The Return
As the retreating Bructeri began to burn their own
possessions, to deny to the Romans every sustenance but
ashes,
a flying column sent by Germanicus
commanded by Lucius Stertinius
routed them;
and there, discovered amid plunder and the dead,
was the Eagle of the nineteenth
legion, lost with Varus.
*
The Romans now
brought to the land of the Bructeri,—to whatever lay
between the river Ems and the river Lippe,
to the very edge of their territory,—
devastation;
until they reached at last
the Teutoburgian Wood,
in whose darkness
Varus and the remains of his fifteen thousand men,
it was said, lay unburied.
*
Germanicus then conceived a desire
to honor with obsequies these unburied warriors whose
massacre once filled Augustus himself with rage and
shame,—
with hope or fear every corner of the Empire,—
while the least foot soldier, facing alien
terrain, was overcome with pity when he
thought of family, friends, the sudden
reversals of battle, and shared human fate.
*
First Caecina and his men
entered,—
ordered to reconnoitre the dismal
treacherous passes, to attempt to build bridges and
causeways across the uneven, sodden marshland,—
then the rest of the army, witness to scenes
rending to sight and memory of sight.
*
Varus’ first camp, with its wide sweep and deployment
of ordered space in confident dimension,
testified to the calm labors of three legions;—
then a ruined half-wall and shallow ditch
showed where a desperate remnant had
been driven to take cover;—
on the open ground between them
were whitening bones, free
from putrefaction,—
scattered where men had been struck down
fleeing, heaped up
where they had stood their ground before slaughter.
Fragments of spears and horses’ limbs lay
intertwined, while human
skulls were nailed
like insults to the tree-trunks.
Nearby groves held the altars
on which the savage Germans
sacrificed the tribunes and chief centurions.
*
Survivors of the catastrophe slowly began, at last,
to speak,—
the handful who had escaped death or slavery
told their fellow soldiers where the generals
fell, how the Eagles and standards were seized;—
one showed where Varus received his first wound, and
another, where he died by his own melancholy hand;—
those thrown into crude pits saw
gibbets above them,
as well as the platform from which Arminius
as if in delirium harangued
his own victorious troops,—
fury and rancor so joined to his
joy, the imprisoned men thought they would soon be butchered,—
until desecration of the Eagles at last satisfied
or exhausted his arrogance.
*
And so, six years after the slaughter,
a living Roman army had returned
to bury the dead men’s bones of three whole legions,—
no man knew whether the remains that he had
gathered, touched perhaps in consigning to the earth, were
those of a stranger or a friend:—
all thought of all
as comrades and
bloodbrothers; each, in common rising
fury against the enemy, mourned at once and hated.
*
When these events were reported to Rome
Cynics whispered that thus the cunning State
enslaves us to its failures and its fate.—
Epicureans saw in the ghostly mire
an emblem of the nature of Desire.—
Stoics replied that life is War, ILLUSION
the source, the goal, the end of human action.
*
At the dedication of the funeral
mound, Germanicus laid the first earth,—
thereby honoring the dead, and choosing to demonstrate
in his own person his
heartfelt share in the general grief.
He thereby earned the disapproval of Tiberius,—
perhaps because the Emperor interpreted
every action of Germanicus unfavorably; or he may have felt
the spectacle of the unburied dead
must give the army less alacrity for battle and more
respect for the enemy—
while a commander belonging to
the antique priesthood of the Augurs
pollutes himself by handling
objects belonging to the dead.
*
on the open ground
whitening bones scattered where men had been struck down
fleeing
heaped up
where they stood their ground
Varus’ first camp with its
wide sweep
across the open ground
the ruined
half-wall and shallow ditch
on the open ground between them
whitening bones scattered where men had been struck down
fleeing
heaped up
where they stood their ground
I have returned here a thousand times,
though history cannot tell us its location.
*
Arminius, relentlessly pursued by
Germanicus, retreated into pathless country.
