Category: The Eagle of the Ninth

A great film in its own right but … | BBC4’s Front Row reviews The Eagle with girlish hope

Anthony Lawton2 Comments

Rosemary Sutcliff’s book The Eagle of the Ninth was much loved by Rachel Cooke, writer for The Guardian and The Observer, which left her with “girlish hope in her heart” as she went to see the film, The Eagle. She spoke of the film on BBC 4 in the UK, on the review programme Front Row, with Mark Lawson.

I went to see this with so much girlish hope in my heart because it was one of my favourite books, and what I feel about it is its a great film on its own terms, but if you were a Rosemary  Sutcliff fan I think you might be disappointed by it. It’s not as nuanced as the book, it’s not as tender or as  lyrical as the book. It’s a very angry frenetic film, it’s very one note, there’s not much light and shade. It’s a buddy film with axes and bearskins.
Source: Listen at 1.05 minutes here

Are you a Rosemary Sutcliff fan, and what did you think of the film? Do post your reactions and reflections in the comments here; or a longer review at the You Write tab (see at the top of the page) … And if you are not someone who has up to now read Rosemary Sutcliff, I do hope the film leads you to the book, and indeed to The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, two books in a trilogy of Roman novels, all published by Oxford University Press in film tie-in versions.

More on the film The Eagle on this blog

Manda Scott in The Independent newspaper on the ‘power and pleasure of epic fiction’

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Anne, a regular reader and commenter of this blog, as well as Google, has pointed me towards n a fascinating article which builds upon the impact on her of the work of Rosemary Sutcliff,  Manda Scott (who has been hailed by The Times as ‘one of Britain’s most important crime writers’; and who like Rosemary Sutcliff has written of Romans and Boudica) reflects in The Independent newspaper on the ‘power and pleasure of epic fiction’.

I was eight years old when I read The Eagle of the Ninth, but it opened doors that have never closed. I was captivated not so much by Marcus Aquila and his quest for the lost eagle of his father’s legion, but by Esca, the captured Briton, and the barbarian tribes that lived north of Hadrian’s Wall. They were wild, savage and magical; they spoke to seals, to horses, to hounds and conducted shamanic ceremonies that were closed to outsiders. I was an outsider and hated being so.

Source: Rome recast for today as Eagle of the Ninth is adapted for big screen | The Independent.

‘It would seem that Sutcliff was right after all” | The Eagle and The Eagle of the Ninth | More on The Roman Ninth Legion’s mysterious loss | BBC News

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

Ninth Legion stampRosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth is grounded in a view about what happened to the ninth Roman legion. The fate of the legion continues to be debated, most recently on the BBC website, by Miles Russell of Bournemouth University.

The British problem was of deep concern to Roman central government. Thanks to a tombstone recovered from Ferentinum in Italy, we know that emergency reinforcements of over 3,000 men were rushed to the island on “the British Expedition”, early in Hadrian’s reign. The emperor himself visited the island in AD 122, in order to “correct many faults”, bringing with him a new legion, the Sixth.

The fact that they took up residence in the legionary fortress of York suggests that the “great losses” of personnel, alluded to by Fronto, had occurred within the ranks of the Ninth.

Archaeological evidence of the legion’s fate is scarce

It would seem that Sutcliff was right after all.

It was the Ninth, the most exposed and northerly of all legions in Britain, that had borne the brunt of the uprising, ending their days fighting insurgents in the turmoil of early 2nd Century Britain.

Source: BC News – The Roman Ninth Legion’s mysterious loss.

See also on this blog a post on The symbolism of The Eagle of the Ninth | What happened to the ninth legion: Part IX?

Writer Amanda Craig on historical novelist and children’s writer Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony Lawton4 Comments

Interview here in The Times newspaper with your blog’s author – about Rosemary Sutcliff, the book The Eagle of the Ninth and the film The Eagle.

The symbolism of The Eagle of the Ninth | What happened to the ninth legion: Part IX?

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Last week I met Professor Michael Fulford of Reading University archaeology department, who introduced me (and a crowd of film journalists covering The Eagle film) to some Roman history at Silchester – Calleva in Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth historical novel for children (of all ages!). I asked him for his take on the fate of the ninth legion, and he has written to me (with permission to reproduce his words – thank you Michael):

At the time Rosemary Sutcliff wrote The Eagle of the Ninth it was the general view that legio IX Hispana, based at York (Eburacum) had somehow come to grief in northern Britain.  There was no specific evidence for a disastrous battle but the record of the legion stopped with an inscription of AD 107-8, commemorating the construction of a building by the legion within the fortress at York.

Since the 1950s further evidence of the fate of the legion has come to light.  There is a tile and a mortarium (specialist pottery vessel) from the legionary fortress at Nijmegen in the Netherlands, each stamped by the legion (LEG VIIII; LEG VIIII HIS), which date to the early 2nd century.  There are also inscriptions of NCOs and officers of the legion whose career profiles are such that the legion must have still been in existence in the 120s, ie after work started on the construction of Hadrian’s Wall in Britain.  Although there can be no certainty about this until more evidence emerges, it is likely that, after a period in lower Germany (at Nijmegen), the legion was transferred to the East.  If it was not destroyed in the war against the Jews later in Hadrian’s reign, it might have met its fate in the war against Parthia in the early 160s.  The historian Cassius Dio mentions an unnamed legion which was destroyed at the siege of Elegeia in Armenia in 161.

Even if we can no longer associate the loss of the Ninth with Britain, the story, The Eagle of the Ninth can be seen to be symbolic of the fairly constant struggle between Rome and the tribes of northern Britain, from the time of the 1st century governors like Petilius Cerealis and Agricola onwards, through the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, the later building of the Antonine Wall between Clyde and Forth, the return to the previous frontier line, and so on.