Teutoburg Forest (Kalkriese), September AD 9

The battle, stage by stage

1. September AD 9 (day 1)

   Out of the summer camp

   At the end of the campaigning season of AD 9, Publius Quinctilius Varus, legate of Germania, leaves his summer quarters near the Weser (the site has never been found) to march back toward the Rhine. With him are three legions, the XVII, XVIII and XIX, with three alae of cavalry and six auxiliary cohorts (Velleius Paterculus) and a long baggage train with servants, women and children (Cassius Dio). Modern estimates of the force run from roughly 15,000 to 20,000 combatants plus followers; some scholars put it lower. Cassius Dio says the revolt was staged far off so that Varus would march against it through apparently friendly country; Arminius of the Cherusci, a Roman citizen and equestrian who has dined at Varus's table, leaves to 'gather allies'. Segestes' warning is ignored (Velleius). The route drawn here — along the northern foot of the Wiehen hills from the east — is a modern conjecture, not a recorded road.

2. September AD 9 (days 1–2)

   Attacks in the woods

   Dio describes rough, wooded country cut by ravines, where the Romans had to fell trees and bridge gaps, the column straggling and mixed with wagons. A violent rain and wind set in. The Germanic warriors, who knew the paths, first threw missiles from cover, then closed in on a column that could not form a battle line, and were reportedly stronger at every point of contact. Where this happened is unknown: the blocks and arrows here are a schematic illustration east of Kalkriese, not attested positions. The Cherusci, Bructeri and Marsi are the peoples most securely linked to the uprising; no ancient writer gives Germanic numbers, and modern guesses range widely.

3. September AD 9 (night of day 2)

   The fortified camp

   According to Dio (56.21.1), the Romans 'encamped on a wooded mountain' as best they could and then burned or abandoned most of their wagons and everything not strictly needed. Six years later Germanicus's men found what Tacitus calls Varus's first camp, whose wide circuit and measured headquarters showed 'the handiwork of three legions', and farther on a half-fallen rampart and shallow ditch where the survivors had made a stand (Annals 1.61). Neither camp has been securely located. In 2017 excavators at Kalkriese (Salvatore Ortisi and the University of Osnabrück) reported an irregular, hastily built Roman rampart with an outer ditch, large enough to shelter perhaps 2,000–3,000 men — possibly an entrenchment from late in the fighting. The camp here is drawn schematically on the hills east of Kalkriese.

4. September AD 9 (day 3 or 4?)

   Into the Kalkriese pass

   Marching west, the column enters the bottleneck between the Kalkrieser Berg (157 m) and the Great Bog (Großes Moor). The passable zone is about a kilometer wide and the firmest strip only about 220 m; at the Oberesch, the narrowest point, the Germans have built a turf-and-sand rampart about 400 m long, bent almost into a zigzag, roughly 4 m wide and nearly 2 m high, with a palisade on part of it, a drainage ditch behind and small gaps for sallies (Wilbers-Rost and Rost). Warriors wait behind it and in the woods on the slope; whether others waited at the bog edge is conjecture. The Romans may already have been attacked east of the Oberesch. Which day of Dio's four this was is debated: the excavators see it as the final phase, while Jona Lendering (Livius) argues it may have been the first attack.

5. September AD 9

   Attack from behind the rampart

   Squeezed between the rampart and the wet ground to the north, the column cannot deploy. The Germans strike from behind the wall, sally through its gaps and come down from the hill; the rampart lies parallel to the Roman flank rather than across the road. Broken Roman javelins concentrate against the eastern stretch of the rampart, suggesting Roman missile fire there, and some of the rampart collapsed during or after the fight (Wilbers-Rost and Rost; Kalkriese 6, 2012). Nearly 90 per cent of the roughly 6,000 Roman military finds come from the Oberesch. Dio's fourth day brings a downpour and gale that soak bows, javelins and shields. Positions in this stage are schematic.

6. September AD 9 (final day)

   Collapse

   Wounded and fearing capture, Varus and his senior officers take their own lives (Dio; Velleius); his half-burned body is later mutilated and his head sent to Maroboduus and on to Augustus. Of the two camp prefects, Velleius says, Lucius Eggius died fighting while Ceionius proposed surrender; Numonius Vala abandoned the infantry and rode with the cavalry for the Rhine, but died on the way. Florus tells of a standard-bearer who hid an eagle in a bog. At Kalkriese the scatter of finds west of the Oberesch, toward the south-west and north-west, suggests flight and running fights. Where Varus died is unknown (one reviewer, Drinkwater, thinks west of the Oberesch). Positions and arrows are schematic.

7. AD 15

   Germanicus at the battlefield

   Six years later Germanicus, campaigning between the Ems and the Lippe, sends Aulus Caecina ahead to scout the forest passes, then visits the site. Tacitus (Annals 1.61–62) describes whitening bones scattered or piled where men fled or stood, weapon fragments, horses' limbs, skulls nailed to trees, and altars where tribunes and senior centurions were sacrificed; the army buries the remains under a mound, whose first turf Germanicus lays. At the Oberesch excavators found eight pits of human, mule and horse bones that had lain exposed for some years, five in a row in the east and three about 200 m west; Rost and Wilbers-Rost read them as this burial, which critics doubt. Whether Kalkriese is the Varus battlefield at all is still debated: Reinhard Wolters and others have argued for a battle of Germanicus's campaigns (Caecina's fight at the 'long bridges', AD 15), while coin studies (Berger, Wigg-Wolf) and a 2022 metal-fingerprint study linking finds to Legion XIX's earlier base at Dangstetten favor AD 9.