Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Arminius (16 BC-AD 21), in Germany also frequently
called Hermann der Cherusker, was a war chief of
the Germanic tribe of the Cherusci. Born in 17 or
16 BC as son of the Cheruscan war chief Segimerus
(German: Segimer), he was trained as a Roman
military commander and attained Roman citizenship
and nobility before returning to Germany to drive
the Romans out. 

Arminius is a Latin|Latinized variant of the
German name Armin. The name "Hermann" was further
defined as the German equivalent of Arminius many
centuries later, mainly through religious reformer
Martin Luther who wanted to use an ancient and
heroic figure as a symbol of the fight against
Rome. Hermann means "man in an army" or "warrior".
The well-known German family name of Herrmann
roughly equates to "supreme one".

In about 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 Germany
in about 7/8 AD, where the Roman Empire had
established control of the territories west of the
Rhine and sought to extend its hegemony eastward
towards the Elbe river, under the military
governor Publius Quinctilius Varus. Arminius soon
began plotting to unite various German tribes and
to thwart Roman efforts to incorporate their
territories into the empire.

In the fall of 9|9 AD, in the Battle of the
Teutoburg Forest, Arminius – then
twenty-five years old – and his alliance of
German tribes (Cherusci, Marsi (Germanic)|Marsi,
Chatti und Bructeri) ambushed and annihilated a
Roman army (comprising the Legio XVII|17th, Legio
XVIII|18th and Legio XIX|19th Roman legion|legions
as well as three cavalry detachments and six
cohorts of auxiliaries) totalling about 25-30,000
men commanded by Varus. The precise location of
the three-day battle remains to be established
with certainty, but may have been near the
Kalkriese hill about 20 km northeast of
Osnabrück. When defeat was certain, Varus
committed suicide by plunging himself into his own
sword, and the Romans never again attempted
permanent conquest of any territory on the right
bank of the Rhine.

After his great victory, Arminius tried for
several years to bring about a more permanent
union of the north German tribes so as to resist
more effectively future Roman efforts at conquest,
but did not succeed in the face of tribal
jealousies. He also met the Romans in other
battles, as they sought revenge for Teutoburg
Forest. In 13, Germanicus invaded the same area
with 80,000 troops, buried the dead of Varus'
legions, and raided much of the surrounding area.
Arminius successfully resisted in a series of
skirmishes and battles and came close once more to
annihilating an entire Roman army under Caecina;
only the indiscipline of his uncle Inguiomer, who
attacked the Roman camp too early, saved Caecina
from suffering Varus' fate. Caecina abandoned his
camp and supplies and fled with his remaining
troops while Inguiomer's warriors plundered the
camp.

In 15, Germanicus again raided German settlements
and captured Arminius' wife Thusnelda who was
delivered to the Romans by her own father Segestes
(Segest) as an act of revenge on Arminius.
Promised by Segestes to someone else, Thusnelda
had eloped with Arminius and married him after the
victory of Teutoburg Forest. Segestes and his clan
were Roman clients and opposed the policy of
Arminius, as did Arminius' brother Flavus.
Thusnelda was taken to Rome, displayed in
Germanicus' victory parade in Rome in 18, never
saw her homeland again and vanished from history.
The son, Thumelicus, she bore Arminius while in
captivity was trained by the Romans as a gladiator
in Ravenna and died in a gladiator bout before
reaching the age of thirty. 

The last major battle between Germanicus and
Arminius, the Battle of the Weser River, took
place with heavy losses for both sides in 16 at
Idistaviso (Angrivarierwal) near the Weser river,
where the Romans avoided another devastating
defeat only because, again, Inguiomer failed to
heed the agreed battle plan. But this marked the
end of Roman attempts to subdue northern Germany.

Once Rome had withdrawn behind the Rhine, war
broke out between Arminius' alliance and Marbod,
king of the Marcomanni in modern Bohemia, the
other major Germanic leader of the time. Arminius
had repeatedly sought to forge an anti-Roman
alliance with Marbod (he even sent him the head of
Varus after the victory of Teutoburg Forest), but
the latter was not willing to play a supporting
role to Arminius. The war ended with Marbod's
retreat, but Arminius did not pursue him, as he
faced serious difficulties at home from the family
of his wife and other pro-Roman leaders. In 21, at
age thirty-seven, he was murdered by members of
his wife's family.

Largely forgotten for centuries except in the
accounts of his Roman enemies, some of whom highly
respected him for his military leadership skills
and as a defender of the liberty of his people,
the story of Arminius was revived in the 19th
century as part of the revival of German
patriotism fuelled by the wars of Napoleon (see
National Romanticism). In 1839, construction began
of a massive statue of Arminius, known as the
"Hermannsdenkmal", on a hill near Detmold in the
Teutoburg Forest; it was completed and dedicated
during the early years of the Second German Empire
and in the wake of the German victory over France
in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, and has
been a major tourist attraction ever since, as has
"Herman the German", a similar statue erected in
the United States.