readily submitted to the invaders and become zealous partisans
of Roman authority was a chieftain named Segestes. His daughter,
Thusnelda, was preeminent among the noble maidens of Germany. Arminius
had sought her hand in marriage; but Segestes, who probably discerned
the young chief's disaffection to Rome, forbade his suit, and strove to
preclude all communication between him and his daughter. Thusnelda,
however, sympathized far more with the heroic spirit of her lover than
with the timeserving policy of her father. An elopement baffled the
precautions of Segestes, who, disappointed in his hope of preventing the
marriage, accused Arminius before the Roman governor of having carried
off his daughter and of planning treason against Rome. Thus assailed,
and dreading to see his bride torn from him by the officials of the
foreign oppressor, Arminius delayed no longer, but bent all his energies
to organize and execute a general insurrection of the great mass of his
countrymen, who hitherto had submitted in sullen hatred to the Roman
dominion.

A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it
materially favored the ultimate success of the insurgents, served, by
the immediate aggravation of the Roman oppressions which it produced, to
make the native population more universally eager to take arms.
Tiberius, who was afterward emperor, had recently been recalled from the
command in Germany and sent into Pannonia to put down a dangerous revolt
which had broken out against the Romans in that province. The German
patriots were thus delivered from the stern supervision of one of the
most suspicious of mankind, and were also relieved from having to
contend against the high military talents of a veteran commander, who
thoroughly understood their national character, and also the nature of
the country, which he himself had principally subdued.

In the room of Tiberius, Augustus sent into Germany Quintilius Varus,
who had lately returned from the proconsulate of Syria. Varus was a true
representative of the higher classes of the Romans, among whom a general
taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all intellectual
gratifications, a minute acquaintance with the principles and practice
of their own national jurisprudence, a careful training in the schools
of the rhetoricians, and a fondness for either partaking in or watching
the intellectual strife of forensic oratory had become generally
diffused, without, however, h