His victory at Teutoburg Forest precipitated the Roman Empire's permanent strategic withdrawal and the deprovincialization of Germania Magna,[2] and modern historians regard it as one of Imperial Rome's greatest defeats.

After serving with distinction in the Great Illyrian Revolt, he was sent to Germania to aid the local governor Publius Quinctilius Varus in completing the Roman conquest of the Germanic tribes.

[11] In his History, Marcus Velleius Paterculus calls him "Arminius, the son of Sigimer, a prince of the nation" and states he "attained the dignity of equestrian rank".

Born in 18 or 17 BC in Germania, Arminius was the son of the Cheruscan chief Segimerus (German: Segimer; Proto-Germanic: Sigimariz; Old English: Sigemær),[16] who was allied with Rome.

[citation needed] Around the year AD 4, Arminius assumed command of a Cheruscan detachment of Roman auxiliary forces, probably while fighting in the Pannonian wars on the Balkan peninsula.

Arminius began plotting to unite various Germanic tribes in order to thwart Roman efforts to incorporate their lands into the empire.

Recent archaeological finds show the long-debated location of the three-day battle was almost certainly near Kalkriese Hill, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of present-day Osnabrück.

Arminius' success in destroying three entire legions and driving the Romans out of Germany marked a high point of Germanic power for centuries.

[30] Tiberius denied the request of Germanicus to launch an additional campaign for 17, however, having decided the frontier with Germania would stand at the Rhine river.

[32] His brother Flavus, who had been raised alongside him in Rome, remained loyal to the Roman Empire and fought under Germanicus against Arminius at the Battle of Idistaviso.

[33][34] Tiberius allegedly had refused an earlier offer from a Chatti nobleman to poison Arminius: "It was not by secret treachery but openly and by arms that the people of Rome avenged themselves on their enemies.

Numerous modern historians have regarded Arminius' victory as one of the most decisive battles in history,[4][5][6][7][8][17] with some calling it "Rome's greatest defeat".

Politics also played a factor; emperors found they could rarely trust a large army to a potential rival, though Augustus had enough loyal family members to wage his wars.

Tiberius, who succeeded Augustus in AD 14, decided that Germania was a far less developed land, possessing few villages and only a small food surplus, and therefore was not currently important to Rome.

[39] Only when indirect methods proved insufficient to control the Germanic tribes beyond the Rhine, did Roman emperors occasionally lead devastating punitive campaigns deep into Germania.

An Icelandic account[42][43] states that Sigurd "slew the dragon" in the Gnitaheidr—today the suburb Knetterheide of the city of Bad Salzuflen, located at a strategic site on the Werre river which could very well have been the point of departure of Varus' legions on their way to their doom in the Teutoburg Forest.

[45] After Tacitus' Annals were rediscovered by Renaissance humanists and first published during the Gutenberg Revolution of the 15th century, Arminius became an important symbol of German national identity, as a figure who successfully opposed colonialism and prevented the Romanization of his people by outgeneraling and defeating one of the world's first superpowers.

[46] The first literary adaptation of the Arminius story came in 1520 with Ulrich von Hutten's Latin dialogue Arminius, which inserts the Germanic leader into a reimagining of the twelfth chapter of Lucian's satirical Dialogues of the Dead; a debate between Alexander the Great, Hannibal, and Scipio Africanus before the underworld judgment seat of Minos over who most deserves the position of history's greatest general and military strategist.

Arminius argues his own claim and calls upon Tacitus to bear witness, and ultimately wins the case and the eloquent praise of Minos.

[48] During the military occupation of the German States, first by the French Revolutionary Army and then by the French Imperial Army of Napoleon Bonaparte, Hermann der Cheruskerfürst once again became a national icon and a martyr within both German Romanticism and the anti-Colonialist romantic nationalism fueled by the Napoleonic Wars, which are still termed in Germany the Wars of Liberation.

[10] In 1808, Heinrich von Kleist wrote the play Die Hermannsschlacht,[50] but with Napoleon's victory at Wagram it remained in manuscript, being published in 1821 and not staged until 1860.

The Hermann Heights monument was erected by the Sons of Hermann, a fraternal organization formed in New York City by German Americans as a means of self protection against anti-German sentiment and discrimination in 1840; and that flourished during the 19th century in American cities and rural areas with large populations speaking the German language in the United States.

Particularly during the Cold War, Arminius and his warriors were anachronistically reinterpreted quite similarly to the slave revolt led by Spartacus in the Marxist-Leninist official history promoted by the State; as an early socialist revolution and as revolutionary terror against the "Roman slaveholder society" (Sklavenhaltergesellschaft).

[52] According to journalist David Crossland: "The old nationalism has been replaced by an easy-going patriotism that mainly manifests itself at sporting events like the soccer World Cup.