Book 2, letter 16

Part 1 of 3

To Tacitus: A ghost Story: from Teutoburg to Vietnam

                                           11th C transcript of Tacitus' Annals

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Dear Tacitus,

When I started reading your book, The Annals, I didn't know much about you, or the era you write about. I've spent some months reading about the Roman Republic, learning the stories of senators and consuls and studying the downfall of the quasi-democratic system that saw Julius Caesar and Cicero assassinated. 

But you, Tacitus, aren't from that era, you lived about a hundred years after Julius Caesar, and you wrote about the early Emperors, Octavius (who changed his name to Augustus) and Tiberius and a lot more, but I've only read books one and two of your Annals so I don't know the rest of the story yet, but I thought I would write to you about my impressions so far.

But first, you knew Emperor Nero didn't you? His name has echoed through the centuries to be a synonym for madness and cruelty. “Nero fiddles while Rome burns” is a common phrase meant to represent the worst kinds of managerial incompetence. Even those from our era who have never heard of you, have heard of Nero. But twenty years or so after Nero came Domitian, and though his name is less recognised, you remember his tyranny thus:

“Even Nero turned his eyes away, and did not gaze upon the atrocities which he ordered; with Domitian it was the chief part of our miseries to see and to be seen, to know that our sighs were being recorded.”

When Domitian was assassinated in 96CE, you expressed the relief felt by everyone, but add that many who still lived were no more than “survivors of themselves”. You say further that:

“We witnessed the extreme of servitude when the informer robbed us of the interchange of speech and hearing. We should have lost memory as well as voice, had it been as easy to forget as to keep silence.”

I've spent a bit of time criticising Cicero for loving the Republic, ruled though it was by tyrants and butchers, but you lived through the nightmare that Cicero worked so hard, and failed to avert, and in reading your accounts of the despotism of later Emperors, the love that Cicero held for the old forms of oligarchy suddenly seem so much more defensible.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, I wanted to write to you today about the years 9CE to 19CE

It's a ghost story, and its petty famous in certain circles.

Imagine tens of thousands of Roman centurions, wandering in the haunted forests of Germany, fighting through the trees and rivers and ravines and all the sorts of places that are very good for guerilla soldiers, and not so good for Centurions. They were fighting an enemy who had defeated the Romans many times before, and the dark forest soil became littered with Roman dead.

But I don't want to start there, lets back up to the story of Arminius.

                                               Arminius

From what I understand of his story, it goes like this. Arminius was a German, of the Cherusci tribe. When he was a boy, the Romans came to his village and demanded hostages as way to bind a treaty, and to keep the tribes in servitude to Rome. This taking of hostages was a common diplomatic practice, and has been for centuries with people all over the globe. So, Arminius was taken from his family and sent to Rome to be raised, where he was educated, trained and eventually, through his displays of both martial prowess and commanding wisdom, was put into a position of some authority in the Roman army. As a fully grown man, he was then sent back to Germany to help subdue the tribes there who were always rebelling and causing trouble. Arminius made it back to his home village, he even met his father who had given him up to the Romans, and for a time, it seemed that Arminius would be the perfect deal maker between the Roman invaders, and the German tribes.

Arminius though, betrayed the Romans in spectacular fashion, and in 9CE he covertly organised a massive German rebellion, eventually destroying utterly, three Roman legions (about 15,000 men) commanded by a man named Varus. 

Luring them into the dark and swampy Teutoburg forest, Arminius managed to sever the Roman supply lines, ambush the Centurions with savage efficiency, and eventually forced a battle ending in horrific slaughter and fire. Very few Romans escaped.  The commander, Varus, committed suicide.

Their bones were left to soak in the mud.

             Otto Albert Koch - The Battle of Teutoburg Forest (1909)

You wrote about those bones, Tacitus, and it's those bones that I wanted to talk about, but first I have talk about the Roman Commander who was sent to avenge the dead.

Germanicus Julius Caesar was the commander sent by Emperor Tiberius to avenge the death of Varus. He was eventually successful (after a fashion) in his wars to subdue the Germans, and though he died quite young, as a result of a mysterious black magic curse, (or so the rumors go), his achievements are still recorded with great pride by you, Tacitus. During his campaign against Arminius, Germanicus found in the dark Teutoburg Forest, the remains of those Roman legions of Varus, and the two thousand years from then till now do not reduce the grim sense of haunted terror I find in your descriptions of that day.

                                 Germanicus Julius Caesar

From the Church & Brodribb translation of The Annals, published in 1952.

Book One, section 61 & 62

“In the centre of the field were the whitening bones of men, as they had fled, or stood their ground, strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near, lay fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars on which they had immolated tribunes and first rank centurions. Some survivors of the disaster who had escaped from the battle or from captivity, described how this was the spot where the officers fell, how yonder the eagles were captured, where Varus was pierced by his first wound, where too by the stroke of his own ill-starred hand he found for himself death. They pointed out too the raised ground from which Arminius had harangued his army, the number of gibbets for the captives, the pits for the living, and how in his exaltation he insulted the standards and eagles.

And so the Roman army now on the spot, six years after the disaster, in grief and anger, began to bury the bones of the three legions, not a soldier knowing whether he was interring the relics of a relative or a stranger, but looking on all as kinsfolk and of their own blood, while their wrath rose higher than ever against the foe. In raising the barrow, Caesar (Germanicus) laid the first sod, rendering thus a most welcome honour to the dead, and sharing also in the sorrow of those present.”

                        The Suicide of Varus - Martin Disteli

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So I've gotten to the bones of the story, Tacitus, but from here I'm going to take you among the wandering ghosts of the Vietnam War. 

We humans are a peculiar species...