Arminius
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- For the Protestant theologian, see Jacobus Arminius.
Arminius (16 BC–21 AD), in Germany also frequently called Hermann der Cherusker, was a war chief of the Germanic tribe of the Cherusci. Born in 17 or 16 BC, son of the Cheruscan war chief Segimerus (German: Segimer), he was trained as a Roman military commander and attained Roman citizenship before returning to Germany to drive the Romans out.
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Biography
Arminius is a Latinized variant of the Germanic name Irmin meaning "great" (cf. Herminones). The name "Hermann" (meaning "army man" or "warrior") came into use as the German equivalent of Arminius many centuries later, apparently through the efforts of religious reformer Martin Luther who wanted to use an ancient and heroic figure as a symbol of the fight against Rome.
Battle at the Teutoburg Forest
In about 4 AD, Arminius assumed command of a Cheruscan detachment of Roman auxiliary forces, probably fighting in the Pannonian wars on the Balkan peninsula. He returned to northern Germany in about 7/8 AD, where the Roman Empire had established secure control of the territories west of the Rhine and now sought to extend its hegemony eastward towards the Elbe river, under the military governor Publius Quinctilius Varus. Arminius soon began plotting to unite various German tribes and to thwart Roman efforts to incorporate their territories into the empire.
In the fall of 9 AD, in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, Arminius — then twenty-five years old — and his alliance of German tribes (Cherusci, Marsi, Chatti and Bructeri) ambushed and annihilated a Roman army (comprising the 17th, 18th and 19th legions as well as three cavalry detachments and six cohorts of auxiliaries) totalling about 25,000–30,000 men commanded by Varus. Recent archaeological finds suggest that the long-debated precise location of the three-day battle may have been near the Kalkriese hill about 20 km northeast of Osnabrück. When defeat was certain, Varus committed suicide by falling upon his sword, and the Romans never again attempted permanent conquest of any territory on the right bank of the Rhine, which formed a limes of the Empire for centuries.
Further conflicts with Rome
After his great victory, Arminius tried for several years to bring about a more permanent union of the north German tribes so as to resist more effectively future Roman efforts at conquest, but did not succeed in the face of tribal jealousies. He also met the Romans in other battles, as they sought revenge for Teutoburg Forest.
In AD 13, Germanicus invaded the same area with 80,000 troops, found and buried the dead of Varus' legions, and raided much of the surrounding area. Arminius successfully resisted in a series of skirmishes and battles and came close once more to annihilating an entire Roman army under Caecina; only the indiscipline of his uncle Inguiomer, who attacked the Roman camp too early, saved Caecina from suffering Varus' fate. Caecina abandoned his camp and supplies and fled with his remaining troops, while Inguiomer's warriors plundered the camp.
In 15, Germanicus again raided German settlements and captured Arminius' wife Thusnelda who was delivered to the Romans by her own father Segestes (Segest) as an act of revenge on Arminius. Promised by Segestes to someone else, Thusnelda had eloped with Arminius and married him after the victory of Teutoburg Forest. Segestes and his clan were Roman clients and opposed the policy of Arminius, as did Arminius' brother Flavus. Thusnelda was taken to Rome and displayed in Germanicus' victory parade in Rome in 18; she never saw her homeland again and vanished from history. The son she bore Arminius while in captivity, Thumelicus, was trained by the Romans as a gladiator in Ravenna and died in the arena before reaching the age of thirty.
The last major battle between Germanicus and Arminius, the Battle of the Weser River, took place in 16 at Idistaviso (Angrivarierwall) near the Weser river, where the Romans avoided another defeat only because, again, Inguiomer failed to heed the agreed battle plan. Both sides suffered heavy losses, and this marked the end of Roman attempts to subdue northern Germany.
Inter-tribal conflicts and death
Once Rome had withdrawn behind the Rhine, war broke out between Arminius and Marbod, the other major Germanic leader of the time, who was king of the Marcomanni in modern Bohemia. Arminius had repeatedly sought to forge an anti-Roman alliance with Marbod (he even sent him the head of Varus after the victory of Teutoburg Forest) (Velleius II 119,5), but Marbod was not willing to play a supporting role to Arminius. The war ended with Marbod's retreat, but Arminius did not pursue him, as he faced serious difficulties at home from the family of his wife and other pro-Roman leaders. In 21, at age thirty-seven, he was murdered by members of his wife's family.
Legacy
Largely forgotten for centuries except in the accounts of his Roman enemies, some of whom highly respected him for his military leadership skills and as a defender of the liberty of his people, the story of Arminius was revived in the 1500s with the recovery by German humanists of the histories of Tacitus. In the 19th century "Hermann" — as he had been rechristened by Martin Luther — became an emblem of the revival of German patriotism fuelled by the wars of Napoleon. In 1808 Heinrich von Kleist's published but unperformed play Die Hermannsschlacht, unperformable after Napoleon's victory at Wagram, aroused anti-Napoleonic German sentiment and pride among its readers.
The play has been revived repeatedly at moments propitious for raw expressions of National Romanticism and was especially popular during the Third Reich (Reeve 2004). In 1839, construction was started on a massive statue of Arminius, known as the "Hermannsdenkmal", on a hill near Detmold in the Teutoburg Forest; it was completed and dedicated during the early years of the Second German Empire in the wake of the German victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. It has been a major tourist attraction ever since, as has "Herman the German", a similar statue erected in the United States. The German bundesliga-football-club DSC Arminia Bielefeld is also named after Arminius.
External links
de:Arminius es:Arminio eo:Arminio fr:Arminius hr:Arminije it:Arminio he:ארמיניוס lt:Arminijus nl:Arminius (veldheer) pl:Arminius pt:Armínio ru:Арминий fi:Arminius sv:Arminius