For we must bear in mind the marked tendencies of our sources for the administration of Varus. Florus was concocting a melodrama; Dio arranging an explanation, which should save the credit of Rome and the Roman soldier by putting all the blame on the dead who tell no tales; Velleius distorting everything _in maiorem gloriam_ of Tiberius, for whom Varus must serve as a foil at every turn. There is therefore nothing so stupid, arrogant, or wilful that it is not cheerfully ascribed to him, while perfectly proper and natural things, like the presence of lawyers on his staff, the making of arrangements regarding the quantity and character of the assistance to be rendered by the _socii_, the dispersion of little detachments of troops upon one or another small but necessary service, are exaggerated into acts of wanton folly and oppression, and interpreted as the inauguration of a totally new policy. Yet every one of these things must inevitably have taken place on all the numerous similar demonstrations that had been made in Germany; the only reason that they are not mentioned elsewhere is that we have no accounts regarding other operations in Germany in which such details would have been in place. They were the ordinary routine of campaigning and of no interest to the average ancient historiographer, save as they served to point a lurid description of a disaster, or to supply a basis, however flimsy, for a misrepresentation.
Varus was, we may feel assured, doing no more, in all probability much less, than his predecessors had done on numerous occasions. Two years of heavy fighting had not broken the Pannonian revolt. The forces along the Rhine, if not actually weakened in order to enlarge those in Pannonia, would doubtless be so represented by hot-headed Germans of the nationalist persuasion, particularly after two years of utter inaction. It was doubtless in response to suggestions that Roman prestige needed some refurbishing in the interior, and very likely at the express command of Augustus, that Varus undertook his fatal demonstration. The very fact that he left so large a force at the Rhine under Asprenas would indicate that he felt it safer to keep two armies in readiness for action at different points, rather than to concentrate his forces and so risk the breaking out of trouble in some quarter from which pressure had been removed. Without any open show of violence, rather with every expression of courtesy, confidence, and good will, he was engaged in the ordinary routine of a commanding officer upon such a demonstration in force, when suddenly attacked and destroyed. Graciousness and friendliness had been taken for weakness, as too often with the barbarian, and he and his men had to pay for a conciliatory attitude with their lives. All this is but the thing which we should reasonably expect under the circumstances; it is all that the sources, critically examined, will justify us in asserting. We do not possess, to be sure, the actual documents of alliance between Rome and various tribes or chieftains of Germany; we have in fact scarcely the name of any German preserved from Ariovistus to Arminius, but we can be perfectly certain that negotiations of friendship and alliance were frequently and solemnly entered upon. If Rome had made an alliance with Ariovistus in 59 B. C. (see above n. 8), while as yet he was a relatively unknown force, hundreds of miles from the frontier, how much more must she have been busy in organizing friendly relations with the German tribes that were immediately contiguous to the Rhine and through whose territories her armies so often marched in peace?