Suetonius declares that in the German wars Tiberius proved to be a martinet, and mentions the case of an officer who was severely punished for sending his freedmen to hunt on the opposite side of the Rhine contrary to orders. Tiberius would indeed have been a bad general if he had neglected to punish a gross violation of discipline, which by revealing the presence of his force might spoil a carefully devised operation. Similarly Suetonius sees excessive severity in the strictness with which Tiberius cut down the transport of officers. Those better versed in the difficulties of warfare will be inclined to take a different view. There were fashionable and luxurious officers then as now, whom it was essential to keep in order. Doubtless some one of these cherished his grievance and left it recorded in his memoirs to be added to the evidence compiled by the historians of a later age. A mysterious transaction with the Pannonian chief Bato, who was spared after the surrender because he had allowed Tiberius and his troops to slip through an encircling force on one occasion, suggests that diplomacy was employed, as well as arms, in bringing about the surrender of the Pannonians, though it is possible that Tiberius accompanied an act of kindness with an ironical reference to an occasion on which he had outwitted Bato. The Pannonian war was barely concluded before Tiberius was called off to the Rhine; he left his nephew Germanicus to finish his work east of the Adriatic, and hurried to the scene of his former victories in Germany. Quintilius Varus, the Governor of the Southern German Marches, had been enticed into a trap by the German patriot Arminius, and slain along with two legions, the greater part of a third, and their complement of cavalry and light-armed troops. Arminius, like Maroboduus, had been educated at Rome; he was even a Roman citizen and a member of the Equestrian Order; he too had measured the weakness of Rome, and was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to strike. The rising was organized on a great scale; the Gauls who lived in the country round Vienne were tampered with, the object being to check the advance of a Roman army across the Alps. Fortunately they were only half-hearted in the cause, and were easily suppressed by Tiberius on his way northwards. More serious were the movements on the lower Rhine. The great camp which had been fortified originally by Drusus at Aliso on the Lippe was invested, and a general rising of the tribes who had been settled on the west bank of the Rhine was only prevented by the decision of Lucius Asprenas, who without waiting for the arrival of Tiberius marched two legions down the river. The garrison of Aliso succeeded in cutting its way through the enemy.