“Varus, Give Me Back My Legions!”

407, Lot: 288. Estimate $100. Sold for $220. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUCIS and PIERIA, Antioch. Pseudo-autonomous issue. temp. Augustus, 27 BC-AD 14. Æ Trichalkon (19mm, 7.51 g, 12h). Struck under P. Quinctillius Varus, Governor of Syria. Dated year 25 of the Actian Era (7/6 BC). Laureate head of Zeus right / Tyche seated right on rocky outcropping, holding palm branch; EK (date) to right; at feet, half-length figure of river-god Orontes swimming right. McAlee 85; RPC I 4242; DCA 402. VF, dark green to black patina with reddish earthen highlights/deposits.

Up until his final battle, Publius Quinctilius Varus was one of the most celebrated of Augustus’ generals. He had been consul in 13 BC (along with the future emperor Tiberius), governor of Syria from 7-4 BC, where he had sent two legions into Judaea to quell local unrest after the territory was converted to a Roman province, and subsequently governor of Germania. By AD 9, Augustus had decided to straighten (and thereby shorten) Rome’s borders by conquering the vast region of Germania beyond the Rhine. He assigned Varus to develop the region without war, but the mixed Gauls and Germans living there were not prepared to accept Romanization. The Cherusci under their king Arminius, along with other allies, ambushed Varus in the Teutoburg Forest of northwest Germany, and there annihilated the XVII, XVIII and XIX Roman legions in a pitched battle that lasted for three days. Varus, sensing doom, committed suicide, and when Augustus heard of the disaster, he tore his clothes and screamed, “Varus, give me back my legions.” No further attempts were made to subdue the Germans beyond the Rhine until the reign of Domitian, and Varus was blamed for the collapse of imperial policy in Germany.