[15 A.D.]

which he regarded himself as bound in honour to terminate. A fleet of a thousand ships, with flat bottoms adapted for the ebb and flow, well manned and abundantly provisioned, was collected in the Batavian islands. In these he voyaged with eight legions to the mouth of the Amisia and then marched by land to the Visurgis, on whose right bank the Germans were posted under the command of Arminius.

A brother of the Cheruscan chieftain was serving in the Roman army and had been rewarded for his military services in Pannonia and for the loss of an eye with pay and badges of honour. Arminius asked and obtained an interview with him; but warmly as he exhorted him in his own name and their mother's to take the part of their beloved country and to fight for their hereditary freedom and native gods, his words recoiled without effect from the breast of the misguided and degenerate man. If the Visurgis had not flowed between these dissimilar brothers they would have come to blows. Thus even in the earliest times Germany exhibits the spectacle of fraternal strife and national disunion.

Next day Germanicus led his army across the river. The Batavian cavalry, which preceded the main body, was enticed by a feint of flight on the part of the Cherusci into a plain encircled by wooded heights, where the majority of them, including their gallant leader Cariobald, succumbed to the blows of the enemy. Soon afterwards battle took place in a plain called by Tacitus Idistavisus, that stretched from the Visurgis to the range of hills that bordered it.

Battling with Arminius

Before the fight began both leaders endeavoured to inflame the ardour of their warriors, Germanicus trying to rid his men of their dread of the unequal combat on wooded ground and of the lofty stature and savage looks of their adversaries, and insisting on the superiority of their armour over the wretched weapons of the other side- their shields of wood and wickerwork, their short spears and sticks hardened in the fire; Arminius reminding the Germans of former victories, and then asking whether any choice was left to them save to maintain their freedom or die before slavery overtook them.

But bravely as the Germans advanced to the fray, victory favoured the tactics of the legions directed by the military genius and resolute generalship of Caesar Germanicus. In vain Arminius strove to rally the fight by bold rushes and cheers, the Cheruscan column was shattered against the advance of the auxiliary troops, Gauls, Ræti, and Vindelici; wounded and with his face disfigured with blood to evade recognition, the German prince escaped to the mountains by the strength of his war horse. Inguiomer also saved himself by the same artifice and the fleetness of his steed. The rest were cut down. Many who attempted to swim across the Visurgis met their death from the missiles of the enemy, the violence of the stream, the hurrying crowd behind them or the yielding bank in front. Some who hid themselves in the tops and branches of lofty oaks were shot by the archers or killed by the felling of the trees. The slaughter lasted far on into the night, for two miles the ground was strewn thick with corpses. The Romans hailed Germanicus as imperator and erected on the battle-field a stately trophy with the names of the conquered tribes upon it.

The Germans had succumbed before the superior might of Rome, but their spirit was unbroken; the erection of the trophy on their territory and

[15 A.D.]

soil inflamed them with wrath and vengeance.

High and low, young

and old, flew to arms and, led by Inguiomer and the wounded Arminius, set upon the Roman army. Thus a second battle took place a few days. later two miles to the east of the scene of the first, near a wide dam which the Angrivarii had thrown up as a barrier against the Cherusci.

It was a terrible battle. The Germans, sheltered by the rampart, offered a desperate resistance, and when they were at length forced to give ground by the slingers and archers, they ranged themselves afresh in a wood, where they had a swamp in their rear, and the struggle was renewed with unabated vehemence until night separated the combatants. The Germans were at a disadvantage on account of the cramped space and their sorry armour; "their unhelmeted heads, their unprotected breasts, were exposed to the sword thrusts of the mailed Roman soldiers." They nevertheless fought with marvellous valour. Inguiomer flew to and fro in the ranks, exhorting them to stand fast; Germanicus also took off his helmet that he might be recognised of all men and spurred on his troops with orders to cut down all assailants.

The Roman victory was not decisive, although a stately trophy proclaimed that the legions of the emperor Tiberius had conquered the tribes between the Rhine and Albis. That same summer Germanicus led his army back without making any provision for maintaining his mastery of the country. Some legions reached the Rhine by land, the general himself marched with the rest to the Amisia to re-embark there. But the fleet had scarcely reached the open sea when a violent tempest arose, lashing the waves to fury. The ships, driven far out to sea, were dashed upon rocks and cliffs or cast away on hidden shoals. Horses, beasts of burden, baggage, and even weapons, were cast overboard to lighten the ships and keep them afloat. Many went to the bottom, others were wrecked on remote islands where the soldiers sustained life in uninhabited regions upon the flesh of horses washed up by the sea. Germanicus' ship was driven on the coast of the Chauci. There he stood day and night upon a jutting crag, and watched in dismay the tumult of nature, laying the blame of this horrible mishap upon himself. His comrades could hardly restrain him from seeking death in the breakers.

At length the wind went down and the sailors succeeded, by the help of such oars as were left and outstretched garments for sails, in getting the less damaged of the ships into the mouth of the Rhine. Of those who were driven out to sea and shipwrecked many were picked up by boats sent out in search of them, many more were ransomed from German and British tribes. [Germanicus himself looked after the destitute men and contributed to their wants from his purse.] Those who reached home told marvellous tales of eddies and whirlpools, or sea monsters and two-natured beasts, conjured up by their own terror and distress.

To neutralise the bad impression likely to be produced on the Germans and the neighbouring Gauls by the news of these mishaps and to show that the dominion of Rome on the Rhine was still unimpaired, Germanicus undertook the same autumn another campaign beyond the Rhine. Silius his legate invaded the land of the Chatti while he himself marched with a great army of horse and foot against the Marsi. The only spoil which the Romans reaped from this unworthy incursion was one of the eagles lost in the defeat of Varus. A banished prince of the latter tribe, who had come as a fugitive to the Romans, betrayed to them the spot where it had been buried in a grove. Germanicus is also said to have recovered one in his first campaign.

[16-18 A.D.]

GERMANICUS RECALLED TO ROME

This was the end of the Roman war in North Germany. In the midst of great schemes for a fresh campaign against the Germans, which the emperor's brave son regarded as the glorious task of his life, he was recalled by a letter from Tiberius to the effect there had been enough of success and disaster; and he was to come home for the triumph the emperor had designed in acknowledgment of his exploits. Now that the honour of the Roman arms had been vindicated and enough done for Rome's vengeance, the Cherusci and the other rebellious tribes of Germany might be safely left to their own dissensions. In vain did Germanicus beg the emperor to grant him but one year more, promising that by then he would bring the war to a glorious end. The answer came that he was to return to assume the consulate; if it were necessary to continue the war his brother Drusus might win laurels and the fame of a commander on the Rhine.

Germanicus obeyed. In the following year he, celebrated at Rome his triumph over the German tribes, in which the ensigns and weapons which had been captured or recovered were carried through the gaily decorated streets of the city, together with pictures of rivers, mountains, and battles in Germany. In front of the gorgeous triumphal car in which the stately imperator sat enthroned, surrounded by his five blooming children, marched many men, women, and children of high rank, captive and in fetters. Among them was Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, and her son Thumelicus, whom she had borne in captivity. Both died in slavery in a foreign land. From the obscure hint given by Tacitus that the son of Arminius grew up at Ravenna and was reserved for a shameful fate, modern inquirers and poets have concluded that the boy was brought up as a gladiator. According to Strabo, Segimund, the brother of Thusnelda, and his cousin Sisithacus, with his princely consort Rhamis, were of the train in the chains of slavery. But Segestes stood in a place of honour and looked down upon the holiday of the Romans and the misery of his children. It was his reward for betraying his country.

END OF MARBODUUS AND ARMINIUS

The spirit of internecine discord to which Tiberius had handed the Romans over soon came to light. The Low German league of the Cherusci in the northwest engaged in a war with the league of the Marcomanni in the southeast. It may be that Arminius, proud of his achievements, aimed at the military command of the whole nation and thus come into conflict with Marboduus the wary and ambitious Marcomannian prince, who had maintained a neutral attitude throughout the war of the Romans and Germans. The chieftains seem to have favoured Marboduus, the tribes Arminius; at least we find Inguiomer, uncle of Arminius, on the side of the Marcomanni, while on the other hand the Langobardi and Senones settled on the banks of the Albis were in league with Arminius. In the third year after the withdrawal of Germanicus the quarrel between the two confederacies came to a sanguinary decision. The battle was probably fought on the Sala, and ended in the retreat of Marboduus to Boihemum (Bohemia).

Of the later history we know nothing, though we can gather from subsequent events that the schism continued to exist, that German blood. was shed to no purpose by German hands, and that the weakness bred of discord gave the Romans an opportunity of harassing the country of the

.