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REMEMBERING THE TEUTOBURG FOREST: MONVMENTA IN ANNALS 1.61

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2014

Jessica Seidman
Jessica Seidman*
Affiliation:
Reed Collegeseidmanj@reed.edu
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Extract

A first-time reader of Tacitus' Annals is as unprepared for this shocking description of the Teutoburg Forest as the Roman soldiers who viewed the site themselves. Here, about three quarters of the way through the first book, sandwiched between an unremarkable summary of Roman/German relations and Germanicus' pursuit of Arminius, Tacitus has composed one of the most vivid, horrifying, poetic descriptions in the entire work. The visual details are stunning: a field covered with ‘whitening bones’, ‘bits of weapons’, ‘the limbs of horses’, and heads of men ‘fastened to the trunks of trees’. This is not merely an archaeological site, to be regarded by tourists with dispassionate curiosity; survivors are present to tell the story of the tragedy, a story at once their own and that of the relatives and friends of their audience. The men could hardly fail to reflect on the casus bellorum et sortem hominum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , June 2014 , pp. 94 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2014 

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