Ancient Cloaks and Daggers

What a world. Seventy-six years of the NATO alliance is culminating in whatever is happening as you read this. And since I wrote it several hours ago, “whatever” could be anything by now.

You might think I have an awful lot to say. Not least because Trump has launched political attacks against my country twice in the last few days, disregarding our decades of alliance and friendship. Alas, my wife is in America right now, and I’m feeling very uncomfortable about that. So please accept this puff piece as the craven act of self-censorship that it is.

We’ll begin with a Roman general.

Publius Quinctilius Varus was distinctly, although oddly, second tier. He was a patrician by birth, his wife was the Emperor’s niece (and the legendary Agrippa’s daughter), and he had held prestigious governorships in fabulously rich provinces. It wouldn’t have taken much for Varus to elevate himself — just one major victory, or a splash of charisma — anything to earn the people’s love and the soldiers’ loyalty. But Varus’s destiny was hamstrung by a particular talent — he was exceptionally brutal.

When a province became unruly, it was men like Varus who were quietly sent there. He would turn the cruel screw of Roman justice, inflate what the Empire expected from locals, and raise taxes to punitive levels. If the executions and deprivation quelled the unrest, so be it. If they fermented an uprising to crush, so much the better. Syria, Judea, modern-day Tunisia and Libya all felt the harsh hand of Publius Quinctilius Varus.

Then, in 7 AD, Varus became the governor of a newly conquered province. Years of military and political brilliance, much of it from the exalted Drusus, had spread Roman dominion from the Rhine to the Elbe in a textbook conquest. Drusus had shown the Germans enough battle to let them feel Rome’s might, but had led his campaign with careful alliances. Why burn and ravage a region when you can simply take it by consent? German princes were invited to become high-ranking Roman citizens, to enjoy the power of command in Roman armies, and to sample the luxuries of Roman wealth. In return, they merely had to squeeze their own people to pay Roman taxes. Countless princes across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East agreed to this, but one is remembered more than any other — Arminius.

A prince of the Germanic Cherusci tribe, Arminius spent his youth fighting as a Roman officer in the Great Illyrian Revolt. He was then returned to Germania to assist Varus in solidifying the nascent province. And he certainly appears to have earned the general’s trust. When two conflicting pieces of intelligence were brought to Varus in the autumn of 9 AD — one saying that the German tribes had united in rebellion, the other that the “rebellion” was a trap — Varus sided with Arminius. He marched his three legions to crush the uprising.

Not rashly, however. Varus may have been on the Roman B-list, but he wasn’t a fool. He marched his army along newly built Roman roads — cleared of trees and ambush points — and kept them behind a steady stream of information from Roman scouts. Days went on, rough camps were made for the nights, the weather turned rainy, and as Arminius pointed Varus deeper into Germania, the roads turned to mud. By the time Varus had marched further than Rome’s road builders had been, his line was stretched thinly over 15 km, and the trees were within touching distance. And the scouts stopped returning. German war bands harassed the legions with javelins, then charged at their supplies and withdrew.

It was clearly a trap. Lacking supplies in hostile territory, Varus’s only option was to escape, but Arminius knew precisely which direction he would take. To the east, a wider path passed between Kalkriese Hill and a large swamp. It wasn’t a great roll of the dice, but it was wide enough for a Roman army to take formation, to put its men behind shields. Varus had to gamble on it. When he got there, though, he would have seen the earthen walls and wooden fences, heard the chattering from the warriors behind them, and known it was too late. The Germans had fortified it.

The slaughter was wholesale. All three Roman legions were destroyed and their eagles taken as trophies. The Rhine, and the rich lands of Gaul it protected, were left open. Even the Empire itself looked as though it might crumble, saved only by the diligence and competence of Tiberius (perhaps the greatest military leader in history).

We have no idea how Arminius did it. Uniting the normally warring German tribes must have taken months of political wrangling, and the ambush would have required hundreds of people to know about the plan. How did he keep everyone silent? How did no Roman spy find out about it? How did no German spy get caught? Why didn’t a single German sell out for a massive bag of Roman gold? It’s baffling, and it's tantalizing.

And it’s tragic. Rome may never have reconquered Germania, but it undertook many punitive campaigns, one of which led to the capture of Arminius’ pregnant wife. Two years later both she and her infant son were paraded through Rome as war prizes, crowds jeering from the dirty streets, nobles watching from purposefully built stands. Among them, her father — a staunch Roman loyalist from the same tribe as Arminius, and the man who correctly warned Varus about the ambush. He must have had a strange mix of feelings, seeing his family so humiliated, even though he himself sided with Rome. I wonder what his feelings were when his grandson was later enslaved as a gladiator. Or when the boy was killed in the arena, still in his teens.

Maybe the moral is that if you side with the powerful, you’ll probably still end up a loser? Maybe it’s that Varus should have taken more time to assess the contradictory information he’d received?

I’ll draw another lesson — wait until you know your wife’s safe.