Barbarians Season 2: Who Were The Real Marbod and Arminius?

Although Arminius’s forces suffered defeats, some at the hands of his own brother, Flavus – whose late side-switching and death in season two of Barbarians is thus historically inaccurate – the Romans were unable to lay claim to either Arminius’s head, or Germania itself. Tiberius, now Emperor, recalled Germanicus to Rome, on the grounds that the campaigns were costing more than they were benefiting, and perhaps fearing that Germanicus’s increasingly famed reputation would one day be a threat to his own power. Germanicus was, however, able to claim Arminius’s pregnant wife, Thusnelda, thanks again to her thoroughly awful father, Segestes. Thusnelda was taken to Rome, where Arminius’s son, Thumelicus, was born in semi-benign captivity. In the show, Thumelicus has already been born, and the abduction happens immediately after forces led by Marbod and Arminius have destroyed Tiberius’s encampment, thus repelling the Roman invasion fleet, an event that almost certainly never took place in real history. Little is known of Thusnelda’s life in Rome, or when and how she died, so we can expect a great deal of ahistorical surprises in season three, if it happens. We do know that Segestes didn’t have his head lopped off by Tiberius, or any other Roman leader, and lived long enough to watch his daughter being paraded through Rome like a trophy.

Arminius vs Marbod vs Death

Arminius’s status as a living legend helped him to poach many tribes that had hitherto shown fealty to Marbod. In turn, Marbod welcomed the defection of Arminius’s bitter and jealous uncle, Inguimerus, along with some of the Cheroski. It wasn’t long before tensions escalated into conflict. Arminius attacked first, scoring his only victory against Marbod at the Battle of the Hercynian Forest. In future conflicts, topography was Marbod’s friend, helping him to defend his territory against further incursion. Marbod even sent envoys to Rome requesting back-up. In the end it wasn’t Arminius who defeated Marbod, but one of his own aristocrats, who laid waste to the capital of Marobudum and deposed the Macromannic King. Marbod fled to Rome, where his pleas for shelter and assistance were met with immediate imprisonment in the city of Ravenna. There he remained for the rest of his life.

Arminius never lost his liberty, but he did eventually lose his life. Not to the Romans, but to his own people, who’d grown tired of his ceaseless efforts to subjugate the tribes and proclaim himself their King. In the end, it was Arminius’s own relatives who assassinated him, and it wasn’t impossible that his brother, Flavus, had something to do with it, given that Flavus’s son, Italicus, eventually became head of the Cheruski.

Depicting Marbod and Flavus’s Sexuality

Finally, let’s consider how some of the second season’s bolder narrative choices and departures from recorded history have met with controversy, and examine why those departures are so important in light of how that history has been framed in the long centuries since the events of Teutoburg Forest.

You’ve probably reasoned this already, but there is no historical evidence to suggest that Marbod ever met Flavus, or that Marbod was gay or bisexual. This latter point has opened the series to accusations of ‘wokery’ from certain portions of the right-leaning commentariat. We can only wonder if the people who hold such views have the same issues with the authenticity of the character of Folkwin. It doesn’t seem fair or logical to argue that we can populate pivotal moments in real-world history with invented people, but we dare not ascribe a non-heteronormative sexual preference to a real person from ancient history. After all, there isn’t any historical evidence to suggest that Marbod wasn’t gay or bisexual in real life, either.

Male homosexuality was a fact of life in Ancient Rome, though its manifestation tended to fall along lines of class, power and masculinity; i.e. those who were more the more dominant partner, both socially and sexually, suffered little loss of social standing for the act. Within the world of the show, it’s certainly conceivable that ‘when in Rome’, as the old saying goes, the physically-imposing and powerful Marbod would have gravitated to the more classically effeminate Flavus. What we really must ask ourselves is this: ‘Does the sexual relationship between Marbod and Flavus add something to the story?’ And the answer is yes. It adds depth, stakes, and complexity, to the characters as well as to the unfolding plot.