The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered, and: The Battle that Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest (review)

Revolting against an emperor with twenty-eight legions at his disposal is a dangerous, and some might argue, foolish undertaking. Yet many ethnic groups in the empire did just that in an attempt to win their freedom from Roman domination. Full-blown revolts were costly even for the winner let alone the loser. Two books have recently appeared each of which treats a famous revolt against the Romans—one of them a notable success, the other a disastrous failure. Although written in totally dissimilar styles and aimed at completely different audiences, both books make contributions to the field of military history.

Peter Wells's book, The Battle That Stopped Rome, chronicles the revolt of the Germans under Arminius that culminated in a three-day engagement in the Teutoburg Forest. The result was the complete destruction of the 17th, 18th, and 19th legions, and the end of Rome's imperial dreams beyond the Rhine. Treatments of this battle have not been lacking in the past, but what makes this book a welcome corrective to many previous works, like Delbrück's or Fuller's, is that for the last fifteen years German archaeologists have been uncovering the actual site of the battle and this new information must be included in any future discussion of the Varian disaster of A.D. 9.

Although the great classical scholar, Theodor Mommsen, had already suggested in the late nineteenth century that the area around Kalkriese was the possible site of the battle, almost three hundred other sites were proposed as the place where the Romans were ambushed in the saltus Teutobergiensis. It was not until 1987, that a British army officer, Tony Clunn, stationed in Osnabrück in northwestern Germany, stumbled upon a site littered with Roman army debris that turned out to be the battle site. Excavation has continued over the Kalkriese-Niewedde Depression ever since. The finds tell a grim story of treachery and annihilation. The commander of the Roman summer camp at Minden was taking his troops back to their winter quarters in Haltern (or Xanthen, we do not know for sure). With them was a baggage train that included women, children, and civilians of various types. This entourage was guided by German auxiliaries led by Arminius of the Cherusci tribe. The Romans had no reason to distrust him, after all, both he and his brother had served in the Roman army, they had learned Latin, and had both been rewarded for their service. Arminius was nursing a secret ambition unknown to the Romans, and led his Roman allies not to safety, but to their doom.

Locating the battleground gives us a better idea of what the fighting was like once the ambush was started. The narrow confines of the pass between the Kalkriese Berg and the Great Bog made it difficult for the Romans to defend themselves. More than 20,000 people died in that pass. Besides the Roman military equipment uncovered, there are the objects of everyday life in a Roman camp—surveying equipment, writing utensils, surgical instruments, razors, keys, locks, scales. Thousands of pieces of evidence giving silent testimony to the slaughter that occurred there. This was hand-to-hand combat at its bloodiest, and Wells spares nothing in the description. He artfully weaves together the literary accounts from Dio Cassius, Velleius Paterculus, and Florus with the archaeological evidence to give us a recreation of what the experience was like for the Romans, and what...