ce. The younger Drusus then commanded the Roman
legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation a peace was
concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the terms of which it is
evident that the latter must have renounced his ambitious schemes
against the freedom of the other German tribes.

Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence, which he
successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated in the
thirty-seventh year of his age by some of his own kinsmen, who conspired
against him. Tacitus says that this happened while he was engaged in a
civil war, which had been caused by his attempts to make himself king
over his countrymen. It is far more probable, as one of the best
biographers[85] has observed, that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of
Arminius to extend his influence as elective war chieftain of the
Cherusci and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal dignity.

[Footnote 85: Dr. Plate, in _Biographical Dictionary_.]

When we remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades,
we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have been
bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with the tribe
by open violence, and, when that seemed ineffectual, by secret
assassination.

Arminius left a name which the historians of the nation against which he
combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to honor. It is from
the most indisputable source, from the lips of enemies, that we know his
exploits.[86] His countrymen made history, but did not write it. But his
memory lived among them in the days of their bards, who recorded

"The deeds he did, the fields he won,
The freedom he restored."

Tacitus, writing years after the death of Arminius, says of him,
"_Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes_." As time passed on, the gratitude
of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and
divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius by every tribe of the
Low Germanic division of the Teutonic races. The _Irmin-sul_, or the
column of Herman, near Eresburgh (the modern Stadtberg), was the chosen
object of worship to the descendants of the Cherusci (the Old Saxons),
and in defence of which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne
and his Christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic
belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the
'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol