Battle of the Teutoburg Forest

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Roman military disaster of 9 AD when Germanic tribes under Arminius ambushed and destroyed three legions under Varus. According to Suetonius, emperor Augustus hit his head against the wall when he heard the news, calling on Varus to give him back his legions. The defeat ended Roman expansion east of the Rhine. Victory changed the development of the Germanic peoples, both in the centuries that followed and in the nineteenth century when Arminius, by then known as Herman, became a rallying point for German nationalism. With Peter Heather Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London Ellen O'Gorman Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol And Matthew Nicholls Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts
0:04.8	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.2	There's a reading list to go with it on our website,
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0:12.8	at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:16.5	Hello, in 9 A.D., Germanic tribes destroyed three Roman legions in the
0:20.8	Battle of the Tudorburg Forest. About 20,000 Roman soldiers were
0:25.0	massacred. Rome was stunned. The Empire was supposed to expand
0:29.1	without limit, but it had found its limit. Emperor Augustus is set of
0:33.2	banged his head against the door and rage shouting,
0:36.0	give me back my legions. As the Empire's frontier settled on the
0:40.0	Rhine, new order slowly emerged on the German side, to trade with the
0:43.7	Romans, creating a great power base. On the story of our
0:47.1	Minus, Victor at Tudorburg inspired ideas of what it meant to be
0:50.8	German from the age of Luther onwards. We'd me to discuss the
0:54.1	Battle of the Tudorburg Forest, our Eleanor Gorman,
0:57.0	Senior Lecture in Classics at the University of Bristol. Peter Heather,
1:00.8	Professor of Medieval History at King's College London, and Matthew Nichols,
1:04.8	Pello and Senior Tutor at St John's College, Oxford.
1:08.0	How much Matthew Nichols? How much had the Roman Empire been expanding
1:12.4	under Emperor Augustus? A great deal, an unprecedented period of expansion and
1:16.8	growth. We're now in about the 40th year of Augustus's reign,
	...

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