The defeat was so unexpected and total that when news reached the Emperor Augustus he is said to have banged his head against the wall of his palace, bellowing: “Bring me back my legions!”
In AD9 the Roman army suffered one of the most humiliating routs in its history as Germanic tribesmen stole out of the trees and killed as many as 20,000 soldiers in two days.
The battle of the Teutoburg forest was one of the great turning points in German history, marking the end of Rome’s aspirations to hegemony east of the Rhine and, for some, the first stirrings of a new nation.
At the time of its discovery the dagger was surrounded by a thick layer of corrosion
For more than 2,000 years, however, no one has been able to prove conclusively where the slaughter took place. Now