JoeCool

Hi All,

Just watched The Eagle the other day, was not as bad as I expected, to be honest.

This in the 3rd flim in the last few years about this Legion and it suposed destruction by the Picts in 117AD. My intrest is peaked.

Why is the 9th of such interest to people? There are more intresting Legions, to be sure.

Is it that fact that, if true, the Romans were beaten by an almost unkown people at the edge of the world?

Is it because of Hadrian's Wall? (Depite the fact that construction had started some five years before the "loss" of the legion). Did the construction of the wall, coupled with the "loss" of the legion, give rise to the myth that the Romans were afraid of the Picts?

What do you guys think?

Also, any other books/flims/sources that talk about the 9th?

Belisarius

Not seen it yet although I read the book in my school days. I suspect it's just Hollywood cashing in on the success of Gladiator.

Sallah

Yeah I saw the previews there a was a black guy. I hate PC movies where they always have to include a black guy in an obviously white country.

Charlie Bravo

The Roman legions took soldiers from all Roman territories, and of all ethnicities, so seeing a black soldier serving in the 9th legion wouldn't have been unusual, nor is it necessarily indicative of PCness when seen in a film.

Mauritius (also called St. Maurice) commanded the Theban Legion in the 3rd century, and was a black man.

The Alani Dragon Rising

Did they not disappear without trace? If that is the case then it's probably more to do with the mystery angle of the whole thing.

HeirofAlexander

They dissapeared in the northern forests of caledonia. But later there was officers and other people listed in Asia and syria. So no one knows what really happened to them.

Clemmie

http://www.historum.com/ancient-hist...st-legion.html

http://www.historum.com/ancient-hist...th-legion.html

http://www.historum.com/war-military...legions-4.html

I've always been interested in the 9th. I was initially interested because I read Rosemary Sutcliffe's novel Eagle of the Ninth (book the movie is based on). As a military brat, I couldn't conceive of how the Romans could lose an entire legion and not know what happened to it.
Read the last thread carefully if you are really interested in Rome's legions. Salah talks about a number of different legions as well.

Salah

Or maybe those "politically correct movies" are depicting "black" guys because there really were "black" guys in their setting...

Quintus Sertorius

Not calling it PC, but the excuse for the black soldier in Centurion, was that he ran away from somewhere, untill he got to the empire, and joined the army. Was this possible? shouldn´t he have been some form of auxilia instead of a Legionaire? Since he wasn´t a roman citizen?

Don´t misunderstand me, i would ask the same question if he was clearly Irish or from somewhere else outside the empire.

Has for the 9th, it´s always more interesting to perpetuate some misteries.

Salah

A black man in the early 2nd Century AD could have easily been a Roman citizen. The Numidians were "black", and they had a long (and largely friendly) history with Rome.