Hermann was the first to dream of German unity. While the infant Christ was growing into boyhood in Palestine, this Hermann was studying Latin and history at Rome; and as he read he pondered. He found that the Romans had achieved such tremendous power by _combination_. If his people would unite and stand as one nation before the world, why might not they too become great? These Romans were pleasure-loving and vicious. His Germans in their rude homes were just and true. They did not laugh at vice; they were rough, but simple and sincere; love bound the father and mother and children closely together. The idea of German unity took possession of Hermann. He resolved to devote his life to its accomplishment, and to return to his country and try to inspire his race with a sense of common brotherhood, and a comprehensive patriotism. Julius Cæsar, the great Roman general, was governor of Gaul, and with one eye fixed on Britain and another on Germany was steadily bringing Europe into subjection to Rome. The task of subduing the stubborn Teutons was given by Augustus to Varus, a trusted general. In the year 9 A.D., Varus had arrived with his great army in the heart of Germany. Little suspecting the plans and purposes surging in the young man's brain, he leaned upon Hermann, whom he had known in Rome, as his guide and counselor in a new and strange land. Unsuspectingly he marched with his heavily armed legions, as if for a holiday excursion, into the fastnesses of the Teutoberger Forest, into which Hermann led him. When fairly entangled in the dense wood, surrounded by morasses and wet marshes instead of roads, suddenly there was a thundering war-cry, and barbarians swarmed down upon him from all sides. Hundreds who escaped the rain of arrows were lost in the morasses. It was not a question of victory, but of escape, for the entrapped and heavily armed legions. Only a handful returned to tell the story, and Varus, unable to bear his disgrace, threw himself upon his sword. The great Emperor Augustus clothed himself in mourning, let his beard and hair grow, and cried in the bitterness of his soul, "Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!" But Hermann, like many another hero, was not comprehended by the people he wished to inspire. He had arrested the tide of Roman conquest in Germany. How was he rewarded? His people could not understand his dream of unity. Should they be friends with the Cimbri and Suevi, who were their enemies? They suspected his motives. There were intrigues for his downfall. His adored wife, Thusnelda, and his child were delivered to the Romans and graced a triumph at Rome, and when only thirty-seven years old, the first heroic character in the history of Germany was assassinated by his own people.