Asatru Folk Assembly - 3⧸11⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 192 - Life and Times of Prince Hermann

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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00:03:00.000 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:09.520 This week, we have a very special episode for you.

00:03:13.760 We got folk builder Chris Savage here to do another of his highly regarded history presentations.

00:03:25.080 Tonight, he's going to talk to you about Prince Herman of the Trucy.

00:03:30.000 And I think this is a hero that fascinated, certainly fascinated me when I first became interested in Auschwitz.

00:03:43.820 It's one that I have seen. I had to pick one of our heroes that I think has inspired the imagination of the most members that I've heard about.

00:03:55.620 it's probably herman um known to latin authors as armenius if you guys are interested and are

00:04:06.420 familiar then this will be a treat if you guys have never heard about him you are in store to uh

00:04:11.940 hear about a great man tonight and have really interesting show so before we get into that i

00:04:18.660 would invite everybody to join us at thorshoff here in just a week and a half for uh austra

00:04:30.660 at thorshoff in linden north carolina that's thorshoff's premier annual event at the hoff

00:04:38.900 it is going to be amazing they've put a lot of work into beautifying thorshoff lately we've had

00:04:44.580 guys out there doing painting and scraping it's about every weekend now for several weeks i know

00:04:50.340 they put a lot of love into getting that place up it's our oldest hof and it's it's really charming

00:04:57.940 it's got a lot of character to it the building in the bay itself is is beautiful um but it's

00:05:05.220 you know it's a really special place if you guys haven't been there the building that stands there

00:05:10.900 now is from we should give you the exact year in the i want to say i want to say on the centennial

00:05:23.700 i want to say it's uh 1876 is when that building's from if not i'm off by maybe a year or two so

00:05:32.580 it's uh anyway it's a neat place to go it's the home of the first of the murals that spawn painted

00:05:38.980 the Thor mural there is amazing and it just dominates the space in a really impressive way

00:05:47.200 we got great members there so I'm looking forward to seeing you there I will be there

00:05:51.180 producer Nick will also be there as will other AFA luminaries so if you can make it out do any

00:05:58.200 of our folk builders can get you all set up with you know how that works and how to go and any of

00:06:04.260 details but that's going to be march 20th through the 22nd so do that if you can also top of the

00:06:13.140 show things as always gw farmsworth impresses us with us with his generosity thank you for that

00:06:22.580 donated thirty dollars towards restoring the heat at thorishoff and twenty dollars towards

00:06:26.820 for services. Stephen in Japan donated $10 to Thoris Hoff Heat and $10 towards paying

00:06:35.780 off Fraze Hoff. Thank you very much for that, Stephen. And someone bought us coffee. Thank

00:06:41.700 you, someone. We appreciate you. Speaking of Fraze Hoff, how's that looking, Nick?

00:06:49.340 excellent so we are 36.4% paid off um got 79,438 to go still and about 109 dollars per member

00:07:05.160 will get us there so there you go thank you so much everybody who's donated we appreciate you

00:07:11.280 guys' generosity. You all are awesome. That's what we got for the top of the program. So

00:07:20.120 you actually, instead of me coming to you and trying to get you to do a show for us,

00:07:31.440 this is one that you volunteered to do and you came to me with. What inspired that? Why Herman

00:07:39.200 and why is this something that you brought to me so i would like to say i have a cool story about

00:07:47.000 how uh prince prince herman moved me but um specking or brandy facet asked me to do a talk

00:07:56.400 on herman on arminius and for reasons that aren't important it didn't end up happening

00:08:02.180 and i already had all the stuff ready to go and i was like oh man i gotta do this on vns this is a

00:08:08.680 sign i can't throw this away you know and so i i came forward with this because no this is this

00:08:16.000 is a good one i think arminius is honestly of all of our heroes probably the one that has the most

00:08:22.200 pop cultural reference in a certain sense there are some of our heroes like you know ralph the

00:08:30.440 strong who while interesting to us don't have tv shows and operas made about them but arminius

00:08:37.820 absolutely does i think arminius might also be the one to have received the most

00:08:43.480 attention from like world leaders which we'll we'll get into that later but

00:08:49.500 in the modern era of course not just in the ancient world

00:08:53.280 all right well good enough i am glad that we are uh yeah i'm glad you brought that to us uh we

00:09:03.820 Like I said, we get very good feedback about your shows.

00:09:08.040 They're always edifying.

00:09:09.500 You do a great job making the subject matter clear and engaging to people that, you know, to people that are familiar with it and also to people that maybe it's their first time.

00:09:19.900 So without further delay, tell us about the life and times of Prince Herman. 0.92

00:09:27.600 so let's set the stage as I like to do with these so 50,000 BC earliest homo

00:09:38.280 sapiens enter Europe 11,000 BC Neolithic hunter-gatherers show up in what is

00:09:43.680 today Germany that's where a lot of this tale takes place about 8,000 to 6,000 BC

00:09:49.980 waves of Anatolian farmers show up in what is today Germany 6,000 BC or so the

00:09:55.580 The Indo-European migrations begin, and the proto-Indo-European peoples start moving out of what is today the Ukraine.

00:10:02.700 About 5,000 BC, Denmark is part of the, this is pronounced, Eotabulla culture in Danish, but the Eotaballa culture.

00:10:14.240 This is in northern Germany. It's related to the linear pottery culture.

00:10:17.960 These people are fishermen, and they don't exactly farm grain, but they do farm crops.

00:10:25.580 They are not Indo-Europeans, however.

00:10:29.900 So 4,000 BC, the funnel beaker culture, named because of these distinctive pots, beakers that look like funnels,

00:10:38.860 they do gain predominance in northern Germany, southern Scandinavia.

00:10:45.000 They're not Indo-European.

00:10:48.020 Then 3,000 BC comes along, the corded ware culture gains predominance in the same area.

00:10:54.020 They are Indo-European.

00:10:55.160 Mass Indo-Europeanization occurs.

00:10:58.080 Germany from then on becomes what we now think of Germany in a lot of ways.

00:11:03.840 2000 BC, Proto-Indo-Iranic splits off of common Western Indo-European.

00:11:13.500 This forms the Scythians, the Sarmatians, etc.

00:11:17.660 1750 BC, 1750 BC, is Mycenaean Greece.

00:11:23.020 So Greece, as we know it, is this, the southeast portion of a bunch of mountains. On the northwest of those mountains, there's this Grecoid horizon of groups like the Thrashians, who are related to the Greeks, but they're not philosophy, mathematics, and gyros Greeks.

00:11:46.780 so 1100 bc the halstadt culture who are proto-kelts develops do you want to throw up the

00:11:56.520 first picture nick right so halstadt is the yellow orange and then latene keep this up for a little

00:12:03.660 bit nick is in green so these are the peoples that go on to lead to the proto-celtic and proto-italic

00:12:13.820 peoples so the halstott culture has a lot of wealth from salt mines and gold mines in the

00:12:24.060 mountains and then this allows them to buy things out of uh with gold but also just to make things

00:12:32.140 with gold the salt is very important because it allows them to move long distances coherently

00:12:38.540 if you're going for a journey you need food and water you either have to have enough food and

00:12:44.620 water to last you from where you start to where you go or you need to get food along the way

00:12:50.540 that's not a guarantee so in early human history how far people go is very much dependent upon how

00:12:58.140 far they can bring food so these proto-celtic peoples can go a long distance because they

00:13:03.420 they can preserve their food with large amounts of salt. So around 1000 BC, Proto-Celtic and

00:13:10.360 Proto-Italic split. Then there is the Bronze Age collapse. This ties in with the collapse of the

00:13:17.900 Halstatt culture. 716 BC, we are told that Romulus ascends and dwells with the gods in the heavens.

00:13:27.020 509 BC, Blocias Tarquinios Superbus, the last Roman king, is ousted.

00:13:33.100 The Senate rules Rome in place of a monarchy.

00:13:36.700 500 BC, Proto-Germanic is reconstructable, and the Halstead culture starts to dissolve.

00:13:42.200 This seems to be pretty much out of nowhere as far as archaeology is concerned.

00:13:48.140 Something bad happened to the Halstead culture, and it breaks up into what's called the Latene culture.

00:13:54.400 Archaeological cultures are named for where archaeologists found the stuff the first time.

00:14:01.420 They found the first things of the Letene culture in the village in Switzerland.

00:14:07.000 They found the first things of the Hallstatt culture in Hallstatt.

00:14:12.380 Neanderthals are so called because they are from the Neanderthal Valley, the Tal of Neander.

00:14:23.040 Nander being a guy this region was named after, right?

00:14:27.060 Like Sredny Stog.

00:14:29.560 That material culture was named after a place, Sredny Stog. 1.00

00:14:32.700 So Arminius is not a Celt. 0.90

00:14:37.560 He lives on the periphery of the Celtic world. 0.51

00:14:40.360 Do you want to throw that first picture back up, Nick?

00:14:43.120 So if you look above, north of where it says Treveri,

00:14:46.540 you'll notice that that is about the Netherlands.

00:14:48.820 And if you look north of where it says Volsai or Borcai,

00:14:52.520 That is Germany.

00:14:55.300 The Proto-Germanic world develops on the periphery of this Hallstatt-Latene cultural sphere.

00:15:04.820 So from the Proto-Germanic perspective, there's this huge Celtic civilization to the southwest.

00:15:13.320 It's very wealthy. It's very sophisticated. It's very powerful. It's very intelligent.

00:15:18.520 And the Proto-Germanic peoples are a small group on the periphery of that society.

00:15:24.360 So around 500 BC, Proto-Germanic is reconstructable.

00:15:28.640 The Halstead culture starts to dissolve.

00:15:31.340 450 BC, the Latene culture crops up. 0.93

00:15:34.800 So this transition marks a shift away from the centralized world of the Halstead culture towards a more city-state, Republican nation kind of environment that characterizes the Celtic world.

00:15:52.760 And what starts to happen pretty quick is that the war band develops.

00:15:57.380 In Germanic and Celtic society, tribal polities, Republican city-states, start to break down as influences of wealth accrue.

00:16:05.180 The warlord sociality develops as an alternative to the tribe, because now people can essentially offer bribes of violence.

00:16:13.220 So Caesar describes a world that is very similar to the Italic one, and then archaeology backs him up.

00:16:22.240 And academics for a long time were puzzled by that because they were certain that the Celts and the Italics were completely different people.

00:16:29.160 They're not. If you were fluent in Latin, you could more or less understand the basics of Gaulish, which is the language spoken by the Celts in France.

00:16:39.280 So the big difference between Gaulish Celtic and Italic society is that in Italic society,

00:16:47.720 the rich people plant themselves down and then send the poor people off to fight in wars.

00:16:55.760 In Celtic society, the rich people move around, and then the richer you are,

00:17:02.200 the more you can go fight wars and do banditry and raiding.

00:17:05.920 this is this has a lot of profound differences between italic and celtic culture they're not

00:17:11.740 important here um the theory as to why this happens is that gaul actually had stronger

00:17:17.280 more sophisticated governance so the the elites had to go raiding to get booty they couldn't just

00:17:23.020 be a corrupt mafioso in the city-state all day okay so throw up the second nick it uh the second

00:17:31.420 the second image nick so this is that celtic horizon that i was talking about and it shows 0.82

00:17:43.320 europe from the proto-germanic perspective so german comes to us from germanicus this is a

00:17:53.920 Celtic loan word into Latin, what it means is either the people who scream or the people

00:18:01.200 nearby, the neighbors. The people who scream is, there's a number of terms to refer to people who

00:18:08.460 don't speak your language, people who speak nonsense, people who yell, and people who are

00:18:14.200 mute are three really common ones. The word that the Germanics use to refer to the Celts is

00:18:21.100 Walchaz. It means Celt, so if you actually look at where it's used to refer to people,

00:18:29.760 it's always used to refer to the civilizational horizon to the southwest, right? You'll notice

00:18:36.900 that it refers to people in Wales and Cornwall who were culturally Celtic and Roman, but it

00:18:43.320 doesn't refer to the Irish. It doesn't refer to the Balts. It doesn't refer to Finns. It doesn't

00:18:48.720 refer to Greeks. It doesn't refer to Slavs. It means Gallo-Roman. It is used as a term meaning

00:18:57.720 foreigner in a few kennings, but it does not mean foreigners in general, okay? That's important.

00:19:04.640 It gets loaned into Slavic words, like, I believe it's pronounced Wachu, is the Polish name for

00:19:13.460 Italy, Vlachs, and Wallachia, right?

00:19:17.600 Those terms come from that Proto-Slavic word.

00:19:21.000 You can get this image off the internet elsewhere where it can show you the words better.

00:19:26.580 The fact that it gets loaned into Proto-Slavic is a demonstration of the fact that it doesn't mean foreigner.

00:19:30.700 It's referring to a specific kind of person, a Celt, and later an Italic.

00:19:37.320 This big civilizational horizon is extremely influential on the Proto-Germanic people.

00:19:41.700 There are a large number of Proto-Germanic words that get loaned in from Celtic.

00:19:46.520 So Gothic Kelican from Galish Kelicanon, meaning tower.

00:19:50.500 Gothic Reix from Galish Rix, which means king.

00:19:54.760 Proto-Germanic Ambatia from Galish Ambaktos.

00:19:58.000 This is actually where we get ambassador from via Frankish.

00:20:03.040 Proto-Germanic Aethas from Celtic Oetos, which means oath.

00:20:06.580 Gothic Arbia, which comes from Celtic Orpio, which means air.

00:20:12.920 Gothic Freis from Celtic Prius, which means free.

00:20:16.780 Proto-Germanic Gislas from Celtic Geistlos, which means hostage.

00:20:21.180 Proto-Germanic Winis from Celtic Fini, which means friend.

00:20:24.660 Proto-Germanic Hathus from Celtic Catus, which means battle.

00:20:28.600 Proto-Germanic Isarna from Proto-Celtic Isarnorn, which means iron.

00:20:33.220 So iron is actually a loan word, ultimately.

00:20:36.580 Gathic prunio from Proto-Celtic prusunios, meaning male coat.

00:20:41.520 Proto-Germanic huiraz from Proto-Celtic weiros, meaning wire.

00:20:46.180 Note that common K to H change.

00:20:50.960 Walchaz ultimately comes from a Celtic word meaning volcos,

00:20:54.660 which either means the people of the hawk or people of the wolf.

00:20:58.900 That is part of Grimm's law.

00:21:00.540 becomes in words that were loaned into Proto-Germanic before 500 BC this is why

00:21:08.520 the raw German term for Emperor is Kaiser and not high cell because to stopped

00:21:17.100 somewhere around 100 BC so Germanic peoples referred to themselves by tribal

00:21:22.980 names you can take the picture off Nick they refer to themselves by tribal names

00:21:27.120 which are usually in reference to a weapon, an animal, a hairstyle. They called themselves as a

00:21:32.560 whole, Theudo, which means the race, the ethnos, the people. This is where Dutch, Deutsch, Diech,

00:21:39.840 and Dieet come from. The king of Rohan in Lord of the Rings is Theoden. That name is actually a

00:21:46.480 title that means leader of the race. The modern English cognate would be Theed if we used it today.

00:21:53.040 All right, 600 BC. So we have this really complicated Celtic civilization, and 60 BC, not 600 BC. We have this very powerful, very wealthy, complicated, technologically advanced Celtic civilization, and at the periphery is this group of Germanics.

00:22:12.140 A guy by the name of Ariovistus leads the Suebi and conquers the Gallic Idwi tribe west of the Rhine. 0.92

00:22:23.400 He unites a coalition of Eastern Celts and the Germanics against the Western Celts. 0.81

00:22:30.900 So if you kind of cut France down the middle, East France and Germany against West France.

00:22:37.340 He is a highly Celticized Germanic leader.

00:22:41.060 He had two wives, one Germanic and one Celtic, Gaulish.

00:22:45.920 Both would be murdered by Roman soldiers.

00:22:49.260 Caesar portrays him as a hostile tyrant in order to justify his illegal banditry in Gaul.

00:22:57.140 Ariovistus had to be stopped.

00:22:59.580 Ergo, Caesar's crimes in Rome were justified.

00:23:01.900 So, TLDR, Caesar breaks the law in Rome and then leaves with an army so that he can go steal gold from Gaul, so that he can then go back to Rome and pay off everyone that hated him.

00:23:16.940 I'm greatly summarizing this because this isn't about Rome at the end of the day.

00:23:21.360 Did you want to say something, sir?

00:23:24.320 Okay, so there's an ironic possibility that Ariovistus is actually trying to do the same thing from his side of the Rhine.

00:23:31.900 As I said, he wrangled together a Gallo-Germanic coalition against the wealthier west half of the Gaulish groups.

00:23:41.360 So there's a kind of an ironic possibility that he was trying to gather up enough money and arms to deal with the inevitability of Roman incursion.

00:23:49.380 Because the Romans and the Germanics know about each other before this point, but they're not coming to blows, really.

00:23:57.920 The Germanics are one of these strange peoples on the periphery of the world, as far as the Romans are concerned, for quite a long time before this happens.

00:24:07.040 So, when Caesar goes to Gaul, the big fight is Caesar versus Ariovistus.

00:24:16.040 Both sides end up using Gauls as meat shields against the other.

00:24:20.240 In 55 BC, Caesar builds the first bridges across the Rhine, which is a big river.

00:24:25.620 In 54 BC, Ariovistus is dead and his family have been murdered by Roman soldiers.

00:24:31.140 49 BC, Caesar leads an army into Rome.

00:24:34.480 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar dies on March 15th, the so-called Ides of March.

00:24:42.360 30 BC, Gaius Octavius Caesar Augustus visits Alexander's tomb to celebrate emperorship.

00:24:49.880 But as an aside, Gaius Octavius Caesar Robustus means the eighth guy named Gaius in the Caesar family, the great one.

00:25:00.060 So, anyways, 30 BC, Augustus visits Alexander's tomb to celebrate his emperorship.

00:25:08.320 27 BC, Marcus Licinius Carassus is given a triumph for defeating the Celto-Germano-Sarmatian Bastarnae in Thrace,

00:25:16.780 the first post-Caesar real Germanic conflict with Rome. Thrace is the area that is today

00:25:26.320 kind of the north of the part north of Greece of the Balkans. 22 BC Augustus steps down as consul

00:25:36.820 in order to acquire greater power. 19 BC Augustus steps back up as general consul for life

00:25:45.060 effectively making him de facto leader of everything for the rest of his life.

00:25:50.100 18 BC, Arminius is born.

00:25:52.880 Now we're going to jump ahead to the end because we see where this goes.

00:25:57.540 18 BC, Arminius is born.

00:26:00.180 394 BC, Theodosius makes an edict against paganism and his antifas destroy the flame of Vesta.

00:26:07.180 410 AD, did I say 394 BC?

00:26:10.260 394 AD, the hearth of Vesta is doused. 0.92

00:26:12.960 410 AD, Alaric invades Rome and strips it of its wealth as part of his rule as a Byzantine government official

00:26:19.080 in order to fuel his political career in Byzantium.

00:26:25.620 475, Orestes, the Byzantine stooge in Ravenna, names his son Romulus Augustus,

00:26:32.820 which literally means the little August Roman, as emperor.

00:26:38.460 However, 476 AD, a year later, Orestes refuses to pay his Germanic soldiers, classic blunder.

00:26:46.460 Odoacer, their leader, rebels, defeats Orestes in battle, takes the city of Ravenna, and declares himself reix.

00:26:54.000 The Senate in Rome submits to the rule of Zeno, the Byzantine emperor, shirking the then-in-exile Julius Nepos.

00:27:02.600 Zeno then declares Odoacer to be a patricius and the duxitaliae.

00:27:08.340 So at this point, the Western Roman Empire is gone because there's no one claiming to be the Western Roman Emperor.

00:27:13.400 There is now a king of Italy and a duxitaliae, which basically means military goon in charge of place.

00:27:21.300 So we have here about 500 years between Rome's first contact with the Germanics and the Germanics completely steamrolling Italy.

00:27:32.700 Arminius is what begins that process. 0.97

00:27:36.240 I'm going to take a sip of my tea if you want to say something, sir.

00:27:41.720 No, other than it's fascinating, I'm glad that we're getting such a detailed timeline of Roman history.

00:27:50.900 I think a lot of people are very familiar in the periphery of the basic concept,

00:27:55.860 but i think that understanding the timeline and like the key events is something a lot

00:28:01.780 of people probably don't have readily accessible to them in their in their mind and the reason i

00:28:07.700 want to do this massive timeline is to emphasize a few things much later in this this lecture

00:28:15.940 as there's a crossover isn't there some of the stuff you were just saying i think you've said

00:28:20.740 before i know you've talked about some of the theodosius and stuff yeah theodosius i i shouldn't

00:28:28.660 have said theodosius is antifa's theodosius seems to have been a personally devout christian but as

00:28:33.780 far as the actual christianian christianity versus paganism thing theodosius seems to have just kind

00:28:39.620 of let christians do their thing like let uh let people more antifa than him do their thing right

00:28:47.780 Right. But he also, Theodosius, was in an odd sense a patron of Asatru due to his relationship with the Thanaric.

00:28:56.440 So this is all related. Right. But yes, the importance of this buildup is leading into the why do we care?

00:29:07.460 Because it's greater than Arminius won a fight against Varus. Right.

00:29:11.860 Okay, Arminius. Let's start with his name. Arminius. In the sources stands one manuscript that has Arminius, which is an obvious scribal error. Also, we have no evidence. Okay, what does that name mean?

00:29:27.440 Well, the Armenius theory means the Armenian because he went to Armenia. Romans typically had names, so they would have a personal name like Gaius. A third of Romans are named Gaius, Caius, Gnaeus, or Knaeus.

00:29:47.140 then they would have a clan name against this is where we get uh gentile gentilic genteel

00:29:54.960 from a clan name like kaiser um julius uh like you julie ungi these kinds of things

00:30:03.760 then they would typically take what is called a cognomen literally like their with name this is

00:30:11.000 how people actually refer to them it's a nickname but it wasn't the romans had only so many names

00:30:18.820 to call people so they came up with cognomene which would be like my friend gaius you know

00:30:24.960 the one with the hair that's one theory as to why he's called julius caesar he's gaius of the julie

00:30:31.780 you know the one with the hair which is an ironic thing because he was balding roman nobility loved

00:30:38.220 taking these self-deprecating uh nicknames they thought it made them folksy like uh cicero 0.82

00:30:45.660 cicero means chickpea means testicle like that's the slang so you know like you know 0.71

00:30:53.180 bullsy right if you've ever watched the sopranos that's ancient roman i'm not kidding so 0.87

00:31:00.300 So they would take these nicknames off of locations that they had glory in.

00:31:06.940 Germanicus.

00:31:08.320 Well, his name's not Germanicus.

00:31:09.680 He's, you know, the one from Joimini, because he conquered Germans, right?

00:31:13.880 So you'd have guys named things like Armenius, Armenicus, you know, the one who went to Armenia.

00:31:21.040 There's no evidence that Armenius ever went to Armenia.

00:31:23.600 Now, there is a crazy theory that it's a reference to his blue eyes, because there's a mineral Armenium.

00:31:30.300 It's a form of Azurite mind in Armenia. We can compare his brother's name later.

00:31:35.880 There's another theory that it's actually of Etruscan origin, but there's no evidence that he hung out in Etruria either.

00:31:45.140 Later German romantic nationalists called him Hermann to claim him as theirs, but his name probably wasn't Hariamannas, that H that begins Hermann.

00:31:57.920 The ancestor of that is actually pronounced H, which is why I said it was Walchaz.

00:32:05.600 That H sound is translated into Latin with a CH.

00:32:09.800 This is why the tribe is there. 1.00

00:32:13.020 We call them the Cherusky in English.

00:32:15.020 To a Roman, a person of the Cherusky would be a Cheruscus, because the Proto-Germanic name, Cherusky.

00:32:24.680 um so if his name was derived from harryamana's then it would be charminius not arminius one

00:32:35.120 theory is that it comes from ermin or earmin which is also where we get earminsul which

00:32:39.180 means like the great the problem with it is why isn't the vowel why isn't why isn't it

00:32:44.240 earment earminius or arminius those are perfectly valid in latin um for ease i'm just going to say

00:32:51.660 arminius but calling him herman is culturally entirely normal in germany and has been for

00:32:59.580 the past 400 or so years so just a note on that because again and how we're going to refer them

00:33:07.660 and how we're going to list them on the website and the thoughts on that because that was kind

00:33:12.300 of ultimately my call on it when we go with um when we go when we're trying to honor heroes of

00:33:24.540 our past we run into different stuff with the namings confusion on the namings um lack of dates

00:33:33.340 like figuring out when we're gonna have days of remembrance and whatnot when we lack definitive

00:33:39.980 information i try to default on the perspective of the one being honored and not on the source

00:33:48.220 writing about them so

00:33:54.140 the more historically attested arminius is the name assigned to him by you know by his greatest foes

00:34:03.100 and playing with the linguistics i make no claim that you know that's what his mom named him but

00:34:11.480 that is what he's come down to in the history of his country and then looking back fondly and

00:34:16.700 remembering him and so that's what i felt honored him the best and that's why we went with it but

00:34:24.620 some people ask you know why this and not that and that was kind of the reasoning it's lacking

00:34:29.080 something else i went with the german nationalist um conception because he fought for german

00:34:37.240 nationalism and to be clear calling him herman or haman is not wrong i'm not saying you shouldn't

00:34:44.040 call him that but to be clear but to be clear that's something that the germans in the 1800s

00:34:51.800 picked yes that's likely entirely modern yeah there's speculation on like

00:34:58.200 what mama herman named him we don't have a cool oath ring saying you know on this day prince

00:35:12.440 son of segameraz did this defeating rome we that's not that's what i'm getting at here right

00:35:17.960 Okay. So on to his origins. He was born 1817 BC to the Cheruskian king Segemer. I'm also not going to call them the Cheruski for just ease.

00:35:30.160 The name Cheruski probably either means the people of the deer from Herut or the people of the sword from Heru.

00:35:38.560 The name is confirmed by the Greek transliteration of Kerus.

00:35:44.240 Kerouskoi.

00:35:46.000 Greek.

00:35:47.220 Too many vowels.

00:35:49.240 The Cheruski were known to the Romans at least as far back as 53 BC when Caesar reports on them,

00:35:55.360 But they no doubt would have been one of these half-flung or half-known, far-flung groups on the edge of civilization from the Roman POV.

00:36:04.300 So throw up the second map, Nick.

00:36:09.300 So this here shows us some Germanic groups.

00:36:16.680 You can see a number of them on here, like the Cati and the Marci and the Sigambri.

00:36:22.580 the Cherusky are like there above that kind of orange blob right so they're on the edge of the

00:36:31.760 territory that the Romans are comfortable moving through and this map actually shows a bunch of 0.91

00:36:36.420 historical battles we're not going to get into some of them so the setup for what happens here

00:36:43.640 a man by the name of Nero Claudius Germannicus Trussus is made governor of Gaul he then enacts

00:36:50.120 a harsh taxation policy and census. You can take the picture down, Nick. And in response to this,

00:36:56.360 the Gauls rebel. In response to that, Drusus enacts harsher martial law, which means basically

00:37:02.720 having soldiers go around raping and pillaging allied villages. In response to that, bandits

00:37:09.060 from two Germanic tribes, the Sicambri and the Usipetes, and you don't need to put it back up

00:37:15.860 on the the thing nick but the sicumbri are right next to the border between gaul and germania 0.80

00:37:21.700 they are the neighboring people on the other side of the border so the bandits have to throw it back

00:37:28.180 up just for me now i want to see where it is on the map sorry okay so the usipeti are the people

00:37:39.140 kind of southeast of the frizzy and then the sicumbri are the ones south east south of them

00:37:45.860 right so they're right on that border with the the rhine there

00:37:52.420 so the bandits eventually happen upon a roman cavalry unit roman cavalry unit that was

00:37:59.380 committing some kind of banditry in gaul and the bandits actually attack the cavalry unit

00:38:05.060 cavalry unit while they're committing banditry and they descend upon it defeat it and take

00:38:11.540 they defeat the entire uh fifth legion and then take its eagle as treasure so the the roman eagles

00:38:19.540 are these statues of eagles on a big pole and it was a a kind of a totem it symbolized the power

00:38:28.980 and authority of the god jupiter but it was also like the eagle of the legion this is very common

00:38:36.820 in indo-european societies for military groups to have a kind of totem thing what it actually is

00:38:43.140 varies culture to culture but like the animal representative of how cool and powerful the

00:38:48.420 military unit is losing one of these was a religious problem for the romans um

00:38:55.700 i've just as a christian equivalent imagine if the enemy takes the fragment of the true cross

00:39:01.300 that you brought out for a fight you have to get it back or you are committing a sin

00:39:07.540 i mean i just thought of like colleges and how they will go and steal the

00:39:13.060 trophy or the statue or whatever from the rival college and you went a lot deeper than

00:39:20.100 yeah imagine if your foot imagine if you go to hell because you lost your football team's mascot

00:39:25.140 that's basically what we're talking about here i i'm that's kind of flippant but it's it's the truth

00:39:31.060 no so that's a relevant thing to um that's not just a roman thing that is a

00:39:40.580 white people indo-european it absolutely is an also true um relevant topic is having

00:39:50.580 um

00:39:50.900 i've heard things like that even described as veins we talk about vase in the sense of

00:40:01.300 like a sacred enclosure or like a a place where you're worshiping but oftentimes or

00:40:08.740 that has been applied to totemic like empowered items like a standard like a battle standard like

00:40:17.700 that like a sacred object that carries you know the might of ritual in this case the might of

00:40:26.020 the gods the might of that like the hymenia of that legion is bound up in their eagle and taking

00:40:33.620 that eagle is of significance and you see that throughout the medieval age with that with certain

00:40:40.420 standards um this that it's a top battle standards is a part of that and that kind of

00:40:48.740 you know capture the flag thing is extremely

00:40:55.220 right now it is an issue or i say things like that in modern times or even in

00:41:02.660 you know napoleonic era matter for morale they matter for prestige and dignity and the honor of

00:41:15.540 the unit in this day and age not only did it matter in a sense of potential consequence if

00:41:24.260 you lose it you offend the gods but like that's literally your strength when that rises and falls

00:41:32.500 your might waxes and wanes um the the feeling that it was very connected to your potency and

00:41:41.300 your efficacy in battle and that could turn the tide of a battle if you have a king's standard

00:41:48.340 that you know falls and everybody drops their arms and goes home like cool we're done now

00:41:53.300 or if it charges forward a demoralized troop surges it was very very relevant and

00:42:02.740 you know as we'll see in the story it comes up but the idea of um

00:42:09.380 ritually empowered items that symbolize a unit or a leader are extremely important and

00:42:18.180 are important and now it's true as well we're certainly well understood by herman and his

00:42:23.700 tribesmen just as well as they're understood in rome so the uh anglo-saxon word for the equivalent

00:42:32.020 of the eagle is kumbol these are images flags banners idols of animals and of various symbols

00:42:40.580 that were removed from groves before battle um taxidus uses the words effigies and signa so uh

00:42:50.180 effigies might also be like uh the raven banner that i think you guys might be familiar with

00:42:57.220 in the norse period and there wasn't one there were several different raven banners but that

00:43:02.340 would be that or the the oriflame in medieval france you'd have these banners that were empowered

00:43:09.460 based on this exact same tradition um in gothic the term ansis is attested it's actually cognate

00:43:16.020 with ice here but it's referring to some kind of device used to worship the ancestors but

00:43:22.500 these were carried with the soldiers in battle right um the other term used for these is uh

00:43:30.980 you know from holding from anglo-saxon is thuf which probably initially was a sprig of leaves

00:43:40.900 from a holy grove that was attached to a pole or maybe a lance but by the time it actually

00:43:47.860 starts getting attested it actually refers to a bunch of horse hair attached to a spear or lance

00:43:54.100 and the romans actually started doing this of having these kind of sacred like sacred spear

00:44:01.940 cozies i guess you could almost call them right so the uh old norse cognate to kumbol is uh kumbh

00:44:10.580 which actually refers to runestones and the old norse equivalent of thuf is thufa which um actually

00:44:18.660 means mound but has similar connotations it just it just doesn't move so back to back to drusus so

00:44:30.500 these bandits descend upon a cavalry unit while it's mid pillage defeat it take the eagle run

00:44:37.140 back enraged that someone else was taking what was rightfully his to steal drusus followed these

00:44:43.620 bandits with a large army an actual army not just like a professional soldiers and they just

00:44:50.160 march through germania destroying everything they find as they go um eventually he uh

00:44:57.960 eventually he meets up with whoever has the eagle they sue for peace drusus gets the eagle back but

00:45:05.240 this begins a state of total war of hostility by the romans against the germanics that is essentially

00:45:13.440 unprovoked because it's worth remembering here that at this time border means we're not going

00:45:20.420 to send an army over we're just not going to punish our civilians if they go over and steal

00:45:26.140 your stuff you can do whatever but we're not going to send it back if you want or if you ask

00:45:30.940 right so when you hear about invasion remember we're talking about people at this time most of

00:45:36.580 Germany and Gaul and even Italy is really quite empty. Today, there's people everywhere. At the

00:45:43.200 time, that wasn't the case. So marching an army in, the army has to find people. So that's a little

00:45:53.420 easy in Germany. So at the time, the Cherusky lived in today's what is northwest central Germany. 0.96

00:45:59.600 They were initially opposed to Roman occupation, and in 11 BC, they waged war against

00:46:05.440 when Drusus began to head back to Gaul after his rape and pillaging session

00:46:12.780 he made camp for the winter and he was ambushed by an actual army of Germanic soldiers.

00:46:20.900 It's uncertain why but he and his army were spared and a large part of the Cherusky tribe

00:46:26.400 would become allied with Rome and by 4 AD the entirety of it would be. The Cherusky were led 0.55

00:46:33.900 by the king, I think it'd be more proper to call him the Theodas, Segemer.

00:46:41.460 Segemer is the chieftain of the Cheruski. He has two sons, both of whom we are only

00:46:46.440 told their Latin names. They are Arminius and Flawus. Flawus is actually a very

00:46:53.400 easy word to translate. It means blondie. He had blonde hair. Flawus, when referring 1.00

00:47:00.240 to things other than human hair can mean yellow and red, like the colors of the dawn, right?

00:47:07.280 Anyways, so this is a Roman name. Segimer did not name his kids Arminius and Blondie. These are

00:47:15.040 names they... Arminius maybe, but Flavius is absolutely a name he took to interface with

00:47:21.100 the Romans, right? So Arminius served in the Roman military from 180 to 680, so he would have

00:47:29.040 been about 17 to 18 when he went off to Rome as a mercenary with his brother, who would probably be

00:47:35.980 younger than him, but still 16-ish, right? Segemer is referred to as a princeps of his gains. The

00:47:44.400 Romans used native Latin terminology to refer to foreign structures, but then they clarify when

00:47:50.340 they're different. So princeps means first, but was used to refer to the leader of a group. This is

00:47:58.680 It's usually translated into English as chief, but only in reference to non-Roman uses.

00:48:04.760 In Roman uses, it's translated as prince, which actually does descend from print caps, funnily enough.

00:48:09.940 But this is in the Italian usage, it's not in the French heir to the king usage.

00:48:14.480 Against, meanwhile, was a political unit of an extremely extended family and was actually a government of sorts unto itself.

00:48:21.920 This word is translated into English as tribe.

00:48:25.940 There's that word again, tribe.

00:48:28.060 So, tribe is a word that academics use to refer to any kind of political situation in which kinship is relevant and they don't feel like figuring out what's actually going on.

00:48:38.960 Tribe does not mean ooga-booga simple.

00:48:41.840 Sparta is a tribe.

00:48:43.720 Tribe does not mean mud huts.

00:48:46.860 Rome is a tribe, right?

00:48:48.960 The same qualifications of what is a tribe makes Athens a tribe.

00:48:54.400 tribe comes i've talked about this before and i'll say it again tribe comes from the latin

00:49:00.840 tribus which means third because rome was divided between the uh latins the sabines and the uh

00:49:09.500 the third group i'm brain farting the etruscans excuse me and okay we're all one city now you

00:49:19.160 guys are going to go over there and you're going to take care of yourselves so like the tribe of

00:49:23.680 the Sabines was a tribal institution that took care of the Sabines, because there was not an

00:49:29.780 institution that took care of the Sabines as far as the Etruscans and the Latins were concerned.

00:49:35.520 So as an aside, in medieval Iceland, kinship was reckoned by descent from a common ancestor,

00:49:42.220 and your kin was everyone who radiated out of that nine generations back shared ancestor.

00:49:48.280 This is not how it works in mainland Scandinavia, where kinship was based on tribal membership, because everyone was, it just wasn't feasible to bind people together by, like, a common ancestor, because the common ancestor was, like, dozens of generations back.

00:50:06.600 Okay, so, tribes.

00:50:11.500 What do they live in?

00:50:13.160 You know what the Gaulish tribes lived in?

00:50:15.800 Cities.

00:50:16.280 The specific term used is urbes, or rather, that's what you call a city that the Romans liked.

00:50:25.800 The Romans didn't like your city. Your city was an oppida.

00:50:29.880 Archaeologically, there's zero distinction.

00:50:31.700 Many of the Gaulish oppida are actually made using Hellenistic influences.

00:50:37.680 Like, some of these Celtic cities were built because they hired a Greek guy to help them design the city.

00:50:45.260 right when you hear about celtic and gaulish tribes in gaul remember these are groups equivalent to

00:50:53.040 greek city-states right but then there's also these ethno-republican institutions where multiple

00:50:58.620 city-states are bound together by shared kinship so when we talk about city-states in gaul and

00:51:07.920 stuff remember all of this comes from the roman perspective for romans they're not writing as

00:51:14.940 objective historians caesar has no problem saying that athens is an urbes and some others celtic

00:51:21.420 city-state is an oppida purely because the celtic city-state is not friendly to rome and athens is

00:51:27.920 okay what does this mean segamer being the first of his tribe really means that he's essentially

00:51:35.820 Administration versus regime.

00:51:39.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:41.540 But Segemer being the first of his tribe, it means he's the leader of an independent ethno-republic.

00:51:46.640 These are Germanics we're talking about, so we know from elsewhere that he would have had supreme military, economic, and religious power and authority.

00:51:53.580 But his rule would have been for the good of his people.

00:51:56.120 His position's title was probably something like Theodanas.

00:51:59.680 Thus, Segemer's alliance with Rome would bind the entirety of the Cherusky to it. 0.56

00:52:04.600 to be Cherusky involved to be an ally with Rome.

00:52:08.140 It's not immediately stated in the sources why the Cherusky allied with Rome.

00:52:12.960 Segemer's position was based on essentially benefiting the Cheruskyan people.

00:52:17.100 He would not have been democratically elected, but he had to keep the elites happy or they'd kill him, right? 0.89

00:52:24.700 So the swiftness with which the Cherusky allied with Drusus, 0.80

00:52:28.600 combined with the fact that their meeting actually occurs when the Cherusky ambushed Drusus' army, 0.71

00:52:34.060 right and then segamer immediately sending his sons to rome both of them mind you leads me to

00:52:40.420 believe that segamer essentially demanded to be made a roman ally at spear point this would have

00:52:45.600 given great wealth and status to the cheruscian nobility they had first mover advantage the

00:52:50.780 cherusci were basically the first germanics to ally with rome so this plugs them deep deep deep

00:52:57.320 deep into the Roman apparatus. The Cheruscian nobility probably wanted this. They probably

00:53:04.860 sat down, saw what Caesar and friends were doing in Gaul, and said, let's benefit from this.

00:53:11.920 Segemer, as the Theodenos, would have done what was best for his people, which was ally with Rome.

00:53:19.600 So, keep that in mind. The Cheruscian nobility are pressuring Segemer to ally with the Romans. Segemer isn't necessarily a cultural Romanophile. He shows back up, so keep him in mind.

00:53:35.840 the man himself. Arminius was born around 18 to 17 BC. He would serve for six years in the Roman

00:53:43.980 military, which granted him Roman citizenship at, you know, 4 AD. Remember, Roman citizenship

00:53:53.280 is a big deal then, along with the status of equus. As a citizen, Arminius was in. He was

00:53:59.940 legally and economically Roman, and could even bring matters to the forum for settlement. So he 0.88

00:54:05.360 went to like the real courts he didn't go to like the the silly little you know oh you'll get justice

00:54:13.160 don't worry peasant we'll make sure no he went to like the courts for people who matter to be an 0.87

00:54:19.500 equite which really means like a horseman required a minimum amount of wealth that was quite

00:54:25.000 substantial so him being made an equite not only implied political standing but also substantial

00:54:30.140 wealth that was accessible to the roman economy he could buy and sell in the forum because he had

00:54:35.820 money money not just like gold back home in germany he was a knight yes knight is how this

00:54:42.860 is turned and translated rich horsemen rich mounted cavalrymen the one of the things that i think is

00:54:52.620 often glossed over or missed when people you know just have a brief understanding it's not like he

00:55:01.740 was just a germanic tribesman that was you know emerged out of the woods in in 9 a.d

00:55:10.140 no he was an accomplished like member of roman society he had status he had he was a professional

00:55:17.500 he was some he was somebody he wasn't just you know a barbarian on the fringe he he had

00:55:25.100 you know his his official roman status matters and it's why when uh spawn um painted his uh

00:55:36.620 or i guess arded i don't know if actual painting was involved but came up with the um

00:55:42.300 The arc we used for today's show and that we kind of use for him, it has him in, you know, a substantial amount of his Roman war gear is, you know, he was a Roman warrior of note, not just reputation wise, but also like actual status within the empire.

00:56:03.540 within the empire arminius was fluent in latin he could not have achieved these statuses without

00:56:10.420 being fluent in latin just for clarity here he would have been fluent in roman culture and

00:56:15.800 religion he could not achieve the the status of citizen and equite without that to be clear

00:56:21.180 about the armor remember at this time that the roman military equipment is stuff that they saw

00:56:29.680 Gaul's wearing and got from Gaul. And at this time, the Romans are looking at the stuff the

00:56:37.900 Germanics wear and are saying, wow, we need to get ourselves some of these Germans so they can 0.99

00:56:43.840 make us this stuff. The Roman military machine is not materially sophisticated in comparison to the 1.00

00:56:52.820 Gauls and the Germanics. What makes the Roman military machine so good at this point is that

00:57:00.620 they have a massive plantation society designed to funnel food into cities to make lots and lots 0.96

00:57:08.200 and lots of Romans. The Roman military regime, Roman military supremacy was based on being able

00:57:16.060 to funnel romans to wherever they wanted consistently so you'll you'll see at this

00:57:22.240 time a lot of these conflicts like the romans will send like the sixth legion and the seventh 0.71

00:57:26.900 legion and there'll be this big fight with the herduri and then that's it the herduri are done 0.97

00:57:32.820 for because they used up every man they could win or lose for the battle for the romans they just 0.84

00:57:39.680 said a-o bada-bing bada-boom who wants to make some money going and getting in a fight and another

00:57:44.600 10 000 people signed up for the draft right that's not because they have like super cool swords

00:57:51.260 let's be clear here so um flowers was also given these distinctions although we're told much less

00:57:58.900 about him as a character these positions of status would imply a great familiarity with latin blah

00:58:04.760 blah i already said that we are told by roman writers a few things about arminius he was brave

00:58:11.060 He was intelligent. He was alert and had striking eyes that belied a powerful mind.

00:58:17.320 A focus on Arminius's mind and his eyes is very common in Latin literature about him.

00:58:25.400 Arminius is not dumb. Roman writers do not think Arminius is dumb. 0.91

00:58:30.960 In fact, they almost kind of think he's too smart, right? 0.99

00:58:34.920 He was not a fool or an oaf who bungled into importance.

00:58:37.800 his brother uh being named blondie flowers lends credence to the idea that he had blonde hair he 0.66

00:58:44.620 probably had blonde hair and blue eyes like he's a german at this time you know that's what they

00:58:49.360 look like so i'm gonna pause for a sec over in the chat cfay uh 713 says matt i just wanted to

00:58:58.760 let you know that your voice is soothing and reminds me of a father reading stories to me

00:59:03.200 as I fall asleep in bed.

00:59:05.160 Thank you for saying so.

00:59:06.520 I'm glad you think so.

00:59:08.820 And yeah, thank you for saying so.

00:59:15.040 All right, Arminius' service to Rome.

00:59:18.480 Regarding his military service,

00:59:20.220 we know that at minimum,

00:59:22.220 Arminius and Flavius fought together

00:59:23.700 in the Pannonian Wars.

00:59:26.360 We also know that Arminius was given command

00:59:28.540 of an all-Cheruscian auxilia detachment.

00:59:31.980 I'll explain the importance of that in a minute.

00:59:34.600 Essentially a private army.

00:59:36.140 No doubt this was to fight in the Pannonian Wars alongside, or probably in command of, his brother.

00:59:41.360 The Pannonian Wars were part of a series of conflicts in Illyria, which is today Croatia and Bosnia.

00:59:47.680 This region was crucial for the Amber Road.

00:59:50.820 So, the Amber Road is this exportation of amber, which is fossilized tree sap,

00:59:57.360 out of the Baltic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, ultimately to Anatolia and then into Asia.

01:00:08.580 Amber is very important for a lot of things. It's a wonderfully malleable material. It's basically

01:00:14.800 a gem, but you don't need to do insane nonsense to carve it. Also, this is purely an aside, but I

01:00:21.740 i do personally think this probably increased the value of it him pre uh pre in pre-modern times

01:00:27.820 amber was a teething aid for infants like you would give your kid amber to chew on because

01:00:33.900 it's it's not sharp it doesn't shatter if you kind of just gum it right so this amber would go out

01:00:42.780 into anatolia and some of it would leak west the romans wanted to get their hands around that

01:00:48.220 Amber Road. The Amber left Europe through Illyria. So around 200 BC, the region was led by a dynasty

01:00:58.060 that was friendly to Rome, and an enemy of Macedonia. With the fall of that dynasty, local

01:01:03.180 elites tried to establish a new rulership. This would cause a renegotiation of terms between the

01:01:09.180 region and Rome. Rome did not want to renegotiate terms. Thus would begin a long and protracted

01:01:16.540 conflict between the Romans and the people of Illyria. This would culminate in the penultimate

01:01:22.380 conflict in 33 BC and the final one in 6 AD. However, in between those two were various smaller

01:01:28.380 uprisings. Around 4 AD, Arminius was given command of a Cherusky detachment of auxilia,

01:01:33.980 essentially a private military force for the purposes of helping to manage Illyria

01:01:38.380 for the Romans. Manage Illyria for the Romans. In addition to military action, they would have

01:01:45.980 been used as a police force. Hiring foreigners to use them as cops was very common at this time.

01:01:53.180 The police force of Athens was a Scythian mercenary company, like circa 400 BC. The Athenian

01:02:02.540 government, around the same time that they were inventing philosophy and mathematics and

01:02:06.780 pederasty and all that stuff they paid scythian mercenaries to be their their cops so 0.98

01:02:18.220 all right in addition to ensuring the deconstruction of illyria 0.99

01:02:23.420 in addition to deconsturing the deconstruction of illyria for roman purposes

01:02:28.140 because illyria was viewed by the romans as a rebellious province i've got it i can't like he's

01:02:33.820 laughing in addition to ensuring the deconstruction of illyria for roman purposes because illyria was

01:02:41.500 viewed as a rebellious and turbulent client state that had gone rogue arminius and flowers would be

01:02:47.020 in charge of defending the province from outsiders illyria was the so there's the there's illyria and

01:02:55.580 then to the east we'll get a map up in a minute we don't want it right now there's the people

01:03:00.060 the Dachians who inhabit the area east of Illyria. The Dachians wanted to take Illyria for their own. 0.99

01:03:06.460 The Dachians had been attempting to invade Illyria for many years. The region was not 0.92

01:03:09.820 only the site of an active rebellion, but also a potential battlefield for territory with outsiders,

01:03:14.620 like actual outsiders. As an aside, all of this comes back to bite Rome in the rear,

01:03:21.660 because come the 200s, the survivors of the Illyrian conflicts, the remaining Illyrians,

01:03:27.660 end up forming a military clique within the empire and they take power.

01:03:31.100 This results in Constantine the apostate.

01:03:34.540 He then starts a process of draining the western empire of its wealth

01:03:38.460 and shipping it to the eastern empire. 0.90

01:03:41.820 The Illyrians today are survived by some of the population of Romania,

01:03:47.740 who are partially descended from Latinized Illyrians,

01:03:50.860 along with the Albanians. Albanians are descended from a non-Latinized Illyrian

01:03:56.540 enclave that's not involved in this conflict, but the Albanians do actually get Latinized later.

01:04:03.900 Not important. This would all come to a head in 6 AD when the Illyrians finally united for one last

01:04:13.040 hurrah, notice that they were disunited for the 200 years of conflict preceding this, and made a

01:04:18.840 concerted, unified effort to cast off Roman rule for good. This was a serious problem, indeed

01:04:24.120 arguably the single greatest military threat that Rome had faced since Carthage,

01:04:29.240 Tiberius pulled troops out of Germania to deal with the matter.

01:04:34.460 That's how big this is. 0.92

01:04:35.900 Rome is willing to sacrifice places like Germany to deal with Illyria. 0.78

01:04:40.300 Although it's not as romanticized as other revolts,

01:04:43.280 the Romans saw this as the single most important thing of their time,

01:04:47.600 akin to a long-standing enemy finally rearing its head

01:04:50.480 because it finally was one single enemy.

01:04:54.120 You can throw up the third map, Nick, map, Nick.

01:04:58.160 The Illyrians actually assembled enough troops in sufficient quality and quantity to march into Greece, which they took. 0.84

01:05:06.960 They then prepared to attack Italy. 0.89

01:05:15.700 OK, so Illyria is really close to Italy.

01:05:20.900 um we will see we'll have some we need some like elevator music pauses i feel bad i'm sorry nick 0.90

01:05:31.520 okay so the illyrians butchered roman colonists they sacked greece if you're wondering okay 0.57

01:05:41.760 greece is everything that matters because athens and sparta and then alexander the 0.94

01:05:46.200 great conquerors of the world and then rome why does greece start mattering or stop mattering

01:05:51.960 part of that is because of this right so culturally there is a native revival of illyrian culture

01:05:59.480 this is a very common theme with the romans you can see this archaeology archaeologically like

01:06:06.120 rome is in power roman stuff is cool rome is out of power go back to nativism

01:06:12.640 so so great was this conflict that augustus actually instituted a draft of all free men

01:06:20.000 and not like literally all of them but you know like hey there's a draft now

01:06:23.580 something that had not been done since canine modern authors generally view this period in

01:06:30.280 arminius's life as one of cynical calculation rome was overextended stretched thin and organized

01:06:38.200 barbarian forces, which again, remember, barbarian means not Greek, not Roman. It does not mean

01:06:46.180 unsophisticated. Remember that at the same time that the Romans think that Germans are barbarians,

01:06:54.580 they are desperately trying to get as many of them to come to Italy as they can

01:06:58.640 to make armor and weapons, because German armor and weapons are better than Italian armor and

01:07:04.700 weapons at this time. So organized barbarian forces could fight against

01:07:09.620 Rome and take significant amounts of of territory with them when they started

01:07:15.560 rising up. So modern authors view this as a cynical calculation on Arminius's

01:07:25.340 part. Rome was overextended, he could get power. Thus Arminius saw his chance to

01:07:31.460 attack Rome and attain power by doing so. This is not what I would say is the correct way to look

01:07:38.340 at the matter. The problem with this is that it relies upon an overly detached academic

01:07:43.000 interpretation of the tale and rejects both the Roman and German point of view, and indeed the

01:07:49.080 textual sources in favor of the so-called, in favor of the so-called objective first-person

01:07:54.800 point of view, reject this. From the perspective of a Cheruscian auxilia fighting in Pannonia,

01:08:01.760 a few things would be obvious, and not merely that Barbaria could beat Italia. The first is

01:08:07.840 that the Cherusci were being used as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy. Remember, Rome pulled

01:08:15.120 troops out of Germania to move them to Illyria. Rome had imported Germanic troops, or more so,

01:08:22.800 exported troops from Germania to Illyria and then moved troops from Italia into Germania.

01:08:31.120 So while they're trying to put down a conquest or a resistance in Illyria, they actually engage

01:08:38.240 in an attempted conquest of Germania and the Illyrians are so good at fighting that they

01:08:43.200 have to pull troops that were supposed to be there to fight Germans out to send them to Illyria.

01:08:48.720 entire legions that had been scheduled to fight and conquer Germanic tribes were moved quite

01:08:55.260 hastily down to Illyria. Those legions were supposed to fight civilians. They were not

01:09:02.100 supposed to fight soldiers. The second thing that would be apparent to a Cherbuskyan auxilia 0.98

01:09:06.840 is that the Romans were keen on destroying the Illyrians as a coherent people. 0.87

01:09:11.740 The Illyrians had come together as a united front and cast off Roman culture and norms. 0.84

01:09:16.020 In return, they were to be destroyed, as the Carthaginians had been. 0.96

01:09:20.040 The survivors would then be harvested, literally, they would be enslaved and worked to death. 0.98

01:09:25.980 They would be scattered to the wind and ground up as biomass for fields and factories.

01:09:30.920 Because of how tightly the Roman religion was interwoven into the Roman state, and given how tightly the converse was true in Illyria and Germania,

01:09:38.420 the cultural revolution that was at play here would be obvious to them in ways that would be missed on us today.

01:09:44.220 Okay, she says, let me just sketch for you a little, imagine this, consider if your hometown was conquered by China, and upon the cessation of military hostilities, in order to vote for either of the CCP-approved candidates, you had to burn an incense stick to the Buddha before declaring eternal loyalty to communism and then kneeling before an altar of Qin Shi Huang, the more loyal you were to China, the more traditional American culture you were allowed to retain.

01:10:10.820 In the Roman system, the more wealthy and powerful you were, the more native you

01:10:19.460 could be. The poorer you were, the more Romanized you were. While the Roman 1.00

01:10:25.340 practice of religious syncretism was on its face and nominally more accepting of

01:10:29.540 foreign, foreign to the Romans, of foreign religiosity when compared to

01:10:33.140 Abrahamic religion, in reality a subtle intolerance is present. When Rome came to

01:10:38.900 your land, you had to worship Jupiter. You would worship Jupiter. If you knelt to Rome willingly,

01:10:45.180 you got to worship Jupiter, who was coincidentally also your native religion's god-king.

01:10:49.020 If you did not kneel to Rome willingly, you simply worship Jupiter the Roman way,

01:10:53.900 because he had sent his chosen people, the Romans, to tame you. 0.96

01:10:57.340 So, while the Cheruscian auxilia under Arminius are helping destroy the Illyrians, 0.55

01:11:10.200 they would be noticing that the Romans were planning on doing the exact same thing to them,

01:11:14.820 and it had only been stopped by this, from the Germanic perspective,

01:11:18.480 freak uprising of this other people scheduled for deconstruction.

01:11:23.040 Do you want to say something, sir?

01:11:23.800 the obvious implication of what this would mean for the germanics whose first contact with rome

01:11:31.880 had been extreme aggression by the romans upon civilians would not be lost to arminius who would

01:11:38.720 be plugged in remember he was a knight he was in the room when decisions were made he knew latin

01:11:47.220 well enough to know what decisions were being made.

01:11:51.740 The obvious implications of what would have happened

01:11:55.760 had the Illyrians not drawn the legions away from Germania

01:11:58.860 would not be lost on Arminius.

01:12:02.680 In my notes, I have to tell Nick to put up another map.

01:12:06.440 Are you there, Nick?

01:12:10.720 Okay, all right, thank you.

01:12:12.840 Fantastic.

01:12:13.460 No, no, bring up the...

01:12:14.380 No, no, the first...

01:12:15.180 No, no, the third one.

01:12:17.220 that one this is illyria so you'll notice that from the south they can just march into thrace

01:12:24.960 thrace is let me see there we go thrace is this part of greece here right they marched into thrace

01:12:33.060 and took like hellas too they then turned their troops around and they are literally on the

01:12:40.440 border with modern Italy. So Rome is really like a few days march from the Illyrian territories.

01:12:50.360 The Illyrians could bring an army to the city of Rome a lot easier than the Carthaginians could. 0.86

01:12:56.540 Can you bring up the next map? The Illyrian revolt one, the fourth one, that one. This just shows kind

01:13:03.200 of the breakdown of the territory here. You'll notice part of what makes this so difficult is

01:13:08.040 that the the Illyrian rebels are in a very mountainous region so they are in

01:13:13.660 an extremely defensible position having a native revolt against a hostile

01:13:19.280 foreign power that is essentially trying to destroy their culture and religion

01:13:23.880 and again the Romans were more tolerant than modern Abrahamic religion but by

01:13:29.320 this point the Romans were getting sick of 200 years of war against the Illyrian

01:13:32.980 rebels so they were just done with this

01:13:36.800 Flawis would remain in Pannonia, fighting until 9 AD, when he would lose an eye in the Siege of Andetrium.

01:13:44.400 Arminius, however, returned to Germania somewhere around 6-7 AD.

01:13:49.300 He would have arrived with a personal retinue of loyal retainers, numbering somewhere between 500 and 1,000 men.

01:13:56.300 He would have arrived rich. He would have arrived with great status.

01:14:00.300 He would have arrived with experience as a leader of men.

01:14:03.000 He would have arrived with a vision for what a united Germania could look like.

01:14:06.600 in comparison to a united Italia and a united Illyria.

01:14:11.380 Because remember, Arminius not only knows what the Roman government looks like, but also the Illyrian one.

01:14:18.240 He would have been intimately familiar with the political and bureaucratic machinery necessary to make these structures happen.

01:14:26.060 At some point during the Pannonian conflict, Arminius decided that a line needed to be drawn between Italia and Germania, lest there be no more Germania.

01:14:36.600 All right, let's talk about what the auxilia were. So in the Roman army, auxilia were usually ethnically cohesive military forces, sometimes from even a singular tribe within an ethnos.

01:14:48.680 This meant that they lacked the massive provisioning system that could be used to provide the Roman economy's supply lines.

01:14:54.920 However, it meant that they were light, nimble, usually equipped with missile weaponry and given substantial freedom to prosecute a conflict as they saw fit.

01:15:02.580 They fought for glory and wealth and would use that wealth to equip and provision themselves as necessary for the conflict at hand.

01:15:09.980 This altogether meant that they were essentially professional guerrilla fighters who could interface with line infantry as per a commander's needs.

01:15:18.160 Again, there were usually about 500 to 1,000 men in an auxilia unit.

01:15:23.040 This is where we get the term auxiliary from.

01:15:26.440 Arminius and Flawis holding the status of equite has another important meaning, horsemanship.

01:15:32.180 The Germanics, much to the bafflement of modern academics, were known for being fantastic horsemen.

01:15:37.860 Thus, the auxilia that they, as high-ranking Cherisky and noblemen, led were probably actually cavalrymen.

01:15:44.440 While they were not likely to be heavy cavalry at this time, yes, they're knights, but they don't wear heavy suits of armor, right?

01:15:51.400 They are far more nimble.

01:15:52.940 they would be mounted troops nonetheless, and they at minimum would have had a number of

01:15:59.600 mounted troops in their contingent. This would necessitate great wealth and social standing

01:16:04.840 amongst the troops that Arminius and Flavius were leading in order for them to be cavalry units.

01:16:10.940 So the auxilia that Arminius and Flavius led were probably the sons of nobility lesser than them,

01:16:15.980 but still no milady so again arminius is not an ooga booga primitive in the woods wearing like

01:16:23.820 furs and ash and stuff he is a mounted horseman bedecked in what the world considers to be that

01:16:32.380 the most advanced military technology of the day cavalry units actually had more than one horse per

01:16:39.740 person so that you could swap out horses as you went through your your endeavors so arminius is

01:16:46.460 actually leading a very powerful contingent of extremely wealthy and important people

01:16:51.660 and they're all his boys they are cheruski who have served under him they have been in the thick

01:16:58.940 of it with him and they will have been with him when he's been coming home from being with romans

01:17:05.820 and were probably vented about what these gabagoo mafiosos were going to do to the Germans.

01:17:12.820 So, the 500 to 1,000 men that Armenians commanded were not just a private military, but they were loyalists.

01:17:21.820 They were loyalists who had been through what he had, they were downstream of his ideals, they were Germanic men, they were not just mercenaries.

01:17:29.820 These were loyal thanes whose social position and indeed religious position in the eyes of the gods was determined by their tribe and their lord and their loyalty to both.

01:17:42.160 Arminius being the son of the Theudanas meant he was more than just a lord.

01:17:46.620 He was the future of the tribe, its people, and its faith.

01:17:49.960 There would come a day when Segimer would pass his position to Arminius, and that meant Tubichuruski meant Arminius.

01:18:00.780 so kind of an interjection here also with the nomenclature some people like why do you call him

01:18:07.900 prince termine he should be chieftain he's this and that they wouldn't again he would not have

01:18:14.060 called himself prince but the combination of the latin proto prince and the literal he was destined

01:18:26.780 to be the leader of his tribe led me to feel that was an appropriate titling to give him trying to

01:18:35.020 style people with what the title would be in a way that's legible and understandable to the audience

01:18:42.700 is a part of it so that's kind of part of the thought process of why we went with that for his

01:18:49.020 for his titling and to be fair like we do have to translate things in terms people understand to a

01:18:57.660 degree if we called him because in in early germanic languages you would put someone's

01:19:05.580 title after their name right so you'd have like olafra in norse right you still do that in modern

01:19:11.420 Icelandic as well. So if we did that, if we called him

01:19:14.820 Haryamannas Theudanas, people would think his name was

01:19:19.500 Theudanas, the Hermannas, which is not true.

01:19:23.400 That's not correct. And they would have no idea who we're talking about.

01:19:27.860 Prince Hermann of the Cherusky is someone people know about.

01:19:30.640 Right. So

01:19:33.100 when Arminius arrived, while Arminius arrived home with a

01:19:38.560 substantial and devoutly personally loyal private military force of Cheruscian noble sons,

01:19:43.580 he would not have been able to take on the Romans with just a thousand horsemen. He would need the

01:19:48.080 backing of large segments of the Germanic and specifically Cheruscian population. However,

01:19:53.200 a portion of the Cherusci remained fast allies of the Roman imperial machine and were no doubt

01:19:58.240 tightly plugged into it, securing great wealth for themselves by doing so. Opposition to Rome

01:20:05.480 would have made enemies amongst the Cheruski. Luckily, Arminius had other Germanic tribes to 1.00

01:20:11.080 recruit from. So I want to talk for a brief moment here about the question that might be on some

01:20:17.760 people's minds, was Arminius an oathbreaker? And I'm not a godhi, so I can't opine on the theology

01:20:24.100 of that, but I'm going to make, I do not believe so, on the grounds that he personally did not

01:20:29.680 were an oath to the Romans. His father made a contract of phoedratus with the Romans. So

01:20:39.140 in the later period, 300s into 500s, you hear a lot about phoedrati, and that involves the

01:20:49.760 settlement of a Germanic tribe on Italian or Greek or Thrasian or Anatomian land.

01:20:56.040 At the time of Arminius, however, the diplomatic treaty that was made was a contract between two sovereign states.

01:21:06.160 So when the Cherusky and the Roman polities make a diplomatic agreement, this is like Germany and France shaking and declaring a truce and saying, diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy.

01:21:19.640 Okay, we're friends. 0.51

01:21:21.660 Yes, the Cherusky are much smaller than the Romans, but the Romans were actually viewing these people as a, like, a theoretically co-equal population. 0.72

01:21:32.760 The Romans actually had an entire priesthood whose job it was to interface with foreign groups, the Peregrini, sorry, the Fethils, the Peregrini, anyways, the Fethil Brotherhood.

01:21:48.060 so the phoederati like the arminius flowers segamer they did not swear an oath of like loyalty

01:21:56.580 to augustus they entered into a negotiable treaty mediated by on the roman end the fetal brotherhood

01:22:04.680 who were essentially diplomat priests we're never told in any of the latin literature about arminius

01:22:10.520 being an oath breaker if you read english translations betray stab in the back these

01:22:17.440 words are used, but in the Latin, I checked the Latin, I checked the Latin, we're never told that

01:22:22.500 Arminius betrayed the Romans. He struck at them. He attacked them. He laid them low. He defeated

01:22:28.740 them. He waged war. He didn't betray. So the Romans had no problem breaking these diplomatic

01:22:40.100 treaties. They did all the time. From the Roman perspective, these treaties were only binding

01:22:45.180 and to be upheld in as much as they continue to be useful for Rome.

01:22:50.320 It is worth noting, and we will talk about a bit of this in a little bit,

01:22:55.920 but it's worth noting that while the Romans,

01:23:00.300 after having signed a treaty of non-aggression against the Rome,

01:23:04.320 with the Cherusky, the Romans continued to engage in hostile action against the Cherusky,

01:23:11.140 against cheruski civilians like roman armies marched into germania and attacked people on

01:23:17.920 their farmsteads hostile action right um the roman authors who tell us about most of all of this go

01:23:28.700 so far at times as to defend arminius against the cruelty of drusus and later varus or their 0.73

01:23:35.560 foolishness the foolishness of drusus and varus or they'll talk about how amazing arminius was

01:23:40.740 and thus how trusted he was arminius was amazing so he was trusted because he deserved to be 0.98

01:23:46.900 trusted and then these buffoons drusus and varus screwed it all up another thing that ends up

01:23:54.100 happening uh showing up in the literature later is that there were omens from jupiter that were

01:23:58.020 missed so like oh my god oh my jupiter why did this happen roman failure right arminius is not

01:24:07.220 portrayed as this like malicious guy in the shadows the romans don't do that um to a degree

01:24:15.760 this was simply a roman attitude to barbarians that they can't be trusted hey oh look what we

01:24:21.980 got the fun trusting of this guy but throughout the sources there are a lot of hints that the

01:24:26.500 romans at some level understood that they had misbehaved and the cheruscian resistance was

01:24:31.160 merited even cassius dio even i'm almost done here so real quick i just want to sorry i'm

01:24:36.980 a thing, I don't want to go. Cassius Dio even goes so far as to chastise Varus for not only treating

01:24:41.940 the Cherusci as slaves, despite being free people with the Romans held as co-equals, but going so

01:24:49.780 far as to forcibly extract wealth from them as if they were a militarily subjected nation. The

01:24:55.380 Cherusci willingly entered into a diplomatic alliance with Rome, and they were betrayed by

01:25:02.420 men like Varus and Drusus. They were diplomatic and political allies. No one man swore an oath.

01:25:10.180 One thing is clear. The Romans in retrospect saw themselves as having been splashed by scandal

01:25:16.180 here at the Germanics. As an aside, the legions in Germania that had been pulled out to fight in

01:25:23.220 Illyria were planning on making an unprovoked attack on the civilians that were led by the

01:25:31.220 Marco Mani chieftain Marobodwas. We'll get to him in a bit.

01:25:35.620 This was in violation of a treaty.

01:25:38.260 This was not Drusus' plan. It was Augustus'.

01:25:42.500 The decision to expand Rome's borders and to destroy the Germanics... 0.99

01:25:48.180 This was Augustus' plan. 0.93

01:25:51.620 This was something that was done because Augustus needed money.

01:25:57.140 augustus was trying to harvest the germanics to pay people and bribe them drusus and varus were

01:26:04.980 agents of that plan so when cassius dio is chastising varus he's doing the thing where you

01:26:14.420 chastise the chinese emperor's favorite eunuch as a way of chastising the chinese emperor

01:26:20.500 without getting yourself in big trouble go on sir no i was just going to say that is the

01:26:27.360 the tradition when you read the literature it's not the treachery of armenius and it's

01:26:33.960 it's telling you know at the risk of spoiler alert um augustus doesn't pace the halls of the

01:26:42.240 of the palace you know saying damn you armenius he says rest give me back my legions it's not a 0.58

01:26:50.500 this external guy did something bad to us or betrayed us it's how come our people didn't 0.97

01:26:55.940 do better with this why weren't our generals able to be successful it was never

01:27:04.180 in any of the right of the writing of the time that i've read or encountered it's never

01:27:11.380 it's never that he's shady or villainous it's that he's a respected foe that bested them and

01:27:17.860 they're mad about that but they're mad that they lost not mad that that he you know somehow violated

01:27:24.900 some understanding or some trust it's oh my mars how could we have screwed this up this 0.88

01:27:32.980 guy was so amazing think of how many other barbarians he could have killed for us and 0.61

01:27:38.180 then we made and we we screwed it up and made him go do this little nationalist revival thing 0.62

01:27:43.940 this is such a big problem on our part. So the Tudorburg Forest Battle. You can bring up the

01:27:53.960 Tudorburg, the fifth map, Nick. So three legions, approximating about 18,000 men total, were left

01:28:01.860 in Germania. There were another two legions, about 12,000 men, in southwest Germania, a distance

01:28:09.140 away. The larger force was led by a man by the name of Publius Quinctilius Varos. Varos had

01:28:18.640 ruled in Germania as a wicked tyrant, raising villages and enslaving huge numbers of people,

01:28:24.280 making many enemies by waging war on any tribe that caught his eye. The Germanic peoples at 0.90

01:28:29.460 this time lived in a sort of suburban village life, carving fields out of the forests as needed.

01:28:34.960 although they had few urban centers. They were essentially everywhere in Germany.

01:28:39.820 They had a very diverse selection of crops that they farmed. They ate large

01:28:44.140 amounts of meat and dairy by ancient standards, not by

01:28:47.720 modern standards, due to large-scale and widespread animal husbandry.

01:28:51.460 Communication and organization of these omnipresent villages was done along

01:28:55.200 kinship lines, and women, because women and less so, but still it happened, men,

01:29:00.760 would journey from their home village to another to be wed. These Germanic 0.52

01:29:04.900 villages were ruled by ethno-republican tribal governments and the personal feudal regimes of

01:29:09.600 warlords. It was these structures that Rome allied itself with. So when you hear about, you know,

01:29:17.160 ancient Germanic tribesmen respected their women, that's partially because the women of these

01:29:23.140 Germanic tribes were, in a sense, the diplomatic engines of this society. They were the ones who

01:29:30.160 be in contact between tribes right um as an aside the typical germanic dwelling was a large hall

01:29:38.400 sometimes called a long house because you can just make them extend infinitely these were owned by a

01:29:45.040 patriarch and housed him his extended family and their animals who were usually kept it usually

01:29:51.120 they'd be cut in half and half of the long house would be like a bar and the other half would be

01:29:54.560 the house um exterior sheds or huts for the housing of tools and possibly animals were also

01:30:01.040 common however the germanic longhouse even excluding the barn portion would have been far

01:30:06.960 larger than dwellings than the dwellings of most romans but of course they'd be much smaller than

01:30:12.800 the luxurious mansions and villas of the romans the germanic peoples had a far more egalitarian

01:30:23.040 terms of wealth society than the romans did the average germanic tribesman was a lot wealthier

01:30:28.720 than the average roman sit roman i almost said citizen but just person in rome not the average

01:30:34.480 roman citizen citizen matters here's a term um so a modern parallel here would be that of varus

01:30:44.480 uh varus is the guy tasked with managing germany to be clear he has three legions he's marching

01:30:50.160 through germany he's attacking civilians as he goes he's essentially walking his army into a

01:30:55.760 random suburb of an allied nation to punish it because members of a totally separate hostile

01:31:01.040 nation sued for peace in an unrelated conflict and then he had his soldiers enter the houses 0.65

01:31:06.880 of non-hostile citizens of this allied state remove people from their homes beat the snot out 0.52

01:31:12.720 of them enslave them steal their stuff and then burn their houses down remember he's doing this

01:31:18.160 two rome's allies i'm kind of skipping over why varus is marching through germany at this time

01:31:23.680 it's not really important because he's attacking roman allies the cruelty of drusus and varus was

01:31:31.440 so great that even roman authors comment on it as being foolish what's more we are told that these

01:31:37.280 two men attempted to enforce roman laws upon the germanics and that the germanics did play ball

01:31:42.640 It was Varus and Drusus that misbehaved here by themselves breaking those laws and not allowing for the Germanics to have proper redress when they came to Roman courts of law, as Varus and Drusus had broken Roman laws.

01:31:58.940 Several years prior, it certainly must have weighed on Arminius that while he was off helping annihilate another nation much like his own, his nation was being oppressed by the very same sort of man he was working to repose upon the illiterates. 0.74

01:32:11.760 So I want to make it clear. We are told by the Romans that Germanic tribesmen went to Roman courts of law to seek redress for crimes against Romans and were denied a right.

01:32:24.320 They were given by treaties that the Cherusky and the Romans had signed, right? 0.97

01:32:29.980 So the Romans are treating the Cherusky like crap.

01:32:32.760 So, in the fall of 9 AD, three years after Arminius had returned home, Varus intended 0.91

01:32:40.880 to march his three legions from their northern outpost to the southern post holding the two

01:32:44.880 legions.

01:32:45.880 Along the way, he was alerted of possible treachery by Segestes, a Cheruscian nobleman,

01:32:53.320 Segestes as opposed to Segemer, who spoke of a plot by Arminius to cast out Rome.

01:32:59.360 Keep that name, Segestes, in mind.

01:33:01.640 disregarded this as nonsense. It turns out that was a bad move on his part. On

01:33:06.620 September 8th, a combined effort by the Cherusci, the Marci, the Chati, the

01:33:11.140 Bruckteri, the Chossi, and the Sicambri, and a few other smaller tribes, descended

01:33:15.880 upon Varus' legions while they marched. This began waves of lightning raves

01:33:19.800 that went lightning raves? Lightning raids that eventually resulted in all

01:33:24.500 three legions being annihilated. The Romans were completely unprepared and

01:33:28.880 were completely destroyed. Worse, the sacred eagles of the legions fell into Germanic hands.

01:33:35.340 So what the Romans were doing was they were marching along this kind of high ground ridge

01:33:40.640 in a big line, right? The Germanics fortified one portion, and then they attacked the first

01:33:49.540 portion from behind the fortifications. And then another wave came in. And then further down the 0.59

01:33:57.080 line another wave of germanics attacked the stragglers with the stragglers the people on

01:34:03.080 the back of the line as they were trying to move up to enter into formation so the romans would

01:34:09.380 typically fight by forming a sort of if you ever watched hbo's rome the first episode with uh

01:34:16.340 titus polio and titus polo and lucius verinus shows this really well they essentially form

01:34:21.340 these kind of lines where one guy would be at the front with his sword stabbing at the enemy

01:34:26.080 and then he would fall back to the back of the line and the next guy would get in like take up

01:34:32.200 the line behind him and if the guy at the front got stabbed the guy behind him would pull him back

01:34:37.680 and he would be pulled to safety and they would form these kind of like masses of soldiers that

01:34:45.040 could fluidly move troops in and out hold defensive positions but also attack at the lines

01:34:51.500 right so when the romans are doing this they're essentially attacked on the flank and so they

01:34:56.220 try to do a big pivot from a column so the romans are trying to get a bunch of men to line up to

01:35:04.620 form a fight uh fighting maneuver at the embankment but the romans then do a pincer movement

01:35:10.940 this is actually something that the romans did very often armenius no doubt learned this trick

01:35:17.180 from the romans because you'll notice here that the the romanic troops if you look on the map

01:35:22.760 they're the blue ones they have these blocks of troops that's typically not how the germanics

01:35:28.240 fought all the time but the germanics would typically do is they would do hit and run attacks

01:35:32.820 moving in and out of combat the romans hated that the romans hated having to disengage and re-engage

01:35:40.540 because their military strategy was all about forming this big massive troops

01:35:46.320 that could grind away at the enemy so the Germanic pincer movement combined

01:35:52.000 with the lightning raids meant that the Romans could never really mass up so

01:35:56.800 they actually ended up fleeing into this swamp area where they were picked off by

01:36:01.900 you know missile troops in the lake hmm so this map actually shows the present

01:36:09.640 highway in germany right and they ended up falling back to this camp and getting destroyed so

01:36:19.400 tacitus tells us that the battle happened at saltus theudoburgiensis excuse me saltus means

01:36:27.560 a sort of glade or clearing in the woods theudoburgiensis is clearly a latin a latinized

01:36:34.280 form of Teutoburg, which itself is from the Proto-Germanic Theudoburgs. This means something

01:36:41.260 like hill of the race or fortification of the people. Tacitus was writing this around 100 AD.

01:36:47.620 He tells us that this entire affair is sung of in Germanic sagas and by scalds. So that means by 100

01:36:55.000 AD, the Germanics were calling it that. Notice that Tacitus is quoting a Germanic term,

01:37:00.740 not a latin term teutoburgiensis is a latin term or sorry it's a germanic term not a latin term

01:37:09.000 in 1616 philip philip cluvel started calling it teutoburgwald and that caught on at the time

01:37:19.920 however it was actually called the osning the forest the big statue um the hermanstein mal

01:37:26.820 the one I'm sorry but the one where he's got the neck beard and he's kind of like holding his sword

01:37:31.840 up like this that was erected by Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1875 at the time it was hypothesized the site

01:37:40.040 of the statue was actually where the battle took place go on he's clean shaven in that statue

01:37:47.520 The bearded ones in New Alamo.

01:37:50.540 Oh, was I wrong?

01:37:53.300 Okay.

01:37:55.200 But the point, okay, whatever he looks like in the statue.

01:38:00.400 1875, Kaiser Wilhelm I, the first German emperor to rule over a unified German empire.

01:38:07.880 As a big middle finger to France and Napoleon, he erects this big statue of the founder of the German nation, as he was called.

01:38:16.780 he has peach fuzz in it he's got a tiny tiny little scruff this was supposed to be where

01:38:23.180 the battle took place it's actually about a hundred kilometers to the northwest of where the

01:38:27.940 the humans necmal is but it's semantics it's the same forest right um it's worth noting that

01:38:36.960 archaeology indicates that this conflict actually spread out quite a bit towards the present day

01:38:42.360 area of cotycles and it took place over several days so we like to think of this as like one

01:38:47.880 single epic fight this was kind of a shorter than a week you know like a prolonged effort

01:38:53.400 the romans had enough time to form a sort of wagon encampment to try and defend themselves that way

01:39:01.960 um yes this is the statue i'm thinking of and for the record i'm wrong he has a little bit of

01:39:07.640 he has a the tiniest indication of some peach fuzz on it if you zoom in

01:39:13.240 uh that's what we're arguing about to be fair to be fair i don't know if you can actually see his

01:39:19.640 facial hair when you're looking up at that statue no you got you gotta zoom in it's pretty small

01:39:24.680 on that one but um yeah that's i had uh on a trip um with uh steve mcnalen

01:39:40.360 trying to think what year that was now 2013 anyways long time ago um we were in the

01:39:50.040 uh to the burger bald and it was a really cool feeling being there and seeing it and looking out

01:39:57.000 over westphalia um it's a really special place oh and a side note another wombat you should still

01:40:08.280 join the afa we did not close our membership roles you are welcome to join us at any time

01:40:14.280 and i would encourage all of you to do so also another side note while i've duverted the

01:40:19.080 conversation we have a request if you are listening to this and you are in las vegas

01:40:26.120 nevada or the surrounding environs you should join the afa we've got a member who's very active

01:40:33.640 there wants to get you get more people to join we have some members there already and you would love

01:40:38.760 to see the activity increase so vegas listeners join the afa anyone else also join the afa and

01:40:48.040 And if you are in Michigan, if you're in Michigan or North Indiana or Ohio, particularly Toledo, contact me at csavage at runestone.org, and I would love to talk to you.

01:41:02.320 I also have a moot this Saturday.

01:41:03.940 There is still time if you're interested.

01:41:07.120 All right.

01:41:08.980 So.

01:41:10.800 Now we're still diverted.

01:41:12.160 So while we're still diverted, we will get to this later, but another Wombat also asked, are there modern pagan heroes?

01:41:23.420 Absolutely there are. I would direct you, and Nick can throw up the link, to where we have our recognized us true heroes on our website.

01:41:32.660 And you can see who we've got there. We have heroes two in the late 1400s.

01:41:39.220 we have um a number of like 20th century uh heroes as well so if you take a look you'll

01:41:49.420 you'll see that there and we make over a few more of those um when we get to it later in the program

01:41:54.840 but i did want to mention that right now just because it was up there and we also have somebody

01:41:59.640 asking if we've got uh activity in oklahoma we certainly have oklahoma members we'd love to have

01:42:05.020 more activity there if you you know want to get involved we can absolutely get you to local folk

01:42:10.760 builder and get stuff happening we actually have a brand new folk builder in texas that's going to

01:42:15.880 be helping out not just with texas but also helping out our oklahoma guys to get together

01:42:19.880 more often so do definitely consider joining if you find yourself there

01:42:24.700 and i think nick may have left us for uh i'm sorry chris may have left us for a break

01:42:34.360 And since he mentioned it, I did find a really close-up picture of the New Ulm statue, and it does have some neckbeards.

01:42:41.940 Yeah, that's what I was saying.

01:42:43.860 The New Ulm beard is prominent, whereas the one in Westphalia is, again, very, very small indication of a little bit of facial hair.

01:42:57.620 Yeah, the New Ulm one, the article I read, they had to get a crane to lift them up to take a close-up picture.

01:43:05.560 Also, really cool statue.

01:43:07.200 If you are in Minnesota, it's very easily accessible.

01:43:10.580 New Ulm is a really cool little town.

01:43:12.460 There's a lot of history there.

01:43:14.060 They've got quite a bit of statuary there.

01:43:17.820 We've been moving there a couple times.

01:43:19.620 It almost is where we got Baldursoff.

01:43:22.220 um we were looking and we were looking and we looked actually i think that's when we're still

01:43:30.180 didn't know where thorshoff was going to be and that's where we were looking so i guess it was

01:43:33.880 almost thorshoff perhaps there was one really tempting one in new ulm but uh there was a mold

01:43:39.840 issue that it wasn't it wasn't the choice for us but a mold issue that was worse than the issues

01:43:47.860 the boulders off hat yeah because it wasn't like hazmat oh like remember what i've heard of the

01:43:56.180 smells of boulders off it should have been a hazmat thing that's i mean that's that's

01:44:01.780 make that but health department would allow us to use boulders off as opposed to tearing it down

01:44:07.220 and that wasn't really an option at the place we're looking at yep that is fair um okay so

01:44:12.980 So while that's going on, let's see what I can knock out over here in the end.

01:44:17.540 And just Chris is doing a masterful job tonight, as I knew that he would and he always does.

01:44:26.760 But it's a really good show tonight.

01:44:28.100 We're getting a lot of really good feedback on that.

01:44:30.060 So we are fortunate to have him amongst us.

01:44:42.980 Well, let's shout out

01:44:47.140 the wonderful Mr. Gilbert Page

01:44:49.200 who donated $150

01:44:51.180 to Thorosoft Heat.

01:44:54.180 Awesome. Thank you,

01:44:55.180 Gilbert. We appreciate you. You are amazing.

01:44:59.960 Yeah, thank you for that.

01:45:04.620 He has returned. I was looking at the

01:45:07.060 questions, but I do want your kind of feedback

01:45:09.020 on a couple of them, or most of the ones

01:45:11.040 i was looking at he is back from his break um carry on where you left off if you would carry

01:45:18.560 on in the story or did you want me to do something with a question no go ahead with the uh story okay

01:45:23.520 could you throw up the the sixth image nick the post arminius situation nope

01:45:28.160 all right so red pinkish is the germanic populations that are openly hostile to rome

01:45:42.120 yellow are peoples that are in some kind of client relationship with the romans green are

01:45:49.200 um in diplomatic pacts with them in various ways right so arminius attacks at tudoburg

01:45:59.680 destroys three legions takes three eagles the impact of the dukeet upon the romans is mostly

01:46:06.500 what is focused on in regards to the battle as all of the written sources of course are by romans

01:46:11.800 there is not an adequate word in english today to describe how badly this was all seen in romanize

01:46:19.040 short of apocalyptic the universal conquest of the world given to them or given to the romans by

01:46:27.740 jupiter was seen as an obvious historical end to be defeated this grievously was not possible

01:46:34.080 short of extreme divine wrath i mentioned the fail the the omens missed hypothesis that is because

01:46:42.820 the romans have essentially failed their deities here not only failed their deities but committed

01:46:49.020 a grievous sin in a certain sense. The sacred eagles of the legions, totems given to them by

01:46:54.820 Jupiter and seen as an extension of his will, had been lost. The Romans had failed the king of the

01:47:00.000 gods. Many years after the event, Cassius Dio relates that immediately unseen signs and portents 0.93

01:47:07.860 were found, omens that had been missed, indicating the god's displeasure. 200 years of explanation

01:47:14.020 to act as a salve to an old wound.

01:47:17.480 Remember, Cassius Dio is writing long after Arminius was dead.

01:47:22.600 Upon hearing of the...

01:47:23.920 Sorry to butt in, but it's very relevant.

01:47:27.660 Thanks to Goathe East, I was watching a podcast earlier today

01:47:30.460 called The North Something or Another,

01:47:33.020 but they were talking about the linen farm,

01:47:37.000 linnus farm, and the raiding,

01:47:38.640 And how, obviously, at that time, all the money was at the churches, and they didn't have warriors there, and they fell very easily via just the shock and awe tactics of the raiders at Lindisfar in 793.

01:47:57.140 three but people writing about it later uh the church scribes basically in a very similar way

01:48:08.980 they kind of blamed god for it by basically but not in like basically saying basically he let it

01:48:16.100 happen that they were that he had removed um their protection or whatever so like he removed

01:48:24.340 the thing they really they said like the shield of over the area or something i don't know but

01:48:30.480 it's a very similar thing where like the gods let it happen or their god let it happen because they

01:48:36.940 did bad yeah no this is a big deal um i'll refer to i'll tell you what the romans call they call

01:48:48.540 this event in, like, Roman history in a bit, but, um, upon hearing of the defeat, Augustus broke

01:48:54.980 down in a frenzy, banging his head on the wall while yelling, Quintili, warre, legiones, reede!

01:49:01.540 Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions. My legions returned them. Immediately, a border

01:49:09.740 between Rome and Germania was firmly established. This was where the South ended and where the North 0.50

01:49:14.840 begun arminius is the supreme religious political and military authority in germania had drawn a

01:49:20.680 line in the sand rome would go no further and it would not go any further this this battle actually

01:49:26.480 defines pretty much the border between roman civilization and northern europe for a very long

01:49:33.880 time and while there are military incursions into germania the romans just give up on taking north

01:49:40.620 germania at this point they do not view this as something they can do the defeat is so grievous

01:49:47.440 they almost treat it as a religious commandment not to go back up there do not try this again

01:49:53.480 right varus we are told fell on his sword as was the customary practice for roman officers who fell

01:50:00.920 in the field or failed in the field either that didn't happen and he was captured or his body was

01:50:06.420 dragged out of the field, as either way he was beheaded and Arminius sent the head to one of

01:50:12.280 Varus' Germanic enemies, Marobodwus, king of the Marcomanni. Remember how I had mentioned earlier

01:50:18.800 that Augustus wanted legions in there to destroy the Marcomanni? Until Arminius came back to 1.00

01:50:24.840 Germania, the big man in Germania was Marobodwus. He was the guy that Augustus saw as being able to

01:50:31.800 unify the Germanics against Rome, so Augustus wanted him gone. Augustus was willing to break

01:50:37.380 trees, do whatever he could to get rid of Marobodwus. So until Arminius did the Teutoburg 0.99

01:50:43.780 Forest battle, Marobodwus was the guy in Germania that the Romans wanted gone. So when Arminius

01:50:51.740 sends him Varus's head, Varus was the guy tasked with killing Marobodwus, find you. He's making an 0.64

01:50:58.660 offer of alliance, but also doing like, hey, we're on the same team. We're the same people.

01:51:05.540 Look what I've done for you. I've helped you. The Marcomanni were the ones that Augustus had wanted

01:51:12.220 the legions to march on and defeat before they were called away to Illyria. The Marcomanni had 1.00

01:51:17.680 been the victims of Roman aggression in the past, and it actually retreated eastward to avoid future

01:51:22.080 conflicts. That wasn't good enough, however, and Augustus still sought to destroy them to remove

01:51:27.620 any possibility of Germanic unification, as the Marco Mani were seen as the single greatest threat

01:51:32.000 to Roman rule. Undoubtedly, that not being the case must have been one of those missed omens.

01:51:39.660 Marobodwis, however, sent the head back to Augustus as a peace offering. Augustus still

01:51:45.220 sought the destruction of the Marco Mani, however. This cowardice on Marobodwis' part was itself an

01:51:50.740 omen of what was to come. Marobodwis and Armidius would eventually come to blows at some point,

01:51:55.680 and Marobodwus would once again flee further east. Roman authors made a point to speak of the

01:52:03.120 heinous human sacrifice of the captive Romans, who are assumed to have been exsanguinated,

01:52:09.440 hanged, or drowned. Drowning shows up in Roman records as a particularly unique

01:52:14.640 Germanic way of executing people. But little archaeological evidence supports that.

01:52:20.560 dismembered corpses have been found, and we're told by Roman authors that the bodies and goods

01:52:25.840 of this land were festooned across the trees as a warning to those who might come next.

01:52:30.480 A warning seems more likely than like blood sacrifice to Wodenaz or something here,

01:52:35.200 given the archaeological findings. We're told that the battle site became a sacred

01:52:40.080 site for the Germanics, and there is some evidence for this, either literally in the

01:52:44.880 asatru of the time or of the civic religion of the germanic peoples later the romans would actually

01:52:52.240 find the site and desecrate it it would then be repaired and re-consecrated by germanic tribesmen

01:52:57.760 after this like this shows up in the archaeological record there's like three stratas for the battle

01:53:04.080 post-battle festivities i guess you could call them desecration re-consecration right so this

01:53:12.560 is almost kind of like a mound you can see it as like it's a big grave site but it's also like a

01:53:19.100 kind of center of power theudoburgs the races the races hill the people's mountain the fortification

01:53:31.340 of the tribe right like literally the hill on which the people made their stand in a certain

01:53:38.080 sense do you want to say something sir well i do one of the things that is

01:53:46.480 compelling for herman's elevation to ascended hero there's plenty of heroes of our folk and

01:53:57.680 great war leaders and people that happened to be also true but one thing that's that's noteworthy

01:54:06.560 is the post um the post victory sacrifices sacrifices and trees um i do think sacrifice

01:54:16.720 to odin in the trees is an absolute thing that likely occurred um the bog sacrifices would not

01:54:27.360 surprise me either at the time depending on you know water sacrifice was known amongst our folk

01:54:35.760 in a lot of ways and also the sacrifice of of war gear and it's

01:54:47.520 poignant and interesting to me in years to come when they go and examine the battlefield and you

01:54:53.600 know do expedition up there and see the uh the remains and the um the things done with the dead

01:55:01.920 The fact that it became like a sacred site and a holy place in Germany for the tribesmen elevates this in character to not just be the heroic deeds of a warlord, but also a holy victory with the gods of victory being acknowledged in a more front and center way than in other accounts we have.

01:55:31.920 of similar things? So archaeology confirms that at this time a massive

01:55:40.700 cultural shift happens in Germania. As Roman culture and social systems recede,

01:55:45.960 agricultural monoculture collapses and is replaced by a return to a local

01:55:51.160 dietary diversity. So the Germanic peoples had a pretty diverse diet by

01:55:54.520 ancient standards. I talked about how they ate a lot of meat and cheese. The

01:55:58.500 average italian was despite the wonderful italian cuisine today the average italian back then

01:56:05.300 basically subsisted off of grain and very dilute vinegary wine so like when caesar and his men are

01:56:11.860 marching through gaul at one point he they run out of grain but they have these huge stores of

01:56:17.620 like meat and cheese and vegetables and the soldiers are like hey oh bada bing about a boom

01:56:22.100 what's a guy gotta do to get some a pita around here and he almost has to like he has to like

01:56:27.700 really pull out some stops to keep the soldiers from just rebelling and going home because they

01:56:31.620 literally are they're not going to eat cheese and meat and pears and what no they want they want

01:56:39.240 bread right so this is this is a cultural thing for roman supremacy of bread as opposed to

01:56:46.560 all the things a germanic tribesman would eat urbanization collapses and is replaced by return

01:56:54.360 under the native village suburbanism, I guess you could call it.

01:56:58.360 Importation of Roman goods ceases for all but the nobility, it's replaced with local products.

01:57:04.120 How much of this is based on a receding of Roman colonists as opposed to taste changes in Germanic peoples themselves is uncertain,

01:57:12.160 but the change had to be felt by Germanics, simply because there's just less Roman stuff, right?

01:57:18.960 It's worth noting here, the Germanics had actually been importing things from Greece for a very long time, like 500 BC long.

01:57:27.960 The Germanics would export iron goods back in like 500 BC, and they would import Greek drinking ware.

01:57:36.960 Um, so the Romans refer to this event as the Clades Varian, the Varian disaster, although Clades has connotations of, like, beating, like, like, uh, the whooping, the whooping that Varus got, right?

01:57:57.640 So, Arminius, the family man. This is a fun part here. 0.89

01:58:04.260 Arminius would take a wife, a woman by the name of Thusnelda, which is an obviously a Germanic name, around 14 AD.

01:58:12.060 She would bear him a son, Thumelicus. Thusnelda was the daughter of Segestes. Remember that guy.

01:58:20.300 himself a powerful Cheruscian noble. You can occasionally find statements that Arminius

01:58:26.120 raped Thosnelda. That does not mean he sexually violated her, but rather that he married her 0.52

01:58:31.660 consensually. Her consent, not Segestes'. So, the specific wording that Tacitus uses is

01:58:40.500 oxorum armini raptum, which literally means wife Arminius took. Rapere does not refer to

01:58:48.720 sexual assault in Latin, but rather to taking something without asking for permission from

01:58:53.760 its rightful owner. You know who owned Thusnelda? Segestes. You know why? Because men owned women.

01:59:01.100 Women were property. That's literal. You know that meme where, like, the guy's like, I consent. 1.00

01:59:06.400 The girl's like, I consent. And then Jesus is like, I don't. It's like that. Like, literally,

01:59:12.040 like this nelda gets with arminius that it doesn't matter what she wanted sigisties had

01:59:20.440 he'd actually tacitus tells us he'd actually promised her to another man already and they

01:59:25.640 have not that's universal in both cultures that we're talking about here the yeah no

01:59:31.960 Pater Familius had the say over those kind of things.

01:59:37.400 The Roman Pater Familius could literally execute anyone under his manus, under his hand, his legal authority.

01:59:49.220 If you lived on someone's property, he could just straight up murder you for disrespecting him.

01:59:57.500 And, well, I mean, hey, you shouldn't have been on his property if you were disrespecting him.

02:00:01.180 Your fault.

02:00:01.960 right? So...

02:00:04.420 I'll start none, won't be none. 0.99

02:00:07.460 What little we know of the Snelda places her 0.74

02:00:10.020 as having been loyal to her husband. 0.93

02:00:12.340 And wanting to

02:00:14.000 be with literally the most

02:00:16.040 important man in Germania at the time.

02:00:18.460 So it's not correct to say that he

02:00:20.020 sexually assaulted her. 0.57

02:00:22.320 She wanted to be with the

02:00:23.940 coolest dude in Germany.

02:00:25.940 Her father didn't like this.

02:00:28.440 There's a question of why that was the case.

02:00:30.160 Tacitus tells us that she was promised to another man but you know let's just keep going the most

02:00:37.420 likely answer is that what happened is that Thysnelda chose Arminius and Arminius wanted

02:00:41.340 to marry her possibly out of politics possibly for romance we don't really know the father

02:00:46.300 objects probably due to the politics of it as we'll see but he had already set her up to be

02:00:51.400 wed to another man Arminius had already sprung his great trap when Thysnelda and Arminius got

02:00:57.620 together, and there was a civil war taking place amongst the Cherusky, and the Germanics as the

02:01:02.880 whole, remember from the map, right? Arminius had detonated a bomb in Germania. So Segestes was on

02:01:10.560 the pro-Roman faction. Arminius didn't know that. Arminius was a burgeoning anti-Roman Germanic

02:01:18.740 little emperor and sought to marry a woman. Thysnelda made the obvious calculation that 0.76

02:01:25.920 this was the best man that a princess of her standing could marry, the disagreement is obvious.

02:01:31.600 And it ends in an elopement, the lack of reference to sexual misconduct by Roman authors, 0.84

02:01:36.200 who, remember, had no problem slinging the sexual mud around. Like, Caesar's enemies,

02:01:43.760 Julius Caesar's enemies, they said that he was not fit to lead because he was the power bottom

02:01:49.520 in the sexual relationship he had with his nephew, Gaius, great nephew, Gaius Octavian.

02:01:55.920 And then when Gaius Octavian took power, his enemies said that he was not fit to leave because he was the power bottom in the sexual relationship that he had with his great uncle, Julius Caesar.

02:02:07.360 So the fact that we're just never the heinous rapist barbarian from the north, that doesn't show up.

02:02:14.800 There'd be no reason to not talk about it. 0.94

02:02:17.360 He's literally the Roman enemy, right?

02:02:19.980 Like, so, as an aside, this usage of rapere to mean taking without permission shows up elsewhere in Greco-Roman literature.

02:02:30.660 So, like, when you hear about Zeus raping someone, she consents.

02:02:35.780 That doesn't mean that her daddy likes her being carried off by a giant swan or whatever is happening, right?

02:02:42.640 So, the real problem here is that Arminius consented.

02:02:47.880 Thosnelda consented, Sigistes did not.

02:02:54.940 Sigistes was the snitch who alerted Varus about the plan at Teutoburg.

02:02:59.240 However, Tacitus tells us that Sigistes actually fought at Teutoburg with Arminius

02:03:04.820 due to consensu gentis, the consensus of the tribe.

02:03:11.120 Against, remember, is a state, so this means that Arminius' plan was actually almost universally accepted,

02:03:17.000 so much so that his enemies had no choice but to partake lest they lose status.

02:03:22.640 So it's interesting that this battle happens with a huge number of people

02:03:26.420 and what seems to be pretty universal acclaim,

02:03:29.180 but then there's a civil war afterwards.

02:03:31.240 Like, a large number of the Cheruski seem to have been willing to jump the Romans,

02:03:35.440 but they didn't necessarily want the fallout that would happen afterwards.

02:03:41.280 Possibly due to status hierarchies,

02:03:43.300 like, you don't want to be the guy that's too chicken to go fight the Romans, right?

02:03:50.500 We are told that Segestes had a son by the name of Segemond, and these two had lost position and

02:03:58.900 status amongst the Cherusci sometime after Tudoverg, and Segemond was sent as an envoy

02:04:04.100 to Rome to seek Roman intervention to regain their status. Segemond was actually a priest,

02:04:09.460 a sacerdotes, that we are told, who had been made one in what is now Cologne, a center of Germano-Roman syncretism.

02:04:17.220 He was actually made a sacerdotes at an altar, a Roman religious altar, that was in Cologne.

02:04:26.200 Again, Cologne was a center of Roman and Germanic syncretism and probably some Celtic stuff in there, just because that's how it always worked, right?

02:04:35.760 So, um, we're told that when news of the battle had happened,

02:04:43.460 Segemund, the son of Segestes, actually tore his oicta off and fled, like, ran off to go fight in the battle.

02:04:51.020 A oicta is a headband, a white string that will be worn around the forehead and tied in the back,

02:04:58.600 And that was actually the traditional priestly symbol of office of a Roman priest, or priestly official.

02:05:05.720 Wearing white, actually, despite common opinion otherwise, is not a super priest thing to do at this time.

02:05:14.600 Like, Greek priests didn't wear white robes, for example.

02:05:19.560 The Greco-Roman indicator of priestly status was actually the wita, this headband.

02:05:24.840 A laurel wreath is laurel, stuffed into one's weta, so like it's not actually like a U-shaped thing with leaves, it's literally plants stuffed in your headband and held there by that.

02:05:40.840 So, Segestes and Segemin have to work with Arminius to not further lose their status, but they're also losing status by having been on the pro-Roman faction.

02:05:53.080 So then they go to the Romans to try and get some kind of help. 0.71

02:06:00.080 So the Romans send a force to gather up any pro-Roman traders amongst the Cherusci and take their families with them.

02:06:10.080 Like the heavily pregnant Fusnelda, who had been staying with her father and didn't know about this and didn't approve of it.

02:06:19.080 So the Romans basically kidnapped Thusnelda because her father had not actually come out that he was betraying Arminius until literally a, I'm going to call them a Roman spec ops unit because that makes it sound really cool, but like a Roman spec ops unit comes to Germania to protect these pro-Roman traders that are fleeing to Ravenna to live in exile.

02:06:42.660 And they're, like, kidnapping this heavily pregnant woman because Arminius and Thucenelda didn't know that Sigistes was a traitor.

02:06:52.020 We're told in translation, because no one wants to hear the Latin.

02:06:56.340 Was more of the husband than of the father, in that temper which sustains her, unconquered to a tear without a word of entreaty, 0.99

02:07:04.600 her hands clasped tightly in the folds of her robe, and her gaze fixed on her heavy womb.

02:07:10.200 her. While she was subjected to humiliation by Rome, we are told that Arminius was enraged by

02:07:16.380 this. So what probably happened was that Arminius came home, was far cooler than whoever Thusnelda 0.60

02:07:22.380 was supposed to marry, and took her as his own, something she accepted. This enraged Segestes,

02:07:28.260 who was on the side of the Romans. Segestes' betrayal and turn to the Romans was probably

02:07:33.260 not foreseen by Arminius or Thusnelda, hence why Thusnelda still dwelt in his estates,

02:07:38.760 and hence why she was upset about being taken to Rome.

02:07:41.680 She and her husband did not expect Segestes to stoop so low

02:07:45.180 as to offer up his own pregnant daughter to the Romans as a prize.

02:07:51.520 Tacitus confirms this in a, no doubt, fictionalized speech by Segestes to the Romans

02:07:57.420 in which he says that his daughter is here only by force,

02:08:02.120 implying that she did not betray her husband.

02:08:05.020 Tacitus tells us furthermore that Segestes' true nature

02:08:07.480 was only exposed to the Germanics as a whole after he and his estates had fled,

02:08:12.040 meaning that Arminius and Fusnelda were certainly not aware that Segestes was an open collaborator

02:08:17.400 until it was literally too late.

02:08:21.160 On to the future.

02:08:23.480 The Roman response to Arminius' actions was one of immediately trying to stop Arminius'

02:08:28.040 obvious goal of unifying the Germanic tribes into a permanent polity.

02:08:32.200 This would go on to characterize Roman geopolitics regarding Germania for over three centuries.

02:08:37.480 Divide and rule by pitting tribes against each other and ensuring that centralization and unification can never occur without actually trying to permanently occupy the territory, something that from then on the Romans essentially viewed as divinely granted.

02:08:51.100 Again, remember, the Romans can't go back and conquer Germany.

02:08:56.360 Jupiter took that away from them. 0.90

02:08:59.220 They screwed up.

02:09:00.360 They don't get to do that again.

02:09:02.340 In 1580, the Roman leader Germanicus would get a better prize, Thucenelda.

02:09:07.920 He led an incursion into Germania to retrieve the lost eagles, and along the way somehow managed to capture Arminius' pregnant wife. 0.66

02:09:15.020 This is where the Roman spec ops unit goes to go get the traitors.

02:09:18.580 So Germanicus moves into Rome to get the eagles back, and while he's doing that, the traitors link up with him.

02:09:27.400 So Thucenelda gives birth to Thumelicus.

02:09:30.300 arminius's son in captivity she and her son would be dragged through the city to rome's in chains 0.57

02:09:36.160 as a grand display of rome's victory over germania in a triumph which was essentially a mock human

02:09:42.740 sacrifice uh an act of ritual humiliation these would in the these often ended in the ritual

02:09:50.120 strangulation of a prisoner of importance he was strangled who's no wasn't strangled in the triumph

02:09:56.480 but um when caesar drags the gaulish chieftain i think it's a person get a ricks back to rome he

02:10:03.120 is strangled to death at the end of the procession a um he's not then he's strangled so it's not

02:10:10.640 technically a human sacrifice because if they drew blood then it would be a sacrifice which

02:10:14.720 would imply cannibalism which would make the gods angry blah blah blah blah blah blah so 0.83

02:10:20.560 thus nilda being paraded through the city is a ritual humiliation of the germanic peoples 1.00

02:10:25.440 Look what we got, your pregnant queen. 0.80

02:10:32.220 Sigistes, we are told, stood in the crowd as a common onlooker and watched as his daughter was dragged through the city, humiliated.

02:10:43.260 Tacitus tells us that he would speak of Thumelicus's fate, which was a sad affair, but never does.

02:10:49.360 Tacitus's books are incomplete, not due to his failure, it seems.

02:10:55.440 He and Thusnelda were scheduled to be taken to Ravenna, which was a center of gladiatorial combat.

02:11:01.480 So some academics speculate that Thumelichus was essentially thrown into the arena to be killed for the crowd's amusement.

02:11:08.620 Gladiators were trained as early as 16, and some of them even earlier.

02:11:12.400 So it makes sense that this newborn would be thrown into combat very early, because he would literally be trained for it for most of his life.

02:11:20.340 We have no actual evidence of that.

02:11:21.960 Ravenna was really just... Ravenna was also where captured or exiled Germanic elites were sent.

02:11:28.520 That's where they were stashed.

02:11:30.540 I personally think that Thumelichus going and fighting in the arenas is a really cool story nonetheless,

02:11:37.500 but we don't know what happens to him.

02:11:40.180 Thumelichus and Thunethusnelda are obviously Germanic names.

02:11:43.420 Both of them are kind of uncertain in their etymology, though.

02:11:46.240 One thesis regarding the etymology of Thumelichus is that it's actually a pet name, meaning little thumb.

02:11:51.960 Another thesis is that it refers to the tumile, an altar involved in the worship of Dionysus.

02:11:59.960 The crowd would dance ecstatically around the altar, so the crowd is mocking and jeering around this kid because they can't get at his father.

02:12:12.960 That's the thesis, but we don't have that. It's a hypothesis.

02:12:15.960 Interestingly, the Germanic peoples at this time tended to name their children with either illiterating or rhyming names.

02:12:23.960 So, like, there's a thesis that the Seg in Segestes lends some possibility to him being related to Segemer, Arminius' father.

02:12:32.960 Note that there are multiple Segemers at this time. Segestes was not the uncle of Arminius.

02:12:38.960 The fate of this entire endeavor.

02:12:44.960 Arminius' vision would not be realized, due to the small-mindedness of those around him.

02:12:49.960 Marobodwus, the obvious ally, was too scared to come to blows with Rome, even while Augustus still literally was plotting to destroy him.

02:12:58.960 Men like Syngistes and Flavius preferred trinkets and golden chains to what Arminius was proposing.

02:13:03.960 Arminius' uncle, Ingwiomer, whose name coincidentally is that Ingwi, Ingvi, Ingvi Frey,

02:13:11.960 sided with the Marco Mani despite helping Arminius fight the Romans.

02:13:16.960 These traitors would end up murdering Arminius, ending the possibility of him or someone like him unifying the Germanics.

02:13:23.960 So, to be clear here, basically everyone at this time fights against the Romans at Teutoburg. 0.69

02:13:29.960 They immediately start breaking up afterwards.

02:13:32.960 Segemer and Ingweomer both fight against the Romans, so does Segestes.

02:13:39.440 So interestingly here, hang on, Tacitus' narrative is actually really

02:13:48.640 involved and has a lot of speeches and quotations. How accurate these are, it's

02:13:54.800 Tacitus. But like there's a portion in the story where like Arminius and

02:14:01.160 Laos are on two sides of the Rhine, and they start cussing each other out in Latin, and then they get, like, heated enough that they have to switch to Proto-Germanic, so, you know, they're like, at each other across the river, and Tacitus doesn't really have a very involved story for what happens to Arminius when his kinsmen betray him. 0.62

02:14:22.000 It's just kind of matter-of-factly, yeah, and then the Germanics, you know, they poison him, almost like he's kind of disappointed, right?

02:14:31.160 Um, Arminius lived for about 37 years and was in power for 12 of them, so Tacitus tells 1.00

02:14:38.580 us.

02:14:39.580 They only took power at 25, and thus had spent about seven years in Roman employ, meaning

02:14:43.900 that those 12 years begin at Tudelberg.

02:14:47.080 The chief of the Chatti, Ad Gandestrius, wrote a letter to the Roman Senate, offering to

02:14:53.920 poison Arminius.

02:14:55.960 The Romans, we are told, refused the offer due to the great virtue of the Romans, who dealt with their enemies head-on.

02:15:03.840 Undoubtedly, the need to rectify this grievous problem and not let it fade into the background was also a great concern of the Senate,

02:15:10.140 which might have been why they didn't take up this offer of poisoning, because Arminius needed to die, or else he would remain a symbol.

02:15:20.680 As an aside, the Chatti fought with Arminius at Teutoburg.

02:15:24.680 In 47 AD, the remaining Cherusky, now a pacified and harmless faction in Germania, requested that Flavius' son Italicus be sent as an envoy by Emperor Claudius to rule them.

02:15:43.680 They had been brought so low that they had to request for the Roman Emperor to order their king to leave the luxury of Rome to lead them.

02:15:52.680 Italicus journeyed to Germania, and evidently things did not go well, so he was forced into exile shortly after.

02:15:58.680 Chariomerus, presumed to be Italicus's son, but we don't have any confirmation of that, would replace him and also be driven into exile.

02:16:07.680 In 88 AD, the Cherusky would finally be obliterated by the Chatty, who had fought with Arminius at Teutoburg, and then offered to kill him.

02:16:17.680 do you want to go into anything here sir before i kind of ramble about some history stuff from here

02:16:28.320 now you're going to start rambling about some history stuff i love it i love it no i'm good

02:16:34.400 the points i want to make about this will be good when you're when you're afterwards they'll keep

02:16:41.680 okay so i want to just talk about some results and alternatives about what happened here

02:16:47.680 The death of Arminius was crucial in Roman geostrategy regarding Northern Europe.

02:16:53.680 The traditional methods of blunt force were unreliable and ultimately could be defeated.

02:16:57.680 To that end, Rome quadrupled down on divide and rule. 0.64

02:17:01.680 If the Germanics were too busy fighting each other, they could not resist Rome. 0.73

02:17:05.680 For the next 500 years or so, this would be the de facto official policy regarding how barbarians were handled. 0.77

02:17:11.680 handled. Official large-scale action could unify them, so Rome simply never acted against any given

02:17:17.480 barbarian group as a whole. Rather, it pitted them against each other and used internal divisions to

02:17:21.980 sow discord. Had Arminius not have died by treasury, it's likely that this policy would not have been

02:17:27.540 adopted. Rome would have been pincered between Persia in the south and Germania in the north.

02:17:33.420 Arminius would have established some kind of Germanic kingdom, probably a kind of feudalism

02:17:37.700 come early rather than a bureaucracy, but it would have been a semi-unified military power that could

02:17:42.500 resist Roman and later Hunnic aggression in any sense. Rome would have to enter a permanent

02:17:48.420 defensive position from then on with an interesting geopolitical idea of allying with India against

02:17:55.380 Persia. This would be done via higher taxes. The Romans would have to raise taxes in order to

02:18:02.340 increase spending to fight the Germans, which would put greater strain on the Roman economy.

02:18:07.060 The border with Parthia in the Levant, Parthia is Persia, would have been fortified.

02:18:12.740 Either more or less focus would be put on Israel. 0.59

02:18:15.840 The reason the Romans cared about Israel was because it was the, if you draw, if you find the line of the lowest distance from Persia to the Mediterranean, it's smack dab through Israel, right?

02:18:30.780 So Israel had to be fortified in order to keep the Persians from getting to the Mediterranean, which was the lifeblood of the Roman economy and world.

02:18:40.200 So either more or less focus would be put on Israel, resulting in a stronger Jewish puppet kingdom, or a more tight-fisted Hellenistic Levantine fortress province.

02:18:51.380 Either way, the middle ground that happened in real life would be abandoned.

02:18:54.820 so probably no Christianity on those grounds alone, in addition to any other butterfly effect

02:19:00.760 kind of things. Had Arminius succeeded in making a unified Germanic state, Rome wouldn't be split

02:19:07.700 east and west, as there wouldn't be a military need for dividing the empire. The Roman Empire

02:19:12.400 might have exploded nonetheless, but it probably would have resulted in a smaller Italian polity

02:19:18.720 than a complete conquest by Germanics, because they would be in their own state and would

02:19:23.480 extract wealth via raiding or tribute, not actual conquest.

02:19:27.620 Alternatively, Rome's fall would be like China, 0.80

02:19:30.460 an occasional kerplu-y into war lordification,

02:19:33.880 followed by re-centralization. 0.96

02:19:35.960 There'd be no Islam, no Christianity. 0.80

02:19:39.220 We'd have a European bloc, a Mediterranean bloc, and an Iranian bloc. 0.77

02:19:43.260 The Slavic expansion probably wouldn't have happened 0.92

02:19:46.180 unless Rome and Germania wore themselves out. 1.00

02:19:49.220 The Slavs would probably be a puppet people like the Armenians. 0.99

02:19:52.300 realistically a lot of things from the mediterranean world like like christianity 0.96

02:19:59.000 but probably a lot of greek philosophy too wouldn't spread into germania due to it being

02:20:03.620 foreign roman nonsense but what about another hypothetical it's fun to think about what

02:20:09.800 happened if romania or farmenius had won what about if he hadn't done anything he could have

02:20:16.320 just chilled out in rome he had it made he could have gone to a stately villa in etruria and had

02:20:23.240 a diet consisting of dates and high class prostitutes to the end of his days

02:20:28.140 what if he hadn't acted the romans would likely have put down marobotus germania would become

02:20:34.040 like gallia entirely romanized and plugged right into the roman economy rome would extend into

02:20:38.880 poland because if you if you draw like a radius from the farthest northwest that rome gets it's

02:20:44.680 into Romania, and if that radius keeps going, it gets into Poland. And they'd probably develop a

02:20:50.300 client state in the Baltics, essentially northern Armenia. There'd be no Germanic migrations because 0.78

02:20:55.900 the Germanics would have been totally Romanized. Rome just bears the blunt of the Huns. The greater 0.85

02:21:01.500 tax base and area to expand in, Gallia plus a safe Germania, means that the West would probably 0.65

02:21:07.300 be wealthier and more stable due to having far more soldiers. Rome could easily and freely move

02:21:13.640 troops from Gallia and Germania into Persia, its only real enemy for conflict, Scandinavia would

02:21:21.240 experience a far earlier Latinization. This matters for us because Scandinavia would be the only place 0.86

02:21:26.360 where Germanic culture remained. While Christianity probably wouldn't happen due to butterfly effect

02:21:30.680 stuff, we'd still see a massive Roman influence very early in Scandinavia, so there'd be no equivalent

02:21:36.360 to the Eddas. Germanic languages would probably be relegated to like the Alps and Scandinavia.

02:21:42.360 there'd be no migration period as Rome would just vent the Germanic peoples where it needed to send

02:21:47.640 them. Rome might not actually fall or at least it did do the collapse into a number of bickering 0.89

02:21:54.200 Latin kingdoms that then reform thing. There'd be no southern versus northern Europe. The

02:21:58.520 Mediterranean would just extend up to Denmark. The western empire wouldn't get destroyed by Germanics 1.00

02:22:03.800 and it wouldn't need its own separate imperial structure due to them. There'd be a west-east 0.98

02:22:08.280 division new to latin greek but there'd probably still be one coherent roman government and

02:22:12.840 identity christianity if it did happen would probably be more successful here it was it would

02:22:17.840 be immediately in a top-down unimpeded government system there'd be no trinitarianism because the

02:22:25.260 arians would have total domination with no interruption caused by the germanics defeating

02:22:29.400 the arian power centers the pope probably wouldn't be as important because the roman empire wouldn't 0.68

02:22:34.480 fall he'd just be one patriarch among many we might even see some odd thing like a patriarchate

02:22:41.280 in cologne if this is the case there would probably be no protestant reformation as there would be no

02:22:47.280 people dominance just the imperial religion forever now christianity might not take root

02:22:52.720 but whatever did manage to realize that you could just intolerance your way to victory in the roman

02:22:58.960 government would do the same could be mithraism or the isiac mysteries or whatever it's important

02:23:03.840 to remember here that while we're talking about christianity christianity was not the first

02:23:09.420 religion to take over rome like the elite of rome it was just the first to realize that you could

02:23:14.480 force the lower classes to do what you wanted rome was on like its eight or ninth new religion

02:23:20.740 as far as the elites were concerned by the time christianity came along so again whatever the

02:23:27.160 Mediterranean looks like in this strange no Arminius world it takes over Europe

02:23:33.820 completely there's no divisions in Europe at this and from here then right um

02:23:40.000 do you want to say something before I go into I have this as why do we care and

02:23:46.340 it's kind of just my thoughts. Go on, sir. So sure. One of the, I think it's, I think

02:23:59.160 it's interesting. I think you're, you know, what if speculations, the further they radiate

02:24:05.740 out, the more speculative they are, but they kind of point to how very significant this

02:24:14.800 was. And I want to, there's a couple of things and I want to get to it. We have a particular

02:24:25.660 question coming up that I think is going to get to it in,

02:24:35.440 And I'll go ahead and put it in now.

02:24:39.660 So one thing that I think is really cool is just how Tacitus closes out his bit about Arminius and eulogizes him in a way that I think is important and I've always really liked.

02:24:57.440 you know he remarks that armenius was undoubtedly the liberator of germany a man who not in its

02:25:05.200 infancy as captains and kings before him but in the high noon of its sovereignty threw down the

02:25:10.960 challenge to the roman nation in battle with ambiguous results in war without defeat he

02:25:17.920 completed 37 years of life 12 of power and this day is sung in tribal lays those he is unknown

02:25:25.600 an unknown being to greek historians who admire only the history of greece the

02:25:37.440 the very poignant

02:25:41.920 truth and lesson that i think is

02:25:45.040 demonstrated in the rise and fall of herman is

02:25:55.760 when our ancestors when our people when our folks stand united

02:26:01.840 their accomplishments are unstoppable when they stand united when we stand united

02:26:10.800 there's nothing we can't overcome the idea of these tribesmen standing up to the legions

02:26:22.380 and getting three eagles and forever like those legions don't exist anymore we don't

02:26:30.680 talk about them anymore and being literally the most power

02:26:35.580 there's a case to be made for like cyrus for alexander but barring them the most powerful

02:26:44.460 man the world had ever seen was augustus and he's spending the rest of his life

02:26:51.820 distraught about this loss it stopped them you know we stood together and stopped the most powerful

02:26:59.900 force in the world for basically the rest of its existence at a river and

02:27:11.100 all that even within one generation people couldn't stay loyal they broke off got petty

02:27:17.900 over petty petty nonsense to be disloyal and to break off into small and irrelevant chunks

02:27:24.860 and that's a great tragedy and we don't see the german nation reuniting until

02:27:35.260 you know auto von bismarck and that's

02:27:41.340 that's an important lesson for us to learn today and it's something that

02:27:46.140 it's something that i i think a lot of us see within modern house of true and within

02:27:55.820 various movements amongst our folk everybody wants to continually balkanize into small irrelevancy

02:28:05.180 or over petty you know pettiness and greed and small-mindedness betray everyone whoever wants

02:28:14.700 to step up and lead anything and we see we see the tragedy of how that behavior keeps us down

02:28:23.820 but we also see the hope of man but when we get it right and we stick together even for a moment

02:28:31.980 the ability to grasp and surpass destiny is amazing for a brief moment our people had it

02:28:42.620 together just for a second and there's a victory you know what 2000 and almost 2020 years ago

02:28:52.940 we're still celebrating we still are in awe of so the hope of what can be accomplished when we stand

02:29:02.140 unified versus just the the uh tremendous waste when we don't and when there's pettiness the the

02:29:14.940 crab in the bucket thing as much as we feel it now the crab in the bucket thing existed in the

02:29:20.060 the dark forests and swamps of the germany of our ancestors in you know the same

02:29:26.700 that same uh dark impulse was there as well so it's really important that we learn that lesson

02:29:36.300 and that serves a guide that we don't continue to make that mistake and that we are able to surpass

02:29:41.740 it to achieve the victories that we want for our folk for our gods and you know for our future

02:29:50.060 And it's worth noting here. Alright, Arminius does his thing. Arminius is killed.

02:29:58.060 The Roman strategy regarding Germania was divide and rule from then on out.

02:30:04.060 That strategy was actually maintained very well for 1,794 years, in fact. 0.99

02:30:11.060 Because from 21 AD to until 1815, Germany and Germanics were a mess. 0.96

02:30:20.620 Like, we don't need to put it up, but like, the Holy Roman Empire, go look up a map of it. 0.99

02:30:25.600 Then remember that that doesn't include Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, England, right?

02:30:38.160 and then napoleon comes in and he's all 0.79

02:30:43.220 and blows up the holy roman empire and then the congress of vienna is like well we can't simply

02:30:50.880 have chaos in europe we have to organize it on rational enlightenment principles and then they 0.78

02:30:55.680 make the german confederation like they actually like take all of the the germans and squish them

02:31:02.060 together and then the germanic leaders are like wait we can do this like we can actually unify 0.83

02:31:08.520 and it results in germany like the the state of germany in a very real sense is something that

02:31:15.800 augustus was actually trying to prevent from existing any degree of germanic unification was

02:31:22.400 bad it was literally the enemy as far as roman with the romans the romans were concerned and

02:31:29.680 if you look at this, if you look at what happens, there's a number of really big Germanic rulers

02:31:34.360 that come through. Athanaric is, like, our favorite one and all that, but then there's,

02:31:39.160 like, Edoacer, and a bunch of other ones who, yeah, yeah, they're Christian, but still, like, 0.84

02:31:44.280 they unify a bunch of Germans, and then, uh-oh, bad times ensue, not for the Germans, mind you, 0.59

02:31:52.060 but for the Roman Empire, because they didn't want these people to unify.

02:31:56.080 so um so this is just kind of my thing on why do we care in a big picture sense like sure he won a

02:32:09.160 cool battle against Rome but like why is why is this important first he essentially created the

02:32:15.680 division between northern and southern Europe in doing so he prevented Roman incursion into

02:32:19.800 Scandinavia into the Baltic into the Slavic world had he not done so in such a massive singularly

02:32:25.240 powerful act, the Romans would have continued marching northeast, and they

02:32:30.040 end up marching into Scandinavia to a degree. He is essentially the guy who

02:32:36.280 prevented Rome from swallowing up all of Europe. He is, in a certain sense, the

02:32:41.440 second most important man in producing the Poetic Edda behind only Semondre

02:32:45.940 Frohli, because without him, without Arminius, Roman culture spreads into

02:32:50.900 Scandinavia. Secondly, Arminius was a man who could have submitted to Rome and

02:32:56.540 simply left his people to their own devices. He could have. He was a citizen

02:33:00.800 in Equai. He could have retired to a villa in Hurturia and spent the rest of

02:33:04.900 his life eating dates and sleeping with high-class prostitutes. That's literally 0.98

02:33:08.660 what was expected of him. He didn't. He went home and fought for his people. He was

02:33:14.940 presented with comfort and luxury and ease, and he chose the alternative. But

02:33:20.000 But more importantly, he chose to organize his people.

02:33:23.500 He chose to take a disorganized, scattered mass—and Germania was that in comparison to Rome—and uplifted into something greater.

02:33:32.500 He didn't have to do that, but he did it.

02:33:36.060 Third, he had a vision.

02:33:38.060 He had seen eternal principles while abroad and sought to manifest them in the world.

02:33:43.460 He was a man of ideas and a man of enacting them.

02:33:46.560 He was, as we say today, a doer.

02:33:48.700 He was not a reactionary, but rather enacting a coherent system of ideas upon the world, a unified, organized, civilized polity.

02:33:59.140 The Theudanas was not just the secular leader of the Cherusky, but their high priest.

02:34:03.620 Arminius was, in a sense, structuring his society on that of Asgard.

02:34:07.040 Our religious backing to Arminius' actions are threaded through this, as Tudorberg was a holy site to the Aesir after the battle,

02:34:15.520 and casting off the yoke of Roman religion and slavery in favor of the faith of the forefathers

02:34:21.640 is repeatedly stressed by the Roman authors.

02:34:25.160 It's not super focused on by academics today, but the Romans saw this as having religious importance,

02:34:31.800 not just for them, but for the Germanics.

02:34:35.000 For the Germanic peoples, this meant that the Aesir wanted them to be independent.

02:34:41.420 They didn't want them to just dilute into Rome.

02:34:43.560 And the Romans, to a certain degree, kind of accepted the same. If Jupiter wanted the Romans to conquer Rome, or conquer Germania, well, either they would have won at Teutoburg, or they would not have, you know, you know what I mean here, like, this wouldn't have happened.

02:35:04.880 Either they lost the chance, or they were denied it entirely.

02:35:09.880 These three are priestly acts. Arminius is thus a hero not for our people, but for our faith.

02:35:15.880 Arminius is the man with a vision. He had a vision to order his people in accordance with cosmic order and natural law, not as a decentralized and chaotic mass, but as an orderly nation.

02:35:28.880 was to uphold the principle of the worship of the ancestors, the oldest ancestors being the gods.

02:35:35.200 It's important to recognize here that he was not betrayed due to an alternative vision.

02:35:39.520 We're never told about that.

02:35:41.360 He was not betrayed due to disagreements over principles or theology or political ideology.

02:35:46.160 He was not even really betrayed because he disagreed with the ideals of Rome.

02:35:49.360 We're not told that he was betrayed because his kinsmen particularly liked how Rome did things.

02:35:58.480 he was betrayed by vice you by cowards by dishonorable men by those who chose he was

02:36:05.440 betrayed because you're not the boss of me he was betrayed by those who chose the lower

02:36:12.640 or the higher by those who could not strengthen themselves for the journey

02:36:17.760 the results of that betrayal is what is thus always to traders destruction within a lifetime

02:36:23.920 that Cherusky had fallen from the center of a grand new order to being a rump state casually destroyed by its neighbors. 0.79

02:36:31.760 Why? Disloyalty. Betrayal is always driven by vice.

02:36:35.360 It is not a disagreement, there is no both sides, because the betrayer casts away having a side when they choose chaos.

02:36:46.560 Betrayal is not a competing order, it is simply chaos.

02:36:50.880 I want you to pause and reflect for a minute here, in that this betrayal is quite literally exactly what the Roman Empire wanted.

02:36:58.480 In lieu of being able to completely conquer Germania, the Roman Empire enacted a policy of enacting chaos and disorder in Germania to neutralize it as a possible threat.

02:37:08.800 Infighting, bickering, backbiting, and betrayal were all the tool and goal of Roman action in post-Arminius Germania.

02:37:17.440 There were two sides—Rome and Germania. Any Germanic chieftain who did not side with Germania, 0.51

02:37:22.960 no matter what he said that he wanted, was aiding and abetting Rome and his own destruction. 0.64

02:37:28.320 Because if Rome couldn't have Germania, no one could. The Romans wanted it that way. Any Germanic

02:37:35.120 leader who wasn't working for Arminius was, whether he liked it or not, working for 0.93

02:37:39.680 Rome and his own destruction. Today, whenever we fight, we are just twisting the knives deeper

02:37:46.160 into arminius's back today whenever you break an oath you are saying that you would gladly work

02:37:52.020 against arminius let's make this a little more relevant to today nick do you have a picture of

02:37:57.860 odin's off on hand yeah one second i should have included that one i'm sorry i mean you do you boo

02:38:10.440 getting loaded all right let's make this a little more relevant here every trader every

02:38:24.380 oath breaker everyone who says oh well but the afa didn't massage my ego they are saying that

02:38:28.340 they want this place torn down every bloat every stumble every house of hotny every wedding every 0.91

02:38:33.120 good memory they want them all chucked in the garbage heap and set on fire that is what betrayal 0.98

02:38:38.080 entails. Now, this is one of our places, but you can extend this outwards. It's not just an AFA

02:38:44.960 thing. When we speak of loyalty, we do not only mean holding firm to those with vision, to those

02:38:50.640 upon whose shoulders the gods placed their hands, to those who act so that we might have a better

02:38:54.880 life. We also mean acting when those people need us to. We also mean helping to carry the load when

02:39:00.160 they are not enough. If you do not help carry the load, then we are all one set of hands closer to

02:39:05.920 being crushed by it disloyalty benefits no one not only the disloyal or not even not even the

02:39:11.680 disloyal it is a net loss for everyone whenever a member of the group acts badly all members of the

02:39:17.760 group suffer whenever a man breaks his oath all men are that much weaker whenever a man betrays

02:39:23.280 his friends all men are that much weaker whenever a man spreads lies about his fellow men all men are

02:39:29.040 that much weaker disloyalty to the gods to the folk to the gozar of the folk and the gods to the

02:39:34.160 ancestors, these are all one and the same thing, and all will lead to the others. 0.91

02:39:38.000 Disloyalty will lead to the imposition of foreign customs and faith. 0.99

02:39:41.200 It will lead to forgetting one's ancestry, literally to forgetting one's image 0.80

02:39:45.920 or one's lineage. It will lead to turning on everyone else.

02:39:49.920 If one is a betrayer, then they cannot trust anyone else to not betray.

02:39:53.040 If one is a betrayer, then they cannot be trusted to not betray again.

02:39:56.560 If you betray someone, you can't be certain that you're not going to be

02:39:59.280 betrayed. You want proof? I mean heck, go look at

02:40:01.920 the truth they betrayed stephen flowers and became universalist that was the trend that was a trend

02:40:08.800 between 1987 and 1994 and initially focus group would have some member or members they get upset

02:40:14.880 about something and then they would betray their so-called friends and then the betrayers would

02:40:18.400 spiral into universalism because if you break the basic rules there's nothing stopping you from

02:40:23.040 breaking the advanced rules i mean that literally the truth ended up doing like voodoo like what

02:40:30.320 what are you if y'all contains betrayers? If you are willing to raise a middle finger to the Aesir

02:40:36.960 or drive people away from their temples in order to prosecute some interpersonal feud,

02:40:40.960 then you're not really working for the cause of the Aesir. If you are willing to stab your friends 0.83

02:40:45.920 and comrades in the back, you're not traditionally minded. If you are willing to spread lies to keep 0.58

02:40:51.680 people from worshiping Thor in his temple, then you are totally willing to worship Loki. What's

02:40:56.320 stopping you you're driving people away from thor's temple might as well right no one sings

02:41:02.300 songs of the men who betrayed arminius their names are lost to time that's a good thing but

02:41:07.620 it's also a bad thing no one will sing songs of those men as the ones who stood firm next to him

02:41:12.500 as a hero we have all of us lost because arminius was betrayed we should not repeat the same mistake

02:41:20.460 and that was from when this was a uh lecture sermon i was going to give to a private afa

02:41:29.720 audience instead of doing on vns but i didn't want to lose it so done

02:41:35.360 no you did awesome tonight with that i thank you for presenting all of that and

02:41:43.680 absolutely you know that was something that

02:41:47.460 again, I hope everyone takes the lessons from his life and can internalize those and learn from

02:42:05.460 them. Something on the historical significance that's, you know, that is interesting. It's

02:42:12.540 funny that you say he's probably the second most important person in making the eddas happen um

02:42:22.940 yeah it occurs to me what little we know of um of gaelic religion of celtic uh

02:42:30.540 gaulish religion almost nothing because they were so quickly overcome and assimilated and their

02:42:37.580 their religious practice you know lost to the myths of antiquity um and and just to say real

02:42:45.860 quick here not just because of the romans mind you the romans were willing to allow

02:42:50.720 religion to continue to exist what happened was the gaulish people were made extremely fragile

02:42:57.860 to someone coming in and saying chuck your heritage in the bin true it it was christianity 0.91

02:43:04.540 that destroyed what we know what we would now wouldn't know what we would know today about

02:43:10.060 gaulish polytheism but christianity could only do that because the gauls had been made weak enough

02:43:16.380 that this could even be humor like we're not going to write it down first you know well and

02:43:23.420 that's the thing is it's not just that so it isn't that you know latin mars worshiping rome

02:43:33.740 obliterated all these things but just a historical truth this isn't even to villainize the empire

02:43:40.620 it's just to say historic the historical truth is it created a venus system throughout

02:43:49.260 its empire that the virus of christianity flowed through the the rhine was a barrier to that to

02:43:59.020 where our our customs our lore our religiosity was able to survive to the time of writing and

02:44:09.260 it wouldn't have been able to otherwise it's one of those you know by the time the people who were

02:44:14.460 intimately aware of it and involved with it got to writing they would have long since been romanized

02:44:20.620 and then infected with the spread of christianity much much sooner so it's such a a fortunate thing 0.82

02:44:29.020 That because of, you know, because of September 9th, 9 AD, we have access to all we have.

02:44:41.760 It's funny because people will, you know, criticize our lack of, you know, all of the things we don't have, but it's amazing all the things we do have because that force was stopped at that moment.

02:44:59.020 yeah you're we continue to get praise heaped on you in the chat and it's well deserved um i look

02:45:07.380 forward to all of these that you can do because you do such a good job at it

02:45:11.500 can i throw in a real quick about what i think is interesting about arminius

02:45:16.500 you can throw in anything you like i think it's kind of interesting because arminius is

02:45:22.640 i'm just gonna i i could be wrong here but i believe he's the only one of our heroes

02:45:28.960 whose struggle did not involve christianity in some capacity right and in a certain sense

02:45:38.400 that make that's because he's the most moral uh or ethical almost of our heroes in as much as his

02:45:47.040 struggle was against immorality itself rather than doctrinal disagreements or disloyalty to the

02:45:54.000 Aesir, right? You can get into complex theological debates about Christianity

02:46:01.120 versus Asatru, and what is real and what is not. Arminius wasn't struggling against

02:46:09.020 people who said, well, the Aesir are either demons or don't exist. He was

02:46:13.700 struggling against people who would say, oh yeah, loyalty and oaths are awesome,

02:46:17.300 and then sought to betray a man who, frankly, was saving their bacon from

02:46:22.860 complete and utter destruction he's not necessarily a sectarian kind of fellow because

02:46:31.660 at the end of the day his struggle is almost against our lesser nature than some kind of

02:46:36.620 outside force in a certain way he's almost he's a uh a hero against a vice rather than christianity

02:46:45.100 or or something like that less disloyalty to the icer and just disloyalty in general

02:46:57.980 yeah that is that is a unique feature amongst our heroes

02:47:02.540 um you know he was one of the earliest batch of heroes too

02:47:11.020 so got a couple we got a couple of few questions here tonight

02:47:15.100 One, is Proto-Indo-European the oldest known language that white people spoke?

02:47:22.780 Has there ever been any speculation as to what language of any Neanderthals spoke?

02:47:30.480 Do you have any insight on that, Chris?

02:47:32.360 Um, so, a proto-language, anytime you hear proto-X, this is a statistical model that is trying to figure out what the most likely, based on the evidence that we have, language spoken at a given time was.

02:47:58.760 So as an example, you might have heard me say things like theodoburgs, theodanas, that zz there at the end, that is a nominative singular suffix on a protodramatic noun, masculine noun to be precise.

02:48:15.700 that is was first hypothesized due to the in in large part due to the that ends

02:48:26.580 old norse strong masculine now it's like right uh that sound had to come from somewhere

02:48:37.140 when we look at other languages and the sounds that they have what sound changes

02:48:44.060 that are reflected elsewhere in the language

02:48:46.560 go back to a singular sound, right?

02:48:50.840 Then we found some really old artifacts that have...

02:48:56.420 So this is cool.

02:48:57.900 There's two spears from both about, like, 500 A.D.

02:49:02.400 One found in, like, Romania, one found in Denmark.

02:49:05.540 And they both have the same word written on the spear

02:49:09.020 as the spear's name, the spearhead, in runes.

02:49:12.120 but they are in proto-norse which i just said it's i just said that's a statistical reconstruction

02:49:19.420 proto-norse is actually not it got named and then we found things written in it um but the the name

02:49:26.120 is uh in gothic it's like round rauna and in old and in proto-norse it's raunias it means reckoner

02:49:34.800 but more actively it means tester like test like stabbing with the spear you know like

02:49:41.980 let's find out right and it actually has uh the z written there right so that confirms the

02:49:52.660 hypothesized sound right we're basically doing that with everything this is where like the

02:49:58.700 That's where the laryngeals come from. That's why her name is Kheusos. That's why it's that H sound, as opposed to one of the myriad of vowels that are found prefacing the name in the daughter languages. 1.00

02:50:11.700 The earliest, farthest back reconstructed proto-language is proto-Afro-Asiatic. It's extremely reliant upon Egyptian for its reconstruction.

02:50:25.700 spoken somewhere around 15 000 bc um neanderthals lived around uh four thousand forty thousand bc

02:50:39.220 so it's a cool idea but linguistic reconstruction works by taking

02:50:47.460 Linguistic reconstruction works by taking what we have and seeing how far back we can go, but the problem is it's a pyramid, and it eventually comes to a point.

02:51:01.460 For Indo-European languages, the farthest back we can go with any degree of certainty is Proto-Indo-European.

02:51:12.460 We can make statements about what pre-Proto-Indo-European probably entailed at some point.

02:51:16.460 Pre-Proto-Indo-European was probably ergative, absolutive, and probably had a verb, subject, object, word order.

02:51:22.820 That's why verbs end in a suffix that marks the subject.

02:51:27.960 I see, you see, he sees, that z at the end of he sees, that indicates it's a third-person singular indicative noun.

02:51:43.140 um so that that comes from an old something like see he it he sees it right he see it he see it

02:51:55.060 emerge together um the ergative absoluto from pi can be determined because of the

02:52:01.540 odd ergative nature of a lot of verbs regarding thought and uh the senses like i smell i smell

02:52:09.700 the flower i smell bad right that sort of thing um i actually smell quite good just for the record

02:52:16.180 but that's neither here nor there so the problem is that we don't have any sister languages to

02:52:25.620 proto-indo-european because proto-indo-european isn't tested if we did we could figure out what

02:52:32.580 pre-proto-indo-european looked like by looking at the sound changes between pi and its sister language

02:52:38.260 so it kind of as we lose information from the family tree we can only go back to the common

02:52:45.820 ancestor which currently seems to be about 15 000 bc again this is largely reliant on the extreme

02:52:55.200 conservatism of egyptian now there are linguistic theories about nostratik and they are

02:53:05.160 extremely reductive.

02:53:09.460 No stratic, had verbs,

02:53:11.700 nouns, adjectives, and pronouns.

02:53:17.440 That's not very helpful.

02:53:20.960 Probably had, maybe had nasals

02:53:23.540 in the pronouns, like knee.

02:53:28.360 We don't use this anymore, but like unk,

02:53:31.060 unk would be the object form of the second person.

02:53:35.160 the dual first-person pronoun, if we still use that.

02:53:40.260 We don't. Thank the gods. Wit and unk sounds terrible.

02:53:46.360 So I can't say anything about Neanderthal language.

02:53:49.560 I would honestly imagine that we just don't have enough to say anything meaningful on it.

02:53:54.560 I do know there are some people that like to look into...

02:53:58.960 They like to posit about what Neanderthal brains could be like from the skulls,

02:54:02.760 which is a cool idea. But at the same time, remember, it's entirely possible to be a postal

02:54:08.020 worker, have a perfectly normal skull, and then be also missing 95% of your brain matter.

02:54:13.580 Like, the brain is really squishy, and you really have to screw up a brain's shape

02:54:19.600 before it'll just squish into shape, you know? Now, as far as white people go, 0.96

02:54:28.500 I think you could make quibbles about what constitutes white people because, like, our ancestors spoke the Neolithic hunter-gatherer languages and the Anatolian farmer languages, and those predate Proto-Indo-European, but we can't take, we can't reconstruct those before pi, right?

02:54:51.300 um even the vast cognic languages the the ones that bask is related to bask is the only pre pre

02:55:01.640 indo-european um language in europe left that hasn't entered into europe like finnish maltese

02:55:09.340 hungarian these all entered into europe after the proto-indo-european migrations right

02:55:13.300 basque is not related to pi um so yes but i i don't think that's necessarily a hard

02:55:24.740 the earliest you know white people writing is linear a and that's 1000 bc you know that's old

02:55:37.020 but there's still like 5 000 years of history between the proto-european migration and

02:55:43.280 and linear be right do you have anything to add sir no other than the sad truth is with a lot of

02:55:53.660 historical things you can only go back so far and then unless you discover some new piece of

02:56:00.320 archaeology or some new you know you unearth some new thing there's only so far back you can take

02:56:07.020 it you know everything comes from somewhere there was at some point when our people first started

02:56:12.020 making noises and when those noises first started making sense and when you made a different noise

02:56:17.700 for a buffalo than you did for lightning over time but all of that's just a common sense

02:56:26.500 speculation about how things came about but no i thought that was an extremely thorough answer

02:56:33.300 and yeah as far as accessible language with like a lexicon of terms the farthest back that i'm

02:56:41.220 aware of is the supposed proto-indo-european um hey there question for the show tonight apart from

02:56:50.900 the clear answers i.e praying giving offerings etc when do you feel the closest to the gods

02:56:59.300 in your day-to-day lives and why thanks chris when do you feel the closest to the gods in your

02:57:07.300 day-to-day life and why oh that's a hard one because it's like you've already excluded all

02:57:15.700 of the religion things you know um being with family being with with family with friends and

02:57:27.360 family being part of that i'm a father so i'm no longer like the the the tippy buds of the family

02:57:37.040 tree right i have a branch coming off of me but being part of that that kind of wave as it unfolds

02:57:46.740 across the sea with with my kinfolk i think that would be the most i think that would be when i

02:57:54.760 have a religious feeling that isn't caused by literal religious behavior or actions right

02:58:02.180 because it's like you know my wife and myself and my daughter we hail the dawn every day you know

02:58:08.800 and I like I pray before bed and we do offerings and stuff but that's kind of excluded by what you

02:58:13.460 were asking for so I do think it's being part of my folk as a living unfurling thing

02:58:21.180 watched over by the gods and the ancestors going back to the

02:58:25.820 you know going back to the ancestors but also going back to the gods

02:58:29.860 it's hard because it's a

02:58:34.240 again you took away all the easy answers

02:58:38.420 which I respect but it makes you

02:58:40.100 it challenges you to think a little bit more

02:58:57.900 so I'm trying to

02:58:58.760 I have the answer in my head.

02:59:02.180 I'm just trying to figure out a way to put it into words that makes sense.

02:59:06.140 There's no, there's no one thing.

02:59:10.220 It's not like when I'm in the woods, I'm closest to the gods or when I'm, you know, driving in my car, I take a moment to reflect and I feel like I'm closest to the gods.

02:59:20.080 when

02:59:22.780 I am very thankful

02:59:29.620 that I have

02:59:31.600 the ability to be

02:59:33.900 deeply moved

02:59:36.440 by things 0.92

02:59:37.400 I'm kind of ridiculous 0.94

02:59:39.780 in like a song 0.98

02:59:42.680 or something on TV

02:59:44.360 or whatever will get me to tear up

02:59:46.700 and it's

02:59:48.680 kind of

02:59:51.420 it's not random

02:59:55.900 because they're very purposeful

02:59:57.300 but

02:59:57.500 there will be many things

03:00:05.560 in life that will

03:00:07.880 hit me

03:00:10.160 in a way that

03:00:11.580 I have a realization

03:00:16.100 of my place

03:00:18.240 in the scheme of things, the God's presence in my life, all of the different ways or many of the

03:00:25.120 different ways, I guess, that I have been blessed. And I noticed those things at small moments. I

03:00:33.900 noticed those things when, you know, I'll see something in a movie or hear something in a song

03:00:39.180 or, you know, my daughter will come up and, you know, say something to me that

03:00:44.720 will will strike something in me and i just take a moment to give thanks and

03:00:50.680 there's that's not predictable there's no particular circumstance or thing that ties it

03:00:57.600 together other than a chord will strike in me to where i feel tremendously just

03:01:05.060 blessed and moved and you know moved to give thanks and be appreciative and it happens

03:01:14.260 fairly regularly.

03:01:18.720 Another random thing, and take this for what it is,

03:01:22.780 it's just an honest answer to the question.

03:01:26.400 No kids, I'm not encouraging you to smoke. But when I smoke a

03:01:30.720 cigar, something happens.

03:01:33.420 I don't get anything out of the nicotine or whatever. It's not

03:01:38.600 that, but there's something that goes on that

03:01:42.400 I'm not breathing normally, like because of the aspect of smoking, I'm taking, you know,

03:01:50.300 half as many breaths as I would normally. And something about that calms me and puts me in a

03:01:57.540 place where I'm very introspective and it's like my mind slows down. The various tedium stresses

03:02:09.740 of the day slow way down and i've become very aware of the god's blessings in my life and so

03:02:20.080 there's that hello excluding tears off which of the future hafs are you most excited for chris

03:02:32.100 um so the the thing that pops into my mind when i hear that is austras hoff

03:02:45.300 and that's not on the list right i think part of it why it's interesting to me um

03:02:55.060 um is in part of it's just that i austra was the first of the ice here that i came to

03:03:03.140 came back to when i came home to ossature formally but um she's not on the gilfaggoning list

03:03:11.680 so it's it's when it does happen it will be because we've gone through the list and are now

03:03:19.780 entering into uncharted territory which i think would be fun um a more mundane answer though is uh

03:03:27.940 heimdalshoff because i i heard someone once say that that should be uh goli john roxhoff and

03:03:35.060 john's my friend and i just i know he's particularly devoted to heimdals so i think that'd be nice for

03:03:39.620 him but if it happens that way of course you know what i mean like i

03:03:49.780 Weird goes ever as it will.

03:03:56.440 People can move.

03:03:57.660 We start getting it close and it's not in the right spot.

03:03:59.760 John can pick up and relocate.

03:04:02.980 So

03:04:03.460 I am very excited about

03:04:12.080 Vidar and Vowleshoffs

03:04:15.660 for similar reasons.

03:04:19.780 first, and I almost feel impious always pairing them as if not giving them the respect to treat

03:04:35.380 them individually. But they are different in, I mean, with the very small things that we have,

03:04:42.160 there's really important differences. But one of the things that I'm very excited about

03:04:47.260 But when we establish a Hoff to our gods, we grow, we build a closer relationship and a closer understanding.

03:05:02.960 And I think there's certain of our gods that have a level of fame in our folks, you know, consciousness that they're super aware of.

03:05:14.640 and they you know have name recognition and then we have other gods that that has been lost over

03:05:21.680 time and our people aren't familiar with and haven't heard of and don't have that ready

03:05:26.640 association with and i'm excited to build that again with vidar and with valley and i also think

03:05:33.840 that their particular imagery just the tiny couple of lines that we have about both is visceral and

03:05:43.200 is powerful in um in different ways like there's a lot of uh

03:05:55.200 there's a lot of tradition and custom that can get established there and i'm sure the

03:06:00.080 same is true with any of the gods but that's exciting to me because of their differences

03:06:06.320 because of vidar's patience and silence and

03:06:16.080 that contemplativeness and because of valley's immediate action is like just the visceral nature

03:06:25.280 of you know

03:06:27.120 not getting the afterbirth off of him or combing his hair until he exacts vengeance

03:06:37.200 swiftly and decisively because it's what needed to be done and i i think that both

03:06:46.400 they clearly pair very well but i think both of them are very special opportunities for

03:06:52.480 also true to advance and for our relationships with those two gods to advance so those are ones

03:06:59.520 that are that i'm very much looking forward to i mean i'm looking forward to all of them obviously

03:07:05.360 but those in particular i'm very much looking forward to um is armenius or herman mentioned

03:07:13.360 in Old Norse literature? No, but there's always the argument that Sigurd is a reflection of or

03:07:26.720 inspired by, but I think that's speculation. There's not a direct reference like there are

03:07:35.840 some of the migration era um gothic uh leaders in in the in the war yeah it's not until like the

03:07:44.960 300s 400s that we start seeing and part of the problem with this is that the goths still had a

03:07:51.680 cultural continuity going from gothia to sweden that doesn't seem to be shared much by this early

03:08:02.560 early Germanic period. I'm not entirely sure why. I think you could come up with a lot of speculation.

03:08:10.320 Guthbrander Wigfusen, the Wigfusen of Klesby and Wigfusen,

03:08:17.680 he was a big proponent of the Seagerther is Arminius theory, and it's not really...

03:08:27.680 it's very reliant upon like oh like like coded language like this word shows up in

03:08:36.160 sigur there's story and this place in germany nearby the battle site has this name and i'm not

03:08:44.320 saying it's not true but it like uh our manneric just is in norse sagas yeah i i am i'm saying that

03:08:53.120 it's not true um no because people make it sound like it's a very intentional thing

03:08:58.800 i i don't think anybody can fault um

03:09:07.040 you know

03:09:10.400 you can take inspiration for anything and so i don't think we can ever say oh it had nothing

03:09:15.200 to do with the inspiration of it i mean maybe but they're not similar enough that it's like

03:09:21.840 a secret coded message that this is what this is or that is it's just not and and we don't see that

03:09:28.640 with other characters like no one needs to encode this guy or that guy they just come out and say

03:09:35.120 oh yeah this dude then they'll make up some odd backstory about him being like a hunt or something

03:09:40.240 but it's just this dude now having said that in a certain sense though arminius does show up in

03:09:48.640 modern germanic sagas um arminius was really big ever since the ever since the uh tacitus annals

03:09:59.440 and other works started getting published in the renaissance and had been a symbol of german

03:10:04.640 nationalism for a very long time like 600 years now um big important character in a lot of

03:10:12.160 of literature, a big figure of opera. He was a figure of resistance by the Germans against

03:10:19.540 insert bad guy here. Like I said, Kaiser Wilhelm was big on having him as the founding father of

03:10:29.200 the German nation in opposition to Napoleon, in opposition to France, the supremacy of French,

03:10:35.400 italic and british culture over germany hearkening back to this ancient german past right um luther

03:10:46.360 martin luther it's people often say that luther is the one who said that um arminius equals herman

03:10:54.700 i don't know if that's true i know he was an early user of it it doesn't really matter

03:10:59.060 he saw arminius as a figure of opposition to the papacy to rome the man in rome right

03:11:07.660 arminius was a figure of a lot of operas in the literature and stories and tales about

03:11:14.480 him and what his struggle mean meant for the people living that time um the national

03:11:23.240 socialists were really big on him and after that their regime fell in west germany it became pretty

03:11:29.960 pardon the pun phil bolton to talk about arminius at length but in east germany humorously enough

03:11:37.560 they uh they spun arminius into being like a kind of spartacus rising up with the workers against

03:11:45.080 the decadent roman capitalist slave owners kind of a figure i think he he is a very romantic figure

03:11:55.240 in that regard and i think as frankly as long as there's going to be germanic peoples speaking

03:12:00.600 germanic languages arminius is probably going to be someone who's very interesting because he does

03:12:05.480 in a certain he literally is the germanic founding father in a certain sense he's the one who says

03:12:11.240 there's going to be germanics from here on out i'm willing to stab someone over this

03:12:15.960 and because of the roman source material because of tacitus we have we have a lot of meat there

03:12:24.040 i think there's other figures that you know capture the imagination in a lot of ways but

03:12:28.040 it's very hard to find that much meat to flesh out the character or their circumstance or things we

03:12:38.040 have a substantial amount of um source material to go on to have a deeper understanding of herman

03:12:49.960 and he doesn't he just to say real quick he doesn't lose in a certain sense like there's

03:12:56.280 this one gothic warlord who will brings this huge horde south and he wants to like go down to rome

03:13:03.080 and sacrifice the entire senate and then he ends up losing in like a really big military catastrophe

03:13:10.920 arminius yes he gets betrayed but it's not like his struggle was defeated by him

03:13:19.480 apostatizing to christianity or being like actually i think i'll take the villa into

03:13:24.360 truria like he he dies a victor ultimately in as much as no one really intellectually defeats him

03:13:33.120 yeah he's unbroke yeah he's assassinated or maybe dies in like a duel or something by traitors but

03:13:41.140 it's not like he had a there he didn't have his ideas didn't have competition and even if he had

03:13:48.920 been brought to rome and strangled to death after a parade it wouldn't really have undone what he did

03:13:54.280 all right um which group had more gods and goddesses the roman pagans or the germanic pagans

03:14:06.840 what say you and he did throw in or the slavic pagans after the fact or the slavic pagans

03:14:15.400 what say you chris i think if you had to go by sheer number of attested deities it'd probably

03:14:22.120 have to be the romans if just because i know this isn't necessarily fair but there's like a bit

03:14:28.360 where augustine does like the oh really you worship the gods may every god bit and he like

03:14:36.560 makes fun of a bunch of these deities that are supposed to be involved in like marriage and

03:14:43.160 there's like 10 of them involved in this one stage and five involved in the next i think

03:14:50.000 the massive amount of literature that we have from the romans makes that easy to do but i don't

03:14:58.540 think that necessarily gives us a good because it's like what do you mean by more per se so you

03:15:06.860 said it right when you said the most attested and that's the thing when you're counting all of the

03:15:14.820 things that you know there's the olympians or there's the icer but there's a bunch of

03:15:24.820 local deities that you would call that that are of place that are of rivers that are of you know

03:15:32.980 different household functions the romans had a way of also personifying lots of just regular stuff

03:15:41.300 as deities um so yeah the the i don't think we know that i don't think we're ever going to know

03:15:49.060 the actual answer to the question but the the attestation certainly would go to the

03:15:54.980 to the romans in that sense but i think an important thing and it's here and it's also

03:16:00.340 with the historical side of things is sometimes it's not about what's written it's about what's

03:16:06.340 not written and just and and chris has done it tonight and he's done it many other times in the

03:16:13.540 past and he did it with the whole the the the raping thing where that's not the definition

03:16:20.740 of rape that they used and this is a very similar situation of yeah they wrote down all of these

03:16:28.660 things but just because somebody else didn't write it down doesn't mean it wasn't a thing somewhere

03:16:33.780 else as well so it's it is important to note the context and just the reality of the way things

03:16:40.580 were at that time for one these are all the same deific sources these are the arian gods it doesn't

03:16:50.880 matter if it's the german gods or the the mediterranean gods it's the arian gods so

03:16:56.980 So the number of spiritual entities is the same.

03:17:02.340 It's just we relate to them a little bit differently down here by the water than we do up there in the forest.

03:17:08.580 I think that there's also a bit of a, just to say real quick, a kind of classification problem isn't the right term here.

03:17:15.120 But like, is every nymph mentioned in Greek mythology a goddess?

03:17:22.880 Should you include them in a list of the gods?

03:17:26.120 But if you're going to be doing this, it's almost like how many individuals are within the tribe of the Aesir?

03:17:34.920 Yeah, it's not a fair question. It's not a fair question, because at some point, the question is involving any, you know, good spiritual entity, which, you know, which can be your ancestors, which can be a bunch of different things, depending on how you term that.

03:18:04.020 if we believe yeah well there's i'm saying there's not the linguistic distinction there of like

03:18:09.780 big g gods versus little g gods you know in rome every house there's a you know a different deity

03:18:18.660 for your house there's all these different things we recognize that as you know

03:18:23.700 land vetier and various alfar and things that way what of that really counts and doesn't in the

03:18:32.680 question i think is very hard to uh flesh out and like if we're just topically if we're to propose

03:18:40.120 that arminius has ascended and dwells with the gods it's like is he a god well that's yes ascendant

03:18:49.320 mortals again depending on how you classify so i don't think that's it's an ambiguous question as

03:18:56.760 As far as attested deities, certainly I'd say wrong.

03:19:03.420 And I think we touched on this a little bit,

03:19:05.720 but as a concise sentence or two,

03:19:10.660 Chris, how should we honor Prince Herman on his day?

03:19:15.940 Oh, never mind.

03:19:16.840 I misunderstood the question.

03:19:18.780 Take all the barriers off.

03:19:20.260 How do you think we should honor Prince Herman

03:19:21.960 on his day of remembrance?

03:19:23.040 i think there's the generic answer of of bloat prayer thinking about the hero but i think

03:19:32.160 ultimately the you know words are wind deeds are iron kind of thing comes down to being loyal

03:19:38.200 and figuring out what you're loyal to and then you know holding holding faster to it becoming

03:19:47.360 more tight with it figuring out what those you are loyal to need and want

03:19:55.340 you know arminius's struggle was ultimately one against the the darker lesser shadows of our

03:20:06.660 nature it was one against betrayal it was one against those who couldn't see the forest for

03:20:12.000 the trees um yeah the romans couldn't see the forest or the trees but yeah i couldn't see

03:20:26.040 what's in the forest or the trees anyways um i know being loyal is kind of vague here but i think

03:20:33.340 it's important on his day of remembrance as like a a thing to do i think would be to stop

03:20:40.620 and think about what do you actually care about and are you are you being like i said one of those

03:20:49.880 people helping hold up the weight because if you're not you're going to get crushed

03:20:56.240 right you're especially going to get crushed if you're if you're kicking at the back of the

03:21:01.900 the knees of people who are holding up that weight

03:21:04.420 so yeah it's a there's i think there's multiple layers to the question there is the deeper layer

03:21:16.340 that i think chris just answered yeah learn the lesson learn the lesson and then in a proactive

03:21:23.840 way demonstrate your loyalty and your commitment to

03:21:28.400 order versus chaos and to loyalty versus petty self-interest um

03:21:38.380 in a you know more tangible like fun what to do way tell the story tell the story speak about him

03:21:50.040 raise toasts in his honor share a meal with your family and friends and you know talk about him

03:21:59.040 that's one of the most important things is to you know tell these people's story talk about them

03:22:05.800 um celebrate them build their fame and you do that by

03:22:10.400 by talking about them by teaching your children about him

03:22:16.180 by coming on here and doing shows like this like keep it alive it's important

03:22:25.120 um what language did the bactrians speak

03:22:31.720 nick already answered but in you might have a different answer or what is your

03:22:40.240 so the bactrian language is an east iranian language so the proto-indo-iranic peoples

03:22:49.920 okay so there's like

03:22:52.480 west indo-european and it's this blob that celtic and germanic and slavic and italic and all these

03:23:02.360 come out of and the proto-indo-iranic peoples blob out of that and go west east they start in

03:23:09.200 The Proto-Indo-Iranic peoples are European when they start their existence, and then they move east.

03:23:17.200 Then they move south, and they become the Scythians, and the Sarmatians, and a bunch of these odd steppe peoples that aren't here anymore in Eastern Europe.

03:23:27.200 But then they also become a bunch of things in Central Asia.

03:23:30.200 um they end up becoming the vedic peoples and the iranians hence indo-iranic as an aside

03:23:39.580 language families you can have families within families germanic is a language family within

03:23:46.420 proto-indo-european right um language families are given a name based on the theoretical maximum

03:23:52.360 extent of the known languages within the family at the time of the naming when indo-european was

03:23:59.480 coined the indo-european languages were spoken everywhere from india to europe this is extremely

03:24:06.920 vague because you could call it the you know galo sri lankan language family because they're spoken

03:24:14.040 everywhere between ireland and sri lanka at the time proto or at the time indo-european was coined

03:24:22.120 tokarian was not understood even though something i can't remember the oasis that tokarians

03:24:29.480 that the tokarian stuff was found in but you know like you could call it the

03:24:33.640 indo-euro tokarian language family sino-tibetan it's in china and tibet yes

03:24:39.940 there are sino-tibetan languages outside of china and tibet we just found them

03:24:44.760 after they were named um so bactrian is an east iranian

03:24:48.660 language um related to persian related to uh pashto you know um the problem with a lot of

03:25:02.100 these groups though this is the thing like with the huns what is a hun well there's like ethnic huns

03:25:08.580 and then there were people who were politically working with the hun i'm just gonna call it

03:25:12.820 con it for lack of a better term bactria and gandhara and those central asian regions had a

03:25:19.860 lot of internal ethnic and thus linguistic and cultural and religious diversity so it's kind of

03:25:25.860 like when we talk about bactrians there's the east you know the east iranian group but then there's

03:25:32.100 just like greeks like zorba yabadeva duplis the gyro salesman greeks living in gandhara and

03:25:39.700 bactria it's kind of like okay but what who are you actually talking about when you say a bactrian

03:25:46.420 the bactrian people spoke in east iranian language however there you go um and then

03:25:54.260 to cap it off tonight is the afa planning a hof in the uk yes conceptually we would love to do that

03:26:02.740 like all things we need a thriving membership there we need leadership there that are going to

03:26:09.700 be committed to making the hoth perpetually successful um

03:26:19.300 i will say this the uk is a challenging place for a lot of things now i think until

03:26:25.700 they get a lot more free than they currently are it makes the challenges and the threshold

03:26:34.500 of doing it much higher i think it looks much more appealing when they have freedom of speech

03:26:41.660 and thought and existence um i think it would be a very challenging thing for us to be

03:26:51.180 you know racially exclusive and to exclude uh sexual mental illness

03:27:00.900 and be able to do that over there especially um as an american-based church i think it would be

03:27:11.760 really interesting if we had the members over there that's the thing we're committed to doing

03:27:17.500 the right thing if we had the members and we had the leadership over there to make it viable we

03:27:21.580 would have to figure out what would need to go into an international hof and how that would flesh

03:27:29.900 out but if we had the members in the in the gothar there to make that happen we would love to do that

03:27:35.900 and that's absolutely an area we would love to see advancement in if you are a brit or anyone

03:27:46.700 who's not an american or canadian that is a a call to arms and a chance to attain glory

03:27:54.860 not like a literal physical violence called arms you know what i mean i'm being metaphorical

03:27:59.420 it's a kenning that is a chance to attain glory in in a a very very virgin territory

03:28:09.680 and you know if you are a brit and you're listening

03:28:12.400 you might be able to get the first european half in the uk yeah but but if you don't if you don't

03:28:20.500 act swiftly enough it might go in in sweden or norway or france or even ireland you know but like

03:28:30.460 it is a tremendous opportunity to to move forward and build something so yeah we'd love to see that

03:28:38.000 happen um and he was in the chat tonight i'm still looking at you i want my first croatian member

03:28:45.200 you need to join dude absolutely you and wombat there you need to join mr everybody

03:28:53.520 if you are a heterosexual white person join the astro folk assembly now's the time we've got to

03:28:58.640 stay united we stand strong we have great things to do we do them better when we do them together

03:29:05.600 Join the Ask True Folk Assembly. Today's the day. With that, Chris, thank you so much for coming on

03:29:12.640 again. As always, a masterful presentation. I'm very thankful for you sharing that with us and

03:29:21.680 for the hard work putting in on that and so many other AFA things. Appreciate you. My pleasure.

03:29:27.360 all right well i will talk to y'all next week where we will continue through uh spawn and i

03:29:34.880 will continue through the gilford genning until then hail the isere hill the folk

03:29:40.800 L-E-A-F-A. Remember, victory never sleeps. 0.98

03:30:10.800 Thank you.

03:30:40.800 Thank you.

03:31:10.800 Thank you.

03:31:40.800 Thank you.

03:32:10.800 Thank you.

03:32:40.800 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - March 12, 2026

3⧸11⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 192 - Life and Times of Prince Hermann

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