Reviews
The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest
Peter S. Wells
(Norton, 2003) 256 PP., $24.95
Most archaeology monographs are pretty dry. They present highly specialized discussions in dense technical jargon for a small academic elite. Every once in a while, though, some unusually gifted scholar manages to produce a book that’s different—one that is literate and scholarly yet fun to read. The Battle That Stopped Rome, by University of Minnesota anthropologist Peter Wells, is just such an exception.
Full of colorful personalities, momentous discoveries, Machiavellian intrigue and gory battle scenes, Wells’s book is about as close to a page-turner as an archaeology text can be. It’s also a solid piece of scholarship that deftly weaves together the latest findings in archaeology, anthropology and cultural history to answer the question: “What really happened at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest?”
If you studied the classics in high school or college, you may remember that Teutoburg Forest, in northern Germany, is the site of one of ancient history’s most spectacular military upsets. It was there, in 9 A.D., that one of Rome’s most celebrated fighting forces was ambushed and wiped out by a much smaller, less-well-armed band of German “barbarians.” The episode was so shocking and demoralizing to the Romans that they eventually abandoned their attempts to conquer Europe east of the Rhine.
According to most classical accounts, the blame for Rome’s defeat lies squarely at the feet of two men—Rome’s headstrong governor in Germania, Publius Quinctilius Varus, and a wily barbarian known simply as Arminius. An ambitious chieftain from Germany’s Cherusci tribe, Arminius initially gained fame and fortune fighting for the Romans in one of their auxiliary contingents. When Quinctilius Varus was appointed governor of the Rhineland in 7 A.D., Arminius wheedled his way into the governor’s inner circle. Spreading rumors of an uprising among his fellow Germans, he convinced Varus to divide his forces (something Roman commanders usually tried to avoid in occupied territory); then he lured Varus and three of Rome’s finest legions into the forest, where they were set upon by German tribesmen.
The Romans supposedly managed to fend off their attackers for more than three days, but the unexpectedness of the assault, the alien landscape and the forces of nature all seemed to conspire against them. According to the early second-century A.D. Roman historian Cassius Dio, “Rain began to fall in sheets and a heavy wind scattered [the Romans’] numbers.” It rained so hard that the brave legionnaires “could not grip their arrows or javelins … Even their sodden shields were useless.” In the end, almost “every man and every horse”—nearly 20,000 Romans, or one tenth of the Roman army—was slaughtered. Governor Varus and his officers threw themselves on their swords rather than be captured; only a handful of survivors managed to flee the scene and report back to Rome (see Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book 56).
At least, that’s the version of events you’ll find in most Roman accounts of the battle. The Germans, of course, tell a slightly different tale. According to their oral traditions, Arminius was not some scheming traitor who owed his victory to a lucky break in the weather; he was a mighty liberator and a brilliant tactician who courageously defied Rome and helped give birth to the modern German nation. During the Middle Ages, the story of Arminius (or Hermann, to give his German name) was cited again and again by German philosophers and religious leaders. Martin Luther (1483–1546 A.D.) drew parallels between Hermann’s career and his own struggles with the high church of Rome. By the late 19th century, Hermann had become so popular that his likeness could be found in every German textbook, and monuments to his greatness appeared as far away as the German-American settlement of New Ulm, Minnesota, where tourists can still view a 45-foot-high statue of “Hermann the Liberator.”
But which of these two versions of history is more accurate—the heroic German saga or the Roman tragedy? Until recently, it was almost impossible to know. Because of the scarcity of Roman survivors and the ancient Germans’ illiteracy, there are no eyewitness accounts of the battle. (All of the Roman accounts, including Cassius Dio’s, were written years later and were clearly based on second- and third-hand reports.) Furthermore, both sides soon lost track of where the battle occurred—making it impossible for archaeologists to learn more about the battle from material evidence.
Everything changed in 1987, however, when a British soldier and amateur archaeologist named Tony Clunn stumbled across a cache of ancient Roman coins, slingstones and other artifacts in the forest just outside Kalkriese, Germany. Dates from some of the coins, along with a wealth of other evidence, convinced most scholars that this was the site of the infamous Teutoburg massacre, and in 1989 a team of German archaeologists began a systematic excavation of the site.
Over the past 15 years, the excavations at Kalkriese have yielded a wealth of artifacts, including thousands of ancient coins, weapons and trinkets; numerous human and animal remains; and a 2,000-foot-long wall that the Germans appear to have built in anticipation of the ambush.
Solidly constructed out of sod, limestone and wooden fencing, the 5-foot-high wall was apparently designed to provide camouflage and protection from Roman swords and javelins. Wells believes that a sizeable German force hid behind this barrier, waiting to unleash a deadly spear attack on the marching Roman column. This is supported by “the exceptionally large quantities of Roman military objects and bone fragments recovered in front of the wall.” The list of objects found in the immediate vicinity of the wall includes a silver-plated facemask, bits of Roman helmets, Germanic pickaxes and sickles, and catapult bolts. Excavators have also uncovered five burial pits full of human bone fragments—”some of them with cut marks indicating a death by sharp weapons.”
Wells painstakingly lays out all this new evidence and then combines it with the written accounts to determine what really happened at Kalkriese almost exactly two millennia ago. His basic conclusion is that the Romans seriously underestimated the Germans and were quickly and decisively defeated (which will not come as a surprise to those familiar with his earlier work, The Barbarians Speak).
What makes this book so exciting is how Wells presents his conclusions: He abandons the detached viewpoint of most scholars and plunges us right into the story. In the first chapter, simply titled “Ambushed,” we ride along with Varus and his men as they make their way through the strange and forbidding forest, unaware of the disaster that is about to befall them. Later chapters are narrated from the point of view of Emperor Augustus, the German chieftain Hermann and soldiers from both armies.
This tale is not for the squeamish—it’s full of carnage and “rivers of blood.” Nor is it for scholarly purists, who will no doubt shudder with contempt at Wells’s docudrama-like telling of ancient history. That very theatricality, however, is what invites us into his world—not only to learn about the past, but to feel its mysteries and terrors.
The Battle That Stopped Rome is a riveting account of a crucial episode in world history. What more could you want?
A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine (Part 1)
Andrew Petersen
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Council for British Research in the Levant) 340 pp., $175
For much of the past 150 years, archaeology in Palestine has been principally concerned with the biblical period, which runs from about the late-second millennium B.C. to the first century A.D.
In recent years, however, Near Eastern archaeologists have increasingly uncovered a rich and varied past with little or no connection to the Bible. Some have explored remains from the Bronze Age (3100–1200 B.C.), the Chalcolithic period (4500–3100 B.C.) and the Neolithic period (8300–4500 B.C.), while others, like Andrew Petersen in A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine, have turned to more recent history, such as the 1,400 years of Arab Islamic rule.
The history of Islamic Palestine is usually divided into three major eras: the early Islamic period (640–1099 A.D.), the medieval period (1099–1516) and the Ottoman period (1516–1917). This brings us to within a century of our own time, meaning that much of Palestine’s legacy to us is Islamic, and certainly much of its architectural legacy.
From the beginning, Palestine was an important place in the Islamic world. The first Islamic dynasty—the Umayyad caliphate (660–750), which was centered in Damascus—built the Dome of the Rock and other religious and secular buildings in Jerusalem. In 712 Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik founded Ramla as the provincial capital—a city that still has great political significance for modern Palestinians.
During much of the 12th century, Palestine was ruled by the Crusaders, who built churches, monasteries and fortresses, many of which remain standing today. Palestine returned to Islamic rule under the Ayyubid (1169–1260) and Mamluk (c. 1250–1516) dynasties, which converted many Crusader churches into mosques.
Palestine especially prospered under the Egyptian Mamluk sultans, and this period is often considered the Golden Age of Islamic architecture in Palestine. Many mosques, madrasas, mausoleums, bridges, caravanserais and markets were built. The Mamluk sultan Baybars (1260–1277) carried out major construction projects in Palestine, including the White Mosque in Ramla and the Great Mosque in Lydda. Baybars also built a chain of caravanserais along the roads that linked the cities, and he restored the postal route between Cairo and Damascus.
During the Ottoman period (1516–1917), when the Near East was ruled by the Turks, Palestine became part of a vast empire with global pretensions. The Ottomans marked the start of their rule with a large reconstruction and building scheme in Jerusalem, including the rebuilding of the city walls. They also built scores of fortresses throughout the Levant.
In the 18th century, when the Ottoman Empire began to fall into a state of general decline, local rulers carved out semi-independent fiefdoms for themselves. The most important of these rulers in Palestine were Zahir al-’Umar, who established a powerful state in the Galilee, and Zahir’s successor, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, who built the famous mosque in Acre. Ottoman architectural activity in many cities and villages—such as Hebron, Nablus, Jaffa and Haifa—was initiated by local aristocratic families that governed Palestine on behalf of the Ottomans.
Palestine’s Islamic architecture, the subject of this book, is our best evidence of Muslim and Palestinian Arab life prior to 1948. The problem, however, is that the bulk of this evidence is rapidly disappearing, as a result of neglect or modern development. Although some prominent sites—the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem, for example, and the Haram al-Ibrahimi in Hebron—remain in good condition, many are dilapidated, unprotected and threatened with extinction.
Petersen’s study is an attempt to counter this trend toward the loss of Islamic remains and to demonstrate the value of vernacular architecture in provincial Palestine. The book covers the modern state of Israel, except for West Jerusalem and Ramla (which are covered in separate publications). The West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be the subject of part 2 (forthcoming).
This gazetteer documents 164 sites (listed alphabetically) geographically, historically and architecturally. It also includes numerous maps, plans, drawings and black-and-white photos, all extremely helpful for understanding the remains of Palestine’s Muslim past and all generally of superb quality.
This well-researched and highly readable book is an impressive tribute to the work of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Let’s hope the word gets out—that it’s time to take significant steps to preserve the Islamic past.