Legions of Rome (42 page)

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, now 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
]

The son of Segimerus looked down at the body of Quintilius Varus, which had been partly disfigured by the botched attempt to burn it. The general’s expensive armor and fittings had been ripped from his corpse, his gold-decorated helmet taken as a souvenir. Tacitus says that the young Chattian insulted the body. [Tac.,
A
,
I
, 71] Perhaps this was merely with a kick; more gruesomely, perhaps he attacked the general’s corpse with a knife and gouged out his eyes; or perhaps it was that time-honored insult—urinating on the body. A warrior soon stepped up and swung a blade, severing the head from Varus’ body. That head was raised on the point of a spear. Tens of thousands of German tribesmen roared their approval.

Arminius was to send Varus’ head as a trophy to King Maroboduus of the Marcomanni tribe in Bohemia, which had not participated in the attack on Varus’ army. Maroboduus then sent it to Augustus at Rome. Despite the disgrace that attended Varus’ defeat, Augustus gave permission for Varus’ head to be interred in the family vault outside Rome.

At the battle site, in the immediate wake of his victory, Arminius climbed on to a mound—perhaps the embankment built by the Romans troops. To a tumultuous reception from his warriors, he praised them for their courage, derided the defeated Romans, and spat on the captured Roman eagles and other standards. Heads were chopped from dead Roman officers’ bodies and nailed to tree trunks. Junior centurions were crucified in front of their men. Thin-stripe tribunes and first-rank centurions were dragged away to nearby sacred groves. [Tac.,
A
,
I
, 61]

These groves were clearings in the forest sometimes surrounded by a high palisade. All had a central altar, and some also contained tables where religious feasts took place. In others, sacred white horses were kept. To avoid offending the gods, women and children and foreign speech were banned. Some tribes required their men to wash as an act of purification before entering their groves.

Julius Caesar had written that human sacrifice took place in the sacred groves of some Gallic tribes, with the victims placed inside giant wicker cages in the shape of a man. These cages were suspended over a fiery altar, where the victims were roasted
alive. [Caes.,
GW
,
VI
, 16] This, it seems, was how the last remaining officers of the 17th, 18th and 19th legions died—a slow, agonizing death, roasted like game on the spit. It is likely that the 18th Legion’s first-rank centurion Caelius would, if he had survived to this point, have been one of those who perished in the flames with his colleagues.

The three legions would have started this campaigning season with fifteen thin-stripers, young officer cadets of 18 and 19 years of age, all of them members of the Equestrian Order and the sons of leading Roman families. Half a century later, the writer and philosopher Lucius Seneca, chief minister to the emperor Nero, was to write to a friend: “Remember the Varus disaster? Many a man of the most distinguished ancestry, who was doing his military service as the first step on the road to a seat in the Senate, was brought low by Fortune.” [Sen.,
L
,
XLVII
]

After celebratory banqueting and thanks to their gods, the victorious Germans moved on. The spoils from the defeated Roman army were borne away, to be divided among the tribes. The eagles and standards of the annihilated legions were hung up in sacred groves across Germany. The legionary prisoners, chained and dragged away, became slaves of the Germans. The naked, butchered dead of three legions were left where they had fallen.

But there was more fighting to be done. For the Romans still occupied forts on German soil east of the Rhine. Tribesmen, buoyed by their victory in the Teutoburg Forest, swarmed west to deal with those invaders also.

AD
9
X. THE STRUGGLE AT FORT ALISO
Holding out against the Germans

Modern-day archaeologists have identified the locations of several Roman forts that existed east of the Rhine in
AD
9. Most are on the Lippe river. Roman merchant vessels had used the Lippe to take trade into eastern Germany from west of the Rhine.

From nearest the Rhine to the east, those forts were at or near the present-day towns of Holsterhausen, Haltern, Beckinghausen, Oberaden and Anreppen. Traces of other, smaller Roman forts have been found further inland, at sites including Sparrenburger Egge, near Bielefeld, but these are thought to have been only marching camps. The permanent camps on the Lippe were extensive. The Roman fort at Haltern, for example, dating from around 5
BC
, covered 47 acres (23 hectares) and contained facilities for a wing or more of cavalry. [Wells, 5, 11, & Illustr. 16]

Both Velleius and Dio wrote that the German tribes in revolt were able to surprise and overrun every one of those forts but one, apparently reducing them one at a time. Archaeological evidence at these fort sites indicates that Roman occupation indeed ceased in
AD
9, with hordes of coins and other valuable material having been swiftly buried on the sites. There were also the bones of two dozen men found in a pit at the Haltern site, apparently tossed in there by the Germans after they took the fort. [Ibid.]

The lone fort holding out against the attacking Germans was named Aliso. Tacitus states that it was one of those on the Lippe, although he doesn’t indicate its specific location. An altar in memory of Drusus Caesar had been erected at the fort, and it is possible that it was there that Drusus had died in 9
BC
. With many present-day German place-names preserving the first letter or sound of the original Latin name, it is tempting to suspect that Aliso was either the fort at Anreppen or the one at Oberaden—literally, “Above Aden.” [Velle.,
RH
,
II, CX
; Tac.,
A
,
II
, 7]

While no classical author gives the precise location of the Aliso fort, Velleius identifies its commander, Lucius Caedicius, who was camp-prefect of one of the three legions that had by this point been wiped out in the Teutoburg Forest. Fortune had spared camp-prefect Caedicius from the horrors of the Teutoburg, but now he faced his own dice with death. Fort Aliso was besieged by “an immense force of Germans,” says Velleius. [Velle.,
II, CXX
]

But the tribesmen “found themselves unable to reduce this fort,” said Dio, “because they did not understand the conduct of sieges.” Camp-prefect Caedicius received sufficient warning of the revolt to close his fort gates in time. He was also fortunate to have a cohort of archers stationed at the fort, and they “repeatedly repulsed” the German attackers “and destroyed large numbers of them.” [Dio,
LVI
, 22]

The Germans surrounded the fort and settled in to starve the Romans into submission. But this delay worked in Rome’s favor. Lucius Asprenas, Varus’ nephew and Roman commander on the Upper Rhine, having heard of the uprising, possibly as a result of the warning from Boiocaulus, came rushing down from Upper Germany to Vetera with his two legions. Velleius was full of praise for Asprenas’ swift reaction. Asprenas’ arrival on the Lower Rhine, he said, strengthened the allegiance of the locals west of the Rhine, “who were beginning to waver.” [Velle.,
II, CXX
]

Dio says that, after maintaining the siege of Aliso for some weeks, Arminius’ warriors came to hear that “the Romans had posted a guard [Asprenas’ legions] at the Rhine and that Tiberius was approaching with an imposing army.” This was enough to frighten off some tribesmen, who pulled out of the siege and returned home. If Arminius had planned to cross the Rhine and invade Gaul—and there is no indication that this was on his agenda—he no longer had the manpower or momentum to mount such an operation. He therefore left a detachment of tribesmen guarding the roads leading to the Rhine at “a considerable distance” from Fort Aliso, “hoping to capture the Roman garrison” after it emerged due to “the failure of their provisions.” [Dio,
LVI
, 22]

Velleius reported that the garrison at Aliso did indeed end up suffering “difficulties which want [of supplies] rendered unendurable.” Camp-prefect Caedicius was not only having to supply the troops of his garrison, he had many other mouths to feed, for the fort was also crowded with civilians—women and children associated with the men of the garrison, who had been living near the fort, as well as camp followers who had withdrawn from Varus’ column when he had turned north for the Teutoburg several weeks earlier. [Velle.,
II, CXX
]

While they had provisions, Caedicius and his multitude, pent up at Aliso, waited for relief to come from west of the Rhine. But as the weeks passed and the weather became wintry, their provisions dwindled to nothing. Unbeknownst to Caedicius, Asprenas had taken the decision not to cross the Rhine, so no Roman relief force was going to appear on the scene. Caedicius decided to break out and make a run
for the Rhine, but his would not be a blind charge west. Following his orders, Caedicius’ scouts sneaked from the fort and discreetly observed the Germans camped between Aliso and the Rhine, noting their dispositions and their guard routines. Now Caedicius and his troops “watched their chance.” That chance, said Dio, came with a stormy night. [Velle.,
II, CXX
; Dio,
LVI
, 22]

It would have been a bleak November night as the storm raged along the Lippe valley. Knowing the Germans would be keeping under cover, Caedicius and the occupants of Fort Aliso crept from the fort and made their way through the darkness. “The soldiers were few, the unarmed many.” Caedicius and his troops led the way, prepared to fight if they had to, but hoping to sneak by the tribesmen. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of women and children fearfully trailed along behind, shivering in the icy conditions as the storm raged about them, toting everything of value they could carry as they strove to keep up with the soldiers. [Ibid.]