Arminius

For the Dutch Protestant theologian, see Jacobus Arminius.

Arminius
Chieftain of the Cherusci
Hermannsdenkmal memorial
Born	18/17 BC
Birthplace	Magna Germania
Died	AD 21 (age 40)
Place of death	Germania

Arminius (18/17 BC – AD 21), also known as Armin or Hermann (Arminius being a Latinization, similar to Brennus) was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci who defeated a Roman army in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Arminius's influence held an allied coalition of Germanic tribes together in opposition to the Romans but after defeats by the Roman general Germanicus, nephew of the Emperor Tiberius, his influence waned and Arminius was assassinated on the orders of rival Germanic chiefs. Arminius's victory against the Roman legions in the Teutoburg forest had a far-reaching effect on the subsequent history of both the ancient Germanic peoples and on the Roman Empire. The Romans were to make no more concerted attempts to conquer and permanently hold Germania beyond the river Rhine.

Biography

Born in 18 or 17 BC as son of the Cheruscan chief Segimerus, Arminius was trained as a Roman military commander and attained Roman citizenship and the status of equestrian (petty noble) before returning to Germania and driving the Romans out.

"Arminius" is probably a Latinized variant of the Proto-Germanic *erminaz (Irmin) meaning "great" (cf. Herminones). During the Reformation but especially during 19th century German nationalism, Arminius was used as a symbol of the German-speaking people and their fight against Rome. It was during this period that the name "Hermann" (meaning "army man" or "warrior") came into use as the German equivalent of Arminius; the religious reformer Martin Luther is thought to have been the first to equate the two names.

Battle at the Teutoburg Forest

Main article: Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

Around the year 4 AD, Arminius assumed command of a Cheruscan detachment of Roman auxiliary forces, probably fighting in the Pannonian wars on the Balkan peninsula. He returned to northern Germania in 7 or 8 AD, where the Roman Empire had established secure control of the territories just east of the Rhine, along the Lippe and Main rivers, and was now seeking to extend its hegemony eastward to the Weser and Elbe rivers, under Publius Quinctilius Varus, a high-ranking administrative official appointed by Augustus as governor. Arminius began plotting to unite various Germanic tribes to thwart Roman efforts to incorporate their lands into the empire.

In the fall of 9 AD, at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, 25-year-old Arminius and his alliance of the Cherusci, Marsi, Chatti, Bructeri, Chauci and Sicambri ambushed and annihilated an entire Roman army (composed of the 17th, 18th and 19th legions, plus three cavalry detachments and six cohorts of auxiliaries). Totalling about 20,000 men, it was commanded by Varus. Recent archaeological finds show the long-debated location of the three-day battle was almost certainly near Kalkriese Hill, about 20 km north of Osnabrück. When defeat was certain, Varus committed suicide by falling on his sword.

Roman retaliation, inter-tribal conflicts and death

Between 14 and 16 AD Germanicus launched punitive operations into Germany, defeating Arminius two times - in the Battle of the Weser River and later near the Wall of the Angrivarii. Roman troops managed to recapture 2 of the 3 legionary eagles lost in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. However, Tiberius denied Germanicus' request to launch a full fledged campaign, since he had decided the frontier with Germania would be at the Rhine river. Instead, he accorded Germanicus the honor of a triumph for his two victories. The third Roman eagle was recovered later under Emperor Claudius.

With the end of the Roman threat, a war broke out between Arminius and Marbod, king of the Marcomanni. It ended with Marbod fleeing at Ravenna under Roman protection, but Arminius failed to break into the "natural fortification" of Bohemia and the war ended in stalemate. Arminius also faced difficulties at home from the family of his wife and other pro-Roman Germanic leaders.

In 19 AD, Germanicus died in Antioch under circumstances which led many to believe he had been poisoned by his opponents. Arminius had suffered death two years later, murdered by opponents in his own tribe who felt he was becoming too powerful. Tiberius allegedly had refused an earlier offer from a Chatti nobleman to poison Arminius, stating that "it was not by secret treachery but openly and by arms that the people of Rome avenged themselves on their enemies."

Legacy

Rome

In the accounts of his Roman enemies, Arminus is highly regarded for his military leadership skills and as a defender of the liberty of his people. Based on these records, the story of Arminius was revived in the sixteenth century with the recovery of the histories of Tacitus, who wrote in his Annales II, 88:

Arminius, without doubt Germania's liberator, who challenged the Roman people not in its beginnings like other kings and leaders, but in the peak of its empire; in battles with changing success, undefeated in the war.

Arminius was not the only reason for Rome's change of policy towards Germania. Politics also played a factor; emperors could rarely trust a large army to a potential rival, though Augustus had enough family members to wage his wars. Also, Augustus, in his 30 year reign, had annexed many territories still at the beginning of the process of Romanization.

Tiberius, successor of Augustus, decided that Germania was a far less developed land, possessing few villages, with only a small food surplus, and therefore was not currently important to Roman. It would require a commitment too burdensome for the imperial finances and for excessive expenditure of military force for a new achievement.

Modern scholars have pointed out that the Rhine was a more practical boundary for the Roman Empire than any other river in Germania. Armies on the Rhine could be supplied from the Mediterranean sea via the Rhine and Mosel, with a brief area of portage. Armies on the Elbe, however, would have to have been supplied by extensive overland routes or by ships travelling the hazardous Atlantic. Economically, the Rhine already had towns and sizable villages at the time of the Gallic conquest. The Rhine was significantly more accessible from Rome and better equipped to supply sizeable garrisons than the regions beyond.

Rome would control Germania by appointing client kings, which was cheaper than military campaigns.

Rome chose to no longer rule directly in Germania east of the Rhine and north of the Danube; Rome preferred to exert indirect influence through client kings, so Italicus, nephew of Arminius, was appointed king of the Cherusci; Vangio and Sido became vassal princes of the powerful Suebi, etc.

Old Norse sagas

In the early 19th century, attempts were made to show that the story of Arminius and his victory may have lived on in the Old Norse sagas, in the form of the dragon slayer Sigurd of the Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied. An Icelandic account states that Sigurd "slew the dragon" in the Gnitaheidr—today the suburb Knetterheide of the city of Bad Salzuflen, located at a strategic site on the Werre river which could very well have been the point of departure of Varus's legions on their way to their doom in the Teutoburg Forest. Also one of the foremost Scandinavian scholars of the 19th century, Guðbrandur Vigfússon, states the identity of Arminius with Sigurd. This educated guess was also picked up by Otto Höfler, who was a prominent National Socialist academic in World War II, and whose views remained pronouncedly racist during his postwar tenure in Vienna.

Martin Luther

In Germany, he was rechristened "Hermann" by Martin Luther, and he became an emblem of the revival of German nationalism fueled by the wars of Napoleon in the 19th century.

Another theory regarding Arminius' Latin name is that it is based on the Latin word armenium a vivid blue, ultramarine pigment made from a stone. Thus, Arminius would have been called "blue eyes," and his brother Flavus "blondie" – as references to the stereotype physical features which the Romans assigned to their Germanic neighbors. In that case, the theory goes, "Arminius" does not necessarily have anything to do with the word and god-name "irmin", and his Germanic name could thus have been anything—Siegfried, for instance. Proponents of that theory argue that his father, too, (Segimerus, the modern form of which is "Siegmar") also bore a name with the stem "sieg," or "victorious".

German nationalism

Statue on Hermann Heights Monument, New Ulm, Minnesota.

In 1808, Heinrich von Kleist's published but unperformed play Die Hermannsschlacht, unperformable after Napoleon's victory at Wagram, aroused anti-Napoleonic German sentiment and pride among its readers.

The play has been revived repeatedly at moments propitious for raw expressions of National Romanticism and was especially popular during the Third Reich.

In 1839, construction was started on a massive statue of Arminius, known as the Hermannsdenkmal, on a hill near Detmold in the Teutoburg Forest; it was finally completed and dedicated during the early years of the Second German Empire in the wake of the German victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870– 1871. The monument has been a major tourist attraction ever since, as has The Hermann Heights Monument, a similar statue erected in the United States in 1897.

The Hermann Heights monument was erected by the Sons of Hermann, a fraternal organization formed by German Americans in New York City in 1840 and named for Hermann the Cheruscan that during the nineteenth century flourished in American cities with large populations of German origin. Hermann, Missouri, a town on the Missouri River founded in the 1830s and incorporated in 1845, was also named for Arminius.

The German Bundesliga football-club DSC Arminia Bielefeld is named after Arminius.

Modern popular culture

Robert Graves' novel I, Claudius includes a description of Arminius's campaigns, where he is called "Hermann".

In 1945 by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen, an alternate history novel describing a world in which Nazi Germany did not declare war on the United States in December, 1941, Operation Arminius is the code name for the German plan for the invasion of the United States.

Harry Turtledove's 2009 historical novel Give Me Back My Legions is a fictional retelling of Arminius' story, from the points-of-view of Arminius himself, various Germans, and Varus and the Romans.

Irish Black metal band Primordial recently referred to Arminius in a song off their To The Nameless Dead album named "Heathen Tribes" with the line "Arminius stood tall in Teutoborg" in relation to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

See also

• Germanic peoples
• Barbarian invasions

External links

• Arminius / Varus. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest - Internet-Portal „Westfälische Geschichte“, LWL-Institut für westfälische Regionalgeschichte, Münster
• Terry Jones' Barbarians – The Savage Goths (Google Video) – includes a portion on Arminius
• (German) A description of Arminius and his fight against the Romans
• "They Need a Hero" by Clay Risen, The National, October 9, 2009 – an article on modern German views of Hermann and the 2,000th anniversary of the battle

Bibliography

• Reinhard Wolters, Die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald: Arminius, Varus und das roemische Germanien (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2008).