Harry Turtledove - Give me back my Legions!

Two key questions underlie the events leading up to the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. First, why was Segestes so strongly opposed to Arminius? Second, why did Quinctilius Varus prefer to believe Arminius rather than Segestes?

Arminius did elope with Thusnelda, Segestes’ daughter, after Segestes betrothed her to another man. When this happened is uncertain; it may well have been later than I’ve put it, perhaps even after the battle. I’ve chosen to move it forward in time to give Segestes a strong motive for disliking Arminius - and to give Varus a reason for discounting Segestes’ claims about Arminius, as he reckons them fueled by personal animosity. I’ve also made Varus especially susceptible to Arminius’ deceit by having the German remind the Roman of his own son. I can’t prove either of those speculations. Then again, I don’t have to: I’m writing fiction. I can, and do, hope my readers will find them plausible.

In the novel, I’ve mixed modern and ancient place names. Where modern names are likely to be more familiar to the English-speaking reader, I’ve used them: e.g., Rome, Athens, Rhine, Danube. Less widely known places go by the names the Romans gave them: e.g., Vetera rather than Xanten, the Lupia River rather than the Lippe. Gaul is a special case; to call it France after the Franks, the Germanic tribe that later affixed a new name to it, would be anachronistic. The Romans’ large encampment in central Germany was built where the modern town of Minden lies. No one knows what the Romans called it, so I’ve given it a classical-sounding name based on the modern one.

Thusnelda’s giving birth to Sigifredus is fictitious, as is, of course, that baby’s death. A few years later, she did bear Arminius a son. To this day, no one has discovered just where the Roman fortress of Aliso lay. Roman forts east of the Rhine were abandoned in great haste after the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

Arminius and the pro-Roman Flavus faced each other in war when Flavus served with the punitive expedition in the time of Tiberius. Arminius was killed by men of his own tribe, the Cherusci, in A.D. /C.E. 21. Maroboduus, the king of the Marcomanni, ended his days in exile inside the Roman Empire. While the Germanic tribes did eventually help overthrow the Empire’s western half, this did not happen till centuries after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The battle marked a crucial turning-point in history, but no one should make the mistake of thinking it marked an immediate one.