Winkler's comprehensive monograph details the reception history of Arminius (Hermann), the ancient German who led a confederation of tribes to victory against Rome in a.d. 9 in the Teutoburg Forest. The subject is well chosen. The uses and abuses of Arminius in later history, particularly those of modern German nationalism, illustrate well the full dynamism of the reception process in action. Arminius’ transformations are a case study in how an ancient source was so greatly re-read, versified, dramatized, drawn, sculpted and filmed as to be in the end almost unrecognizable as such. W.’s enlightening overview of Arminius’ story is a reminder of how, in the author's words, ‘history and historical myth march on: from epic and tragic seriousness to comedy and satire’ (226). This book encompasses all of these in its scope.

Many readers will already be familiar with the most striking elements of Arminius’ story, likely as a result of the very material that the book examines — Rome's campaigns across the Rhine, Arminius’ rousing of the German tribes, and the Roman general Varus and his legions’ tragic end in the sylvan swampland of Germania (prompting the emperor Augustus’ famous lamentation for that loss). Some may also be aware of Ernst Bandel's famous monumental sculpture of Arminius, and of how the Nazis revived his personality cult, gestating since the onset of German romanticism, and elevated him to the status of racial progenitor and national hero. While giving some background on Arminius’ nineteenth-century reception, W. really majors on his Nazi reception. Here he sheds new light on how Arminius was recruited by the Nazis in their rise to power, as well as at their height — ch. 3 (‘Arminius in National Socialism’) contains a fine study of how the incipient Nazi propaganda machine transformed the ancient in the Lippe election campaign. Here and elsewhere excellent use is made of visual, as well as literary, material to bring Arminius’ reception to life.

The real strength of this book, however, is its examination of the post-War reception of Arminius. W.’s journey through the relevant material is broad and right up-to-date, encompassing everything from post-War German and Italian cinema to Arminius in animation and on Youtube. In his ch. 7 (‘Against Ideology: History Exorcised’) he shows how film-makers struggled to respond to the dominant legacy of Arminius as German nationalist hero. And he examines the complex but imaginative re-interpretations of that legacy by artists such as Anselm Kiefer. Then in ch. 8 (‘After Ideology: History as Infotainment’), he provides a critical response to the more recent commercialization of history in the context of Hollywood and documentary entertainment. As the author trenchantly observes: ‘History has been made fascinating as entertainment — served up, as it were, like delectable cocktails, shaken and stirred, of facts, factoids, simplifications, errors, falsifications, omissions, and inventions, all propped up by sage pronouncements emanating from talking heads’ (251).

In some places the reader may feel that too much detail is given which might have been omitted. Occasionally use of primary quotation is somewhat too long and detracts from the overall flow of the text. However W. is helpfully thorough in consistently including original German renditions, as well as English translation, to ensure that important nuance is not lost. At certain points more background is provided than is strictly necessary (for example on ancient authors in ch. 5, which might have been better placed earlier in the book or appended to the helpfully comprehensive annexes). Some of the more descriptive discussion of film plots (above all in chs 7, 8 and 9) feels a little tangential and might have been briefer. But this does not detract overly from the quality of W.’s analysis and conclusions in these chapters. Conversely in other places the reader may be left wanting more detail — this is no more so the case than for the final ch. 10 (‘Arminius in the New World’), a fascinating and illuminating study of Arminius’ more recent survival in some (including racist) sub-cultures in the US. As the author himself admits, this chapter could be a book in itself, but it was nonetheless a shame not to have been able to have more on this especially recent side of Arminius’ reception history.

While in some ways narrowly focused — given its interest in the story of Arminius alone — the book's particular value lies in what it is thereby able to demonstrate about later history through the mirror of his reception. In that mirror we see all the variety of modern ideologies, and how these were brought to bear upon the ancient. But it is also a clear reflection of how one reception is often really a refraction of another that came before. For these reasons the book will be a useful contribution to classical reception literature, but also to the history of ideas and the social history of propaganda, of which it is a study in its own right.