Germanic Tribes Resistance to Romans Revealed
A scene like the opening one in “Gladiator”.
BERLIN // The battle raged in a dense pine forest on a hill in northern Germany 1,800 years ago, and there is little doubt that the disciplined, well-equipped Romans routed the Germanic warriors who ambushed them.
The site of the carnage, discovered by chance by an amateur treasure hunter, is so well preserved that archaeologists have been able to piece together the action, and they have likened it to the opening scene of the Ridley Scott movie Gladiator.
Archaeologists are hailing their discovery of the battlefield near the town of Kalefeld south of Hanover as a sensation because it may force a reassessment of Roman history in northern Europe. It shows the Romans were still sending armies deep into hostile Germania in the third century, far later than most historians had believed.
The discovery of wagon parts and of a wide variety of weapons, including arrows of the type used by Syrian or Persian archers who served in Roman armies, suggest the Roman force may have numbered up to 20,000, one historian with knowledge of the dig said. More conservative estimates put the force at 1,000 at least.
The Romans, heading from north to south across a ridge called Harzhorn Hill, unleashed a torrent of heavy iron bolts from catapult machines before mounting an infantry attack in tight formations that smashed through the line of what the Romans called “barbarians”.
“We found 300 catapult bolts buried in the ground in clusters, and most of them were facing in the same direction,” said Hans-Wilhelm Heine, the archaeologist at the Lower Saxony Conservation Department, which is in charge of the dig.
“That showed us the positions of the Germanic warriors and of the Romans. “
Also, a site dedicated to the discovery and archaeology of the location where Arminius wiped out 3 Roman Legions under Publius Quinctilius Varus in 9 A.D. in the Teutoburg Forest iin Germany.