The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest

by Peter S. Wells

Overview

The previously untold story of the watershed battle that changed the course of Western history.

In AD 9, a Roman traitor led an army of barbarians who trapped and then slaughtered three entire Roman legions: 20,000 men, half the Roman army in Europe. If not for this battle, the Roman Empire would surely have expanded to the Elbe River, and probably eastward into present-day Russia. But after this defeat, the shocked Romans ended all efforts to expand beyond the Rhine, which became the fixed border between Rome and Germania for the next 400 years, and which remains the cultural border between Latin western Europe and Germanic central and eastern Europe today.

This fascinating narrative introduces us to the key protagonists: the emperor Augustus, the most powerful of the Caesars; his general Varus, who was the wrong man in the wrong place; and the barbarian leader Arminius, later celebrated as the first German hero. In graphic detail, based on recent archaeological finds, the author leads the reader through the mud, blood, and decimation that was the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393326437
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/17/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	393,388
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Peter S. Wells is professor of archaeology at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of The Battle That Stopped Rome and The Barbarians Speak. He lives in St. Paul.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	9
	List of Maps	11
	Important Dates	13
	Preface	15
1	Ambushed!	25
2	Creation of the Legend	30
3	History and Archaeology of the Battle	37
4	Augustus: Rome's First Emperor	56
5	Varus and the Frontier	80
6	Arminius: The Native Hero	105
7	Warfare in Early Roman Europe: Prelude to the Battle	125
8	The Battle	161
9	The Horror: Death on the Battlefield	177
10	The Victors' Celebrations	186
11	The Immediate Outcome	200
12	The Meaning of the Battle	213
	Appendixes
1.	How an Archaeological Site Is Formed	221
2.	Roman Weapons Found at the Kalkriese Battle Site	222
3.	Museums, Roman Remains, and Archaeological Parks	223
	Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading	227
	Acknowledgments	239
	Illustration Credits	241
	Index	243

Editorial Reviews

"Peter Wells conducts us to a hitherto mysterious and myth-enshrouded place....A journey well worth taking."

Robert Cowley

Important analysis of a fierce first-century surprise attack by German tribesmen that ended Rome's designs on territory east of the Rhine and profoundly altered subsequent history. Wells (Archaeology/Univ. of Minnesota) argues convincingly that both archaeologists and historians must contribute to understandings of long-ago events. (Naturally, he believes the former are less subject to bias since histories are written by the victors.) The site of this little-known battle was not located until 1987. Since then the four-by-three-mile location has yielded a trove of relics; more than 4,000 Roman objects had been recovered by the end of 1999. The author's account of the battle consumes only a single short chapter and is admittedly heavily inferential: the surviving written accounts are scanty (and Roman); the archaeological evidence is still being uncovered and assessed. Still, Wells is able not only to reconstruct a credible analysis of the German strategy—pinning the Romans into a tight area of unforgiving forest and marshy terrain in which they could not execute their customary combat tactics—but also to explore the thoughts and fears of the combatants on both sides as the massacre commenced. In about an hour it was all over but the dying and scavenging, the burying and celebrating, the torturing and sacrificing of prisoners. Three Roman legions, some 20,000 men, were destroyed; a very few survivors escaped to spread the news. The Roman leader, Varus, a trusted ally of Augustus, probably fell on his sword when he saw the imminent defeat. The German leader, Arminius, became a folk hero: though trained by the Romans and granted citizenship, he gave the treacherous intelligence thatled the legions to the slaughter. Wells offers much background on Roman and Rhineland history, politics, anthropology, military strategy, and weaponry, supplying myriad grisly instances of the sanguinary horrors of war. Ultimately, Rome vastly underestimated the "barbarians" they faced. At times repetitive or obvious, but always literate and learned. (16 pp. illustrations, 9 maps, not seen)

Kirkus Reviews