BMCR 2009.07.74: Cuff on Wolters, Die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald: Arminius, Varus und das roemische Germanien

Reinhard Wolters, Die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald: Arminius, Varus und
das roemische Germanien.  Muenchen:  Verlag C.H. Beck, 2008.  Pp. 192.
ISBN 9783406576744.  EUR 18.90.

Reviewed by David B. Cuff, University of Toronto
([email protected])
Word count:  2732 words
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[A link to the table of contents is provided at the end of this
review.]

The Kalkriese museum near Osnabrueck, Germany, was recently a prominent
site of the 2000th anniversary festivities commemorating the
Varusschlacht--Arminius's impressive defeat of three Roman legions (the
17th, 18th and 19th).[[1]] It is not surprising that this event's
bimillennial, coupled with the ongoing research at Kalkriese, would
inspire the publication of new research on this subject. Ancient and
modern perspectives on Arminius, Varus and the Germans in general, and
Kalkriese's claim to be the site of this event in particular, are the
subjects of Wolters's work, first published in 2008 and recently
reissued (2009) just in time for the Teutoburg Forest festivities.

The tone of the book suggests that it is intended for a more general
audience; Wolters limits his citations and arranges them as endnotes,
which, combined with bibliography, bring the work to a total of 255
pages. Of the work's 29 illustrations, several suffer from a reduced
size. This is particularly the case with maps; one hopes that in a
future reprint some of these will be enlarged.[[2]] His German style is
straightforward and reflects the language's engagement with vocabulary
from other languages, especially English. The first six chapters
particularly provide a good general introduction to the subject. The
organization of the first six chapters is chronological and each
chapter is helpfully subdivided under more specific headings.

An introduction (9-18) highlights the need to reassess the battle of
the Teutoburg forest in light of recent discoveries at Kalkriese and
the upcoming bimillennial celebration this summer (2009) of Arminius's
defeat of Varus at the saltus Teutoburgiensis.

Chapter 1 (Der Barbar als Nachbar) is divided into two sections. 1.1
(Roemer am Rhein) surveys the historical background of the Roman
presence on the Rhine frontier from Caesar until the start of Drusus's
campaign across the river in 12 BCE. This includes a general discussion
of the Roman army, its reliance on the co-operation of local elites to
maintain control in frontier contexts, and Caesar's early use of
Germans in his army. Wolters foreshadows his discussion of Arminius
with a brief survey of the clades Lolliana (17-16 BCE).[[3]] 1.2 (Die
Germanen) switches the focus to the Germani, a term that is first
attested--in Greek--only in a well known 1st century BCE fragment of
Posidonius (FGrHist 87 F 22). Wolters rightly notes that the 'tribal
world' (Stammeswelt) was inherently unstable, and as such the Germani
should not be interpreted as an ethnically or culturally homogenous
group. In addition to this useful survey one might add, particularly
for the benefit of the interested Anglophone reader, Rives'
introduction to his commentary on Tacitus's Germania, and Bleckmann's
recent book, also published by C. H. Beck.[[4]]

Chapter 2 (Roms Vordringen bis zur Elbe) surveys the elder Drusus's
campaign across the Rhine (12-9 BCE) and Tiberius's continuation of it
following the death of Drusus. Wolters discusses the thorny issue of
Roman 'policy' on the frontier. Since the emperor was in command of the
army, policy was not, in any case, a matter of public debate. 2.1 (Die
Feldzuge des Drusus) surveys the Romans' first sustained military
actions across the Rhine. This resulted in the conquest of the Sugambri
and submission of the Frisii as dediticii in 12, with subsequent
expansion to the Elbe in the following years. This narrative is
accompanied by a useful full-page illustration of all phases of
Drusus's campaign (p. 40). This is the start of the 'Occupation' phase
of Rome's presence in Germania. Wolters singles out Oberaden as an
example of the immense scale of these operations: he notes that this
two-or-more legion fortress, 70 km east of the Rhine and 56 ha in area,
is fully 12 ha larger than the Vatican City. Oberaden was built in 11
BCE-Wolters notes that coins from 15 BCE to 13 have been discovered
here, and observes that coin dates alone are not dispositive for the
establishment of a site's terminus ante quem. This is an argument to
which Wolters will return, in more detail, in chapter 7.

2.2 (Weltherrschaft, Bedrohung oder Familienpolitik) discusses Drusus's
strategy, particularly in the context of the Romans' long term
strategic objectives in Germania. Wolters rejects the concept that
rivers were firm frontiers of the Roman Empire, an argument articulated
compellingly by Whittaker.[[5]] Wolters suggests that Drusus's goals at
the outset of his campaign were modest and that following his
relatively easy subjugation of the Frisii he decided on a more
aggressive campaign east of the Rhine (p. 50). Wolters cites Kehne's
hypothesis[[6]] that a desire to win the spolia opima may have played a
part in this decision. This argument does not seem particularly
convincing. The number of individuals credited with this honour (4, of
whom 3 were either legendary or lived centuries before the earliest
Roman literary accounts) is extremely small, and it seems likely that
images of the spolia opima on Augustan monuments served primarily to
emphasize the achievements of Romulus, with whom Augustus sought to
associate himself. We cannot say what Augustus would have done had
Drusus actually won the right to the spolia opima, but we do know that
the emperor denied the honour to the only well-attested example of a
Roman who justly merited it.

Chapter 3 (Roemische Herrschaft in Germanien) focuses on the period of
the Roman consolidation of conquered territory, surveying Tiberius's
campaigns deep into the territory of the Cherusci and, further north,
the Chauci (4-6 CE). This brought the Romans into contact with peoples
who would later provide numerous soldiers to the Roman auxilia, such as
the Cananefates, Frisii and Bructeri, marking what Wolters sees as a
new phase in Rome's "Germanienpolitik" (58), calculated to demonstrate
the superiority of Roman power toGermania's neighbours. Section 3.2
(Militaeranlagen, Staedte und Wirtschaftsaktivitaeten rechts des
Rheins) offers, along with a good map (61), an informative survey of
early military and urban centers and presents a compelling picture of a
nascent province which, at Lahnau-Waldgimes, may contain evidence of
both civic and military planning, if the reconstruction of the forum is
correct. The archaeological evidence leads Wolters to conclude,
ultimately, that Germania in this period should be seen as a Roman
province (71-74).

Chapter 4 (Karrieren im Dienste Roms) at last brings the reader to
Varus and Arminius. This chapter is essentially biographical, surveying
first the history of the gens Quinctilia and Varus's political career
(75-88). Varus was closely connected to the imperial family; his third
marriage to Claudia Pulchra, granddaughter of Octavia, sister of
Augustus, clearly identifies him as one of Augustus's most trusted
officials. Varus's command in Germany came after two previous
governorships (Africa Proconsularis and Syria), and one gets an
appropriate sense of the confidence that Augustus must have had in
Varus when, in A. D. 7, he was given the command of Germania for three
years. On page 89 we come next to Arminius. Wolters provides a succinct
and useful survey of his known biographical details: his connections
with his tribe's royal stock (stirps regia), his possession of Roman
citizenship and experience in the Roman army. Wolters identifies and
summarizes three modern interpretations of Arminius's life offered by
Bickel, Hohl and Timpe.[[7]] He rejects Hohl's argument that 'Arminius'
is a corruption for 'Armenius' ("Armenian"--this would surely have been
rendered "Armenicus") but accepts, rightly, that once Arminius was
enfranchised he would have borne the Roman names C. Iulius, with his
peregrine name Romanized as a cognomen.[[8]]

In chapter 5 (Die schriftliche Ueberlieferung zur Varuskatastrophe)
Wolters surveys the literary sources for the battle in the saltus
Teutoburgiensis. He begins, however, with a discussion of the famous
tombstone of Caelius, the oldest extant Latin inscription from Germany
(CIL 13, 8648), from Xanten) depicting a fallen centurion of the
Eighteenth Legion, M(arcus) Caelius T(iti) f(ilii) Lem(onia tribus)
Bon(onia), and his two freedmen M. Caelius Privatus and M. Caelius
Thiaminus. Remarkable for its detailed depiction of a legionary
centurion in full gear, the text informs us that Caelius cecidit bello
Variano. Wolters then surveys the extant literary accounts of the
battle: Dio (102-107), Velleius Paterculus (108-109), Frontinus
(109-111). Wolters rightly engages the accuracy of these literary
traditions, none of which are eyewitness accounts. There were survivors
of the battle, however, and some lived long enough in captivity to be
freed during the reign of Claudius. Literary accounts of Germans are
necessarily clouded by the topos of the rash German, a stereotype that
Vitruvius, for example, attributed to the cold weather of their
homeland.[[9]] This is of course entirely a literary conceit which,
along with the set piece oration, should not be treated as accurate,
though these features do not, as Wolters avers, render literary sources
useless. Thus Wolters offers an interesting critique of the suggestion
that Arminius's attack was a rebellion, noting that to use this term is
necessarily to view the event from a Roman perspective (119-121). Since
he views Germania as a Roman province, Wolters accepts the validity of
this characterization, although he is careful to demonstrate that the
Germani were not unified in resistance; clearly the Cherusci, whose
territory was the "Kernland der Rebellion" were the major opponents of
Varus.

Chapter 6 (Die Varuskatastrophe als epochale Wende?) investigates
whether the battle should be seen as a truly defining moment in Roman
history. Augustus, as Suetonius reports, did not take the news of the
defeat well, although the shock did not keep him from boasting about
expanding Roman territory to the Elbe in the Res Gestae.[[10]] Wolters
summarizes Germanicus's campaign against Arminius that lead to enough
successes to justify a triumph in 17 for Germanicus over "the Cherusci,
Chatti, and Angirivarii and the other nations that live as far as the
Elbe". This was an obvious exercise in propaganda since, despite an
impressive campaign, Arminius had not been captured and direct Roman
administration of transrhenane Germania had not been restored.
Arminius's death at the age of 37 came not in a epic battle but at the
hands of an assassin; Wolters observes that dissension among the
leadership of the Cherusci, as presented by Tacitus, can be read as a
metaphor of civil strife in Roman history, where the immense power of
one individual arouses jealousy among other members of the nobility. As
for Varus, his head, at least, could receive a proper burial, since
Arminius had sent it to Maroboduus, who then passed it along to Roman
authorities. A negative assessment, however, of Varus's character was
not universal in ancient scholarship, and Wolters rightly attacks the
disproportionate influence the image of an arrogant and / or
incompetent Roman commander has had on later scholarship.

Chapter 7 marks a stark shift in the book's structure. The historical
narrative of Arminius and Varus essentially concludes with chapter 6.
Chapter 7 surveys past and present research on the site of Arminius's
fateful battle. Noting that over 700 theories have been posited over
the years--itself a reflection of the tremendous local and academic
interest in Arminius--Wolters proceeds in chronological order to survey
several of the more influential ones. This leads quickly to Kalkriese,
on which the majority of this chapter focuses its discussion.

This is hardly surprising, but Wolters's discussion of Kalkriese is not
just a summary of scholarship and archaeological reports, but also a
critical assessment of this work, which, in his opinion, has rashly and
erroneously identified Kalkriese as the site of Arminius's
victory.[[11]] Wolters has expressed these views elsewhere.[[12]] This
is certainly an argument worth making, since the archaeology of
Kalkriese is clearly something of an enigma: the excavation of a wall
with associated burials of bones that bear clearly battle-related marks
led to early associations with a Cheruscan ambush fortification; the
graves were associated with later burials of remains, probably by
Germanicus; all the human bones belonged to males of fighting age and
were, in some cases, mingled with animal bones, and bore signs of
exposure to the elements. The wall, however, is oddly shaped in a
zig-zag wedge line and only stretches 400 meters (as opposed to the
2000 meters originally thought), and the deposits of bones seem far to
haphazard and indecent for a Roman burial of the dead at the Teutoburg
Forest, while the area itself is criticised as being too small to
accommodate an army the size of three legions and auxiliary troops: the
Roman army would have filled the valley.

However, no post-Varus coins have been found at Kalkriese: the latest
strikes date to 2-1 BCE. Wolters argues that later strikes simply were
not there to be found, since newly minted coins would have taken time
to reach the German frontier; if they were circulating, then the
quantities would have been miniscule. However, numismatic studies of
Kalkriese have noted that a small number of coins datable to
Germanicus's campaign have been found at sites known to postdate
Varus's death;[[13]] of course, there are exceptions, as Wolters notes
in the case of Holsterhausen (p. 171). There is also no consensus on a
possible rival identification, though there are several possibilities,
based on conflicts recorded in Tacitus's account of Germanicus's
campaign: a battle at the pontes longi, Idistaviso, or against the
Angrivarii. The finds themselves were not concentrated in a small area,
but were strewn over a relatively long (3 km) and narrow (1 km) funnel
of territory, which, as noted by Wilson / Creighton and Bleckmann,
roughly fits Tacitus's description of the battle site.[[14]]  Of
course, since Germanicus did return to the battle site, even the
discovery of post-Varus coins could be explained as a result of that
return. We await discovery of some trace of the tumulus that he built
to memorialize the fallen, although this was destroyed by the Germani
soon after he left the site.

Chapter 8 surveys Arminius's Rezeptionsgeschichte, starting from the
discovery and publication of Tacitus's Germania and concluding with
contemporary interest in Arminius, inspired largely by the discoveries
at Kalkriese. Following the discovery of the manuscript of Tacitus's
Germania in the sixteenth century, Arminius was adopted by the Germans
as a national hero and idealized in various ways: as the emblem of
Lutheran Protestantism challenging the Roman Catholic Church, as, along
with his wife Thusnelda, part of an idealized Romantic story, and as a
symbol of German nationalism embodying also 19th and 20th century
antipathy toward the French, with whom parallels with the Roman Empire
were easy to draw. Although Wolters surveys the use of the term Germani
in the 20th century to support race theory, on the imagery specifically
of Arminius during the Third Reich he says relatively little (one
paragraph, no illustrations).

An addition here would be welcome. For example, this reviewer was
reminded of an exhibit of Werner Peiner's artwork at the
Roemisch-germanisches Museum at Bonn [[15]] that included a striking
piece: a gilded print on paper entitled "Die Schlacht in Teutoburger
Wald" (1939). Peiner, the director of the "Hermann Goering Academy for
Art" (Hermann Goering-Meisterschule fuer Malerei), depicted Arminius
and all the Germans as blond, muscular, armed with shields (one of
which bears a swastika), marching against Varus and the Romans. Both
armies hold spears / pila at precise 45 degree angles, reminiscent,
surely, of the Nazi salute and the regime's cult of uniformity. Also
striking in that piece was the prominence of German women (also blond)
in the corners of the image, aiding their comrades in battle. These
idealizations combine some of Nazism's more pernicious themes of racial
purity and subordination of the individual to a noble Fuehrer with a
traditional German image that had embodied the concept of freedom from
oppression. The result, in this reviewer's opinion, is a chilling image
that seems very appropriate to Wolters's discussion.

In a short 'Epilogue' Wolters summarizes the policies of Roman emperors
towards the Germanic tribes beyond the Rhine up to the reign of
Domitian. He then shifts to a discussion of Tacitus's portrayals of the
Germani and Arminius in the Germania and the Annales. In the latter
respect he seizes on Tacitus's assessment of Arminius's character to
conclude his book.

In sum, although this book's title promises a study of Arminius, Varus
and the battle in the Teutoburg Forest, Wolters actually provides us
also with a detailed account of the early history of Roman Germany up
to the death of Arminius. Wolters provides a fine introduction to the
evidence and history of the site, while his opinions exemplify the
enduring controversies that his subject cannot help but inspire.

Table of Contents
(http://www.chbeck.de/infopopup.aspx?product=24129;tab=2)

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Notes:


1.   The museum's homepage
(http://www.kalkriese-varusschlacht.de/englisch/start_eng.html)  has
links to resources on recent research on the Varusschlacht.

2.   Image 16, at less than half a page, contains place names that are
difficult to read; image 17 represents archaeological data on findspots
that is similarly difficult to read.

3.   Dio 54.20.4-6 relates how the Sugambri destroyed a Roman fort on
the Rhine commanded by M. Lollius. Wolters notes Mommsen's suggestion
that this event was a major motive for Drusus's campaign.

4.   J. Rives, Tacitus: Germania. (1999) - not listed in W's
bibliography of commentaries on the Germania (p. 240), B. Bleckmann,
Die Germanen: Von Ariovist bis zu den Wikingen (2009).

5.   C. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (1994), not in
Wolters's bibliography.

6.   P. Kehne, "Augustus und "seine" spolia opima: Hoffnungen auf den
Triumph des Nero Claudius Drusus?" in T. Hantos and G. A. Lehmann
(edd.), Althistorisches Kolloquium aus Anlass des 70. Geburtstages von
Jochen Bleicken (1998), 187-211.

7.   90-93, cf. E. Bickel, "Der Sohn der Sigimer, der Befreier des
Germaniens, sein Roemername Arminius und der Siegfriedmythos", RhM 84,
1935, 1-16; E. Hohl, "Zur Lebensgeschichte des Siegers im Teutoburger
Wald", HZ 167, 1942, 457-469; D. Timpe, Arminius-Studien (1970) and
Roemisch-Germanische Begegnung in der spaeten Republik und fruehen
Kaiserzeit (1973),  216-241.

8.   Cf. Bleckmann (op. cit. n. 4), 118.

9.   Vit. 6.1; on the ethnographic tradition of this stereotype, see
e.g. Rives' introduction to his edition of Tacitus's Germania (1999).

10.   Suet. Aug. 29.2, "Quinctili Vare, legiones redde!"; cf. RG 26,
item Germaniam qua claudit Oceanus a Gadibus ad ostium Albis fluminis
pacavi.

11.   A confident assertion of Kalkriese's identity as the battle site
is offered by Schlueter's contribution to Creighton, J. D. and R. J. A.
Wilson (edd.), Roman Germany: Studies in cultural interaction. JRA
Suppl. 26 (1999). In the same volume (14-15) Wilson and Creighton echo
Schlueter's confidence.

12.   See his contribution to Lehmann and Wiegels (edd.), Roemische
Praesenz und Herrschaft im Germanien der augusteischen Zeit. (2007).
This work was reviewed in
English by J. Drinkwater, Sehepunkte 8 (2008), no. 9, and  the review
can be consulted online (http://www.sehepunkte.de/2008/09/13856.html).

13.   See especially the contributions of Berger and Wigg-Wolf to
Lehmann and Wiegels (2007).

14.   Wilson and Creighton (op.cit. n. 10), 14; Bleckmann (op cit. n.
4), 125.

15.   I viewed this exhibit while on a research trip to Cologne in July
2008.