The Eagle of the Ninth

"The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff The Eagle of the Ninth tells the story of a Roman officer, Marcus Flavius Aquila, who sets off on a dangerous journey to discover the fate of his father’s missing legion – the Ninth – which has mysteriously disappeared to the north of Hadrian’s Wall. Accompanied by his faithful slave, Esca, part of Marcus’s mission is also to recover the legion’s eagle standard, a totem of honour for the Roman military. Sign up here for our newsletter featuring the best children’s and young adult books, as recommended by authors, teachers, librarians and, of course, kids. This, for me, is the best historical novel ever written about ancient Rome . I actually only read it for the first time as an adult but it’s often regarded as a classic for children, although I don’t think Sutcliff herself divided her work into ‘for children’ or ‘for adults’. Whichever way you look at it though, it’s a brilliant, often incredibly tense adventure story and a beautiful piece of writing that really makes you feel as if you’re there in the dark, damp British landscape of the second century. I’ve never found Roman military history especially interesting I’m afraid, but I’ll have a crack at this. A legion was a unit in the Roman army consisting of around about four to five thousand men. The Ninth was stationed at various points around the Empire during its history and then it served in Britain after the Roman conquest in 43 CE. Sutcliff says in her own foreword to The Eagle of the Ninth that her inspiration for the story was rooted in two ‘mysteries’ – the apparent disappearance of the Ninth Legion in around about 117 CE after it marched north from its base at York to deal with an uprising among the Caledonian tribes, and the excavation of a little bronze Roman eagle near Silchester in Hampshire nearly eighteen hundred years later. As far as I’m aware, many scholars now believe there was nothing ‘mysterious’ in the Ninth’s apparent disappearance from the historical record and that they probably simply got posted elsewhere. The little bronze eagle is also unlikely to have been from the top of a standard. But I wouldn’t let that stop you, for one nanosecond, from enjoying Sutcliff’s story."