164
Consteenation oe Augustus.
their companions. On the third day, the whole of the Roman
army was annihilated; only a few escaping with their lives.
The Germans took awful vengeance upon their oppressors;
many of the Roman prisoners were sacrificed to the gods of
the Germans, who offered human sacrifices for the purpose of
ascertaining the future. Three legions with as many alae
and ten cohorts were cut to pieces; but, owing to the unfor-
tunate divisions among the Germans, they were unable to
make that use of their victory which Arminius would other-
wise undoubtedly have made. Many of the Roman castella
however were taken and destroyed; and much else may have
been done, which the Roman accounts of this catastrophe
passed over in silence.
Nonius Asprenas, however, maintained himself with two
legions on the western bank of the Rhine; the ever-recurring
divisions among the Germans there, again prevented their pro-
gress, although the nations endeavoured to rise. L. Caedicius,
the commander of Aliso, was in a desperate situation. There
was no hope of mercy for him ; and he defended himself, until,
at length, he discovered an opportunity of forcing his way
through the surrounding enemy. He reached the banks of
the Rhine with the remnants of his brave garrison, and there
was enabled to stop the progress of the enemy. As the victory
was not followed up by the Germans, it afterwards gave rise
to the unfortunate campaigns of revenge undertaken by Ger-
manicus.
The news of this defeat came like a thunder-clap upon Au-
gustus, who was one of those men who always fear the worst,
and who had given sufficient proofs of his timidity during the
revolt of the Pannonians. At Rome the worst Consequenccswere
apprehended : it was thought that the Germans would cross the
Rhine, and that all Gaul would join them: a war in the Alps
seemed on the eve of breaking out, and Augustus no doubt ex-
pected that Maroboduus also would begin to move. But that
king who might now have gained imperishable fame, continued
in disgraceful inactivity, the consequence of which was that he
ended his life as a state prisoner at Ravenna. Augustus was
anxious to make a general levy ; but he encountered the greatest
difficulties, on account of the general disinclination to serve in
the armies, which had lately and in an inconceivable manner
begun to spread over all Italy. Not one hundred years before,
CONTINUATION OF THE GERMAN AVAR.
165
in tlιe wars of Marius, a man might with some reason have
said, with Pompey, that it was only necessary to stamp his foot
on the ground to call forth legions; but things had now be-
come so much altered, and the unwillingness to serve went so
far, that fathers mutilated the hands of their sons, in order to
get them exempted from military service. The soldiers were
taken from the lowest classes of society: freedmen were enlisted,
and patrons were induced to set their able-bodied slaves free,
on condition of their enlisting in the army. In former times,
a slave who had given himself out as a freeman in order to be
admitted into the army would have paid for his presumption
with his life.
The merit of having Stoppedthe course ofthe Germans belongs
to Nonius Asprenas and Tiberius, who was hastily ordered to pro-
ceed to Gaul, and continued the work of averting the danger,
by preventing the Germans from crossing over the left bank of
the Rhine. Afteiovards, Tiberius was called back to Rome,
and Germanicus, the son of Drusus succeeded him in Gaul.
He immediately prepared for an aggressive war ; but Augustus
did not live to sec his success. I shall speak of his campaigns
hereafter.
Augustus was now at a very advanced age. His health had
greatly improved; and, during the last twenty-five years of his
life, he was not ill at all, or but very slightly. He was now
an old man, completely under the dominion of his wife, who
became worse as she advanced in years. She surrounded him
with those only whom she herself liked. Her feelings towards
Drusus may really have been those of a step-mother; and it is
quite certain that she entertained a mortal hatred against Ger-
manicus, who had married Agrippina, and led an exemplary
life with her at a time when all domestic feelings seem to have
become extinct in every heart. Livia hated him, because he
was attached to Agrippina and his children with his whole
heart and soul. She bore an ill-will towards Tiberius’ own
son, Drusus, because he was on too friendly terms with his
adopted brother Germanicus, although in other respects he had
the character of his father. The defeat of Varus had tho-
roughly shaken Augustus. He was unhappy during the last
years of his life, which we may regard as a retribution for the
crimes of his earlier years. Tiberius was to set out to conduct
a war in Illyricum, and Augustus intended to meet him at