Note 29 — Chapter IV · A New Interpretation

This time Dio alone (56, 18, 3) mentions this feature: “he gave them orders like slaves and in particular collected property from them as from subjects.” It is singular indeed that neither Velleius nor Florus is aware of any such striking change in Roman policy, the more so as Velleius (II, 117) expressly calls attention to the avarice of Varus (“pecuniae vero ... non contemptor”) in a short character study and sketch of his previous record, so that some reference to his exactions must inevitably have been made had Velleius ever heard of them. The fact that he mentions nothing of the kind is the very strongest argumentum ex silentio against the correctness of Dio’s statement, as far as it can be considered a matter of general policy. Or, to look at the situation for a moment in its broader connections: our three main sources are equally at pains to explain the reversal of the situation in Germany, and this they very naturally do by assuming that there was a marked change of policy under Varus. All are at the same time noticeably under the ban of a tradition which represented the earlier campaigns in Germany as having produced a marked change in the character of the inhabitants: so profound was the peace established by Drusus that even the climate seemed to have been affected thereby (Florus, II, 30, 37); Tiberius as early as 8 B. C. had made Germany practically a tribute-paying province (Velleius, II, 97, 4); the barbarians established fairs and conventions, and were rapidly growing Romanized without realizing it (Dio, 56, 18, 3). Now inconsistently enough with this picture, both Velleius and Florus, when they come to the time of Varus, describe the Germans as fierce and warlike barbarians who found irksome the piping times of peace and were ready to fall upon their masters at the slightest occasion (Velleius, II, 117, 118; Florus, II, 30, 30 and 32). On the other hand the more philosophical or consistent Dio recognized a discrepancy in these two pictures of the Germans, and sought to avoid it by representing the Germans as experiencing a re-transformation. Peaceful and pious men would not attack their masters even if they were weak and incautious, therefore Varus must be presented as a typical tyrant who treats the Germans “as slaves” and levies tribute upon them “as subjects.” Florus also (II, 30, 31) ascribes to Varus the characteristics of the conventional tyrant (libidinem ac superbiam ... saevitiam), traits about which his contemporary Velleius, who had no occasion to flatter Varus, and certainly did not do so, knows nothing whatsoever. These rhetorical flourishes in Florus are the less excusable, as they are perfectly gratuitous, for the attack of the Germans is already otherwise quite sufficiently motived in his own narrative. Of course, the mere facts are that the Germans had never been broken, pacified and civilized, and that therefore their attack on Varus needs no specific explanation other than that he was careless enough to give them their chance. Dio’s artless acceptance of the palpably exaggerated reports concerning the earlier campaigns leads him to falsify history in the interests of an illusory consistency.