Rosemary Sutcliff fan Robert Vermaat alerted me to a very obvious mistake in my last post. I wrote that the character Esca from ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’ was fighting in the colosseum. Anyone who has read the book would realise of course that it is not the Colosseum but the local amphitheatre in Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester Roman town), a much smaller building than the enormous Colosseum in Rome!
In the upcoming movie ‘The Eagle’, based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s children’s novel, The Eagle of the Ninth, Jamie Bell plays the part of Esca, a freed British Slave. Here are some stills from the film. I think this is the point in the story where Esca is forced to fight in the coliseum as a gladiator, before he is set free.
I have just finished reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic children’s (and adult) historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth and absolutely loved it. One of the things that stood out to me in the book were the early religions that were worshipped in Britain in 117 A.D.
It seems there were many different gods worshipped by tribes and Romans. The lead character Marcus, a Roman centurion, worships the god Mythras of the Mythraic religion. Esca, his companion and a native Briton, prays to a god named Lugh. Both religions are now regarded as forms of paganism and both of these gods are described by Rosemary Sucliff as sun gods.
I’ve started to research both of these gods and their religions and would be interested in any information available.
I have discovered so far that Lugh is an ancient deity from Irish Celtic Paganism. He is the god of the harvest and is depicted as a great warrior from the distant past. He is also known as Lamfhada or ‘of the long arm’ in Gaelic because of his magic spear and sling. He is also known as Lugas in Pan celtic mythology in other parts of europe and as Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Welsh. It is interesting that Rosemary Sutcliff chose Lugh as the deity worshiped by Esca, a Briton. It suggests that she believed celtic paganism was practiced throughout Britain and travelled from Ireland, which was known as Hibernia in Roman times.
Marcus the centurion’s god is Mythras, of the Mythraic histories. I visited an ancient Mythraic temple underneath the church of St Clamente in Rome, back in September.
Mythraic temples were always secret places and usually underground, beneath other buildings. Mythras was commonly worshipped by the Roman Military in the first to the fourth centuries, so Rosemary Sutcliff was absolutely accurate in choosing Mythras as the deity worshipped by Marcus. Not much is known about the Mythraic mysteries as it was a secret religion, however it is believed that it was first formed in Rome.
I woud love to know more on both of these ancient religions and their possible similarities, so please post any links and information you have on the subject.
Here are some links to information on the Mythraic Mysteries and of the celtic god lugh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries#Mithras_and_other_gods
In Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic children’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth, the protagonist Marcus and his friend Esca (freed from slavery by Marcus) travel to the wild lands of Caledonia (northern Scotland) to search for the lost Eagle of the Ninth. On their travels, they pass through many mountain ranges and lochs. One of these Mountains is Ben Cruachan, the highest point in Argyll and Bute.
And to the north, brooding over the whole scene, rose Cruachan, sombre, cloaked in shadows, crested with mist; Cruachan, the shield-boss of the world.
Rosemary Sutcliff fan Robert Vermaat wrote this great comment in response to the Dutch version of The Eagle of the Ninth book cover I posted yesterday.
Well, that’s THE BOOK. The book that got me hooked on Rosemary Sutcliff, but also the book that got me hooked on Roman history. I must have been about 9 years old or something, but it shaped my life. I’m not kidding! How could a mere novel do that? Well, my fascination with the Roman world was fed by a holiday in Germany right along the Roman Limes and its reconstructed wooden watchtowers. The die was cast. I began reading more books by Rosemary Sutcliff, and after school I studied history, where I met my current wife. Sutcliff’s Arthurian novels had by then set me in the direction of the post-Roman period, which brought me to research Vortigern and, later, the Later Roman Army. Need I say more?
A detail: I later managed to buy the very book that began all this when the library cast it aside.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 