*First paragraph...hahaha
Wednesday, 16th June 2010
By BRIAN PENDREIGH
WHAT have the Romans ever done for us? Well, in addition to roads, sanitation and wine, they’re about to give a boost to the Scottish film industry.
The spine-tingling legend of the ‘disappearance’ of the Roman Ninth Legion is about to feature in no fewer than three separate big-screen movies.
Producers - perhaps inspired by Gladiator - are all working on their own versions of how 4,000 elite Roman troops marched into Scotland and were, according to legend, never seen again.
Neil Marshall, who wrote and directed the horror hit Dog Soldiers, is planning The Ninth Legion as an action thriller, in which the Picts slaughter most of the invaders, but a few survivors attempt to fight their way back.
Ros Borland and Catherine Aitken, the Scottish producers of AfterLife, are also working on the premise that the Ninth Legion was massacred in their film Legion, and have a Druid priest using the Roman standard to rally the natives for an attack.
Finally Duncan Kenworthy, London-based producer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, has acquired the film rights to Rosemary Sutcliff’s children’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth, which has sold more than a million copies since its appearance in 1954, and was made into a BBC mini-series shot in Aberdeenshire in the 1970s.
Today, academics and amateur historians still argue over the scant historical evidence for the movements of the Ninth Legion and some suggest it didn’t disappear at all.
Marshall, who partially filmed Dog Soldiers in the Highlands, accepts the disappearance of the Ninth is probably only myth. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story, particularly one that is almost 2,000 years old?
He said: "As soon as I heard the myth that there was an entire legion gone up into Scotland and vanished without trace, I was hooked. It’s not meant to be historically perfect. I’m picking up on a legend and exploring it.
"The legion itself only appears in full at the beginning of the film and then a massacre takes place, and it’s basically about a handful of survivors trying to fight their way back through Scotland to the Roman front line, only to find out that the line is withdrawn, because they went off to establish Hadrian’s Wall."
Dog Soldiers pitted squaddies against werewolves in the Scottish Highlands but most of it was filmed in Luxembourg.
..The origins of the Ninth Legion are uncertain, though it distinguished itself in Spain around 24 BC and became known as the Legio IX Hispana. It also served in Germany, Hungary and Africa, before probably joining the 40,000-strong army assembled to invade Britain in 43 AD.
The Ninth got an early taste of the British fighting spirit when it came up against the forces of Boudicca, queen of the Iceni.
Although she was eventually defeated, the Ninth suffered heavy losses and, according to the historian Tacitus, needed 2,000 reinforcements from the legions on the Rhine to make up its complement.
There is evidence to suggest the Ninth was stationed at Eburacum (York) from 71 AD. But the Romans never subdued the northern tribes - variously referred to as Brigantes, Caledonians and Picts - who repeatedly launched raids into the mighty Roman Empire. The Romans began construction of Hadrian’s Wall around 120 AD, in an attempt to keep the hordes at bay. It is much the same time the Ninth Legion disappears off the page of history.
To many, it seemed logical to conclude they must have been sent to Scotland and were slaughtered by the wild mountain men, whose fighting spirit was noted by Tacitus at the Mons Graupius.
Yet in this age of conspiracy theories, some commentators have suggested the Ninth were deliberately written out of history. Roman historians were much more effusive about victories than defeats, and it has been suggested that the Ninth may have suffered an ignominious defeat in Scotland, which so disgraced the Roman Empire that the legion was disbanded. It is even suggested that the very mention of the legion’s name was thereafter banned.
"There is no evidence that it marched off into Scotland and disappeared into the mists at all," said Lawrence Keppie, retired professor of Roman History and Archaeology at Glasgow University. "It’s just that it was at York and then not at York. Something happens, it leaves. We don’t know what happened.
"It started just by people noticing that the legion had disappeared from the record and then really just trying to find a context for that."
http://heritage.scotsman.com/theromans/Film-frenzy-discovers-the-lost.2483137.jp
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A section of wall from a Roman bath house, standing in the middle of modern Leicester, a few blocks from the cathedral. The wall is over 30 feet high, and the foundation walls of the bath house can be seen at the foot of the wall. Immediately beside the Wall is a museum of Leicester area archaeology.
The bath house and next door exercise hall were built around 154 AD as part of the old Roman town of Ratae Coritanorum, the forerunner of Leicester. The bath house layout is clearly shown, with modern replica hypocaust (underfloor heating) columns showing what the original hypocaust would have looked like. The bath house consisted of three large calderia (hot baths) and three smaller tepidaria (warm baths).
After the Romans left the exercise hall was demolished to make way for a Saxon church, an ancestor of the medieval church of St Nicholas which stands beside the wall today. The Jewry Wall was incorporated into a succession of industrial and domestic buildings. In 1920 the site was cleared of modern buildings, leaving the Jewry Wall standing on its own.
http://www.britainexpress.com/Where_to_go_in_Britain/Ancient_Britain/Roman_britain2.htm
There are numerous US Civil War re-enactors(hobbyists) throughout America, but was surprised to see this website: http://www.legio-ix-hispana.org/
Male of the species really 'dig' (not necessarily archaeologists:) the history of Roman legions http://www.roman-britain.org/main.htm [The No.1 website on Roman Britain
Containing 2,578 Pages]
http://www.roman-britain.org/tribes/coritani.htm
4 comments:
Very much enjoy your forays into British history and locations. Really liked R. Sutcliffe's novel, when I was a young person.
Hi fitzg, I'm interested in most historical periods, but when it comes to the Roman legions & their campaigns, there's plenty of company in almost every corner of the internet...added 2 new links above.
Thanks, again, for linking to British history on the Net. Appreciated.
fitzg, is 'Centurion' based on the Sutcliffe novel? After telling DH about the upcoming movie, he asked if the story revolves around the lost Roman legion's search for a young boy...he recalled reading some yrs ago a novel with that storyline.
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