Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions! How many times had he howled that in his torment? More than he cared to remember. He had no guarantee he wouldn’t start howling it again, either, if the black mood seized him again.

He’d gone on so long and done so well, maybe he’d started believing he couldn’t make mistakes any more. If so, he’d got a reminder of his own humanity, his own fallibility, far blunter and more brutal than the stinking turds in his chamber pot.

Forty years. That was how long he’d ruled the Roman world, the Mediterranean world. In all that time, he hadn’t had to pull back his horns very often. Oh, death had forced him to change his mind more than once about his successor. Irony there: he’d been sickly in his younger years - he was often sickly even now - but he’d outlived almost everyone to whom he’d thought to entrust the Empire after he was gone. Still, no mortal could outwit or outreach death.

Since he’d never had a son of his own body, he supposed Tiberius, his wife’s son from an earlier marriage, would have to do. Tiberius made a fine soldier. He’d proved that in Pannonia. If he hadn’t been busy settling that revolt, he might have proved it in Germany instead.

Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions! Again, die howl of torment rose unbidden in Augustus’ mind, though he managed not to cry out loud. Those legions were gone, gone forever.

Tiberius made a good soldier, yes. But did he have what it took to continue the delicate charade Augustus had carried on with the Roman Senate all these years? Augustus held all the power in the Empire worth holding, but he’d artfully pretended to be no more than a magistrate of the Republic. That was likely one reason, and not the smallest one, he’d escaped assassination for so long. People had feared his great-uncle would make himself into a king - and so Julius Caesar died under the knives of men who’d been his friends. Augustus cared little for the show of power. The reality sufficed.

He wasn’t so sure about Tiberius. Tiberius didn’t suffer fools gladly. If the Conscript Fathers got pushy . . . Tiberius would do whatever he had to do to remind them where power really lay. They wouldn’t like that. Tiberius wouldn’t care. Different parts of the Roman government shouldn’t squabble with one another.

Augustus had to hope they wouldn’t. He saw no one but Tiberius to whom he could hand over the reins. Death had cut down his other choices. When he was gone, all this would be his stepson’s worry.

And so would Germany. Bringing it into the Empire as Julius Caesar had brought in Gaul would have been Augustus’ greatest legacy to his successor. It would have been, but it wouldn’t be now. Augustus knew he would never - could never - mount another campaign to annex Germany. The Rhine and the Danube would remain the Empire’s frontiers.

Maybe, after enough time had passed, Tiberius would be able to avenge this defeat. Even as the thought formed, Augustus shook his head. Some wounds were just too large, too deep. Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!

Again, Augustus kept the shriek inside him. The first few weeks after the catastrophe, he couldn’t even manage that. All his servants flinched whenever he cried out. Varus would have flinched, too, were he not beyond any reproaches but the gods’.

Arminius, curse him, had managed what only death had done before: he’d made Augustus withdraw from a policy he’d set his mind to. If Germany was not to be Roman, it would stay . . . German. It would stay squalid, it would stay barbarous, it would stay independent. It would stay troublesome. Augustus could see that. He had to hope it wouldn’t become too troublesome too soon.

Three days later, a courier down from the Danube reached the great house on the Palatine Hill. He spoke to the grooms. One of the guards spoke to one of Augustus’ senior servants. The freedman approached Augustus himself. “Sir, I think you would do well to see this man, to hear him, to see the burden he bears.”

“Send him to the anteroom, then. I’ll see him there.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did Augustus remember that was where he’d seen the messenger who brought word of the battle in the Teutoburg Forest. Quinctilius Varus . . . Augustus spat into the bosom of his toga to turn aside the evil omen.

The courier looked nervous when Augustus strode into the small antechamber. Augustus knew that meant nothing. Couriers coming before him mostly looked nervous. At the man’s feet lay a large leather sack. Augustus’ nostrils twitched - a faint foul odor rose from it.

“Well?” Augustus pointed toward the sack. “What’s that in aid of?”

“Sir, let me give you this first. It will explain better than I can.” The man handed him a letter festooned with the usual wax seals and ribbons.

“Very well.” Augustus broke the seals and unrolled the letter. The script was small and none too neat. After struggling with it for a moment, Augustus passed it to his servitor. “Read this to me.”

“Of course, sir,” the freedman said. “I begin: ‘I am Gaius Libo, a wine merchant and a Roman citizen. I am at the court of King Maroboduus of the Marcomanni, north of the Danube. King Maroboduus has no letters himself. He asks me to write to you to explain the gift this letter comes with.’“

Augustus pointed to the sack again. “Whatever’s in there?”

“That’s right, sir,” the courier said.

“All right.” Augustus turned back to his servitor. “Go on.”

“Yes, sir. ‘Not long ago, Maroboduus received from Arminius, another German princeling, the head of the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus. Maroboduus says he has no quarrel with you and no quarrel with Varus. To show this, he sends you the head for burial.’ “

“Ah,” Augustus said, to give himself a moment to gather his thoughts. Then he asked the courier, “Do you know if this is truly Varus’ head? Or is it the head of some nobody Maroboduus is using to curry favor with me?”

“Sir, I don’t know. I never met the gentleman alive, and I would not recognize him,” the courier said. “I also have to tell you the head is not in the best of shape. But I have heard that Arminius did send Varus’ head to Maroboduus.”

“Yes. I have heard the same thing,” Augustus said unhappily. Even more unhappily, he went on, “Take the head out of the sack. If anyone is likely to recognize poor Varus, I am the man.”

He could have summoned Julia Pulchra or her son - no, the younger Quinctilius Varus was studying in Athens. But he would not have done that to his grand-niece, and he couldn’t do it to the peaceable youth. He’d seen battlefields and their aftermath, even if not for many years.

He braced himself. The courier didn’t reach into the sack - he didn’t want to touch what it held, and who could blame him for that? Instead, he turned it inside out, spilling the head onto the mosaic floor. The stench the sack had contained filled the audience chamber. Gagging, Augustus’ freedman beat a hasty retreat. He knew no more of battlefields than Claudia Pulchra or the younger Varus did. His ignorance - the ignorance of so many in the Empire - was Augustus’ doing, and something for Augustus to be proud of.

But battlefields hadn’t disappeared altogether, even if Augustus wished they - and one in particular - would have. He stalked around the severed head, examining it from every angle, weighing the wreckage here against what he remembered of his grand-niece’s husband. His gorge didn’t rise - yes, he remembered what death and its aftermath could do to flesh.

“Well, sir?” asked the courier, who’d stood his ground - and won credit with Augustus for doing it. “Is it him?”

“Yes,” Augustus said in a voice like iron. “That is Publius Quinctilius Varus, or what remains of him. The bald crown, curly hair at the temples and nape, the nose, the chin . . . There can be no doubt. That is Varus.”

“He died well, sir, from what people say.” The courier offered such solace as he could.

“So he did. But too many died with him - too many died because he let Arminius trick him.” Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions! Quinctilius Varus never would. The disaster in Germany was no nightmare to wake up from. It was real, and would stay real forever. With a sigh, Augustus nodded toward Varus’ remains. “Would you be kind enough to put - that - back in the sack?” he said to the courier. “I will give it decent burial, but not right now.”

“Yes, sir,” the other man answered resignedly. Getting the head back into the sack wasn’t so neat as taking it out had been. When the nasty job was done, the courier said, “May I wash my hands?”

“Of course.” Augustus called for some slaves, for a basin of warm water, for scented oil - “The sweetest and strongest we have, by the gods” - and for a bronze strigil so the courier could scrape his fingers clean.

“Thank you kindly, sir,” the man said as the slaves brought what Augustus required.

“No. I have to thank you: for your help there, and for the word you brought me,” Augustus said. “Now we know what became of . . . this much of Quinctilius Varus, anyhow. And now we can lay this much to rest.”

After the courier had scraped off as much of the corpse-reek as he could, Augustus dismissed him with a gift of five goldpieces for all he had done. The ruler of the Roman world wished he could have dismissed the whole German problem as easily. But the foul odor from Varus’ head lingered in the audience chamber even after a slave gingerly carried away the sack. The larger problem that foul smell symbolized lingered, too.

And he couldn’t do anything about it. He’d tried, and he’d failed, as he’d failed against death. The death reek here brought back memories of those earlier failures. Wild German tribes would go on prowling the Roman Empire’s northern borders.

Because they were separate tribes, a canny ruler might be able to play them off against one another. Maroboduus and Arminius had no love for each other now. Chieftains in years to come would also surely be rivals. Augustus knew he could exploit a situation like that.

But he also knew his day was passing. If he lived five years more, he would be surprised; if he lived ten more, he would be astonished. How many of those who came after him would share his peculiar combination of talents?

He grimaced. He couldn’t do anything about that. He’d done every-thing he could about Germany, and it hadn’t been enough. If only he’d had two Tiberiuses. If only Pannonia hadn’t rebelled when he was about to lay hold of Germany once and for all. If only . . .

“Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” he cried once more. The empty, useless words echoed back at him from the antechamber’s walls.

HISTORICAL NOTE

What happened in the middle of Germany two thousand years ago has had a profound effect on the history of Europe ever since. The battle of the Teutoburg Forest (Teutoburger Wald in German), in A.D./C.E. 9, made sure that Germany would not become part of the Roman Empire, and that the Germans would not become Romanized as the Gauls had before diem. To this day, the division between Romanized and non-Romanized peoples in Europe is easily visible in the languages and cultures of the nations that grew up on the wreckage of the Roman Empire in the West: a collapse accomplished in military terms primarily by Germanic tribes whose histories would have been altogether different had Germany been annexed to Rome (if, indeed, they would have had separate histories for long after that point).

Our written sources for the battle are less good than we might wish they were. Closest in time is the account of Velleius Paterculus, a retired military officer who wrote his epitome of Roman history around A.D./C.E. 30. His work does not get much respect from modern historians; he was no great stylist, and he was an admirer of Augustus’ successor, Tiberius, whose character had a good many features less than admirable. Imagine a modern U.S. colonel who served in Vietnam and some years later wrote a memoir full of extravagant praise for Richard Nixon. That will give you some notion of why historians raise an eyebrow at Velleius Patcrculus.

On the other hand, the man actually served in Germany. He knew at least some of the people involved in these campaigns. And he has information about them that we simply can’t get from anyone else. So his account is certainly worth reading.

Other historians in the Roman Empire who touched on the fight in the Teutoburg Forest wrote at least a lifetime after the events occurred. They include Florus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio (also known, at least as often, as Dio Cassius), the last of whom wrote in Greek rather than Latin. In addition, Tacitus mentions the battle in passing as he treats in more detail the retaliatory campaigns the Romans waged in Germany in the early years of Tiberius’ reign. Augustus’ anguished cry of “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” comes from Suetonius.

For manv years, the actual site of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest was unknown. There is a large, heroic statue of Arminius holding an upraised sword near Detmold, Germany, which was believed to be close by the battlefield. In fact, it is farther north and east, near the village of Kalkriese. This was proved beyond a reasonable doubt through the excavations conducted by Tony Clunn, one of the gifted amateurs who have contributed so much to archaeology. In the 1980s, Clunn was a British Army officer serving in Germany; the coins and other artifacts he uncovered - including the remains of the rampart Arminius’ men built up - demonstrate where the fight took place.

Clunn has written a fascinating book detailing his discoveries: The Quest for the Lost Roman Legions: Discovering the Varus Battlefield (Savas Beattie: New York, and Spellmount, Limited: Staplehurst, UK, 2005). Also extremely valuable, in addition to the primary sources, was Peter S. Wells, The Battle That Stopped Rome (W. W. Norton & Company: New York and London, 2003). I have not always agreed with their conclusions, but console myself by remembering that I am writing a novel, not history. (Clunn also includes his own fictional version of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, its installments separated by italics from the rest of the book. I carefully did not read those installments, not wanting his take on things to influence my own.)

Arminius, Augustus, Caldus Caelius, Ceionius, Lucius Eggius, Publius Quinctilius (sometimes spelled Quintilius) Varus, Segestes, Sigimerus, Thusnelda, and Vala Numonius are real historical figures. So are Claudia Pulchra, Flavus, Julia, Maroboduus, Tiberius, and Varus’ son (to whom I have given the praenomen Gaius; his actual praenomen is unknown), who are mentioned but stay offstage, as it were. Accounts of Caesar’s deeds in Gaul and Germany a couple of generations earlier than the time in which Give Me Back My Legions! is set are as accurate as I could make them; so are those of Crassus’ less fortunate deeds farther east. Varus’ father did commit suicide as described.

Two key questions underlie the events leading up to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. First, why was Segestes so strongly opposed to Arminius? Second, why did Quinctilius Varus prefer to believe Arminius rather than Segestes?