Who was Arminius and what did he do?
If you would like to read about Arminius in German, click on the following: http://www.kalkriese-varusschlacht.de/arminius.htm
Arminius (c. 18 BC- AD 19), chief of the Cherusci, a Teutonic tribe inhabiting parts of what is now Germany. German nationalists of the 19th century celebrated him as a national hero, under the name of Hermann, for having freed Germany from Roman control. He served in the Roman army (AD 1-6), obtaining Roman citizenship and an insight into the arts of war and policy as practised by the Romans. Returning home about AD 7, he found his people oppressed by the Roman governor Publius Quinctilius Varus. Arminius organized a rebellion of the
Cherusci, annihilating three Roman legions in the Varus Battle or Battle of Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 and forcing the Romans back to the Rhine. The defeat of his legions led Varus to commit suicide.
In AD 15 the Romans, under the general Germanicus Caesar, invaded Germany and in AD 16 defeated Arminius. Germanicus was recalled to Rome, however, and the advantages gained were lost. After this time, no Roman army ventured to penetrate the interior of Germany. After the expulsion of the Romans, internal feuds broke out among the Teutonic tribes, and Arminius was slain by his relatives. A colossal statue of him was set up in 1875 near the spot where he allegedly defeated Varus. Newer archaeological research indicate that the battle had taken place about 80 km north of the statue at the foot of the Kalkriese hill.
In 1875, the Germans erected a colossal statue of Hermann, a chief of the Cherusci tribe, near
the spot where he had annihilated the Roman army. Nationalists viewed this chieftan as a
patriot who had freed Germans from Roman domination. The Romans called the man Arminius
("hammer" in Latin). Arminius' early career was not untypical: he had served in the Roman army
from 1-6 AD, studied its military techniques, and earned Roman citizenship. Rome's policy was
to integrate subject peoples into the Roman political and cultural framework, allowing them to
keep their customs and forms of government largely intact and to enjoy the creature comforts
afforded by Roman "civilization." The conquered people paid taxes to Rome, which retained
control of critical areas in the judiciary (only Romans could exercise the death penalty) and in
civil and military administration. Those barbarians who pledged allegiance to Roman rule might
serve in the military (often in a distant part of the empire, where they would be unlikely to
provoke rebellion), and become Roman citizens. This system of integration combined with a
degree of population shifting could work well, as the Assyrians had demonstrated in
Mesopotamia--as long as the conquerors did not becoming excessively overbearing. When
Arminius returned home in northern Germany around 7 AD, he found the Cherusci suffering
under the inept governorship of Publius Quintilius Varus.
Arminius used his leadership skills and military prowess to gather allies and in the late summer
of 9 AD led the Cherusci in an ambush of Roman forces that Varus had led across the Rhine
and into the Teutoburger Wald. The Teutoburg Forest, near Hanover in modern Germany, was
a range of wooded hills that rise to a height of 1,465 feet. The Romans outnumbered the
Germanic tribes, but Arminius ordered his men to bang their shields with their weapons and
shout like crazy, unnerving the Romans, who assumed that the Germans popping out
of the woods everywhere were an overwhelming force. (Painting one's body and strutting about to
enhance the impression of its size and fierceness, and making a great din with war cries, taunts,
horns, and the clatter of equipment have always been a favorite means of "psyching" oneself for
battle while scaring the hell out of the enemy. The Maori of New Zealand were masters of the
art.) In three days of fighting, the Cherusci decimated a Roman force of three legions, three
squadrons of cavalry, and six cohorts of auxiliaries--about 20,000 men in all. There were
survivors (including Varus), and reports of the defeat trickled in. Later, when Romans returned
to the scene of the battle, they were shocked by the profusion of skeletons, and by the skulls of
Roman soldiers nailed to trees. (See "A Head Note" toward the bottom of the Celts, Romans,
and Boudicca Page. ) Archaeologists have recently excavated a site at Kalkrieser that appears
have been associated with the battle of Teutoburg Forest, and have retrieved about 3,000
Roman coins and pieces of military gear.
The defeat in the Teutoburg Forest stunned and shamed the Romans, who were not used to
being annihilated by undisciplined savages. Varus thought it prudent to commit suicide. After this
unprecedented defeat, Augustus Caesar reportedly would bolt from his sleep, shouting
"Varus, Varus, where are my legions!" Arminius pushed the Romans to the Rhine River, and not until 15
AD did Rome invade Germany again. In 16 AD, Germanicus Caesar defeated and seriously
wounded Arminius, but the government in Rome did not press this advantage. Roman forces
pulled back, never again to set foot in the German heartland. The Teutonic tribes began fighting
among themselves--a not unusual turn of events--and Arminius was killed by relatives in 21 AD.
Herman The Cheruscan
by Kveldulf Hagan Gundarsson
The earliest historical hero of the folk of whom we know, Hermann the Cheruscan lived in the early part of the
first century C.E. when the Romans were threatening to overwhelm Germania. Ironically, we know of him
largely through the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus (Annals I and II), who called him "Arminius," a name
usually taken as the Latinized form of Hermann. He is best known as the leader of the battle of Teutoberger Wald, which is seen as the turning point at which Rome's power over Germania broke, and is honored as the
embodiment of Teutonic freedom. Two great statues of him stand today--one in the Teutoberger Wald itself
near the holy stead called the Externsteine, and one in the American town of New Ulm, Minnesota (surrounded
by Hermann Heights Park). Modern Asatrar celebrate the ninth of Holymonth (September) as the Day of Remembrance for Hermann, toasting the victory which kept Germania from undergoing total cultural
destruction of the sort suffered by occupied Gaul. It has even been suggested by some scholars that the tale of
Siegfried the Dragon-Slayer could have been based on Hermann's victory at Teutoberger Wald, poetically
transforming the dragon-standards sometimes used by the Roman army into an actual Wyrm and the great
host-leader into a single combatant against it, with the hoard being the treasure gained from the Romans (and
like Siegfried, too, Hermann was eventually brought down by his own kin). There is more to Hermann's history
than the battle of Teutoberger Wald, however, and for Heathens, a yet greater stream flowing through Wyrd
from his victories.
Although a German tribesman, Hermann held the position of Roman citizen with the title of knight, a rather
exalted social rank. How he got this title is not clear; he may have inherited it from his father, or he may have
been given it as part of the various delicate and complex negotiations between Rome and the tribes. It was not
uncommon for Rome to offer citizenship and other forms of social bribes to "barbarians" in hopes of winning
their loyalty and thereby either gaining a stronger foothold among the folk or undercutting the trust of the tribes
in their chieftains.
"Arminius" served brilliantly in the Roman army for several years, fighting in
Thracia, Macedonia, Armenia, and Pannonia. If success within Rome had been his goal, he had undoubtedly achieved it. However, in the year 9
C.E. (possibly upon hearing of the death of his father, though this is uncertain), he abruptly left the Roman
army, went back to his own folk, and at once began to put together the great revolt of
Germania. In an
incredible display of political skill that, at a time when every tribe was turned against another and the
Cheruscans themselves were divided within, Hermann was able to gather a number of folks together and to
use his full knowledge of Roman means of warfare to organize and ready them for victory. He was not
unopposed. His plans were betrayed to the Roman commander, Varus, by his father-in-law
Segestes.
However, Varus, having known Hermann as a worthy subordinate in his own army for some time, was not
ready to accept that a successful young Roman officer of noble rank would give up his place to lead a "barbarian" tribe, or that Hermann would turn against his own commander.
The Germans fell upon the Romans as the legions passed through the Teutoberger Wald in September of the
year 9 C.E., using a combination of their native crafts of fighting in their heavily wooded territory and the
military skills learned by Hermann in his long apprenticeship with the foe. The three Roman legions were utterly
destroyed. Varus committed suicide. Not only was this battle blessed by
Wodan, it had clearly been hallowed
to him as well: Tacitus describes how "in the neighboring groves stood the savage altars at which (the
Germans) had slaughtered the tribunes and chief centurions" and also mentions the use of gallows in
disposing of the Roman captives. It was, as Tacitus mentions elsewhere (Annals 13, ch 57.), the way of the
Germanic peoples when calling on the Gods' help in battle to hallow the other host as an offering so that both
the battle-dead and those taken and slain afterwards were seen as gifts to the Gods. In later Norse sources,
this form of offering is specifically dedicated to īdinn for victory.
The battle of Teutoberger Wald effectively cast the Romans out of Germania, back past the Rhine. But
Hermann's work was not yet done. His chief rival was still the treacherous
Segestes; concerning the two of
them, Tacitus writes, ironically, "the enemy (the Cheruscan tribe) was becoming divided between Arminius
and Segestes: both famous names, one for perfidy towards us, the other for good faith." We might say the
same from the other side. The struggle for rule of the tribe ended when a huge company of Romans (four
legions, and ten thousand auxiliaries, according to Tacitus) led by "Germanicus" raided the
Chatti, slaughtering the tribe's old and their women at once and dispersing those able-bodied men who survived. At
this time, Segestes' arguments for peace with the Romans suddenly lost their force, and the Cheruscans
turned against him. He sent to Germanicus for help; Germanicus turned back and rescued him, capturing
Hermann's pregnant wife against her will at the same time (the child was born in Rome as a captive and
apparently ill-treated; he died young). More fired than ever by this, Hermann raised his folk to war, saying,
according to Tacitus, that "In the groves of Germany were still to be seen the Roman standards which he had
hung aloft to the Gods of their fathers...one fact the Germans could never sufficiently condone, that their eyes
had seen the Rods, the Axes, and the Toga between the Elbe and the Rhine. Other nations, unacquainted with the domination of Rome, had neither felt her punishments nor known her exactions...If they loved their country,
their parents, their ancient ways, better than despots and new colonies, then let them follow Arminius to glory
and freedom rather Segestes to shame and slavery!" Tacitus adds that this appeal roused not only the
Cheruscans, but the bordering tribes as well, and brought the chieftain Inguiomerus (who had previously been
on good terms with the Romans) over to Hermann's side, as well it might. Germanicus was forced to withdraw.
His secondary commander, Caecina, with a troop nearly as large, was engaged and nearly destroyed, but
finally managed to win his way free and struggle back across the Rhine.
Germanicus and Hermann met again at the battle of Idisiaviso. The Romans won the victory this time, but while
sailing back via the North Sea, the majority of Germanicus' troops were destroyed by a storm which Tacitus
describes in significant terms: "all heaven, all ocean, passed into the power of the south wind, which, drawing
its strength from the sodden lands of Germany, the deep rivers, the endless train of clouds, with its grimness enhanced by the rivers of the neighboring north, caught and scattered the vessels..."
Germanicus' galley put in to the Chaucian coast alone, while a large part of the fleet were lost. Here we may see the Gods at work; when
their sons had fought and fallen to the ends of their best ability, the high
ones--Thonar, Wodan, and Tiw, perhaps--raised the storm to destroy their foes.
After his many battles, Hermann did not have peace; though he outlived
Germanicus, he was attacked and
brought down in fight by his own relatives in the year 21 C.E. His epitaph is given with grudging admiration by
the Roman chronicler as the final paragraph of Annals II:
"Undoubtedly the liberator of Germany; a man who, not in its infancy as captains and kings before him, but in
the high noon of its sovereignty, threw down the challenge to the Roman nation in battle with ambiguous
results, in war without defeat; he completed thirty-seven years of life, twelve of power, and to this day is sung in
tribal lays, though he is an unknown being to the Greek historians, who admire only the glory of Greece, and receives less than his due from us of Rome, who glorify the ancient days and show little concern for our own."
The true depth of Hermann's legacy, however, is seen most clearly when we look at what happened several
hundred years later, when the tide that he turned had fully swept in the other direction and the Germanic folks
crossed the waters of the Rhine and the Channel to settle in Roman lands. Occupied Gaul and occupied
Britain were already thoroughly Christianized lands when the tribes moved there in the fifth century
C.E. The
Welsh historian Gildas, for instance, later wailed about the Heathen Anglo-Saxons being the scourge of God
sent to punish the Christians of Britain for their sins; but the position of the conquering Saxons was so strong
that Welsh Christianity had little effect on them. In Gaul, however, matters were different. Because of the nature
of this settlement--not simple conquest as in Britain, but a process of careful integration by treaties, upheld by
the desire of the Germanic leaders to claim some of the large-scale authority represented by Rome rather than
to simply take land and settle--the Germanic tribes moving into Gaul quickly found it expedient to convert to
Christianity. This, as much as anything else, shows us how deep and thorough the conversion of Roman Gaul
had been; it was a country in which Heathen leaders, even in a position of strength as the effective rulers of the
land, thought it easier to convert than to hold true to their own folk-ways. Had Hermann failed in his war against
Rome, Germania would have been conquered; our Gods would have been known there for a couple of
centuries as local reflections of the Roman deities and then, already weakened, been forgotten utterly during
the conversion of the Empire--in short, matters would have gone exactly as they did in once-Celtic Gaul.
Instead, Heathenry survived as an active, living religion in Germania until Charles the Genocide's
(Charlemagne's) war of destruction against the Saxons in the late eighth century--and the roots of this war
were based on the politically-motivated conversion of the Gaulish Frank Clovis Kinslayer at the beginning of
the sixth century. Because of Hermann's victories, the culture shaped by our
God/esses, though eventually warped by Christianity, was never so distorted as to destroy those memories of our holy kin that lived on in folk
belief and festival practice; the tongue of the Northern folk was not lost in the lands of
Germania; and,
remembering him, the Germans have always been able to know their own holding, not as an inferior fringe to
the Classical/Christian world centered around the Mediterranean, but as something free of the Empire and--at
root, of the religion that crept forth under the mantle of Rome.