ed assaults of the vigorous and
unencumbered Germans. At last, in a series of desperate attacks, the
column was pierced through and through, two of the eagles captured, and
the Roman host, which on the morning before had marched forth in such
pride and might--now broken up into confused fragments--either fell
fighting beneath the overpowering numbers of the enemy or perished in
the swamps and woods in unavailing efforts at flight. Few, very few,
ever saw again the left bank of the Rhine. One body of brave veterans,
arraying themselves in a ring on a little mound, beat off every charge
of the Germans, and prolonged their honorable resistance to the close of
that dreadful day. The traces of a feeble attempt at forming a ditch and
mound attested in after-years the spot where the last of the Romans
passed their night of suffering and despair. But on the morrow this
remnant also, worn out with hunger, wounds, and toil, was charged by the
victorious Germans, and either massacred on the spot or offered up in
fearful rites on the altars of the deities of the old mythology of the
North.

A gorge in the mountain ridge, through which runs the modern road
between Paderborn and Pyrmont, leads from the spot where the heat of the
battle raged to the Extersteine--a cluster of bold and grotesque rocks
of sandstone--near which is a small sheet of water, overshadowed by a
grove of aged trees. According to local tradition, this was one of the
sacred groves of the ancient Germans, and it was here that the Roman
captives were slain in sacrifice by the victorious warriors of Arminius.

Never was victory more decisive; never was the liberation of an
oppressed people more instantaneous and complete. Throughout Germany the
Roman garrisons were assailed and cut off; and within a few weeks after
Varus had fallen, the German soil was freed from the foot of an invader.

At Rome the tidings of the battle were received with an agony of terror,
the reports of which we would deem exaggerated did they not come from
Roman historians themselves. They not only tell emphatically how great
was the awe which the Romans felt of the prowess of the Germans if their
various tribes could be brought to unite for a common purpose,[83] but
they also reveal how weakened and debased the population of Italy had
become. Dion Cassius says: "Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of
Varus, rent his garment, and was in great affliction for the troops he
had lost, and fo