[27] These defects in method have not escaped the sharp eyes of the latest historian of the German wars, Camille Jullian, _Histoire de la Gaule_, IV, Paris, 1914, p. 117 ff. He notes especially the failure to create a great system of converging roads, establish numerous strong garrisons, found colonies, and maintain a powerful army in the land. Yet under the influence of the theory of conquest he can explain all these grave errors only as due to the ignorance and incapacity of the ageing emperor and his entourage. “Il y a eu, de la part d’Auguste, de veritables aberrations militaires” (p. 117) ... “Une puérile ignorance des situations se montra dans la politique romaine au delà du Rhin” (p. 118) ... “L’empereur vieillissait, et il semblait que sa vieillesse pesât sur tout son entourage” (p. 119). Such a position is logical indeed but quite inadmissable. One must surely recognize in this the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the whole theory of conquest.
[28] The amount of such legal business that Varus did is emphasized by Velleius (II, 118) and Florus (II, 30, 31), but not mentioned at all by Dio (56, 18, 1) who says merely that the Germans “were establishing markets and making peaceful gatherings”. Dio’s account is a more military and political document; Varus there is acting in an understandable if not wholly sagacious fashion. But Velleius and Florus wish to point a contrast between the man of the forum and the man of the camp, and in so doing make Varus out to have been an utter fool. Of course advocates and law suits belong to the conventional equipment of the forum, and must be played up in such a picture. There is grave doubt whether Varus had any more of such matters to adjust than any other Roman general after the presence of the Roman soldier and merchant came to be no unusual thing in the land.