The Bottom Line
If you're trying to understand what we know of the Teutoberg Forest disaster in A.D. 9, when three Roman legions were annihilated by German tribes, or you are looking for background on the opening scene of the movie Gladiator, Peter S. Wells' very clearly written "The Battle That Stopped Rome" will be invaluable. For me, however, it was impossible to overlook the constant repetitions which seem particularly unnecessary in a book whose 12 chapters run to only 220 pages.
Pros
- Easy to understand
- Thorough
- Nicely illustrated
Cons
- Very repetitive
- Maps hard to figure out and badly placed
- Unclear organization
Description
- Describes life for a Roman soldier.
- Describes the arrangement of a Roman legion.
- Discusses the glorification of the German hero Arminius through history.
- Reflects on the affects of the disaster on subsequent history.
- Discusses whether it was Augustus or Tiberius who ended Roman expansion.
- Lists the consequences of the Rhine as the border to the Roman Empire.
- Describes what the day of battle must have been like for the Romans.
- Imagines the battle's aftermath - butchery, sacrifice, sale into slavery.
Guide Review - Review of Peter S. Wells' The Battle That Stopped Rome
The main points of The Battle That Stopped Rome, by Peter S. Wells are put forth in the preface: Dio Cassius and Tacitus explain that a barbarian chieftain in A.D. 9 successfully led an army of Germanic warriors against 20,000 well-trained Roman troops, the annihilation of the three legions in Teutoberg Forest stopped the expansion of the Roman Empire into northern Europe, and excavations of Kalkriese in 1987 revealed our first archaeological insight into the actual battle beyond the single cenotaph of a centurion who died in the battle. The rest of the book fills in all we know about the battle and all a skilled archaeologist can guess based on the remaining artifacts. Photographs of artifacts reveal much about the dress and weaponry of both sides in the engagement. Wells details the marching conditions for Roman soldiers because on the day of their ambush they were moving, under the leadership of Publius Quinctilius Varus, from their camp near the Weser River to a supposed rebellion only a couple of day's march away. Varus had been told of the rebellion by Arminius, sometimes known as Hermann, a German chieftain who was thought to be a supporter of Rome. Another German leader, Segestes, had warned of possible treachery. Because of this warning it was possible (after the fact) to blame Varus for the disaster, but Wells shows it was more terrain, the heavy packs of the legionaries, and German tactics than Roman gullibility that led to the Roman tragedy.
