Discharged because of a battle wound, a young Roman officer Marcus Flavius Aquila tries to discover the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion in northern Britain. Disguised as a Greek oculist and travelling beyond Hadrian's Wall with his freed ex-slave, Esca, Marcus finds that a demoralized and mutinous Ninth Legion was annihilated by a great rising of the northern tribes. In part, this disgrace was redeemed through a heroic last stand by a small remnant around the legion's eagle standard. Marcus's hope of seeing the lost legion re-established is dashed, but he is able to bring back the gilded bronze eagle so that it can no longer serve as a symbol of Roman defeat – and thus will no longer be a danger to the frontier's security.
Development
The Eagle of the Ninth is one of Sutcliff's earlier books, but may be her best-known title. It is the first in a sequence of novels, followed by The Silver Branch, Frontier Wolf, The Lantern Bearers, Sword at Sunset, Dawn Wind, Sword Song, and The Shield Ring. The sequence loosely traces a family, of the Roman Empire and then of Britain, who inherit an emerald seal ring bearing the insignia of a dolphin. The book has also been published as The Eagle. It has been adapted a few times, most notably as the 2011 film The Eagle.
Historical basis
Sutcliff wrote in a foreword that she created the story from two elements: the disappearance of the Legio IX Hispana from the historical record following an expedition north to deal with Caledonian tribes in 117; and the discovery of a wingless Roman eagle in excavations at Calleva Atrebatum. The Museum of Reading, which now houses the Silchester eagle, states that it "is not a legionary eagle but has been immortalized as such by Rosemary Sutcliff". It may originally have formed part of a Jupiter statue in the forum of the Roman town. Sutcliff also assumed that the legion's title of "Hispana" meant that it was raised in Hispania, but it was probably awarded this title for victories there. At the time Sutcliff wrote, it was a plausible theory that the unit had been wiped out in Britain during a period of unrest early in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. Scholarly opinion now disputes this, for there are extant records that have been interpreted as indicating that detachments of the Ninth Legion were serving on the Rhine frontier later than the year 117, and it has been suggested that it was probably annihilated in the east of the Roman Empire. This in turn is disputed by other historians, who assert that it was indeed destroyed in northern Britain. Sheppard Frere, an eminent Romano-British authority, has concluded that "further evidence is needed before more can be said".
