[3] Velleius’ words (II, 119) suggest a series of changing incidents and conditions: “ordinem atrocissimae calamitatis; exercitus iniquitate fortunae circumventus ... inclusus silvis, paludibus, insidiis”; cf. also Tac., Ann., I, 65: “Quintilium Varum sanguine oblitum et paludibus emersum”.
[4] Vell., II, 117; II, 120: “ex quo apparet Varum magis imperatoris defectum consilio quam virtute destitutum militum se magnificentissimumque perdidisse exercitum”; Suet., Tib., 18: “Varianam cladem temeritate et neglegentia ducis accidisse.” Cf. also Tac., Ann., II, 46: “quoniam tres vagas legiones et ducem fraudis ignarum perfidia deceperit” [Arminius], where “vagas” suggests an army marching in loose order, ignorant of the territory and without proper leadership. So Mommsen (Röm. Gesch., V, p. 40) calls Varus: “Ein Mann ... von trägem Körper und stumpfem Geist und ohne jede militärische Begabung und Erfahrung”; Deppe (Rh. Jahrbr., 87, p. 59) accepting Zangemeister’s date for the defeat of Varus as August 2, 9 A. D. (see Westd. Zeitschr., 1887, pp. 239-242) says that the battle followed a feast day, which explains the enigma of how a Roman army of 18,000 men could be annihilated by an unorganized German host: “Die Soldaten waren an diesem Tage noch festkrank, nicht geordnet, überhaupt unvorbereitet, entsprechend der Angabe des Tacitus, der sie in den Ann., II, 46, nennt ‘tres vacuas [vagas] legiones et ducem fraudis ignarum’”.
[5] Dio, 56, 20 f. says that the Romans were fewer at every point than their assailants; moreover, the latter increased as the battle continued, since many of those who at first wavered later joined them, particularly for the sake of plunder. Mommsen (Die Oertlichkeit, etc., p. 209) thinks that from the communities which joined the Cherusci in the uprising the Romans were confronted by numbers probably two or three times their equal.
[6] Cf. Tac., Ann., II, 46: “At se [Maroboduum] duodecim legionibus petitum duce Tiberio inlibatam Germanorum gloriam servavisse.” Mommsen (Röm. Gesch., V, p. 34) estimates the combined strength (regular and auxiliary) of the two armies in the campaign against Maroboduus at almost double that of their opponents, whose fighting force was 70,000 infantry and 4,000 horsemen.
[7] See Eduard Meyer, “Kaiser Augustus” (in Kleine Schriften, Halle a. S., 1900, p. 486); Mommsen, Röm. Gesch., V, p. 37; Shuckburgh, Suet., Aug., 24; Vell., II, 114. Ritterling (“Zur Geschichte des römischen Heeres in Gallien,” Rh. Jahrbr., 114-115, p. 162) argues, on the basis of three legions each to the nine provinces, that Augustus retained 27 legions after the battle of Actium. This is out of harmony with the well-known view of Mommsen that Augustus had only 18 legions until the year 6 A. D., at which time he raised eight new legions in view of the uprising in Illyricum.
[8] Gesch. der röm. Kaiserzeit, I, p. 232 f.: “Der Verlust—er mag 16.000 betragen haben—erscheint trotz alledem nicht bedeutend genug, um eine Wendung in der germanischen Politik zu rechtfertigen.” Koepp (Die Römer in Deutschland, p. 34) agrees that it is absurd to think that the loss of three legions could produce such a change in policy: “so ist es doch schwer zu glauben, dass er [Augustus] in besonnenen Stunden aus dem Verlust dreier Legionen die Konsequenz gezogen haben sollte, dass es mit der Provinz Germanien aus und vorbei sein müsse.” Much the same view is expressed by him in Westfalen, I, p. 40: “nicht als ob der Untergang dreier Legionen ein Verlust gewesen wäre, der das Reich in seinen Grundfesten hätte erschüttern können; wenn man in Pannonien fünfzehn Legionen aufgeboten hatte, so hätte man auch am Rhein eine ähnliche Waffenmacht zusammenbringen können, wenn wirklich der Sieg des Arminius zu einer Gefahr des Reiches geworden wäre. Und später noch ist Brittannien erobert worden, ist Dacien Provinz geworden, ist der Kampf gegen die Parther aufgenommen worden.”
[9] Hist. of Rome, V, p. 61; cf. also p. 54: “The Romano-German conflict was not a conflict between two powers equal in the political balance, in which the defeat of the one might justify the conclusion of an unfavorable peace; it was a conflict in which ... an isolated failure in the plan as sketched might as little produce any change as the ship gives up its voyage because a gust of wind drives it out of its course.”
[10] Kaiser Augustus, p. 116.
[11] Kaiser Augustus, p. 486; cf. Dio, 57, 5. However, Meyer attaches undue significance to this fact. While the old rule confined service in the army to citizens, in times of peril freedmen, or slaves manumitted especially for the occasion, had been enrolled many times previous to the occasion referred to—indeed as early as the Punic wars. See examples cited by Shuckburgh, Suet., Aug., 25. According to Suetonius libertini were employed twice by Augustus: “Libertino milite, praeterquam Romae incendiorum causa et si tumultus in graviore annona metueretur, bis usus est: semel ad praesidium coloniarum Illyricum contingentium, iterum ad tutelam ripae Rheni.” These two occasions, at the uprising in Pannonia, and after the defeat of Varus, are mentioned also by Dio, 55, 31 and 56, 23.
[12] This is the figure given by Ed. Meyer (“Bevölkerung des Altertums,” Conrad’s Handw. d. Staatsw., 3rd ed., II (1909), p. 911), who accepts with slight modifications, Beloch’s calculations. The latter (Die Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt (1886), p. 507) gave 54,000,000 at the time of the death of Augustus. In a later essay (Rh. Mus., IV (1889), p. 414 ff.) Beloch raises materially his estimate of the population of Gaul, which, if accepted, and it seems very plausible, would affect somewhat the total for the empire. Thus H. Delbrück (Gesch. d. Kriegskunst, II, 2nd ed. (1909), p. 175) after Beloch’s revision, calculates the population of the empire at sixty to sixty-five millions, and O. Seeck (Jahrb. für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, III, 13 (1897), p. 161 ff.), would prefer in many instances much more generous calculations than those of Beloch. Compare, however, Beloch’s vigorous reply in the same volume. We have preferred to accept, however, the more conservative figure.