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More recently archaeologists have identified the site of the battle. Peter S. Wells, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, is also an archaeologist, and his reconstruction of the battle owes more to archaeological discoveries than to literary sources, for which in general he evinces a considerable distrust.
His book is an odd hybrid, some of it exact in scholarly fashion, much by his own admission ‘carefully crafted historical speculations. By this I mean that I have taken the known facts and woven a narrative that is plausible and consistent with these facts.’ No doubt he has, and the narrative is certainly often plausible. Nevertheless it is also full of ‘might haves’ and ‘must haves’. It is really no nearer a true version than that of Velleuis Paterculus, itself the basis a couple of hundred years later for Dio Cassius’s history. One might even say that he adds little to the Roman accounts of the disaster except for his obvious sympathy for the Germans, even bias towards them.
That said, he writes clearly and agreeably. This is a good popular history, once you make allowances for the considerable use of the imagination in his reconstructions. The most valuable part of the book is what he has to say about the structure of German tribal society and the Germans’ way of life, military experience and tactics, and use of technology. The least valuable may fairly be described as padding — an account of Augustus’s personal and family history which contrives to be both stale and at points inaccurate.
In one respect the book is misleading. The uninformed reader might suppose that the battle of the Teutoburg forest marked the end of Roman expansion in Europe, rather than merely on the Rhine frontier. But of course it didn’t. Trajan’s great conquests in the Danube valley were yet to come. So indeed, less than 40 years after Varus and his three legions were destroyed, was the invasion and occupation of southern Britain.
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