n
the point of marching east when the liberators killed him. Yes,
said Augustus; the matter must be attended to. But Parthia was
a more of less civilized power: a state at least with an
established central government; and when you have that, there is
generally the chance to settle things by tact instead of by
fighting. He found a means. He opened negotiations, and brought
all his tact to bear. He was the chief, and a bridge again.
Over which presently came Phraates king of Parthia, amenable and
well-disposed, to return the eagles and such of the prisoners as
were still alive. Rome had won back her prestige; Parthia was
undegraded; peace had won a victory that war would have spent
itself in vain striving after.

But the frontier was enormous, and nowhere else marched with that
of an established power. There was no winning by peace along
that vast northern line from the Black to the North Sea, at the
most vital spot of which an unlucky physical geography makes
Italy easily invadable and rather hard to defend. Negotiations
would not work here, since there was no union to negotiate with;
only ebullient German tribes whose game was raiding and whose
trade plunder. So the Alps had to be held, and a line drawn
somewhere north of them,--say along the Danube and the Rhine or
Elbe; a frontier that could be made safe with a minimum of
soldiers. All this he did; excluding adventurous schemes:
leaving Britain, for example, alone;--and was able to reduce the
army, before he died, to a mere handful of 140,000 men.--Varus
and his lost legions? Well; there is something to be said about
that. Augustus was old, and the generals of the imperial family,
who knew their business, were engaged elsewhere. And Germany was
being governed by a good amiable soul by the name of Quintilius
Varus, who persisted in treating the Germans as if they had been
civilized Italians. And there was a young Cheruscan who had
become a Roman citizen, spoke Latin fluently, and had always been
a good ally of Rome. His Latin cognomen was Arminius; of which
German patriotism has manufactured a highly improbable _Hermann._
The trustful Varus allowed himself to be lured by this seemingly
so good friend into the wilds of the Saltus Teutobergiensis,
where the whole power of the Cheruscans fell on and destroyed
him. Then Tiberius came, and put the matter right; but there
was an ugly half hour of general panic first. There had been no
thought of adding