[The following takes place several years after The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, in which the Roman general Germanicus, during one of his successful campaigns across the Rhine and into Germany, came across the old battlefield and the remains of three entire Roman legions, long since massacred.]
From here, Germanicus sent Lucius Stertinius with 4,000 cavalry to sweep through the homeland of the Bructeri, routing every German band that stood in their path. In one village, Stertinius’ troopers recovered the sacred golden eagle of the 19th Legion taken by the Bructeri during the Teutoburg massacre.
At the same time, Germanicus marched the legions to the Teutoburg Forest, site of the Varus disaster, where they found, lying on the ground, the whitening bones of thousands of Roman legionaries. Skulls were nailed to tree trunks. They found the pits where Roman prisoners had been temporarily held, and, in adjacent groves, altars where the junior tribunes and first-rank centurions had been burned alive as offerings to the German gods.
There, ‘in grief and anger’, Germanicus’ men buried the bones of Varus’ legionaries, with ‘not a soldier knowing whether he was interring the remains of a relative or a stranger’.
Source:
Dando-Collins, Stephen. “Part III: The Battles – Invading Germany.” Legions of Rome: The Definitive History of Every Imperial Roman Legion. Thomas Dunne Books, 2012. 260. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Tac., A, I, 62.
Further Reading:
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