Germanicus biography

Dromo's Den

Germanicus Biography

GERMANICUS CAESAR (15 B.C.-19 A.D.) A distinguished Roman general. He was the son of Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus (see DRUSUS) and Antonia, daughter of Marcus Antonius and niece of Augustus. He was adopted in the year 4 A.D. by Tiberius, whom he accompanied in the war waged against the Pannonians and the Dalmatians for the purpose of securing the German frontiers after the defeat of Varus (q.v.; see also ARMINIUS; GERMANIA). After having been consul in 12 A.D., he was appointed in the following year to the command of the eight legions on the Rhine. On the death of Augustus, in 14 A.D., the soldiers revolted, demanding higher pay and a shorter period of service. Germanicus hastened from Lugdunum (Lyons), to remind them of their duty. The soldiers urged him to seize the supreme power, but he refused. He, however, granted their demands, though his colleague, A. Caecina, secretly massacred the ringleaders at night. Germanicus now led the legions over the Rhine below Wesel, attacked the Marsi during a nocturnal festival, and destroyed their celebrated precinct of Tanfana (see GERMANIA). In 15 A.D. he made a second inroad into Germany. Proceeding from Metz into the country of the Catti (q.v.), he destroyed their chief town of Mattium (Maden, near Gudensberg). On his return his assistance was implored by the ambassadors of Segestes (always a firm ally of the Romans), who was besieged by his son- in-law, Arminius (q.v.), the conqueror of Varus. This was at once given, and Thusnelda, the heroic wife of Arminius, fell into the bands of the Roman general. Arminius, burning with anger and shame, now roused the Cherusci (q.v.) and all the neighboring tribes to war. Germanicus, in consequence, commenced a third campaign. He separated his army into three divisions. The main body of the infantry was led by Caecina through the country of the Bructeri, the cavalry under another general marched through Friesland, while Germanicus himself sailed with a fleet through the Zuyder Zee into the German Ocean and proceeded up the river Ems, where he joined the others. The united divisions now laid waste the country in the neighborhood of the Teutoburg Forest, and, gathering up the bones of Varus and his legions, which had lain there for six years, buried them with solemn funeral honors. A victory gained by Arminius induced Germanicus to make a hasty retreat, during which he lost part of his fleet in a tempest. Caecina, who retreated by land, sustained severe losses at the hands of the pursuing Germans. Before the fleet of 1000 vessels, which Germanicus had built at Batavia, was equipped, he was recalled over the Rhine in 16 A.D. by news of the beleaguerment of the recently acquired fortress of Aliso on the Lippe. The Germans were repulsed, and the funeral mound in the Teutoburg Forest, which they had thrown down, was again erected. Germanicus now sailed with his fleet again into the Ems, pressed forward to the Weser, which he crossed, and completely overthrew Arminius in two battles. Nevertheless, he resolved to return, and on his way again lost the greater part of his fleet in a violent storm. In order to prevent this mishap from giving courage to the Germans, he once more, in the same year, marched into the country of the Marsi and dispatched his lieutenant Silius against the Catti. Tiberius now recalled him and bestowed upon him the honor of a triumph, in which Thusnelda appeared among the captives. As Tacitus explains it, to rid himself of Germanicus, whose popularity seemed to render him dangerous, Tiberius sent him, in 17 A.D., with extensive authority, to settle affairs in the East, at the same time appointing as Viceroy of Syria Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, who everywhere counteracted the influence of Germanicus. However, he arranged matters without much difficulty in Asia. Germanicus died at Epidaphne, near Antioch, Oct. 10, 19 A.D. His friends charged that he bad been poisoned, at Tiberius' orders, by the wife of Piso; modern scholars incline rather to the belief that he died a natural death. He was deeply lamented by both the inhabitants of the provinces and the citizens of Rome, whither his ashes were conveyed, and deposited by his wife, Agrippina (q.v.), in the mausoleum of Augustus. Agrippina herself and two of her sons were put to death by order of Tiberius: her third son, Gaius (afterward the Emperor Caligula), was spared. Of the three daughters who survived their father, Agrippina became as remarkable for vices as her mother had been for her virtues. Besides his splendid generalship, Germanicus was conspicuous for his magnanimity, benevolence, finely cultured understanding, and personal purity of life. He wrote several works of a rhetorical character, which have been lost; but of his poetical works we possesses an epigram, a version of the Phaenomena of Aratus (q.v.), and fragments of a work of the same character, entitled Diosemeia, or Prognostica, compiled from Greek sources. Germanicus' literary remains were first published at Bologna, in 1474. The latest edition is that of Breysig (Berlin, 1867). Consult, for extensive bibliography, the article "Iulius, 26," in Lübker, Reallexikon des klassischen Altertums (8th ed., Leipzig, 1914), and Schanz, Geschichte der römischer Litteratur, vol. ii (3d ed., Munich, 1913).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. IX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 652-653.