Introduction

Following the excavations at Kalkriese and then the relatively recent bimillennial, there has been a renewed interest in P. Quinctilius Varus and the disaster by which he was made infamous: the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. The question of the location of the battlefield has been taken up with a renewed interest as scholars once again tackle the fraught issue of the connections between author, text and the historical event. Varus’ reputation as an incompetent military commander has received a more even-handed evaluation as part of the broader question of whom or what to blame. The descriptions of the battle, especially that of Tacitus, have profited from more literary studies, focusing on themes like transgression and memory. Varus has even re-entered the popular imagination in novels, and he, Arminius and the battle have exercised the talents of a growing number of scholars, whose interests also lie in the reception of the classics. The field is expanding to include in the conversation new kinds of evidence that promise to illuminate further the events and personalities of the past and our relation to it. Yet one element seems to remain static in scholarship. Interest in Varus is scarcely found outside of the historical event of the Teutoburg Forest – its causes, location and consequences – and his fairly well-charted political connections and military career. The pool of our textual sources has appeared to many commentators as stagnant. An appropriate investigation about Varus and the battle will include some combination of the standard sources – Velleius Paterculus, Tacitus, Florus and Cassius Dio – and little apart from them. There is, however, a body of evidence that remains relatively underappreciated. Scholars have belaboured the sources for the battle and Varus’ role in it, but Varus is named many more times in Greek and Latin literature.

In this chapter, I take as my starting point all instances of the name of Varus in the extant writings from antiquity that relate to his defeat in Germania. Drawing on this evidence, I argue that in less than a decade after the disaster, Varus was made out to be the model of a negligent general, and that this became a tradition among all of our sources.