Publius Quinctilius Varus
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Publius Quinctilius Varus (ca.46 BC – AD 9) 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.
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[edit] Life
His paternal grandfather was senator Sextus Quinctilius Varus. 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. After occupying Jerusalem, he crucified 2000 Jewish rebels, and may have thus been one of the prime objects of popular anti-Roman sentiment in Judaea, for Josephus, who made every effort to reconcile the Jewish people to Roman rule, felt it necessary to point out how lenient this judicial massacre had been.
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. Tiberius, who would later succeed Augustus as Emperor, left the region to deal with a revolt in Pannonia and Dalmatia, in what is now the Balkans.
[edit] Battle of Teutoburg Forest
In A.D. 9, 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 trusted 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 Germanic tribesmen maximized. Arminius and the Cherusci tribe, along with other allies, had skillfully laid an ambush, and in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in September (east of modern Osnabrück), the Germanic tribes ambushed the vulnerable Roman column.
The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the infantry manoeuvers of the legions impossible to execute and allowed the Germanic fighters to defeat the legions in detail (i.e. the Germanic troops were able to separate the Roman troops into smaller groupings, thus reducing the latter's fighting power). On the third day of fighting, the Germanic fighters overwhelmed the Romans at Kalkriese Hill, north of Osnabrück. Accounts of the defeat are scarce, due to the totality of the defeat, but one account tells of some Roman cavalry which abandoned the infantry they were supposed to be supporting and fled to the Rhine, but were intercepted by the Germanic tribesmen and killed. Some captured Romans were placed inside wicker cages and burned alive (see Edward Gibbon); others were enslaved or ransomed. Tacitus reports that the victorious Germanic tribes sacrificed captive officers to their gods on altars that could still be seen years later. Varus himself, upon seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide (see Bunson, A Dictionary of the Roman Empire). Arminius cut off his head and sent it to Bohemia as a present to King Marbod of the Marcomanni, the other most important Germanic leader, whom Arminius wanted to coax into an alliance, but Marbod declined the offer and sent the head on to Rome for burial. Later efforts on the part of his heir, Tiberius, to subdue the Germanic tribes between the Rhine and Elbe failed and the Romans made no further attempt to conquer what is now modern Germany east of the Rhine, except for the Agri Decumates (the modern state of Baden-Württemberg). The Romans did recover the lost legions' eagles (see Edward Gibbon), two of them in 15-16, the third in 42. See Battle of Teutoburg Forest.
So great was the shame, and the ill luck thought 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.
[edit] In fiction
- 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.
- The Iron Hand of Mars by Lindsey Davis; fourth book of the mystery series set during the reign of Vespasian, a portion of the novel occurs in the Teutoberger Wald.
[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
- Annals by Tacitus (various editions). Summarizes reports of later Romans who found the battlefield.
- Compendium of Roman History (Res gestae divi Augusti) by Velleius Paterculus, Harvard University Press; 1924. Brief mention of the Varus Disaster by the author, who was serving as a staff officer with Tiberius in Pannonia at the time.
| 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 |
