Arminius and Teutoburg: Rome's Hostage Prince Who Erased Three Legions

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Around 8 BCE a boy of about 10 from the Cherusci tribe was taken to Rome as a hostage after the general Drusus defeated his people. Rome gave Arminius a Roman education, Latin, law and military training, and enrolled him in the equestrian order. He commanded auxiliaries in the Balkans and returned to Germania around 4 CE as a trusted adviser to the governor Quinctilius Varus, whose heavy taxes and crucifixions bred resentment. Arminius secretly united rival tribes, including the Marsi, Chatti, Bructeri and Cherusci. His father-in-law Segestes warned Varus of the plot, but Varus dismissed it as family spite.

In September 9 CE Arminius reported a staged uprising and steered Varus's three legions, the 17th, 18th and 19th, off the military roads into the forested territory of the Angrivarii. The column, with its baggage train and camp followers, stretched 15 to 20 kilometers. After days of hit and run attacks, the tribes drove it into a gap barely 100 meters wide at Kalkriese, between a wooded slope and the Great Bog, where warriors fought from behind a hidden earthen wall in heavy rain. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Romans died, and Varus fell on his sword. Germanicus later led campaigns of revenge, but Tiberius ended them, and in 21 CE Arminius was poisoned by his own family.

• As a boy around 11 BCE, Arminius likely watched a Cherusci ambush nearly destroy Drusus's army in bad terrain.
• Rain soaked the Roman scutum shields and mud denied legionaries the footing and space their formations needed.
• Augustus reportedly beat his head against the palace walls crying for Varus to give back his legions, and the numbers 17, 18 and 19 were never used again.
• Arminius sent Varus's severed head to the king Maroboduus, who refused an alliance and returned it to Rome for burial.
• In the 1870s Germany built the Hermannsdenkmal, a monument whose raised sword points west toward France.