A Strange Anniversary

This week saw the anniversary of the defeat by Arminius and the Germans, of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Teutoborg forest in Germany in 9 AD. I mention it, because there are those who still believe that the events of that defeat set the course of European history for the next 2,000 yrs.

That the division of Europe into a Romanised West, a German middle Europa, and a Slavic East, was direct result of that few days so long ago. Whether the fact that Germany remained outside the Empire was good (as 19th and 20th German Nationalists believed), or bad, as those who think a German race with a long history of being inside the Roman Empire would have followed a very different path in the 20th century think, is purely a matter of conjecture.

However, I think its unarguable that the Roman Empire would have been considerably stronger if the Germans had been inside its borders. The Eastern portion of the Roman Empire only fell to the Turks in 1453 AD, whereas the Western portion of the Empire fell a thousand years earlier in 476AD, mainly to Germanic tribes.

One look at the map shows that if Germania Magna up to the Elbe had been in the Empire, a massive buffer province would have been created, with large amounts of manpower and a huge influence right into the east of Europe, with who knows what long term consequences.

As it was, the defeat took away the eastward ambitions of Augustus, and although the Germans paid a very heavy price for their victory, as Roman armies regularly crossed the Rhine and devastated Germany for several hundred years (think of the opening scene in the film Gladiator), they never again tried to conquer the region between the Rhine and the Elbe.

Maybe if the Emperor Trajan had gone to Germany rather than Dacia, it might have been achieved, but Germany had no gold, whereas the more civilised Dacians did ... ah well on such facts history is made.