of Westphalia, where the Roman general conducted himself with all the
arrogant security of the governor of a perfectly submissive province.
There Varus gratified at once his vanity, his rhetorical tastes, and his
avarice, by holding courts, to which he summoned the Germans for the
settlement of all their disputes, while a bar of Roman advocates
attended to argue the cases before the tribunal of Varus, who did not
omit the opportunity of exacting court fees and accepting bribes. Varus
trusted implicitly to the respect which the Germans pretended to pay to
his abilities as a judge, and to the interest which they affected to
take in the forensic eloquence of their conquerors.

Meanwhile a succession of heavy rains rendered the country more
difficult for the operations of regular troops, and Arminius, seeing
that the infatuation of Varus was complete, secretly directed the tribes
near the Weser and the Ems to take up arms in open revolt against the
Romans. This was represented to Varus as an occasion which required his
prompt attendance at the spot; but he was kept in studied ignorance of
its being part of a concerted national rising; and he still looked on
Arminius as his submissive vassal, whose aid he might rely on in
facilitating the march of his troops against the rebels and in
extinguishing the local disturbance. He therefore set his army in
motion, and marched eastward in a line parallel to the course of the
Lippe. For some distance his route lay along a level plain; but on
arriving at the tract between the curve of the upper part of that stream
and the sources of the Ems, the country assumes a very different
character; and here, in the territory of the modern little principality
of Lippe, it was that Arminius had fixed the scene of his enterprise.

A wooded and hilly region intervenes between the heads of the two
rivers, and forms the water-shed of their streams. This region still
retains the name (Teutobergenwald = _Teutobergiensis saltus_) which it
bore in the days of Arminius. The nature of the ground has probably also
remained unaltered. The eastern part of it, round Detmold, the modern
capital of the principality of Lippe, is described by a modern German
scholar, Dr. Plate, as being a "table-land intersected by numerous deep
and narrow valleys, which in some places form small plains, surrounded
by steep mountains and rocks, and only accessible by narrow defiles. All
the valleys are traversed by rapid streams,