Publius Quinctilius Varus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Publius Quinctilius Varus (ca.46 BC – 9 AD) was a Roman politician and general under Augustus, mainly remembered for having lost three Roman legions and his own life when attacked by Germanic leader Arminius in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
Contents |
[edit] Life
His parental grandparents were senator Sextus Quinctilius Varus and Varus was a patrician, born to an aristocratic but long-impoverished and unimportant family in the Quinctilius gens. His mother was a daughter from Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor's first marriage. His father was Sextus Quinctilius Varus, a senator aligned with the conservative republicans in the civil war against Julius Caesar. Sextus survived their defeat, but it is unknown whether he was involved in Caesar's assassination. He committed suicide after the Battle of Philippi (43 BC).
Despite his father's political allegiances, Varus became a supporter of Caesar's heir, Octavian, later known as Caesar Augustus. He was married to Vipsania Marcella, daughter of Octavian's lieutenant Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, and became a personal friend of both Agrippa and Octavian. Vipsania Marcella was a grandniece of Caesar Augustus. When Agrippa died, it was Varus who delivered the funeral eulogy. Thus, his political career was boosted and his cursus honorum finished as early as 13 BC, when he was elected consul junior partner of Tiberius, Augustus' stepson and future emperor.
[edit] Political career
Between 9 and 8 BC, following the consulship, Varus was governor of the province of Africa. After this, he went to govern Syria, with four legions under his command. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions the swift action of Varus against a messianic revolt in Judaea after the death of Rome's client king Herod the Great in 4 BC.
Following the governorship of Syria, Varus returned to Rome and remained there for the next few years. During these years, he married his second wife Claudia Pulchra, daughter of Claudia Marcella Minor (daughter of consul Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor and Octavia Thurina Minor, sister of Caesar Augustus) and consul Aemilius Lepidus Paullus (nephew of Triumvir Marcus Aemilius Lepidus). This made her a great niece of Caesar Augustus, which shows that Varus still enjoyed political favour. They had a son, Quinctilius Varus. (His first wife died.)
In the first years of the 1st century, Tiberius, his brother Drusus, and Germanicus conducted a long campaign in Germania, the area north of the Upper Danube and east of the Rhine, in an attempt at a further major expansion of the Empire's frontiers, and a shortening of its frontier line. They subdued several Germanic tribes, such as the Cherusci. In AD 7, the region was declared pacified and Varus was appointed to govern Germania.
[edit] The Battle of Teutoburg Forest
In 9CE, Varus had stationed his armies near the Weser River with his three legions, the Seventeenth, the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth, when news arrived of a growing revolt in the Rhine area to the west. Despite several warnings, Varus credited Arminius, the man who appealed for his help, because he was a Romanised Germanic prince and commander of an auxiliary cavalry unit.
Not only was Varus trust in Arminius a terrible misjudgement, but Varus compounded it by placing his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and that of the Germans' maximized. Arminius and the Cherusci tribe, along with other allies, had skillfully laid an ambush, and in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest on September 9 (in Kalkriese, near modern Osnabrück), the Germans pounced.
The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the infantry maneuvers of the legions impossible to execute and allowed the German fighters to defeat the legions in detail (i.e. the Germans were able to separate the Roman troops into smaller groupings, thus reducing the latter's fighting power). Despite being at severe disadvantage, it took the Germans three days to overwhelm the Romans. By the end of the third day, however, the Roman legions ceased to exist. Some of those captured were placed inside wicker cages and burned alive (see Edward Gibbon). Varus himself, upon seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide (see Bunson, A Dictionary of the Roman Empire). His head was cut off and sent to Rome.[citation needed]
Of the Roman forces and auxilliaries, only a small party of legionaries escaped, led the by the military tribune Cassius Chaerea (later the chief assassin of Caligula). They made their way to safety, informing Rome of the catastrophic defeat. The Roman position in Gaul was suddenly threatened with complete collapse as nothing stood between Arminius and his allies and the rich provinces to the west. Fortunately, the Germans did not press their advantage and there was no invasion of Rome's wealthiest western colonies. The Romans were also fortunate in that their greatest military enemy, the Parthians (occupying, roughly, modern Iraq, Iran and northwestern India) were also unable to take advantage of the precarious position the Empire found herself in.
The disaster convinced Augustus that the effort to subdue the Germanic tribes between the Rhine and Elbe rivers (the latter having briefly been furthermost eastern boundary of the Roman Empire in Central Europe) was simply not feasible. The Romans would never again attempt conquest and colonization of what is now modern Germany, contenting themselves with a small strip of the Rhineland and the Agri Decumates; they did launch numbers of retaliatory raids, the first being under Tiberius who exacted a heavy price from the Germans who had unwisely scattered their forces.
The Romans especially sought to recover the lost Legions' Eagles and eventually two of them were recovered (see Edward Gibbon). These standards were a combination of the regimental colors of modern armies as well as icons of a Legion's divinities, their loss was thus both a blow to Roman pride and, in Roman eyes, an affront to the gods which protected the armies.
So great was the shame, and the ill luck though to adhere to the numbers of the Legions, that XVII, XVIII and XIX never again appear in the Roman Army's order of battle.
The Battle of the Teutoburger Wald (or Teutoburg Forest) was keenly felt by Augustus, darkening his remaining years. According to the biographer Suetonius, upon hearing the news, Augustus tore his clothes, refused to cut his hair for months and, for years afterwards, was heard, upon occasion, to moan, "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!" ("Quintili Vare, legiones redde!") Gibbon describes Augustus's reaction to the defeat as one of the few times the normally stoic ruler lost his composure.
| Preceded by: Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus |
Consul of the Roman Empire 13 BC |
Succeeded by: Marcus Valerius Messalla Barbatus Appianus and Quirinius |
[edit] References
- The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves, 1957, Penguin Books; Also available from Project Gutenberg: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete
- A Roman Encylopedia by Matthew Bunson, 1995 Oxford Paperback Reference
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, Modern Library
[edit] Dramatizations
- I, Claudius by Robert Graves, Vintage International; a novelization based largely on Suetonius, but one which is generally considered to stick scrupulously to the facts.
