Publius Quinctilius Varus

The threatening presence of warlike tribes beyond the Rhine prompt the Romans to pursue a campaign of expansion into Germanic territory.

However, the defeat of the provincial governor Varus by Arminius at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in CE 9 halts Roman expansion; Arminius had learned the enemy's strategies during his military training in the Roman armies.

This battle brings about the liberation of the greater part of Germany from Roman domination.

The Rhine River is once again the boundary line until the Romans reoccupy territory on its eastern bank and build the Limes, a fortification three hundred kilometers long, in the first century CE.

Various radical Jewish elements, some of which are messianic, rise in revolt after Herod's death.

Threats to stability in both Galillee and Pearea would have been clear to Antipas when he took office.

While he has been making his case to Augustus in Rome, dissidents led by one Judas son of Hezekiah, whose followers tear down the Roman Eagle that had adorned the Temple, attack the palace of Sepphoris in Galilee, seizing money and weapons with which they terrorize the area.

In a counterattack ordered by Quinctilius Varus, Roman governor of Syria, Sepphoris is destroyed by fire and its inhabitants sold as slaves.

Perea borders on the kingdom of Nabatea, which has long had uneasy relations with Romans and Jews.

Here, one Simon, a former slave of Herod the Great, burns down the royal palace at Jericho.

Athronges, a shepherd, inaugurates, with his four brothers, a two-year rebellion in Judea.

Publius Quinctilius Varus, whose paternal grandfather was senator Sextus Quinctilius Varus, is a patrician, born to an aristocratic but long-impoverished and unimportant family in the Quinctilia gens.

His mother is a daughter from consul Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor's first marriage.

His father was Sextus Quinctilius Varus, a senator aligned with the conservative republicans in the civil war against Julius Caesar.

Sextus had survived their defeat, but it is unknown whether he was involved in Caesar's assassination.

He had committed suicide in 42 BCE after the Battle of Philippi.

Varus, despite his father's political allegiances, had become a supporter of Caesar's heir, Octavian, later known as Augustus.

He had in about 14 BCE married Vipsania Marcella, the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Claudia Marcella Major, and had become a personal friend of both Agrippa and Augustus.

Vipsania Marcella is a grandniece of Augustus; when Agrippa died in 12 BCE, it was Varus who delivered the funeral eulogy.

Thus, his political career was boosted and his cursus honorum finished as early as 13 BCE, when he was elected consul junior partner of Tiberius, Augustus' stepson and future emperor.

Following the consulship, Varus was between 9 and 8 BCE governor of the province of Africa.

He had gone after this to govern Syria, with four legions under his command.

As governor of Syria, Varus is known for his harsh rule and high taxes.

The Jewish historian Josephus mentions the swift action of Varus against a messianic revolt in Judaea after the death in 4 BCE of Rome's client king Herod the Great.

After occupying Jerusalem, he had crucified two thousand Jewish rebels, and may have thus been one of the prime objects of popular anti-Roman sentiment in Judaea, for Josephus, who made every effort to reconcile the Jewish people to Roman rule, felt it necessary to point out how lenient this judicial massacre had been.

Indeed, at precisely this moment, the Jews, nearly en masse, begin a full-scale boycott of Roman pottery (Red Slip Ware).

The archaeological record thus seems to verify mass popular protest against Rome because of Varus' cruelty.

Aretas IV Philopatris, the King of the Nabataeans from roughly 9 BCE and the most powerful neighbor of Judea, frequently takes part in the state affairs of this country, and is to be influential in shaping the destiny of its rulers.

While on not particularly good terms with Rome—as intimated by his surname, "Friend of his People", which is in direct opposition to the prevalent "Friend of the Romans" and "Friend of the Emperor"), and though it was only after great hesitation that Augustus had recognized him as king—had nevertheless taken part in the expedition of Varus against the Jews, and has placed a considerable army at the disposal of the Roman general.

Evidence of settlement at present-day Wiesbaden dates back to the Neolithic era; historical records document continuous occupancy after the erection in CE 6 of a Roman fort, which houses an auxiliary cavalry unit.

The thermal springs of Wiesbaden, first mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, are famous for their recreation pools for Roman army horses and as the source of a mineral used for red hair dye (which is very fashionable around the turn of BCE/CE among women in Rome).

The emperor Augustus’ stepsons Tiberius and his brother Drusus, together with Drusus’ son Germanicus (an agnomen that he received in 9 BCE, when it was posthumously awarded to his father in honor of his victories in Germania, the area north of the Upper Danube and east of the Rhine) had in the opening years of the first century conducted a long campaign in an attempt at a further major expansion of the Empire's frontiers, and a shortening of its frontier line.

They had subdued several Germanic tribes, such as the Cherusci.

The region in CE 7 is declared pacified and Publius Quinctilius Varus is appointed to govern Germania, leading three legions and auxiliary troops.

Tiberius, who will later succeed Augustus as Emperor, leaves the region to deal with the Great Illyrian Revolt.

Varus after serving as  of Syria had returned to Rome and remained there for the next few years.

Following the death of his first wife, he had married Claudia Pulchra, daughter of Claudia Marcella Minor (daughter of consul Gaius Claudius Marcellus Minor and Octavia Minor, elder sister of Augustus) and consul Aemilius Lepidus Paullus (nephew of Triumvir Marcus Aemilius Lepidus).

She is a great-niece of Augustus, which shows that Varus still enjoys political favor.

They have a son, Quinctilius Varus.

Arminius, a member of of the Germanic Cherusci tribe, who had apparently received Roman military training as a legion officer, around the year CE 4 had assumed command of a Cheruscan detachment of Roman auxiliary forces, probably fighting in the Pannonian wars on the Balkan peninsula.

He had returned to northern Germania in CE 7 or 8, where the Romans have established secure control of the territories just east of the Rhine, along the Lippe and Main rivers, and is now seeking to extend its hegemony eastward to the Weser and Elbe rivers.

Having risen risen to chieftainship in the Cherusci tribal structure, Arminius begins plotting to unite various Germanic tribes to thwart Roman efforts to incorporate their lands into the empire.

Rivalry between Maroboduus and Arminius, the Cheruscan leader who inflicts the devastating defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest on the Romans under Publius Quinctilius Varus in 9 CE, prevents a concerted attack on Roman territory across the Rhine in the north (by Arminius) and in the Danube basin in the south (by Maroboduus).

However, according to the first century CE historian Marcus Velleius Paterculus, Arminius sent Varus' head to Maroboduus, but the king of the Marcomanni sent it to Augustus.

The lower reaches of the Elbe River, known to the Romans as the Albis, marks the limit of the Romans' farthest advance in Germany in CE 9.

Angered by the governance of the arrogant and tactless Varus, Arminius deceitfully persuades Varus to lead his entire force—composed of the Seventeenth, Eighteeth and Nineteenth legions, plus three cavalry detachments and six cohorts of auxiliaries—into the Teutoburger Wald (Teutoburg Forest) in the late summer of 9, with Arminius as head of a rear guard.

Lying in wait is an allied coalition force of Cherusci, Marsi, Chatti, Bructeri, Chauci and Sicambri.

Once the supply wagons mire (at a point supposedly near present Detmold, Germany) and the legions break formation, Germanic guerillas, the home advantage lying with their more loosely organized forces in the heavy woods, attack the unsuspecting Romans; the German recruits desert, and the rear guard falls on the legions from behind.

Varus desperately attempts to march west to safety, but the tribesmen annihilate his cavalry by the second day; by the end of the third, twenty thousand Roman soldiers are dead.

Varus, humiliated, takes his own life.

The Roman advance into Germany is thus halted at the Rhine, not the Elbe.

Maroboduus has remained neutral in the war of revenge launched by Tiberius and Germanicus against the Cherusci.

War had broken out in 17 between Arminius and Maroboduus, and after an indecisive battle Maroboduus had withdrawn in 18 into the area now known as Bohemia.

In the next year Catualda, a Marcomannic nobleman, who had been exiled by Maroboduus and fled to the Goths, returns—perhaps by a subversive Roman intervention, possibly at the instigation of Drusus—and defeats Maroboduus.

The deposed king has to flee to Italy and Tiberius detains him in Ravenna, where Maroboduus will die eighteen years later, in 37.

Shortly afterwards, Catualda himself is driven out by the Hermundurian Vibilius and flees to Forum Iulii (Fréjus) (Tac. Ann.2, 62-63).