WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.
Arminius left a name which the historians of the nation against which he combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to honor. It is from the most indisputable source, from the lips of enemies that we know his exploits. His countrymen made history, but did not write it. But his memory lived among them in the lays of their bards, who recorded: The deeds he did, the fields he won, The freedom he restored. Tacitus, writing years after the death of Arminius, says of him, "Canitur adhue barbaras apud, gentes." As time passed on, the gratitude of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius by every tribe of the Low Germanic division of the Teutonic races. The Irmin-sul, or the column of Herman, near Eresbergh, the modern Stadtberg, was the chosen object of worship to the descendants of the Cherusci, the old Saxons, and in defense of which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne and his Christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic belief, appears as a king and a warrior ; and the pillar, the Irmin-sul, bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of the deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation until the temple of Eresbergh was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column itself transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where perhaps a portion of the rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the ornaments of the Gothic era." Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, after their settlement in this island. One of the four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity, and was called the "Irmin street." The name Arminius is, of course, the mere Latinized form of "Herman," the name by which the hero and the deity were known by every man of Low German blood on either side of the German Sea. It means, etymologically, the "War-man," the "man of hosts." No other explanation of the worship of the "Irmin-sul," and of the name of the "Irmin street," is so satisfactory as that which connects them with the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the existence of other columns of an analogous character. Thus there was the Rolandseule in North Germany; there was a Thor-seule in Sweden, and (what is more important) there was an Athelstan-seule in Saxon England. About ten centuries and a half after the demolition of the Irminsul, and nearly eighteen after the death of Arminius, the modern Germans conceived the idea of rendering tardy homage to their great hero; and accordingly, some eight or ten years ago, a general subscription was organized in Germany for the purpose of erecting, on the Osnin – a conical mountain, which forms the highest summit of the Teutoberger Wald, and is eighteen hundren feet above the level of the sea— a colossal bronze statue of Arminius. The statue was designed by Bandal. The hero was to stand uplifting a sword in his right hand, and looking toward the Rhine. The height of the statue was to be eighty feet from the base to the point of the sword, and was to stand on a circular Gothic temple ninety feet high, and supported by oak trees as columns. The mountain, where it was to be erected, is wild and stern, and overlooks the scene of the battle. It was calculated that the statute would be clearly visible at a distance of sixty miles. The temple is nearly finished, and the statue itself has been cast at the copper works at Lemgo. But there, through want, of funds to set it up, it has lain for some years, in disjointed fragments, exposed to the mutilating homage of relic-seeking travelers. The idea of honoring a hero, who belongs to all Germany, is not one which the present rulers of that divided country have any wish to encourage; and the statue may long continue to lie there, and present too true a type of the condition of Germany herself. Surely this it an occasion in which Englishmen might well prove, by acts as well as words, that we also rank Arminius among our heroes. |
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