Note 26 — Chapter IV · A New Interpretation

Dio (56, 18, 2) states that “their (i. e. Roman) soldiers were beginning to winter there and were founding cities”, but just what these “cities” were, he neglects to say, and they appear nowhere else either in his narrative, or in that of any other ancient writer; yet the destruction of such incipient “cities” after the defeat of Varus is just the sort of event that could not possibly have been passed over in silence by all our sources. When Dio comes to the appropriate section in his later narrative (22, 2ᵃ = Zonaras) where these should be mentioned, he speaks of nothing but “forts” (ἐρύματα). It is perfectly clear that his sources knew nothing about real “cities”, and that from his knowledge of the way in which settlements grow up about any army post however small, he is indulging in a little exaggeration in telling of the foundation of “cities” so as to give the desired background for his picture of a complete reversal of conditions in Germany.