Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Roman military disaster of 9 AD when Germanic tribes under Arminius ambushed and destroyed three legions under Varus. According to Suetonius, emperor Augustus hit his head against the wall when he heard the news, calling on Varus to give him back his legions. The defeat ended Roman expansion east of the Rhine. Victory changed the development of the Germanic peoples, both in the centuries that followed and in the nineteenth century when Arminius, by then known as Herman, became a rallying point for German nationalism.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Peter Heather No other episodes
  Professor of Medieval History at King's College London
• Ellen O'Gorman 5 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol
• Matthew Nicholls 5 episodes
  Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John's College, Oxford

Reading list

• The Quest for the Lost Roman Legions: Discovering the Varus Battlefield
  Tony Clunn (Savas Beatie, 2009) Google Books →
• 100 Decisive Battles: From Ancient Times to the Present
  P. K. Davies (Oxford University Press, 1999)
• Roman History, Volume VII: Books 56-60
  Cassius Dio (trans. Earnest Cary) (Loeb Classical Library, 1985)
• A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich
  Christopher Krebs (W. W. Norton & Co, 2011) Google Books →
• Famous Battles and How They Shaped the Modern World: From Troy to Courtrai, 1200BC - 1302 AD
  A. Leoussi and B. Heuser (eds.) (Pen & Sword, 2018) Google Books →
• The Roman Empire and its Neighbours
  Fergus Millar (ed.) (Bristol Classical Press, 1981) Google Books →
• Landscape and Memory
  Simon Schama (Harper Perennial, 2004) Google Books →
• The Twelve Caesars
  Suetonius (trans. Robert Graves) (Penguin, 2007) Google Books →
• Annals
  Tacitus (trans. Cynthia Damon) (Penguin, 2012) Google Books →
• Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study
  C. R. Whittaker (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) Google Books →
• Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology
  Martin Winkler (Oxford University Press, 2015) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Sack of Rome 1527
  
  22 Feb, 2024 940 History of Europe
• Roman Britain
  
  1 May, 2003 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Roman Empire’s Collapse in the 5th century
  
  18 Mar, 2004 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Augustan Age
  
  11 Jun, 2009 930 History of the Ancient World
• Tiberius
  
  14 Dec, 2023 930 History of the Ancient World
• Byzantium
  
  19 Jul, 2001 940 History of Europe
• The Aeneid
  
  21 Apr, 2005 870 Latin and Italic literatures
• Edward Gibbon
  
  17 Jun, 2021 900 History
• Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
  
  10 Jul, 2008 930 History of the Ancient World
• Hadrian’s Wall
  
  12 Jul, 2012 930 History of the Ancient World

---

Programme ID: m000f69q

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f69q

Auto-category: 937 (Ancient Rome)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 9 AD, Germanic tribes destroyed three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.