, conquerors of
Varus in the Teutoburg forest, Drusus Germanicus owed a splendid triumph
at which the foremost enemies were carried personally in triumph:
Segimuntos, son of Segestes, chieftain of the Cherusci, and his sister
Thusnelda, with Thumelicus, her three years' old son. Segestes, however,
who from the beginning had not shared his son's policy, but had rather
passed to our side, overwhelmed with honors, beheld how those who ought
to have been dearest to him, walked in chains." Here Johannes Scherr
makes the pertinent remark that, eighteen centuries before Napoleon had
founded the Rhenish Confederacy, there were already in existence princes
of that Confederacy; that is, traitors to the German cause.

How long Thusnelda outlived the disgrace is unknown. It is reported,
however, that, to accomplish the revenge of the Romans, Thumelicus was
trained to be a gladiator at Ravenna, if nothing worse. Gottling, in
_Thusnelda and Thumelicus, in Contemporaneous Pictures_, 1856, seems to
have proved that the beautiful marble statue of a German woman in the
Loggia de' Lanzi at Florence represents Arminius's wife bearing herself
with a wonderful majesty to impress the Romans with her regality.

Now, in contrast to Thusnelda's strength, we have Bissula, a picture of
Germanic grace. Ausonius, a poet of the late Roman period, sketches the
portrait of this German maiden a prisoner who had been captured in the
expeditions of Emperor Valentinianus I. against the Alemanni on the
Neckar and Upper Rhine. She fell as booty to the poet, who stood high in
pedagogical and political offices. The beauty and grace of this charming
Alemannian maiden contrast strangely with the majesty and heroism and
tragic bitterness of Armin's wife. The slave Bissula becomes a queen, as
the queen had become a slave. Ausonius speaks with enthusiastic
tenderness of her shining countenance, her blue eyes and blonde hair.
"Art possesses no means," he says, "to imitate so much grace."

"'Bissula, inimitable in wax or in color,
Nature adorned with charms, as art never succeeds.
Mix then, O painter, the rose with the white of the lily,
Choose then the fragrant blend to paint fair Bissula's face.'"
(H. S.)

The ancient Teutonic woman is, in general, represented as beautiful in
countenance and form. Her rich, reddish-blond, flowing hair became the
envy and imitation of the Ro