Excerpt from The Romance of Reality Rhine, treated the people so humanely that many of them adopted the arts and customs of Rome, and the work of overcoming their barbarism was well begun. He was succeeded in this Office by Varus, a friend and confidant of the emperor, but a man of very different character, and one who t only lacked military experience and mental ability, but utterly misunderstood the character of the people he was dealing with. They might be led, they could t be driven into civilization, as the new prefect was to learn. All went well as long as Varus remained peacefully in his head-quarters, erecting markets, making the natives familiar with the attractive wares of Rome, instructing them in civilized arts, and taking their sons into the imperial army. All went ill when he sought to hasten his work by acts of Oppression, leading his forces across the Weser into the land of the Cherusci, enforcing there the rigid Roman laws, and chastising and executing free-born Germans for deeds which in their creed were t crimes. Varus, who had at first made himself loved by his kindness, w made himself hated by his severity. The Ger mans brooded over their wrongs, awed by the Roman army, which consisted of thirty thousand picked men, strongly intrenched, their camps being impreg nable to their undisciplined foes. Yet the high Spirited barbarians felt that this army was but an entering wedge, and that, if t driven out, their whole country would gradually be subdued. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.