EARLY TRIBAL WARS

and occupy Western Germania ended in disaster.
In A.D. 9 a Roman army operating in the region
now known as Hanover—through the incompetence
of its leader Quintilius Varus, and the gross treachery
of one of his German officers, the Cheruscian Her-
mann (Latinised 'Arminius')—was led into an
ambush in the Teutoberg Forest and utterly exter-
minated. It was a disaster of the first magnitude,
the most serious blow that had fallen on Rome
since Cannae, and it caused the Emperor Augustus
to abandon the project of reducing and civilising
Germany. He withdrew once more to the Rhine
and concerned himself for the short remainder of his
reign mainly with the task of rendering thatjrontier
(together with the line of the Danube) secure against
the raids of the marauding Teutons.

VI
The defence of the Rhine against the Germans
was entrusted to eight legions divided among six
permanent camps—Bonn, Neuss, Xanten; Mainz,
Strasburg, and Windisch (near Basle)—and a flotilla
of patrolling boats. Similar forces held the line of
the Danube. The weak spot of this Rhine-Danube
frontier lay in the hilly region where the two great
rivers have their so-nearly-contiguous rise; Hence
this region, where once the Helvetii had dwelt
before their migration into Switzerland, was gradu-
a.A.—2 17