Note 18 — Chapter I

The report of Dio, the only one which hands down to us a somewhat connected view of this catastrophe, explains the course of it sufficiently, if we only take further into account—what Dio certainly does not bring into prominence—the general relation of the summer and winter camps, and thereby answer the question justly put by Ranke (Weltgeschichte, iii. 2, 275), how the whole army could have marched against a local insurrection. The narrative of Florus by no means rests on sources originally different, as that scholar assumes, but simply on the dramatic accumulation of motives for action, such as is characteristic of all historians of this type. The peaceful dispensing of justice by Varus and the storming of the camp are both known to the better tradition, and that in their causal connection. The ridiculous representation of the Germans breaking in at all the gates into the camp, while Varus is sitting on the judgment–seat and the herald is summoning the parties before him, is not tradition, but a picture manufactured from it. That this is in utter antagonism to the description by Tacitus of the three bivouacs, as well as to sound reason, is obvious.