Arminio

Gaius Julius Arminius (Gaius Julius Arminius) or Hermann (16 or 17 BC to AD 21) was a Cherusco chieftain, Germanic birth but a Roman citizen. In September 9 AD. He annihilated the Roman army of Publius Quintilius Varus at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest After his victory, Arminius tried for several years to permanently unite the Germanic tribes to more effectively resist the onslaughts of the Roman legions. But he was not successful due to the rivalries between the tribal chiefs.

He also faced the Romans in other battles, as they sought revenge for the Teutoburg massacre.

Arminius (Arminius) is the Latin name adopted by this character when he served in the Roman army. It is unknown what the original Germanic name for him was, but it is not likely that Arminius is a Latin adaptation of it, due to Roman name-day conventions at the time. Much later, attempts were made to explain the name from Germanic roots, and thus names such as Armin (Armen) and, much later, Hermann ('man of war' or warrior) arose, the latter probably invented by the religious reformer Martin Luther, who wanted to use it as a symbol of the Germans' struggle against Rome.

Biography

Arminius was born in the year 17 or 16 B.C. C. he was the son of a Querusco chief named Segimer (in Latin, Segimero). He was trained as a Roman military commander and obtained Roman citizenship and nobility. From the year 4 he (just 20 years old) he commanded a detachment of cherusci as a Roman auxiliary force and fought in the Pannonian wars on the Balkan peninsula.

Arminius returned to northern Germania in AD 7 or 8. C., next to Publio Quintilio Varo, who was appointed governor of the Germania Inferior. The reason why Augustus sent Arminius with him was because he knew the Germans and their way of fighting. At first he established a great friendship with Varo, they even became like father and son, but when he saw that his family were deprived of privileges and freedom, he turned against Rome and formed a plot with the leaders of other tribes in the area. against the Romans.

Already in the year 9 B.C. C., Emperor Augustus had almost succeeded in expanding the empire to the Elbe. However, the assimilation was not complete, as the Germans continued to aspire to freedom and warfare.

The Germans were primarily nomadic herders with a warlike and indomitable character. Tacitus, in his work Germania, makes a brilliant description of his fiery blue eyes, blond hair and corpulence. The Romans hated that land "dark by the forests and ugly and stained by the swamps", but the Roman influence gradually infiltrated and the excavations show that there was a lot of trade and a gradual sedentarization of these people.

Customer King

Knowing the Romans the arduous task of directly subduing that region, it was decided to romanize it through suzerainty, creating stable and romanized client kingdoms that would serve as a bridge between Rome and the Germans. To do this, the tribal chiefs had to send their children to Rome to be educated in the Roman way and, upon returning to their homeland, become the new leaders of their tribes, showing unquestionable loyalty to Rome as well as teaching their people the benefits of the romanitas or romanity. Being Arminio and Marbod examples of this plan.

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, also called the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest or Varo Disaster, was an armed confrontation that took place in this mountainous area near the German city of Osnabrück, in Lower Saxony, in the autumn of the year 9, between an alliance of Germanic peoples headed by the Cherusci and their leader Arminio, and a Roman army commanded by Publio Quintilio Varo, legate of the region, which had not yet been organized into a province.

Faced with Varus's intentions to forcibly romanize the Germans, Arminius assembled an army whose strength is unknown, and by means of lures he made the Romans go to the Teutoburg Forest, located in an area of complicated orography, ideal for a ambush and in which the cheruscos remained stationed. Varus, who was leading forces made up of three Roman legions (the XVII, XVIII and XIX Legions), six auxiliary cohorts and three wings of cavalry, fell for the deception and the ambush thus resulted in a catastrophic defeat of the Romans and with the suicide of Varo himself. After this battle, no legion of the Roman Empire carried the numbers XVII, XVIII and XIX again.

After this defeat, the new emperor Tiberius sent his nephew Germanicus, who was victorious but failed to capture or kill Arminius, and regained the province and the honor of Rome.

Attacks by the Roman general Germanicus

Arminio is fired from Thusnelda, painting by Johannes Gehrts, 1884.

In AD 13, Julius Caesar Germanicus invaded the same area with 50,000 men, found and buried the dead of Varo's legions, and skirmished throughout the surrounding area.

Arminius successfully resisted a series of battles and was about to annihilate another Roman army commanded by Aulus Cecina Severus in the battle of the long bridges; but the firm resistance of the legions, added to the indiscipline of his uncle Inviomero, who attacked the Roman camp too soon, saved Cecina from suffering the fate of Varo. Cecina retreated with his troops a few kilometers, while Inviomero's warriors looted the camp.

In AD 15, Germanicus again attacked the German settlements and captured Arminius's wife Thusnelda, who was given to the Romans by her own father Segestes as an act of revenge against Arminius. Segestes had betrothed her to another man, but Thusnelda had run away with Arminius and married him after the victory in the Teutoburg Forest. Segestes and his clan were clients of the Romans and opposed Arminio's liberating policy (as did Flavio, Arminio's brother).

Arminius was urged by Flavius to collaborate with the Latin invaders, but he refused and a major battle ensued between Arminius and the Romans at Idistaviso, probably near present-day Minden. But he couldn't get his wife back.

Thusnelda was taken to Rome, displayed in Germanicus' victory parade in 18, never to see her land or family again, and vanished from history. Tumélico, the son of Arminio that she had in captivity, was trained as a gladiator in Ravenna and died before the age of 30 in a gladiator match.

The Last Battle

The last important battle between Germanicus and Arminius took place in the year 16 in Idistaviso (Angrivarierwall), near the Weser river, and resulted in a Roman victory, since at the end of the battle, the The Romans had lost 1,000 soldiers while the Germans left 15,000 corpses on the field. Arminio managed to escape; Seeing that his plan had not worked and that the cavalry was fleeing, he smeared his face with the blood of a dead soldier so that the Romans would not recognize him and fled. Inviomero was again unable to stick to the battle plan.

Germanicus was victorious and remained in the region for a while until the emperor decided to evacuate (withdraw the legions) a territory considered inhospitable and unproductive. Then the Germans saw their land free of invaders. Tacitus was right to call Arminius "the man who liberated Germany." His guerrilla warfare tactics weakened Roman power in the region and forced it to retreat to the Rhine and Danube, intermittent borders until the last century of the pars occidentalis .

After Rome withdrew behind the Rhine, a war broke the alliance between Arminius and Marbod, the king of the Marcomanni (marcomanni) in present-day Bohemia (Czech Republic), the other warlord important of the time. Arminius had repeatedly tried to form a strong alliance against the Romans, even sending him the head of Varus after the Teutoburg victory, but Marbod did not want to act as Arminius's support.

The war ended with Marbod's retreat, though Arminius did not go after him, as he was facing serious difficulties with his wife's family and other pro-Roman chiefs. In the year 21, at the age of 37, he was treacherously assassinated by members of his political family. He was succeeded by Italicus, son of his brother Flavio, who, like his father, was loyal to Rome, for which reason the Arminio's dream of a "Queruscia libre de Roma" definitely disappeared.

The Germania of Arminio, the myth of Hermann

Although Arminio is known by the words of Tacitus as the "liberator of Germany", something that would be used later by German nationalists in the 16th, 19th and 20th centuries, at the time of Arminius there was no national entity known as Germania (like modern Germany), Germania was the name of a region, not a kingdom, country or province, and each tribe was a nation unto itself, although they all acknowledged having a common history. Arminio's claim constituted the first German unifying attempt, this idea being influenced by his Roman education, since although he admired Rome and wanted the benefits of Romanization for his people, he wanted to do it without Rome itself; this was seen by the German rebels, who initially supported him, as a betrayal of the freedom they had fought so hard for, exchanging one tyrant (Rome) for another (Arminius). In the end Arminio was killed by his rivals; it is unknown whether his death was at the hands of the pro-Romans or disillusioned rebels.

Germania never became a unified kingdom and the different tribes would take different paths: some joining Rome, others disappearing and others remaining independent.

Legacy

Arminio was not alone in the history of the fight against the Romans, an example of which is that the 19th century, when modern nationalisms emerged after the defeat of Napoleon and his imperialism, witnessed the resurrection of many ancient warrior leaders that were used as symbols by nationalists: the French exploited Vercingétorix, the Belgians Ambiórix, the Dutch Julio Civilis and the British Queen Boudica.

The Lusitanian leader Viriato would deserve special mention from the Spanish; He also defeated the Romans, but was never defeated, unlike the German, but despite that, neither he nor Arminio nor any of the above could prevent his nations from being conquered by Rome.

Movie / Series

• The Battle of Germania. The massacre in the Black Forest (1967) starring Cameron Mitchell (actor) and Hans von Borsody as Arminion.
• Bárbaros (2020 series) starring Laurence Rupp, Jeanne Goursaud and David Schüttler