Everything about Publius Quinctilius Varus totally explained
Publius Quinctilius Varus (
46 BC–
AD 9) was a
Roman politician and general under emperor
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.
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 consul
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's 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
Augustus. About
14 BC he married
Vipsania Marcella, the daughter of lieutenant
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and
Claudia Marcella Major and became a personal friend of both Agrippa and Augustus. Vipsania Marcella was a grandniece of
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.
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. Indeed, at precisely this moment, the Jews, nearly
en masse, began a full-scale boycott of Roman pottery (
Red Slip Ware). . Thus, the archaeological record seems to verify mass popular protest against Rome because of Varus' cruelty.
Following the governorship of Syria, Varus returned to Rome and remained there for the next few years. Following his first wife's death, he married
Claudia Pulchra, daughter of
Claudia Marcella Minor (daughter of consul
Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor and
Octavia Minor, elder sister of
Augustus) and consul
Aemilius Lepidus Paullus (nephew of Triumvir
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus). She was a great niece of
Augustus, which shows that Varus still enjoyed political favour. They had a son,
Quinctilius Varus.
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.
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
In
9 AD, 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 a warning from
Segestes, 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 skilfully laid an ambush, and in the
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in September (east of modern
Osnabrück), the Romans marched right into it.
The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the infantry manoeuvres of the legions impossible to execute and allowed the Germanic fighters to
defeat the legions in detail (for example the Germanic troops were able to isolate the Roman troops into smaller groupings, thus reducing the latter's fighting power). On the third day of fighting, the Germans 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. Following that setback, to put the North and East of
Germany under a direct Roman rule as it was in the regions on the
Rhine and the
Danube and the
Agri Decumates. The Romans did recover the lost legions' eagles (see
Edward Gibbon), two of them in
15 AD-
16 AD, the third in
42 AD. See
Battle of the 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 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!" ("Quinctili Vare, legiones redde!").
Gibbon describes Augustus' reaction to the defeat as one of the few times the normally
stoic ruler lost his composure.
In fiction
- I, Claudius by Robert Graves, a novelization of the reigns of first three emperors. Varus doesn't actually appear in the novel, but his defeat by the Germans is an important event.
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.Further Information
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