The Battle of Teutoburg Forest is one of
the grimmest days in Roman military history which has captivated historians and the general
public for centuries. Naturally much attention has been placed on analyzing the lead up to battle,
the ambush, and the ensuing ripple effects across the Empire. In these narratives, the subject of
the battlefield itself is only useful up until the Roman army is defeated at which point it becomes
discarded in favor of other, more relevant topics. Rarely do we hear about what happened in the dark
forests after the fighting ended or of the Roman army’s return to these haunted lands. Today let
us explore this fascinating historical blindspot. a big thanks to the great courses
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material that you are most interested in As the story goes, three Roman legions and their
auxiliaries entered the forests of Germania in 9 AD and met their doom at the hands of the
traitor Arminius and his cleverly laid trap. The fighting occurred in stages over
several days as the Roman column was slowly gnawed upon and eventually swallowed
whole. Seeing this inevitable doom upon them, the imperial officer corp and General
Varus himself committed suicide. After the Roman army had completed its convulsive
death throes, the entire forest must have come to an ominous still. It's hard to imagine just
what that transition must have felt like as the violent yells of some 20,000 dead or
captured gave way to the chirping of birds. What happened next is not clear as we have no
direct sources on the matter from the victor’s perspective. However we can start to get an idea
from a few key Roman writers like Tacitus combined with our understanding of warfare from the period
as well as the findings of modern archaeology. The first people to set foot on the
battlefield once the fighting had ended would have been the
victorious German tribes. Several immediate goals were in order:
1. Hunting down survivors 2. Tending to the dead
3. Taking prizes The first order of business would already have
begun over the course of the battle and extended several days after. The author Paterculus for
example mentions an instance of Roman horsemen abandoning the main body of infantry during
the assault and fleeing for the Rhine only to be slain along the way. Elsewhere it
seems that groups of soldiers or individuals melted away into the surrounding
woods and marshes seeking refuge. The Germans however knew that this was their
chance to inflict as much damage as possible to the enemy and would not have allowed their
quarry to slip so easily through their net. After all THEY were the masters of this land and would
have held the advantage in such a deadly hunt. Archaeology of the area reveals incredible
stories of the pursuit that occured. For instance near a portion of the Germanic
wall, a bell was found, still attached to the neck of a mule. It was stuffed full of grass,
indicating that some panicked Roman soldiers had attempted to silence it in their desperation
to avoid detection while listening to the cries of their comrades being slaughtered around them.
It's unlikely that their efforts were successful. Other stories are small and similarly terrifying:
the small scatterings of coins that tell of an officer's purse that spilled across the muddy
ground. The small caches where soldiers dug holes for their money. The clasps from
armour that was torn off of the bodies. The surgeons' tools, all lying together, as the
medics themselves were killed or taken captive. We do know that some Roman soldiers did
manage to make it out of there alive and fall back to their own lines, regrouping
at the last standing fortress of Aliso. However the percentage of those who
achieved such an escape was quite low. Meanwhile the Germans would have begun their
second initiative, tending to the dead. The tribesmen were sure to comb over the battlefield
recovering as many of their own as possible. Any wounded allies would be quickly brought
to their own healers while any Roman survivors were generally dispatched with a spear thrust
to the neck. Those Germans who could not be saved or who had already perished would have been
brought back to their own villages where funeral arrangements could be made. Such ceremonies
varied from locale to locale - but typically involved the dead being placed on a pyre, a speech
being delivered by the head of the community, and the body being burned by the deceased
individual's surviving family. The warrior’s weapons might accompany him in the fire, be placed
alongside his ashes in a grave, or stay with the family which kept his burnt remains in a treasured
urn to be passed down through the generations. The Romans suffered a far less
solemn and honourable fate. Like many other cultures around the world, the
Germans took prisoners after a victory in battle. The lucky ones would be carted
off to face a life of servitude. The unlucky ones would be sacrificed to the gods.
It seems that this act could take many forms. Tacitus mentions how special altars had been
prepared for prominent centurions and tribunes. Tradition dictated that such victims be
treated just like any other animal offering. As such a priest would oversee the affair,
chanting a prayer to the subject deity while preparing to wield the sacred knife. Roman sources
claim that the actual killing would only come once the victim had assented to the rite. For
livestock this would be done by using a rope to induce a bow from the animal. Its easy to imagine
the same being done to their Roman replacements. Once this step had been completed, the
priest would slash the victim’s neck, allowing the blood to spill over the
altar, the priest, and the land itself. Other victims were ritually hung from oak trees.
The practice involved teams of men raising the captive with a rope, slowly strangling the
victim while a priest chanted his prayers. Yet more sacrificial practices called for
decapitation with the severed heads being nailed to the trees as a way to demarcate an
entire area as a gruesome temple to victory. Finally, some Romans were simply just thrown
into the marshes, already considered to be sacred ground, as both an offering and a thanks
to the gods in the dark recesses of the woods. But such special attention could not be paid
to the thousands of Roman vanquished. The rest would be afforded no honours or holy rites. They
would be cleared from the road, which was still an important route for commerce and communication,
and piled up haphazardly to rot in the open air. As the bodies were moved, the Germans
would undertake their third immediate goal, the taking of prizes. There was
much of material value to be looted. For instance, governor Varus and his officers
surely had riches aplenty stored away in their baggage train near the head of the army
while the troops stowed their own prized possessions in the baggage compartments taking
up the rear. Among the carts strewn across the forest would also be valuables belonging to
the camp followers who accompanied the army. Once these trunks had been emptied, the dead
themselves would be despoiled. Purses cut, jewelry snatched off, and rings pried from cold,
bloated fingers. This would have been a gold rush for the victors who could have gotten their hands
on everything from rare minerals to cooking wares. But perhaps some of the most prized sources of
loot would be the tens of thousands of sets of weapons and armour. Afterall every Roman soldier
was a professional with their own set of high end kit forged by skilled manufacturers and smiths.
These had long been prized in Germany as valuable trade goods and for practical use in inter-tribal
warfare. It seems that the battlefield was so thoroughly picked clean of these items that
archaeological investigations of the site have failed to turn up weapons and armour in
any large numbers. Instead what we find are thousands of tiny nails from Roman sandals which
the barbarians showed no interest in collecting. One of the most iconic pieces that's been found
on the site of Teutoburg, though, is an iron mask. It's thought to have been the property of
one of the German auxiliaries who betrayed the Roman army. It was originally plated in silver,
but the silver was stripped off for reuse. The mask itself, though, was left at the foot
of the wall that had been built for this ambush, in a spot where the killing had been the
highest. It was a symbol and an offering: the auxiliary who left it wanted to ensure that
passersby knew who had done this, wanted to offer it as a sacrifice, and wanted to indicate
that he had cast aside all of his former ties. Another important battlefield prize were the
Roman army standards. Though not of much material value they had tremendous symbolic value. This
was especially true of the legionary eagles. Two of these were apparently captured by
the Germans immediately after the battle while the third was only found later amid the
marshes where a legionary soldier had hid it. The standards would be taken back to the
tribal homelands as symbols of victory. But these weren't the only bits
of memorabilia brought home. It seems that the Germans also collected bits of
human bodies as trophies and talismans. While the mass graves from Teutoburg are inconclusive
on their own, other burial sites across the region have missing bones, which are assumed to
have been taken by the victors in other battles. The most prominent of these prizes, of
course, was the head of Quintilius Varus, which was sent by Arminius to the Marcomanni
tribe in hopes of bringing them to his side. However their king wished to avoid the inevitable
wrath of the legions and promptly sent it on to Rome as a gesture of goodwill. He knew that
Roman vengeance would come soon after the shock, and that they would have no mercy for those
who had committed such an act of aggression. Indeed, the Roman response came quickly. Once
Augustus had shaken off the shock of the news he immediately ordered his most capable general,
Tiberius, to lead a campaign of retribution. He was an excellent choice of a commander who had
just put down the massive Illyrian revolt and had extensive experience with both guerilla combat and
germanic warfare. However to the dismay of those who craved immediate vengeance, Tiberius exercised
his disciplined approach to war by methodically securing the border and slowly pushing into
Germany rather than blitzing into the fray. He succeeded in re-securing the frontier but departed
after two years with much left to be done. Tiberius would be replaced by one
of his most talented young proteges who would become known as Germanicus. As
the agnomen implies, he would achieve great things in Germania with a series of campaigns
that finally avenged the fallen of Teutoburg. One of the most striking moments of this
saga occurs when Germanicus led the Roman army back to the site of battle. Here
is how Tacitus describes the event: "A passionate desire burned in the Caesar to pay
the last tribute to the fallen and their leader, and the whole army present with him were
stirred to pity at the thought of their kindred, of their friends, and of the chances of battle
and of the fate of mankind. Sending Caecina forward to explore the secret forest passes and
to throw bridges and causeways over the flooded marshes and treacherous levels, they marched over
the dismal tract, hideous to sight and memory. Varus' first camp, with its broad sweep and
measured spaces for officers and eagles, advertised the labours of three legions: then a
half-ruined wall and shallow ditch showed that there! the now broken remnant had taken cover. In
the plain between were bleaching bones, scattered or in little heaps, as the men had fallen, fleeing
or standing fast. Nearby lay splintered spears and the limbs of horses, while human skulls
were nailed prominently on the tree-trunks. In the neighbouring groves stood the savage altars
at which they had slaughtered the tribunes and chief centurions. Survivors of the disaster,
who had escaped the battle or their chains, told how - here the legates fell, there the
eagles were taken, where the first wound was dealt upon Varus, and where he found death
by the suicidal stroke of his own unhappy hand. They spoke of the tribunal from which
Arminius made his speech, all the gibbets and torture-pits for the prisoners, and the arrogance
with which he insulted the standards and eagles. And so, six years after the fatal field,
a Roman army, present on the ground, buried the bones of the three legions; and no man
knew whether he consigned to the earth the remains of a stranger or a kinsman, but all thought
of all as friends and members of one family, and, with anger rising against
the enemy, mourned and hated. At the erection of the funeral-mound the Caesar
laid the first sod, paying tribute to the departed, and associating himself with the grief
of those around him. But Tiberius disapproved, possibly because he considered acts of Germanicus
with a jealous suspicion, possibly because he thought that the sight of the unburied dead must
have given the army less alacrity for battle and more respect for the enemy, while a commander,
invested with the augurate and administering the most venerable rites of religion, ought to have
avoided all contact with a funeral ceremony." Tacitus' account is gripping in
its detail and evocative passages. However while we would do well to take
his sensational tale with a grain of salt, it's one of the only remaining sources
we have to go by regarding this event. Luckily though modern archaeologists have been
able to at least confirm that the Romans did indeed return to the site with the discovery of
8 mass graves identified as containing the bones of military aged men with signs of traumatic
injuries. Even today, excavations continue to uncover more of this 2,000 year old tragedy and
we will surely know more as the work progresses. We hope you appreciated this deep dive
into an under-covered aspect of history. Let me know if you’d like to hear more
about the aftermath of other famous battles. A huge thanks to the Patrons for funding
the channel and to the researchers, writers, and artists who made this video possible.
Thanks for watching and see you in the next one.
