Quintilius Varus Give Me Back My

This anguished cry is recorded by Suetonius (The Twelve Caesars, §23), who adds that Augustus let his hair and beard grow for months after the disaster and would beat his head against the door in grief. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD — where the Germanic chieftain Arminius ambushed and annihilated three Roman legions under Publius Quinctilius Varus — destroyed roughly twenty percent of Rome's entire frontline army. The defeat permanently halted Roman expansion into Germania and led Augustus to fix the Rhine as the empire's northeastern frontier.