Arminius

Germanic military leader

• Born: c. 17 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: 19 c.e.
• Place of death: Unknown

Arminius’s unification of various Germanic tribes prevented the Roman conquest and colonization of Germany.

Early Life

Not much is known about the early life of Arminius (ahr-MIHN-ee-uhs), including his precise year of birth, which was around 17 b.c.e. He was the son of the Germanic tribal chieftain Segimer, one of those Germanic leaders who favored cooperation with the Romans.

Arminius, or Hermann the Cheruscan, as the Germans refer to him, grew up in a time when the Roman Empire controlled much of the known world. The borders of the Empire stretched from Mesopotamia to Northern Africa, embracing the Balkans as well as present-day Spain, France, and England. Julius Caesar had just extended Roman control over Gaul (France) and England, both areas inhabited by Celtic people. The one major area in northern Europe that resisted Roman colonization was the land east of the Rhine and north of the Danube Rivers. It was inhabited by various tribes of a non-Celtic ethnic group the Romans called the Germans. These Germanic tribes had migrated from Scandinavia to central Europe. Information on these early Germanic peoples is scant. One of the few contemporary sources on the early Germans is a short pamphlet titled De origine et situ Germanorum (c. 98 c.e., also known as Germania; The Description of Germanie, 1598) by Rome’s leading historian, Cornelius Tacitus. Germania is the length of a present-day newspaper article. In it, Tacitus describes the Germans as a hardy warrior people. In cultural development they were at a stage between the nomadic and sedentary lifestyles and organized by tribes. They had no written language and worshiped the forces of nature.

The Roman Empire was unable to extend its control over the jungle-like territory of Germany with its fierce inhabitants. While the Rhine and Danube Rivers were natural frontiers between civilization and barbarism, Germanic tribes often raided Roman colonized territory, such as Gaul. In the hope of controlling these restless people on its frontier, Rome made an effort to train and romanize the sons of Germanic tribal chieftains. Thus, they invited several to come to Rome to receive military training. Arminius and his brother Flavus (their Roman names), sons of the Cherusci chieftain Segimer, were two of those chosen to go to Rome. Following military training, both brothers received Roman citizenship, were elevated to Roman nobility, and were given officers’ commissions in the Roman army. It was the hope of Rome that these younger Germanic leaders could convince their countrymen of the superiority of Roman civilization and lifestyle over their own primitive ways. Eventually, it was hoped, the Germanic lands would become a Roman province.

Life’s Work

It is in the foregoing historical context that Arminius’s major contribution occurred. In 7 c.e. Arminius returned to Germany and was assigned to command Germanic mercenary troops attached to a Roman occupational army that started to extend control over Germanic peoples in the regions bordering the Roman Empire. General Publius Quinctilius Varus was leading these troops. The majority of the Germanic tribes, however, did not wish to come under Roman domination, yet they were too disunited to offer effective resistance to Roman encroachment. Arminius stopped this infighting, united the tribes, and planned an attack on the Roman troops under General Varus.

In the fall of 9 c.e., General Varus and his three Roman legions, after a campaign against Germanic tribes on the Weser River, returned to their winter quarters at Fort Aliso on the Lippe River. Arminius, whom Varus trusted, offered Germanic scouts to guide the Roman legions back to their fort. Arminius’s familiarity with Roman military tactics enabled him to plan an ambush designed to annihilate these troops. His scouts led the Roman army through the Teutoburg Forest, a swampy and densely wooded region in an area now called Westphalia. In the terrain the legions had to break formation, their heavy baggage and cavalry were stuck in the swamps, and trees further hampered maneuverability. It was there that Arminius and his Germanic warriors, using guerrilla tactics of fighting, killed about twenty thousand Romans in a bloody, three-day battle. On realizing his utter defeat, General Varus and many of his officers committed suicide on the battlefield by throwing themselves onto their swords. Caesar Augustus never reconstituted the three defeated elite legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX.

The Battle of Teutoburg Forest halted, for the time being, Roman efforts to conquer the Germanic tribes. Emperor Augustus’s successor was Emperor Tiberius. He commissioned his nephew Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus—so named because he fought the Germans—to undo the shame of the defeat of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest and to make a renewed attempt to conquer the Germanic tribes. Arminius again led the resistance. Germanicus’s three successive campaigns in the years 14, 15, and 16 c.e., despite a few victorious battles, did not lead to Roman mastery over the Germanic peoples and their lands. Thereupon the Romans decided to give up the pursuit of colonizing Germany. Instead, the Romans built a fortified wall, called the Limes, to keep the Germanic tribes from raiding Roman territory.

Arminius was unable to use his status as hero to unify the German tribes beyond military resistance against the Romans. Strife among the tribes was renewed, in the course of which Hermann was murdered by a relative.

Significance

Without Arminius’s leadership of the Germanic resistance, Germany probably would have been colonized, much like Gaul. Only from around 900 c.e. onward did a German nation and a German state emerge. Arminius became its first national hero. The memory of his defeat of the Roman military machine with barbarian warriors is used throughout German history to rouse its people to war against any encroacher on the nation.

Especially in the early 1800’s, during the Napoleonic occupation of Germany, Arminius’s battle of 9 c.e. is cited as the historic precedent in overthrowing foreign domination. The argument used by German nationalists was: “Since Roman times, Germans never were slaves of another.” It was the ideological preparation for the disunited three hundred German autonomous states—some of midget size—to cooperate in the War of Liberation (1813). It ended French domination over the Germanies and ushered in Napoleon’s downfall.

Nationalism in the nineteenth century burned especially fiercely among intellectuals in the German states and, unlike the patriotism of other peoples, had racial overtones. It culminated in the unification of Germany under the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871. Arminius played a prominent role in the rise of German nationalism as many legends were woven into his biography to make him larger than life. As such, he was used and misused by all extreme German nationalists and racists, including the Nazis.

Bibliography

Detwiler, Donald S. Germany: A Short History. 3d ed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. Provides the reader with context in German history.

Herwig, Holger H. Hammer or Anvil? Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1994. Another work providing a helpful background in German history.

Kuehnemund, Richard. Arminius: Or, The Rise of a National Symbol in Literature (from Hutten to Grabbe). New York: AMS Press, 1966. From the University of North Carolina studies in the Germanic languages and literature series. Includes bibliographical references.

Tacitus, Cornelius. The Annals of Imperial Rome. Translated with an introduction by Michael Grant. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Includes the fullest description available of Arminius’s exploits. This translation includes maps, genealogy tables, bibliography, and index.

Tacitus, Cornelius. Germania. Translated, with introduction and commentary, by J. B. Rives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Tacitus’s tract is helpful in describing Germanic tribal life in the first century c.e.