Arminius was a hostage of Rome,
son of subjugated Germania,
a prince of defeated peoples.
He was taken far from
the marshes of Teutoburg Forest,
to the great city from where
his masters ruled the world.
Captive, he learned
about Roman society,
its vanities and
the logic of its thinking.
In the market, he noticed
not which fruits are sweet;
but how the merchants dealt.
Studying the martial arts,
he did not just learn techniques;
he developed strategies.
His eyes were trained on fissures,
those places where solitary
drops of water
can begin to erode an empire.
And using the tools
his captors gave him,
he dealt a coup de main
which collapsed a thousand year order.
Anthony Squiers, PhD is a political philosopher and poet. He is currently Lecturer and Postdoctoral researcher at the Universität Passau in Germany, and is the author of An Introduction to the Social and Political Philosophy of Bertolt Brecht: Revolution and Aesthetics.