“But it was a Roman loss, not a German victory, since the Germans never even tried to invade and conquer Rome, whereas the Germans spent most of the next couple of decades running away and hiding from Roman armies.”
Germans eventually DID sack Rome (as did Celts); Germans had no reason to hide from an aggressor that, as in Scotland, huddled behind defenses and bribed their way out of defeat for centuries as they died a slow death. There are a lot more Germanic people in northern Italy today than Italians in southern Germany.
Righto. Germans eventually sacked Rome.
I hope you realize how ludicrous it is to draw a line between Teutoburger Wald in 9 AD and the Sack of Rome by Alaric in 410, as if it were part of a continuous conflict, with A leading directly to or causing B.
That’s 401 years. 401 years ago from this year, Pocahontas was captured by the English settlers of Jamestown.
Yet without the foreshortening of history induced by a two thousand-year gap, we don’t think of the events of 1613 as directly causing things that happen this year. Except possibly the celebrity of Senator Elizabeth Warren.
The Romans routinely kicked the crap out of the Germans for 500 years. For most of this time, the Germans raided into the Empire, looted what they could carry, and then ran away as fast as they could. Quite often, it wasn’t fast enough.
The Romans stopped dominating the Germans militarily only when their own empire fell apart around them.