Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [179]
The plot was betrayed, but Varus could not bring himself to distrust his friendly Germans. Believing in Arminius’ honesty, he took the bait, gathered his scattered forces, and marched off to put down the supposed rebellion. The conspirators, purporting to be loyalists, rode with the legions for a time, but then one by one made their excuses and slipped away.
Arminius had chosen the location for the ambush with great care. Archaeologists have discovered the site (at Kalkriese in Lower Saxony) and have unearthed the detritus of a battle. A level pathway led through woods, running between a steep hill and a great bog. Along the hillside the Germans built a camouflaged turf rampart at least seven hundred yards long, where the ambushers could lie in wait for the enemy, out of sight and out of mind. When the Roman column arrived, Arminius’ men launched volleys of spears from behind the turf rampart and then charged. They achieved total surprise.
What happened next is uncertain, but, despite many casualties, a good number of legionaries and most of the officer corps survived and pushed on, under constant attack, passing through open country and then plunging into woods again.
On the third day after the ambush, the situation became hopeless and Varus and his staff realized that there was no escape. Even if it meant leaving their remaining soldiers leaderless, they agreed that there was only one honorable course of action. They nerved their courage for the “dreaded but unavoidable act” and committed suicide, running themselves through with their swords.
It was now every man for himself. Some soldiers followed Varus’ example; others simply lost heart, dropped their weapons, and allowed themselves to be slaughtered by the enemy.
Of the three legions’ fifteen thousand men, few survived to tell the tale. The Germans took about fifteen hundred prisoners, of whom two thirds were sold into slavery; a number of them eventually won their freedom and made their way back to Italy. The remainder were sacrificed as religious offerings. They were put to death in different ways; some had their throats cut, while others were hanged from trees, crucified, or buried alive. The German gods appreciated variety. Victims’ heads were nailed to trees in the forest as a warning to any intending invasion in the future. Once they had exacted their punishments and removed their dead, the Germans left the scenes of battle as they were, for time and nature slowly to restore and conceal.
News that something terrible had happened percolated through the region, and all but one of the Roman fortresses on the eastern side of the Rhine were hastily evacuated. The “province” of Germania was lost.
Augustus was in his early seventies. He had been working at full stretch for fifty years and the last decade had been crammed with personal disappointment and political trouble. He no longer dealt with individual petitions, although with the help of assistants he still investigated legal suits and passed judgment, seated on a tribunal at his headquarters on the Palatine Hill. He gave up attending Senate meetings or people’s assemblies, and entrusted the reception of foreign delegations to a trio of former consuls.
Like the outbreak of the Pannonian rebellion, the Varus disaster (in Latin, Variana clades) seemed to make the princeps briefly panic. He tore his clothes, as was the Roman custom when a man was facing shame and catastrophe, and did not shave for months. He was so upset that he would beat his head against a door, crying out: “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” He kept the anniversary as a day of deep mourning.
A record survives of an aged diva being brought back to the stage in A.D. 9 during celebrations to congratulate the princeps on “his recovery”; this reveals that he had been ill,