Rethinking Rome's “Most Reluctant” Emperor

In AD 9, three Roman legions suffered a massacre in a region of Germania undergoing pacification. In the years that followed several attempts were made to capture or kill the German mastermind, Arminius of the Cherusci, who had shamed Roman honor at saltus Teutoburgiensis, the site of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. All had failed. Then, in AD 17, the war chief of the rival Chatti nation, named Adgandestrius, approached the Romans with an offer he thought they could not refuse. Give him poison, he proposed, and he would kill Arminius. Without hesitation, the Roman commander-in-chief turned down the proposal. “It was not by deceit nor in secret,” he replied, “but openly and in arms that the Roman People took vengeance on their foes.”