of Syria--Quintilius Varus. The new-comer was totally mistaken about the real condition of the country, which was on the brink of revolt. The native chiefs, at whose head was the famous Arminius (the Latin form of _Hermann_), pretended friendship and submission, assisting at the courts which he held after the fashion of an Indian _durbah_, and promptly executing his orders. The report of an insurrection in South Germany reached him while thus employed, and he marched southward to quell it. Arminius and his fellow-countrymen left him, under a promise to return, but really with the intention of preparing an attack. His road lay through the valleys of what is now called the Teutoburgerwald, between Osnabruck and Paderborn, in Westphalia. He marched without any suspicion of danger, his army in a straggling line, encumbered with baggage and a multitude of non-combatants. Half-way through the pass they were attacked. There were three legions and a considerable force of cavalry, and for a time they successfully resisted the enemy. The camp which they pitched at the end of the first day's battle was of such a size, when it was discovered some years afterwards, as to show that the three legions were then substantially intact. The next day, after destroying his baggage, for he recognised that his position was one of extreme peril and that his only hope was to give to his army all the mobility possible, he made for the fortress of Aliso on the Lippe. All the day he was attacked, and had to struggle for every yard of road. By evening his forces had been greatly diminished, for the second camp was seen to be much smaller than the first. The third day's march brought them out of the woods, but only to encounter a fresh multitude of the enemy. Their strength was now exhausted, and they could no longer keep their ranks. Varus killed himself; his army, a very few excepted who contrived to reach Aliso, was destroyed. The effect in Germany was to throw back the frontier of Rome to the Rhine; in Rome the news produced something like a panic. The disaster embittered the remaining years of Augustus. Again and again he was known to start from his sleep and cry in tones of agony, "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!"