Velle., II, CXIX] But for all their discipline, energy and experience, these legions were in desperate straits. Varus ordered a marching camp to be thrown up on the spot. “After securing a suitable place, so far as that was possible on a wooded mountain,” part of the army dug the walls and fosse of a camp while the remaining troops kept the Germans at bay. [Dio, LVI, 21]

  At nightfall the tribesmen pulled back, and Varus and his bloodied troops, together with the terrified civilians, spent a sleepless night behind the camp walls. Varus seems to have been determined to keep pushing forward, convinced that he was needed further to the north. Perhaps the initial report of a German uprising had included the lie that Arminius was trapped, and Varus, unaware that Arminius was in fact leading the attack on him, was determined to save his young friend. He must have thought his attackers that day had been sent to prevent him from relieving loyal troops to the north. Varus, a man of honor, was determined to fight his way through the hills and rescue his colleagues, just as he had rescued a legion under siege at Jerusalem a dozen years earlier.

  As subsequent events were to indicate, Varus may have met opposition from some of his subordinates at a council of his officers that night, men who wanted to turn around and drive for the Rhine. But Varus would have none of it. He gave orders for most of the carts to be abandoned and burned, with everything that was not absolutely necessary to be left behind. This had the double advantage of reducing the load and of diverting the attention of Germans intent on plundering discarded Roman baggage. [Ibid.] It is probable, too, that Varus ordered the legions to depart before dawn, to surprise the enemy and to give the column a chance to be well on its way before the sun rose, for among the many items unearthed at Kalkreise was a bronze mule-bell, of the kind that hangs around the necks of pack mules even to this day, which was stuffed with straw to prevent it from ringing. [Wells, 3] A general intending to sneak out of his camp before dawn without alerting the enemy would have ensured his muleteers silenced the pack mules’ bells.

  Certainly Varus’ troops were able to escape the hastily dug camp. “The next day they advanced in a little better order, and even reached open country, although they did not get away without loss” as they pushed through the Germans stationed in their path. [Dio, LVI, 21] Behind them they had left the abandoned carts in flames, and these and the discarded baggage had attracted the attention of most of the tribesmen. From Dio’s narrative it seems that the Romans may have spent a day on the march before building another camp for the night. But once the Germans had gathered up their loot and hidden it away they gave chase, overtaking the Roman column on the third day.

  As the column entered thick woodland again, the tribesmen resumed the attack in earnest. This time the Romans energetically defended themselves, only to take the heaviest casualties so far. “Since they had to form their lines in a narrow space in order that the cavalry and infantry together might run down the enemy,” said Dio, “they collided frequently with one another and with the trees.” The depleted, savaged army again labored to build a marching camp for the night. [Ibid.]

  Dio says that when the fourth day of the encounter dawned, Varus’ exhausted men resumed the march, to be faced with a return of the rain that had made progress so difficult on the first day. Soaked by the downpour, the Roman troops were now buffeted by the wind. So strong was the gale, said Dio, that the Romans were unable to keep their feet, let alone launch their javelins or loose off their arrows. Their waterlogged shields, meanwhile, were almost too heavy to raise. By this time, too, Arminius’ original bands had been reinforced by more Germans, “as many of those who had at first wavered now joined them, largely in the hope of plunder.” Significantly outnumbered, the surviving men of the Roman column again found themselves completely surrounded by the Germans. [Ibid.]

  Velleius says that, at the last, the column was “hemmed in by forests and marshes and ambuscades.” [Velle., II, CXIX] If the Kalkreise site was indeed the location of Varus’ last stand, its topography fits Velleius’ description, for it combines forest and marsh. To the south rises the 350 feet high [106 meters] Kalkreise Hill. Thickly forested, on this day in September AD 9 the hill would have been seething with German tribesmen using the trees for cover. To the north there is marshland known as the Great Bog. Between the hill and the bog there is a stretch of dry, level ground, in the shape of an hourglass, which is half a mile wide [0.8 of a kilometer] at its narrowest point. Archaeologists say that this piece of land was sandy 2,000 years ago, and it was here that the largest concentration of Roman artifacts was found. [Wells, 3] Varus’ army, it would seem, was trapped here between the hill and the marsh as it tried to make its way to the northeast.

  At this point, with the way ahead blocked by more tribesmen arriving from the north, Varus gave orders for a new camp to be built on the spot. Some legionaries withdrew from the fighting to commence building a camp wall, which would run along the bottom of the hill to give the Romans some protection from the Germans on the slope.

  Some modern authors have surmised that this wall was in fact built by the Germans for offensive purposes, but this is unlikely. The Germans had spent several days pursuing the Romans from the last battle site, and it is improbable that they would have prepared a position several days’ march north of the original ambush location, especially when there is no record of them building a wall at the original site. Secondly, it makes no sense for the Germans to build a wall that could prove of more use to the Romans, who were in the open, than to the Germans, who already had the cover of the trees. As before, Varus ordered a marching camp to be erected when further forward progress proved impossible. But the construction work could not have been undertaken in more difficult circumstances.

  At this point, one of Varus’ cavalry officers decided to try to make a break for the east. Vala Numonius, the prefect of horse, may have argued earlier for an attempted breakout for the Rhine, only to be overruled by his general. Now, Numonius “tried to reach the Rhine with his squadrons of horse.” In doing so, said Velleius, Numonius “set a fearful example in that he left the infantry unprotected by the cavalry.” But Numonius and his cavalry did not get far. “He did not survive those whom he abandoned, for he died in the act of deserting them.” Overwhelmed by mounted Germans and warriors on foot, Numonius and his troopers died some little way to the east of the main battle site. [Velle., II, CXIX]

  As the thinning ranks of legionaries assigned to digging hacked out a shallow ditch and threw up a wall 5 feet (1.5 meters) high, 15 feet (4.5 meters) thick at the base, and at least 700 yards (640 meters) long, at the bottom of the hill, a few surviving pack animals were herded up against the earth bank, to take advantage of the slight protection it offered. This was as much of the camp as the embattled legions were able to build. Varus, meanwhile, abandoned by his cavalry and with many of his soldiers dead or wounded, tried to organize the defense. But then he, too, was wounded, apparently by a spear. His bodyguards moved him to another part of the field; perhaps closer to the wall. The Germans either mounted a rush down the slope against the wall, or actively undermined it, for the wall collapsed at one point, burying a pack mule. The mule’s skeleton was discovered by archaeologists in the 1990s. [Wells, 3]

  With a victorious roar, warriors of the Bructeri tribe carried off the 19th Legion’s eagle, leaving its standard-bearer and numerous other 1st cohort defenders piled dead on the field. Before long, the Cauchi and the Marsi seized the eagles of the 17th and 18th legions. The wounded Varus could see that many surviving officers were also wounded. Clearly, the battle was lost. Emulating his father and his grandfather, who had both taken their own lives in times past, “he ran himself through with his sword.” [Velle., II, CXIX]

  It seems that the general’s staff then attempted to burn his body so that it did not fall into enemy hands; they were not wholly successful, for a little later his corpse was found to be “partially burned.” One of the two camp-prefects, Lucius Eggius, no
w followed his general’s example and also committed suicide. [Ibid.]

  When news of Varus’ death spread among the surviving Roman troops, some officers and enlisted men also took their own lives. Others cast aside their shields and weapons and invited the Germans to kill them, which the tribesmen were happy to do. [Dio, LVI, 22] After the death of the general, and with much of the Roman army fallen, the surviving camp-prefect, Ceionius, proposed to surrender what remained of the army. This was an action despised by Velleius Paterculus, for surrender, in the view of most Romans, was dishonorable. Besides, Velleius could not understand why Ceionius preferred “to die by torture at the hands of the enemy than in battle.” [Velle., II, CXIX]

  Arminius, receiving Ceionius’ surrender offer, called on his countrymen to stay their weapons. The command spread, and across the battlefield the fighting came to a halt and the din of battle subsided. Only the groans of the wounded could be heard, as all eyes turned to Arminius. Perhaps several hundred Romans still lived; on Ceionius’ command, they threw down their weapons. Heavy chains were brought out by the Germans and the prisoners bound.

  The centurions and thin-stripe tribunes were separated from their men, then thrust into the pits which the rank and file had been forced to dig. Realizing that the Germans planned painful deaths for them, junior tribune Caldus Caelius, “a young man worthy in every way of a long line of ancestors,” according to Velleius, took a section of the chain with which he was bound and crashed it down on his skull with all his might, causing his instant death; with “both his brains and his blood gushing from the wound.” [Velle., II, CXX]