ANCIENT ROME'S DARKEST HOUR

How a Roman citizen lured three of the empire's legions into a deadly trap

- EDOARDO ALBERT

It was over. As Publius Quinctilius Varus, commander of the XVII, XVIII and XIX legions, looked at the carnage surrounding him, he knew all hope was lost. For three days they had tried to fight their way to safety, through appalling conditions of mud and rain, while the Germans harassed and assaulted his retreating legions. The commander of the cavalry, Numonius Vala, had abandoned them with the surviving horsemen, trying to ride to safety. Now the native barbarians were amassing for the final assault on the remnants still under Varus’ command.

Publius Quinctilius Varus knew what the Germans did with men they captured in battle. But it was the disgrace that was worse. His name forever tainted. As the screams and battle cries drew closer, the general fixed his sword point up in the muddy earth and fell upon it.

When the battle was over, the Germans found Varus’ body, impaled by his own sword. The man who had masterminded the plan that had seen the almost total destruction of three Roman legions, Arminius, commanded that Varus’s head be cut off and sent as a gift to the leader of the only important German tribal federation not to have taken part in the battle. The head was a message of what Arminius had achieved and a promise of what they could do as allies. Its refusal marked the limits of Arminius’s extraordinary victory among his German rivals. But for the Romans, it would outline the limits of an empire that they had previously believed would expand forever.