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In the year 7 CE, a time when Roman influence was gradually spreading, Publius Quinctilius Varus became proconsul to the Germanic territory. This patrician, a man in his early fifties who had relatives close to the throne, could look back on a series of important positions in the Empire: He had held office in the North African province of Africa and had been proconsul in Jerusalem, where he put down a Jewish uprising. Nevertheless, he was more an administrator, who was rumored to have a gentle disposition more fitted to a straightforward life than to a life of war. And for just this reason he seemed suited to be the proconsul, since the Germani had recently shown themselves to be peaceable and willing to cooperate. And had not more and more Germani joined the auxiliary of the Roman legions? Were there not chiefs in most of the tribes that had been won over by the Romans – by conferring official titles, by declarations of friendship, by generous gifts, or by the education of their sons? Did the Germanic territories not stand at the threshold of becoming a Roman province as Gaul had done?

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