Publius Quinctilius Varus went down in history as a failure due to his defeat in the Teutoburg Forest. Ancient historians clearly demonstrate the desire to find a scapegoat for the catastrophe. By declaring Varus the culprit, they attempted to make the failure of the powerful empire against the Germanic tribes comprehensible. Degraded by Velleius Paterculus to an incompetent, greedy official, Varus served as an embodiment of the Roman Church for humanists and as a symbol of the French occupying power for 19th-century German scholars. Although today historians like Dieter Timpe or Klaus-Peter Johne provide a largely objective assessment of the general, he remains a loser in the eyes of posterity.