The Ninth Legion: Did They Disappear?

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The mystery of the Ninth Legion

0:30It's one of history's most compelling cold cases. The mystery of what happened to over 5,000 experienced Roman soldiers has captured the imagination of authors and filmmakers for decades. This was the Ninth Legion, Legio IX Hispana, the legion that helped Augustus become emperor and helped the Emperor Claudius begin his invasion of Britain. The legion simply vanished from history in the 2nd century AD.

1:00But why? Were they wiped out in the bloody rebellion? Or were they discreetly deployed to a quiet corner of the empire to be forgotten and disbanded? Now to help solve this ancient enigma, I'm pleased to welcome back friend of the podcast and Ninth Legion expert, Dr. Simon Elliott. Dr. Simon, it is a pleasure to have you back on the show.

1:36It has been too long. How are you doing? I'm doing really well. I love coming on the show with you, mate. You've come down to our new studio in our history hit office. Which is beautiful. Exactly. You know, we're adding new stuff, new books, new artifacts to it every week. Where are my books, by the way? I know. I know. Sorry. That was an oversight. You keep churning out book after book after book, but one of your most popular, one of your favorites, and one of our favorite topics that you've covered, that we've both covered together in the past, is the story of the Ninth Legion.

2:08Rome's Ninth Legion. This is one of the great debates slash mysteries of ancient Roman history, isn't it? It is. Absolutely, yeah. Basically, it's the only Roman legion where we literally don't know what happened to it. And there is a lot of different theories around what might have happened to it, and geographical locations as well. The big one is, was it lost in Britain? Was it lost elsewhere? Was it even lost at all, right? So, there are four broad theories about what might have happened to the Ninth Legion. Firstly, it was lost in the far north of Britain. Right. Secondly, it was lost in the south of Britain.

2:40Third, it was lost in the northern empire along the Rhine and Danube. And finally, it may have been lost on the eastern frontier. So, those are kind of the four big theories with the story of the Ninth. And that's kind of what we all think of when someone mentions Legio IX Hispana or the Ninth Legion. You go straight away to the mystery around why it disappears. Was it destroyed in a big defeat? Was it simply disbanded? Where? But, what we also really want to get into today is actually exploring how the Ninth Legion, there's so much more than just the theories as to why it disappeared.

3:13You can actually explore so many parts of the Roman military story through what we have surviving about the Ninth. Absolutely.

Popular culture and historical sources

3:20It's worth reflecting, actually, why in popular culture today it's so resonant, okay? And it's resonant with people of a certain generation, actually, because it was the key feature, the core of the book which Rosemary Sutcliffe published in 1954, the great Rosemary Sutcliffe, in 1954, The Eagle of the Ninth, which is a children's book, but incredibly well-written and well-researched, where she talked about what happened to the eagle of the missing Ninth Legion. It influenced Hollywood movies. So, you've got 2011, The Eagle with Channing Tatum.

3:52I'm just saying it's a great movie, by the way. Very good lorica segmentata, even though it's leather, but it still looks very good. I don't know if there's a running testudo, if I remember, in that. Don't like to talk about that, mate. Should have been a Coenus wedge, but there you go. But it's very pretty. It's very pretty. But also, you get the very gritty movie from 2010 with Michael Fassbender, just before this, with the same kind of storyline, a bit grittier, The Centurion. Yeah, that's like a Teutoburg Forest slash Ninth Legion slash Boudicca kind of mix, that Centurion. We could do a whole other discussion on our reflections of that movie. All goes very, very wrong for the Romans.

4:23But with the story of the Ninth Legion, as you say, in popular culture, it remains massive and big to the present day. But to learn more about the original story, do we have a lot of source material? It's very well recorded, actually, the Ninth Legion's history in Roman contemporary writing and also in epigraphy as well. So actually, we know an awful lot about the Ninth Legion. And these inscriptions that survive, I mean, I love these particular accounts because they are normally, they're very personal. They are inscriptions that record one particular figure, right, who actually served in the Ninth

4:56Legion. And we have several of those surviving in different contexts. We do. And also, I mean, what I love is it gives real agency to these individuals as well. So these are real people who lived. They took part in the stories we talk about 2,000 years ago. My favourite, personally, is in the Yorkshire Museum. So when you're walking to the Yorkshire Museum, you're walking to the main atrium, which is where it has the main sort of new exhibition displays. Then you turn left into the Roman Gallery and one of the first things you see is this very long, tall tombstone for Rufinus.

5:27Now, Rufinus was a signifer from the Ninth Legion. A signifer is a standard bearer carrying a signum standard. And it shows, and that is a fantastic artefact. I remember seeing it as well many times. And so he's kind of in that triangular casing as well. And he is holding, he is holding the standard in his hand. That's how they decided to depict him, or he probably wanted to be depicted on his tombstone to show what he was in life, which was, as you say, this key member, this standard bearer of this legion that are so closely entwined with York's origin story.

6:00Absolutely. And also, if you look closely at his standard, it tells a story because the standard is the signum. And the signum is a standard which would be with either a century or a cohort. And the signifer is the standard bearer who carries it. And if you look at the way that the standard is put together, it's got a series of roundels and other markings. And what they do is represent events in the history of the legion, or the cohort, or the century. So basically, it says, we, I, did this, this, this, and this.

6:30There's a story right in front of you, and it's real. It's a real story with real agency from a real standard bearer from the real Ninth Legion. And I think this is one of the key things I want to get across with our chat today, is when we cover the whole story of the Ninth Legion, we like to always focus on the mystery. But actually, when you delve into the details, the story of the Ninth Legion is full of so many more stories. You know, smaller episodes, whether it's a particular figure like Rufinus, or a story that survives in a historical text, a more infamous tale, right? And that happens again and again and again with the story of the knife.

7:03It is not all just about the mystery of what happened to it. For many people, the Ninth Legion is actually the prism through which they view the Roman military. Okay? Because it's there, it's right in the forefront of the imagination. If you look at my book, for example, Roman and Britain's Missing Legion, that was a BBC history book of the year in 2021. Right, sure. Because, because it's such a popular story. You will always get an interested audience in the story of the Ninth Legion, because it's the mystery. But then when you dig into it, as you say, it starts telling all these individual stories

7:34about real people who really lived and participated in things that we talk about today. Big figures like Boudicca, Roman invasion of Britain, and so much more as we delve into.

What was a Roman legion?

7:46But first of all, no such thing as a silly question. When we talk about the Ninth Legion, it is a Roman legion and in existence will primarily be focusing on the 1st century AD and into the 2nd century AD. Can you give us a sense of what a Roman legion was like at that time? What do we mean by a Roman legion? So a legion is a major frontline Roman military unit. So you have 5,500 to 6,000 men, all armed in the same way. So in this case, in the early 1st century BC, Lorica, Hamata, chainmail, helmets, scutum shield,

8:24a couple of heavyweight throwing javelins to, pierce armour, and then the Gladys Hispaniensis sword, and a Pugio dagger. They're all on of the same way. The legion also includes specialists, but even the specialists all fight in the same way as well. And crucially, he enables people who have no money to join the legions. You don't have to have any wealth or any property. So suddenly you end up with people who have no wealth, being recruited into legions, who then rely totally for their revenue and their wealth on the people who recruited them.

8:56So they become super loyal, which is why in the 1st century BC, you end up with legions, which includes the Ninth Legion, created around this time. And the legionaries are super loyal to whichever Roman warlord, I call them, recruited them. Right. And they all fight in the same way. They've also got specialists. They also do have artillery as well, don't they? Kind of big torsion catapults and bolt firing projectile weapons as well. So it's a ferocious fighting force. And the Ninth Legion, we do think, is in existence from that time, from the 1st century BC, from

9:29that century of really big names in Roman history. You've mentioned Marius, but later you get the likes of Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar, of course, as well. Absolutely, yeah. And they're entwined with the Ninth story as well, are they?

Early campaigns and Caesar in Britain

9:40Absolutely, yeah. So I mean, we start off with Marius and Sulla. So the Ninth Legion is first referenced in the context of the social war. So this is when you have the rebellion of Rome's Italian allies against the Romans themselves. In the 80s BC, the Rome's Italian allies want to be Roman citizens. The Roman Senate don't want to be Roman citizens because it might cost them a lot of money and they might lose their own revenue. So there's a rebellion, the social war, eventually put down broadly by Sulla. And it's in the context of that that we have the Ninth Legion appearing, probably raised by Sulla, actually.

10:11So there's the Ninth Legion appearing. And then the Ninth Legion then is referenced as one of the key legions in Caesar's Gallic war campaigns. It's one of the four legions Caesar uses to invade Britain in his second campaign. Ah, so that's their first taste of Britain, is it? 54 BC, yeah, absolutely. So the Ninth comes to Britain in 54 BC. And then later you go towards the end of the century and it plays a full role in the Cantabrian Wars in northern Spain, which is where it first gets its Cognomen Hispaniensis. Right. Because it fights well. It fights well and that gets shortened to Hispania.

10:43Right. So that's where we get the Nomen, isn't it? The Cognomen, do we call that? Cognomen, yeah. The Cognomen for the legion, the Ninth Legion, which is Legio IX Hispana. Yeah. And the Cantabrian Wars, we've mentioned Sulla, Marius, Julius Caesar. And the Cantabrian Wars is a time of another really big figure in Roman history. Oh, Christus, the biggest. Augustus. The great Augustus, yeah. For the Romans, I mean, in our world today, the great figure is, of course, Julius Caesar. And then, you know, Augustus. But in the Roman world, it was the other way around. For the Romans, the great figure, if you're in the Roman Empire, is the great Augustus.

11:16So the Cantabrian War is the last major campaigns fought by Augustus, effectively. When, in fact, it spans his renaming from Octavian through 27 BC into becoming the first Emperor Augustus. So it spans the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, the Cantabrian Wars. So how do we get from the Ninth Legion serving under Augustus at the turn of the first century to the Ninth being involved in the Roman invasion of Britain a few decades later?

The Claudian invasion of Britain

11:46So the key date here is actually nothing to do with the Ninth Legion. It's AD 9, Teutoburg Forest, the variant disaster when you get three Roman legions wiped out. So Augustus inherits 60 legions, okay, from across the entire Mediterranean at the end of the very sanguineous Roman civil wars. He's the last man standing. Clearly can't afford 60 legions. So he rationalizes that down to 30, then loses three. And it stays at 27 for a period, okay? So what happens between the Cantabrian Wars and the Roman invasion of Britain?

12:19So firstly, the Ninth Legion, as one of the 27 in around AD 14, finds itself based on the Danube, probably at Carnuntum. And that's another key frontier of the Roman Empire at the time, isn't it? Yes, it's the Danube. So this is, I mean, Carnuntum is the legionary fortress on the Danube. The Romans are just beginning to create the province of Pannonia, which later becomes Pannonia superior and inferior. And Carnuntum is the anchor and later becomes the capital, premature capital, of Pannonia superior.

12:50So the Ninth Legion around AD 14 is based there with two of the legions. And actually, the legionary fortress is for 5,500 to 6,000 men. So if you get 18,000 to 20,000 men in there, it's going to get quite cramped and smelly and not very nice. So there's a rebellion. There's actually a rebellion. And during the rebellion, the troops actually almost decide to march on Italy. And of course, the Romans sent to Texas very seriously. The rebellion is put down. The legions are all admonished, may have been decimated.

13:22So the Ninth Legion may have been decimated. So this is the first time there's a black mark against the Ninth Legion, one of three. The first time there's a black mark against the Ninth Legion in AD 14. And then it takes part in campaigns in North Africa. It takes part in Roman occupations in Gaul. And then it finds itself back in Pannonia again, when in AD 43, the improbable Claudius becomes the emperor. And Claudius needs a big political win because no one expected him to become the emperor,

13:54least of all Claudius himself. So he needs a Hail Mary win. And he decides to do the most incredible thing, which is conquer far off mythical, Game of Throne-esque, Tolkien-esque Britannia. So why do you say that? Why do you say mythical, Game of Thrones, you know, Tolkien-esque Britannia? Because this is a place which the Romans know very little. Even after Caesar's two incursions, 55 and 54 BC, this is a place that terrifies the Romans. More than anything, it's because it's not within Mare Nostrum, their sea in the Mediterranean, which they now dominate.

14:25It's across Oceanus, the terrifying North Sea, what's called the English Channel of the North Sea today. So they're terrified of the crossing. Remember, the great Augustus planned to invade Britain three times and very cleverly came up with a reason not to. The very un-great Caligula also planned to invade Britain and failed. It's difficult to do. It's even difficult once the Claudian invasion takes place. Remember, Caesar conquered Gaul in eight years.

14:55It took the Romans 40 years to conquer and actually have within their province Britain up to the line of the Solway of Firth-Tynes. It's very difficult to do. So Claudius needs a Hail Mary. He appoints Aulus Plautius, his leading general and then the governor of Pannonia, to lead the invasion in 1843. He comes up with three other legions, which were in Gaul at the time, which are Legio to Augusta, Legio 14 Germina, Great Roman Legion 14 Germina, and 20 Valerio Victrix, another Great

15:26Roman Legion. And then he has Aulus Plautius with his own legion, which is the Ninth. Ah, so the Ninth is Plautius' personal legion. In Pannonia. To join the three. And they're the three which invade Britain in AD 43. So they have four legions all together when they join up. And they invade the Ninth Legion. Presumably, if it's Plautius' legion, must play a key role in the invasion and the years following, right? It's worth reflecting, actually, Tristan. When you have... I mean, this is an amphibious assault, isn't it? It's the most difficult kind of military operation. And it doesn't nearly go wrong.

15:57I mean, they get the troops ashore and everything. But you have this major two-day encounter at a river crossing battle Dio talks about, which probably is the River Medway. You think it's the Medway? In Kent. It could be the Stowers. It could be... The River Aran, maybe? Maybe. Depends where you think they landed, Tristan, obviously. There's the Sussex. But there is a major river crossing battle, which the Robs nearly lose. That's the key thing. They nearly, nearly lose the battle. And they only just win by the skin of their teeth. If they'd have lost their battle, that battle, there may have been no Rome and Britain at all. I mean, the jeopardy level involved is the same as Paulinus later fighting Boudicca, which

16:29we'll touch on later, because the Ninth has a part there as well. So this is a sanguineous battle. The Ninth plays a major role. But the Romans do win. They cross the Thames. They go to Cameludinum, which is the capital of the Catavallone in Essex, modern Colchester. And this is where Claudius arrives with his elephants, stays for 16 days, never comes back to Britain. Why would a Roman emperor come to Britain? But he declares the province. And this is where Aulus Plautius then becomes the first governor.

16:59So at that point, the province, which the Ninth has taken a huge part in establishing, is the southeast of Britain. Officially, that's the end of the invasion phase of, well, taking the Roman conquest of Britannia, isn't it? But that's not the end of the story with the Ninth. The Ninth is in Britain, and it's in Britain to stay for the foreseeable future. So they've made their way up to Essex and Colchester.

Marching north and founding cities

17:25What's next? There's more of Britain to take over for the Romans, right? So this is the phase when I'm leading my tours. I call it the great Roman Britain bake-off. It's the bake-off. Explain yourself. It's all about layer cakes. It's all about layer cakes. So if you imagine the Romans in the southeast of Britain, the line of the territory is basically Essex through to the Solent, effectively. That's what you're talking about. The most Romanized of the former late Iron Age tribes, there's probably Kantiaki and Kent.

17:56And London's almost in the middle of that, on the Thames, that the Romans found. This is our new center. Yeah, absolutely. A mercantile center, not the capital at the time. But from that point, Aulus Plautus is given orders as Claudius waves goodbye and never coming back. I hate it over here. Going back to Rome and drinking more wine, marrying more ladies from the Julia Claudian dynasty. So he's gone. So Aulus Plautus is given this task, right? Conquer Mordor, effectively. And it's a tough task. You know, it's a tough task. For the large part, especially as you go north in, well, later becomes Roman Britain, the natives

18:31aren't having it. Most of them actually don't want the Romans there at all.

18:38And so it's a hard slog. And what Plautus does is he basically puts 20 Valeria Victrix in charge of consolidating Colchester as a provincial capital. He sends the later great Roman Emperor Vespasian, a big fan of Vespasian, as you know, to the southwest, famously conquered the southwest with two Augusta. He sends 14 Gemina into the West Midlands. Famously, the East Midlands and then the east coast above the Wash is targeted by the Ninth Legion. So over time, it is the Ninth Legion which plays a major role in establishing today's modern

19:11British urban landscape. Because it's the Ninth Legion which founds Leicester. It's the Ninth Legion which founds Lincoln. And it's broadly at that point as you reach, oh, you're looking at about AD 50, that you have a stop line. And it's often called the Fossway Frontier. So a stop line which runs broadly from Lincoln through to Exeter becomes the Fossway, the Roman root way from the southwest to the northeast. And that stops there for broadly a decade.

19:42Shall we talk about that briefly? Because I do love how on a map, even today, with those urban cities and towns as well, you can actually kind of follow the Ninth's movement north. You mentioned Leicester there first and then Lincoln. Both founded before Boudicca, we think, don't we? Absolutely, yeah. And Longthorpe as well. Is that a town in the area that's kind of got a Knight connection to it? Absolutely. If you go through, if you go that entire region. So you're going from Colchester, you're skirting around the territory of the Ikenai because they're a Roman client state. So you don't need to deal with North Norfolk. So you're skirting straight into the southeast Midlands.

20:16So you're Peterborough and then you're moving northwards. Anything founded then by the Romans is by the Ninth Legion. And you think, because we've done a little show on this as well, between Leicester and Lincoln in your neck of the woods, you think there might have been a battle or some sort of engagement that happened between the Ninth and Iron Age Britons during their march north, right? So to my point, I think the Britons, especially as you go further north, weren't having it. They weren't buying into the Roman way of life in any way, shape or form.

20:48So the Romans had to fight the whole way. And I think near where I live, as an example, in Cresswell, which is near Worksop, I think there was an engagement there with a late Iron Age Hill fort called Markland Grips. But I mean, broadly, any Roman marching camp or fort from that period that is to the east of the Pennines is going to be Ninth Legion all the way up to maybe even the Don, the line of the Don. So you're going up to Doncaster, which also is a Roman fort, by the way.

21:18So they're all Roman forts. So a lot of the built infrastructure there today and the roadways there today were established by this campaign by the Ninth Legion in the late 8040s, early 8050s, which is amazing. No, absolutely. And I wanted to mention that because otherwise we can easily skirt over, you know, the Ninth March is north from Colchester, right? And it takes many years. They then found Leicester, then they found Lincoln, and then they stay there for a while. And then they'll go even further north, as we'll continue in a moment. But that makes it too easy to overlook the fact that, yes, we know that from the archaeology.

21:50What is more invisible at this time is actually maybe the engagements they had to fight along the way to get further north. And to me, that's a great point, Tristan. That to me is why I love being an archaeologist, because as an archaeologist, what I can do is I can interpret data when I'm excavating a site. And if I have a buckle or a fastener from a piece of Lorica segmentata in my part of the world, which is in the East Midlands, I know almost certainly it's from a legionary from the Ninth Legion, who then got really badly told off by a centurion for being a slumberly

22:25soldier, for having a sort of like quite manky Lorica segmentata. It's very difficult to maintain, as any reenactor will tell you, by the way, Lorica segmentata, which is probably why auxiliaries are far cleverer using their chain mail, because it's much easier to maintain. But all the archaeology I find, if it's in a military context and it's from the mid-first century, is Ninth Legion, that is real agency for me. It tells me a story of a real individual from 2,000 years ago who was there in a place I am today. That's why I love being an archaeologist and a historian.

22:57They're marching north. They're probably fighting once in a while on their way north as well. They almost certainly are fighting them on their way north. And then you mentioned earlier that client state, that Iron Age tribe in Norfolk, the Iacene, however you wish to say it, which now takes centre stage in the story of the ninth, because we get to the year 60 AD.

Boudica and the revolt

23:21Black Mock number two. So what happens in 60 AD and how is this event and this character, this warrior woman, linked to the ninth story? So the ninth legion at this time is based in Lincoln, where it's established a legionary fortress. So we've already spoken about York being a legionary fortress, and again, later we'll establish that was also founded by the ninth, but we'll come to that later. It's all about the ninth legion, as if you're listening to this podcast, you will know.

23:53So the ninth legion is based in AD 60 in the legionary fortress. It has built in Lincoln. Meanwhile, in North Norfolk, you have this incendiary conflagration of a revolt launched by Boudicca, the queen of the Iacena. Boudicca. It's all about Boudicca. Boudicca, who marches south with a huge army, which is anything between, depending on who you read in the primary sources, 80,000 to 230,000 strong.

24:26I mean, you're probably only talking about maximum 30,000 warriors. But anyway, it's a lot. Maybe a lot of camp followers as well. People have to roam and loot. Remember, this is very early in the province. So the Romans only came here in AD 43, 17 years later, okay? They've only just got to Lincoln. They've got no further north. But there are still people around who are now in the Roman sphere who remember a time or have been told tales of a time before the Romans have taken over. Most people. Most people. Most people. Most people. And this revolt of Boudicca heads south and it heads towards the provincial capital

24:58of Colchester. So you have the legate, later a very successful warrior governor in Britain, Serialis, who's the legate of the 9th Legion, commander of the 9th Legion in Lincoln. And he's given a task to defeat Boudicca before he gets to the provincial capital. So he goes south, not with the whole legion, but with a number of vexillations, so regiments from the legion. Let's say the legion's 5,500 men. We'll say it's 3,000 men. Plus some auxiliary cavalry and some auxiliary foot. So we'll call it 4,000 men.

25:28And they fail to intercept Boudicca getting to Colchester first. So Boudicca sacks Colchester, torched, burnt to the ground. You get the famous burning of the Claudian Temple, which is where the Castle and Museum is today. And the whole place is sacked. But then Serialis, with his small force, does intercept Boudicca after the event, as he's heading towards the new mercantile town of London on the Thames.

25:59And what happens? He gets absolutely hammered. So he gets so badly beaten by Boudicca that he flees with his cavalry, leaving his legionaries and auxiliaries to be slaughtered. So he's abandoned. He's abandoned them. Most of the hardened Roman citizen legionary soldiers that went with him. It's a terrible black mark for the legion. And he hides for the rest of the revolt in a fort. It doesn't come out again until Paulinus defeats Boudicca.

26:29After Boudicca sacked St. Albans, and then after Paulinus, the governor has come back from Wales and has defeated Boudicca somewhere probably along the line of the A5, Wattling Street. And that's only when the 9th legion sort of raises its head above the parapet again because its legate's been hiding. Black mark number two. So the 9th legion has pretty significant battle scars. Can we probably say thousands of men in the Boudicca revolt? Well, if I say 3,000 men from the legion and they got slaughtered, 3,000 men.

27:00So, yeah. Yeah. So, basically, most of its battle strength is lost. Yeah. But the Boudicca revolt is defeated. And if I remember correctly, we do hear then of reinforcements being sent to Britain following that, a few thousand soldiers. Do we think some of those soldiers surely were sent straight away to kind of put the 9th legion back up to strength? It's the first of two instances in the story of the 9th where you get an emergency expedition being sent to Britain to reinforce the north. Right. Okay. So, absolutely, I believe that these reinforcements were basically deployed to help bolster the

27:37remnants of the 9th legion in Lincoln. Interesting. Okay. Because the 9th legion doesn't stay in Lincoln much longer after that. It's only a few years before they're heading even further north, right? We're approaching, Tristan, we're approaching black mark number three. Number three's coming. So, we go back to Serialis. Right. So, Serialis ignominiously defeated, hiding cowardly during the Boudiccan Revolt. But he's a supporter of the Flavians in the year of the four emperors.

28:10And he actually fights pretty well in the year of the four emperors. And then he also eventually leads part of the Roman response to the Batavian Revolt in the Rhine Delta. So, this all happens in around 69 AD. And so, the year of the four emperors, which ends up with Vespasian, who you mentioned earlier. He plays a big role in the Roman invasion of Britain, conquering the southwest when he comes to power. And as you say, Serialis is a big supporter of this new emperor, Vespasian. So, Serialis is back in favor. Turns out, amazingly, he's not an idiot after all.

28:42Given the right troops, obviously not the 9th legion. And he can actually do a decent job. So, he's the second of four warrior governors in the Flavian period, who are the Roman warrior governors who start conquering the far north of Britain. The first one's Bolanus. Then you move on to Serialis. Then Frontinus. And finally, we'll come to the great Agricola in a second. So, the important thing in the governorship of Serialis is that he's given the task by the new emperor Vespasian, a winning martial glory for the new dynasty.

29:16It's the end of the Julia, Claudians, year of the four emperors, the Flavians. He's won a civil war. There's no martial glory in winning a civil war for an emperor. You know, you don't have a triumph for killing Romans. So, he needs martial glory. He can pick a fight in two places. The far north of Britain, or against the Parthians in the east. Vespasian is not an idiot. He knows that if he picks a fight with the Parthians, there's a fair chance in the east he might lose. So, he goes in the far north of Britain. So, Serialis is given the job. Conquer the far north of what we call today, England.

29:46This is also the time where we mentioned Rufinus earlier, that standard bearer. He's alive, and he's a member of the 9th Legion, and he's one of those soldiers. He's a member of the Legion that then receives the orders to march north from Lincoln, and

York and the push into Scotland

30:17where do they all go? York. York. So, this is where York comes from. York is another founding of the 9th Legion, and it's another legionary fortress. So, it becomes the legionary fortress, and Lincoln gets turned into a colonial settlement for veteran retired soldiers. So, York is now the northern legionary fortress, and then for the rest of the Roman occupation of Britain, it becomes the lynchpin of the north of the Roman occupation. Very, very important place in Roman Britain. Later, a sort of a provincial capital after Severus divides the province of Britannia in

30:49half. But it's the home of the 9th Legion, and that's very important because it's from there we then jump through the governorship of Frontinus. And now we're into the later 80s, 70s, into the early 80s, and we have, for me, one of the greatest Roman Britons, if not the greatest Roman Briton. If you ask a Mancunian who the greatest Roman Briton is, it's Agricola, the great warrior governor Agricola. And Agricola is also, like Frontinus, tasked with conquering territory for the Flavians.

31:25And Agricola spans all three Flavian emperors, he spans Vespasian, briefly Titus, and then Domitian. And it's Agricola who leads the 9th Legion and all the other four legions in a five-year campaign to conquer the far north of the whole of the main island of Britain. And for context, by this time, with Frontinus as well, the Romans have largely subdued the

31:55the important areas of Wales, at least important areas for them with resources. And it's been a long, hard fight in Wales, hasn't it? The coast. The coast as well. Exactly. And they're getting their lead mining and all the like. Not fully pacified, of course. Conquest of Anglesey as well. Yeah. So that's all been done. Yeah. So that allows them now to move all their, well, a significant amount of their legionary strength to go with Agricola into what is today Scotland. This is the Roman invasion of Scotland and the 9th Legion plays a part in it. It's so important it plays such a role in our world today, doesn't it?

32:26Because the story of the far north of Britain today is the story of Scotland. It's not the story of England or it's not the story of the whole island of Britain. It's the story of Scotland. And the origins of that are with this period, very specifically with this period. I mean, I always argue at the beginning of January, I'm a fan of rugby as you know, Tristan and the Six Nations. Part of the Six Nations is all down to Agricola and Domitian, you know, as we'll no doubt come to at the beginning of January. So Agricola is tasked with conquering the very far north.

32:57And actually, to cut the story short, he gets all the way through to the Moray Firth. So he's around Aberdeen, he's in Aberdeenshire. And in 883, you have a major battle at Mons Graupius, which if it took place, was probably in the Bernacchi Range, south of the Moray Firth. And there the Romans finally subdue the tribes in the far north of Britain. And the Romans claim success. The whole of the main island of Britain is conquered. Agricola orders the Class Britannica regional fleet to circumnavigate the whole main island. So Britain's been conquered.

33:28And then Domitian orders a monumental arch to be built at Richburg, clad in Carrera marble, possibly the largest monumental arch in the whole Roman Empire ever, probably visible from the continent to celebrate the victory. But of course, it's a massive Roman conceit. So a massive case of Roman PR smoke and mirrors, which the Romans are brilliant at. So where does the Ninth Legion fit in with this? So the Romans are on the line of the Moray Firth, but we'll go back a year. So we're going to go to Black Mark number three. So go back a year to AD 82.

33:58As the Romans are grinding their way up to Aberdeenshire, somewhere along the way, Tacitus, who, let's remember, is Agricola's son-in-law, it's very important, tells us that the Ninth Legion is building a marching camp. Now, a marching camp is something that the Roman military build at the end of every day's march in enemy territory. It's a temporary fort. You've got to be very tough, Tristan, to be a Roman legionary. You march for six hours. You spend three hours building a fort.

34:28You make your bread. You eat. You go to bed. You wake up. You knock the fort down, and then you march, and then you build a fort, and so on. So they're building a marching camp, and the local natives almost overrun it while it's being built. Black Mark number three. But there's a hero on hand. The hero, Tacitus, the son-in-law, tells us it's his father-in-law, Agricola. Who knew? So Agricola arrives and saves the day. And it's very important, joking aside, because it's the last time ever that the Ninth Legion

35:01is mentioned in history. And just to repeat that fact, we have inscriptions, and we'll continue with the inscriptions, basically with history. So textual records in regards to a book, as we call it today, an account, the last ever mention of the Ninth Legion, the last story of it, is linked to an ignominious defeat, to a stain on its career, quite frankly. You could make a very good case in actual fact. Well, I'll tell you what, there would certainly be a missing roundel on the Sigma standard

35:33that Rufinus has got in the Yorkshire Museum. You could make a case that the Ninth Legion is a bit rubbish in actual fact, because actually that's three major black marks. Explain yourself. Well, it's lost to Boudicca. Yeah. So London, let's really, really be serious for a minute here. London is sacked. The first great fire of London takes place because the Ninth Legion fails. Because it fails when it intercepts Boudicca, and it's brutally, well, thousands of its troops are killed. Slaughtered. And then it's almost wiped out again, if you believe Tacitus, writing about his own father-in-law

36:07being a hero, in 1882 in Tacitus' fourth year campaigning in the Far North. So it's a bit rubbish, really, isn't it? Three black marks. It's probably been decimated once. It's almost been wiped out once. And it's almost been wiped out again. And to repeat your first kind of black mark all those years earlier, when it revolts. Yeah, yeah. You know, at the death of Augustus, wasn't it? Around the turn of, yeah. Augustus Tiberius, yeah. So, yeah. So three, you know, difficult periods for the Ninth Legion in the space of less than

36:39a century. It's like the most rubbish legion.

36:44So that's the last mention of the Ninth in history. Yes. In a written down account. And crucially for our topic today, for the Ninth Legion, this will ultimately see them returning to their main base at York. Yeah. The question is for how long? Because now we don't have any kind of historical textual accounts for the Ninth Legion. But we do have archaeology surviving. We have little insights into what happens to the Ninth next and inscriptions and so on. And before we get to the archaeology at York, I also feel this is important.

37:15And this will be important when we explore the mystery, the stories, the theories as well. Is this idea that the Legion is not just based in one place. This word, vexillations. Now, can you first of all explain what a vexillation is? And then I'll explain more. So in a Roman legion, you have a variety of standards, including very crucially for this story, one Aquila eagle standard, which goes in the chapel of the standards in the legionary fortress and only ever comes out when the whole legion is on the march. It's very important for this story. And then you have a number of others. We've spoken about the sigma standard as one, but also you have a vexilla.

37:47Now, a vexilla is a flag. So for us, it's an upside down flag. It's a flag. And the vexilla is a standard which is used to mark out a specific group of troops who are banded together for a special job by the legion or the legate of the legion. So you might have a couple of cohorts.

38:11You could have half the legion, two thirds of the legion. It depends. But they are banded together under a vexilla standard, the upside down flag, which is called a vexillation. Because it's around this time, in the last few decades, following the ninth's return from Scotland, that you also see the emergence of other key Roman forts in what is today the north of England. So Northumbria and Cumbria today. And I believe at certain locations, in particular, the modern day border city of Carlisle, which

38:44is also found around this time. Amazing Roman work going on there with Frank Gecko and his team at the moment. You've also got tile stamps with, I can't remember if it's Legio, if it's shown as Legio 1X or Legio V1111. The latter. It's the latter. The latter. Which shows that alongside the ninth being present in York at that time, there is also detachments of the ninth working seemingly around that time in places like the new fortification at Carlisle in Cumbria. So the ninth, even though we don't have the historical text surviving, we know from archaeology

39:17that in those latter decades of the first century AD, there are detachments of the ninth kind of stationed all across what is today northern England, basically helping on that frontier now, right? Absolutely, yeah. But if you go right to the end of the first century AD, you have three legionary fortresses in operation. You have Cirlion in southeast Wales, which is 2 Augusta. You have 20 Valeria Victrix in Chester. And you have nine Hispana, which is in York. All of them cycle legionaries onto the far northern frontier, wherever it is at the time,

39:48along with the auxiliaries, which are often permanently based there. However, the ninth is the closest by a long way. So it's no surprise to find that you've got vexillation stationed here, there, and everywhere along the frontier in the north.

Epigraphic evidence and the final records

40:01That's exactly what you would expect. So now let's recap. We've got to kind of the end of the first century now, haven't we? Yeah. So what are the key dates at the moment? So we have five key dates. The first one is AD 82, which is the last time that the ninth legion is mentioned in history. Then you have another really important date. So again, we'll go back to the Yorkshire Museum. On display in the Yorkshire Museum is a dedication slab from one of the gateways, which was rebuilt in stone. Earlier, it was in wood in AD 106 in the reign of Trajan. And this says this was built by the ninth legion, AD 106.

40:34And that's the last time it's ever mentioned in writing. So that's kind of where we're getting to next. So date two. Last time in history, last time in epigraphy. Then we have Hadrian arriving in AD 122 with a new governor and a new legion, the sixth Victrix, which replaces the ninth in York. Remember, you don't want to get more than one legion in a legionary fortress because it causes trouble. So the chances are by that point, 122, the ninth, isn't in York. Then in the 120s, Hadrian's Wall is built.

41:06And when that's built, every military unit in Britain takes part and leaves an inscription or many more. There is no inscription from the ninth legion. So the chances are it wasn't here because it didn't take part in building Hadrian's Wall. And then in the AD 160s, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, you have a column erected in Rome. And this lists all the excellent legions at that time. We know it dates from then because by that point, Marcus Aurelius has founded three new legions, one, two, and three Italica, and they're listed.

41:38The ninth legion isn't there. So the last time it's mentioned in history is AD 82. And by AD 166, it's not in existence. And we are basically now at the time of kind of AD 107, 108, which was that other key date, that second date you mentioned, going back to the Yorkshire Museum, the last ever record of the ninth legion in Britain is that amazing inscription. And I think you can see parts of the original and then the replica writing up in the center

42:09of the Yorkshire Museum today. And as you say, it is the rebuilding of the legionary fortresses gateway at York. And it mentions the year in which was built. And they do the year by saying which emperor it was. It was Emperor Trajan, wasn't it? So they can date which year that fortress gate rebuilding in stone was done. And the signature is basically it was done by the ninth legion. And that's the last time. That's the most important smoking gun we've got, actually. There are other pieces of evidence we're going to discuss about whether it was elsewhere

42:39in the empire. But in terms of smoking guns, that's the most important one. Because that's it. There's no other mention of it after that date. And said, by 122 AD, when the emperor Hadrian comes to Britain, and that's kind of the canonical date for the building, at least the construction, the beginning of the building of Hadrian's Wall, which you say you have the evidence for legionaries, they leave their mark, their own signatures to say that we helped build this part. There is no mention of the ninth legion in that at all. And you have, by that time, a new legion based in York. So that's the key thing.

43:09In that decade between 107 AD and about 122 AD, it seems sometime around then, the evidence, what we know at the moment, is the ninth legion has gone from York completely, and it's not even involved in the building of the wall, which suggests it has just gone. And we have one other piece of evidence between the erection of the gateway and the epigraphy in the reign of Trajan, and the visit of Hadrian. And this is our second Expeditio Britannica.

43:43So when Hadrian becomes the emperor in 117, he's not very popular. Bit of a surprise for quite a few people across the empire. The primary sources talk about trouble in various parts of the empire, including Britain, which we'll come to later. And around this time, we have this emergency expedition, the second one sent to Britain. This is a big one. So this is a number of vexillations led by a very, very, very seasoned military leader who is based with Legio III Augusta on the Saharan frontier.

44:16So you have, and he's the primus pilus, so he's the senior centurion in the legion. Remember, Roman centurions aren't just sort of like NCOs up to sergeant majors. You could go all the way up to being a sort of a major general in our parlance with a Roman centurion. This is a very, very, very senior military leader leading a number of vexillations, so maybe up to 4,000 men coming to Britain just after the accession of Hadrian because there's trouble in Britain. almost certainly going to the north, almost certainly because there's a problem. And does this bring us to theory number one as to what happened to the Ninth Legion?

44:53And this is the main theory that has inspired the likes of Rosemary Sutcliffe's Eagle of the Ninth, this idea that the Ninth Legion was destroyed in some catastrophe in the north of England or even the north of Britain at that time. So can you explain what this theory is?

Theories on the disappearance

45:10We're going to go back to the 1850s, Tristan, to a terrifying, fearsome-looking chap called Theodore Monson, who was the leading sort of Roman historian of the day. He's German, wrote a fabulous for his day, still actually sort of often referenced history of the Roman Empire. And Theodore Monson had picked up the idea that no one knew what had happened to the Ninth Legion. So he came up with a theory, and his theory was that there was a Brigantian revolt in the north of Britain. And who were the Brigantes?

45:40So the Brigantes are the broadly the British Confederation in the north of modern England into the Scottish borders. So if you draw a line from the D, Chester, through to the Wash, go all the way up to the Clyde fourth line, Brigantes. It's a catch-all term for the tribes there. So we'll call it Confederation. And his theory was that somehow there was a rebellion by the Brigantes, like the Boudiccan revolt earlier, in the north of Britain, and York was overrun and the Ninth Legion destroyed in York.

46:12And do we think that that might be the reason for Hadrian coming to Britain? Is that that line of argument? Is that that crisis in Britain that's being alluded to, in this theory at least? Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. And also you have the vexillations coming earlier as well. So there's an emergency of some kind. We know that for a fact because these vexillations come. Then Hadrian comes with a new legion. So something in this context has happened, as in reality it almost certainly has. But there are a variety of things we'll talk about that may have happened. So you get Theodore Monson.

46:42And this is the idea which inspires Rosemary Sutcliffe to write The Eagle of the Ninth. But Rosemary Sutcliffe's idea of The Eagle of the Ninth is that Marcus, a junior officer, is trying to track down the lost eagle of his father's legion. So in this narrative, in her book, Marx's father is the legate of the Ninth Legion. And then it marches into the far north of Britain. So this is different. Yeah. With Briganti's revolt, it's this idea that sometime between 107 and roughly 122, there's a big revolt by the Britons. But in the areas, you say, of the borders, Cumbria, Northumbria today,

47:15the more popular version, you know, in regards to kind of pop in media and so on today, is an idea that it wasn't a Briganti's revolt, but instead the Ninth going further north into what is today Scotland. It goes into the far north of Britain, into modern Scotland, and disappears. And is there any evidence for that at all? No. Okay. There's no evidence that York was overrun at all in the Roman period, early or late. And there's no evidence in the archaeological record, in the written record, anywhere,

47:46that the Ninth Legion was lost in the far north. So if there's no evidence that they went up into Scotland, but there seems to be evidence of difficulty in Britain at the time of Hadrian, maybe with the people with the Briganti's, where Hadrian's Wall is ultimately built, that the Ninth Legion might have been a casualty of a revolt by the Briganti's sometime between 107 and 122, the building of Hadrian's Wall. That's kind of theory number one, is it? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, you could, basically, if you look at the lost in the far north of Britain theory, you have Monson's theory that it was lost in a revolt which overran York,

48:18no evidence of it whatsoever. You have Rosemary Sutcliffe's theory that it was lost marching to the far north of Britain, no evidence whatsoever. You could put the two together. You could say there was a Boudicca-esque conflagration in the entire far north. So Brigantian territory up to the Clyde fourth line, and it was a casualty there as well. So it could have been both wrapped together, but again, no evidence at all. And then it's theoretical then if maybe that defeat did inspire Hadrian to build Hadrian's Wall

48:48as a big statement, right, in the aftermath. But once again, that's theory we don't know. True. And also at the time, I mean, Hadrian had already been on a visit to the Rhyme frontier where he'd been building fortifications, not in stone, but he'd been building the northern limes on the Rhyme frontier. Then he comes to Britain and then builds them partially in stone and partially in turf blocks to start with. So it may have been a continuation of what he was doing anyway, but we have the fact that the Ninth Legion disappears after the Trojanic inscription.

49:20So that is why it's so easy to link the loss of the Ninth Legion first to the second in the AD 110's emergency expedition, and secondly to Hadrian's visit with six victories. And then the building of Hadrian's Wall. Yeah. So that's the loss in the north of Britain, kind of theory number one. Yes. Theory number two, staying in Britain and staying at a similar time, the early second century AD. But this is a theory by our good friend, Dr. Dominic Perring, that the Ninth Legion was lost further south.

49:51What's this? So again, we'll go back to our narrative of Hadrian when he becomes the emperor and he's unpopular and there's trouble in Britain. And what we do know happens in Britain, in London in particular, which by now is the provincial capital. So after the Boudiccan revolt, the provincial capital moves to Londinium. So it's now the provincial capital. Um, and it's thriving again as a city, it's absolutely thriving. A mercantile centre where goods are coming in from the continent and then being spread around the entire province of Britannia, and then goods are being sent out from Britannia

50:25across to the continent and into the Mediterranean. So it's absolutely thriving. Um, but there's trouble there. We know around the time Hadrian becomes the emperor through to the AD 120s for three reasons. The first one of these enigmatic Walbrook skulls. So, so one thing in London today you physically won't be able to see is that there is a very large stream which bisects the city of London, which is Roman London in half.

50:55This is the Walbrook. And the Walbrook goes from the Thames into tributaries, which then go outside the Roman boundary, later becomes a Roman wall around Moorgate. And in these tributaries, lots of individual skulls have been found dating from around this period, which many people think were beheaded. And remember, beheading is a big deal in the Roman world. You know, the Romans truly believe that dying is a transition to the next phase of living. So to behead someone, you're, you're, you're removing their ability to transition into the

51:28next phase of living. It's a big deal. So some people interpret these skulls, which date from around these times as being evidence and there's hundreds of them that, that there's been some kind of major event. So lots of people have been executed at the same time. Number one. Number two, you have the Hadrianic fire of London, where it looks as though Roman London around 120 was torched. The torching event appears to have been deliberate because it's the front of the buildings that are torched, not the whole buildings. So people are throwing torches into the buildings. And then number three, you have something exceptionally unusual in the Roman world.

52:00So in the Roman world, legally, you're not allowed to carry weapons within the religious boundary of a settlement. So the Pomerian religious boundary, which later becomes the wall of Roman London, you can't carry weapons. And yet, unusually, the Romans build the Cripplegate Fort in London inside the religious boundary, which is very odd. I mean, there's very, very few places where the Romans do that. Why would you do that? And you can still see the remains of that fort today. You can. Well, near where the Museum of London used to be.

52:32Absolutely, yeah. What's it called? What's that part of London called? So basically, if you walk down Noble Street, walk down Noble Street towards the Barbican, you will see the remains of this fort. You can actually see the remains of the fort later incorporated into the Roman wall. Well, that's almost unique in the Roman world, actually, having a fort built within the religious boundary. So something may just happen. Three things. Lots of people being beheaded, the whole place burnt down, and a fort being built in the 120s after the event. So the narrative goes that basically the Ninth Legion either was defeated, putting down whatever

53:06happened in London during the Trouble when Hadrian became the Emperor, or it's the Ninth Legion causing the Trouble, which is then later put, they're later put down, they're later beheaded, and that's where you get the Memorial of Danatsiae.

53:28So there you go. Those are the two main theories, kind of lost in the North of Britain or lost in the South, linking, you know, if you follow the line of evidence, if you follow this idea that the Ninth, the reason for the Ninth no longer appearing in records in Britain is because it was destroyed

54:00or it was lost in Britain between, let's say, 110 and 122 AD. So those are the main theories suggesting that the reason why the Ninth disappears from Britain is that it was destroyed in Britain. But that's not the end. Because there is another line of evidence that the reason why there are no more inscriptions for the Ninth in Britain following 108 is not because it was then lost in Britain in some defeat, it was in fact relocated to elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

54:31Which, by the way, would not be unusual. That would not be unusual. So it's absolutely possible that's what happened. And there is some evidence for this. There are a number of inscriptions that they do continue into for a few more decades following. And I'll just list them out now because I don't want to get too much into it. But first off, there are basically across the Empire, there are mentions of figures, dedications in certain tombs and burials, some more elaborate than others, as we'll get to, and diplomas and other inscriptions and so on, that mention figures who in their record

55:02of achievements mention service in the Ninth Legion. You have an amazing tomb at Petra, Petra and the Sextus Florentinus, if I remember correctly. And I can't remember if he was a governor or a lego. He was a senior position in the Ninth Legion. And that seems to stay to the 120s around that time. You then have a surviving mention in a fort in Algeria, the amazing fort of Lambisis. I think you've been there, haven't you? I have. I've been there. Incredible. Absolutely. I call it the York in the South. The York in the South. But there's a mention there of another officer who served in the Ninth Legion. And then there's another one, I think this is in Rome, to a certain Numisius Junior, which

55:37always seems to be dated, but it's a bit debated in its own right, whether it dates around the 130s AD, or if it might even refer to a figure who serves as a magistrate in the 160s AD. And he mentions in one of the inscriptions that he has had service in the Ninth Legion, all of which people use this evidence from various parts of the empire to show that, no, no, no, the Ninth Legion was not destroyed between 110 and 122 in Britain.

56:07It was in fact relocated and endured for much longer. So that's the evidence for these other theories that emerged, aren't they? Which may be right or may be wrong. I mean, they may refer to their fathers. We don't know. It's all a question of interpretation. The reality is, and we're going through these one by one, we've got two more candidates to talk about as well, what happened to the Ninth Legion. Ultimately, we don't know, which is what makes it such a fantastic story to discuss, makes it so popular with the public, because all this evidence can be interpreted in different ways.

56:37It's like a historical detective story. Well, let's get into this first non-lost-in-Britain theory, which is lost on the River Rhine. So what's this evidence here and what's the theory? So I'd go for the Rhine or Danube. So the Northern Frontier, for me, for the Northern Frontier. We're going to go to another legionary fortress, and this one's in Nijmegen. So in Nijmegen, you have stamped tiles from the AD 110s, which are stamped by the Ninth Legion. Intriguingly, by the way, it's V11111. Like at Carlisle. Exactly right.

57:09So the only other place, by the way, where you get the Ninth written like that is in the inscribed inscription, the Tridanic inscription in York. So it's really interesting, actually. So you might be tracing the same vexillation moving around the Western Roman Empire. What we do know with Nijmegen, though, is that in the AD 110s, there was a group of vexillations from various legions which were based there to replace a legion which had taken part in Trajan's earlier conquest in the 100s of Dacia, and that legion had stayed there.

57:43So as an interim, their own emergency expedition, a number of vexillations from other legions went there, and one of them was from the Ninth. So it's not evidence that you have the whole legion there, just that you have a vexillation there. And that's the evidence which then people used to say it was then potentially destroyed fighting against people on the Rhine or on the River Danube. That's theory number three. And the key thing then is to look at the opportunity for the legion to be lost. So you need an enemy. So the two major conflicts that you, which is why I say the Rhine and the Danube, the two major conflicts that we're dealing with here are firstly Trajan's conflicts against

58:17the Dacians. So these are in the 100s, two campaigns against the Dacians, and we know for a fact every military unit that took part in that because it's very well written up by the contemporary sources and the Knights not there. And the second one is with the Markamanic Wars, which include conflicts on the Rhine and Danube, but largely on the Danube in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. So that's quite a late one. It's a later one. And again, that lasts for a number of decades. And the key thing there is, again, we have records of every military unit involved and

58:53there's no mention of the Ninth. Okay. And I think actually those two conflicts are so well recorded.

59:00You know, it's at the height of the Nerva, Trajanic period, later with Trajan, one of the best written up Roman emperors of all of them, that we'd know. There's no mention of it. So for me, I don't think so. No, I would argue that that's the weakest of all the theories, that it was lost on the

Eastern frontier and final conclusions

59:16Rhine or the Danube, which leads us to the last theory, which is, this is a really compelling one. I find this one very interesting. I do too. That it was relocated to the eastern part of the empire, so the far east of the Roman empire at the time. So you have three candidate conflicts there where we know the Romans lost a lot of troops. So again, I use the word sanguinous, where the Romans fought. In very bloody conflicts, they lost a lot of legionaries as well. Remember, legionaries are the elite warriors, for me, of the ancient world. So the Romans have got legionaries and auxiliaries. If they're losing lots of legionaries as well, it means they're putting their frontline best

59:49troops in action and they're still losing. You have, firstly, we go to the reign of Trajan. Trajan's second major campaign was in the east against the Parthians. Yes. So we should say with the eastern part of the empire, the far east, what we mean at the moment is kind of eastern Anatolia, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Iraq, that kind of border, where you say you had that other key power at the time, the Parthians. Absolutely. Yeah, the Persians. Later, the Susani Persians, in our period, the Parthians. So you have Trajan's conquest of Parthia. The Trajan is one of the few Roman emperors to conquer the Parthian Empire.

1:00:22Successfully captures and sacks the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon. And then probably the only Roman emperor who got all the way through to put his toes in the Persian Gulf. Then on his way back, he suffers rebellion after rebellion after rebellion as he's going back through newly conquered Roman territory. Now remember that the huge continental river valleys of the Targots and Euphrates have got these amazing Hellenistic cities which are fabulously rich. So they may now be part of the Parthian Empire, but they're incredibly rich in their own right.

1:00:55Hellenistic, large Jewish populations who are doing exceptionally well. And this conflict, as he comes back, is known as the Kittos War or the Second Jewish Revolt. This is led by these Jewish populations in these Hellenistic cities. And this conflagration spreads across the whole of the Middle East in actual fact. And the Romans lose lots of troops here. And that's the first conflict where the Romans may have lost the Ninth Legion in the East. The second one is the Third Jewish Revolt, which is in the AD 130s, which is the Bar-Cockba

1:01:27Revolt, which is a very, very, very brutal revolt focused around Judea, where the Romans almost certainly lose at least one entire legion. So it could be that. And then you go through to the beginning of the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Ferris and the Roman Parthian War in the early AD 160s, when at the change of imperial leadership, Valigasius, who is the Parthian king, decides that he's going to try and wrest Armenia from Roman control, replaces the Armenian king with one of his own candidates.

1:01:57Severianus, who is the Roman governor of Cappadocia, which is the province buffeting on Armenia. So we're talking about Eastern modern Turkey and the border with modern Iran, decides it's going to be a very clever chap. So he's going to lead a legion, unnamed, into Armenia from Cappadocia and reclaim it to gain martial glory for himself at the beginning of the new sort of reign of the Dioc emperors. And he gets wiped out to a man and he commits suicide. And that whole legion is wiped out.

1:02:28Okay. But we don't know its name. So that is a very good candidate, maybe for the Ninth being wiped out. I do quite like it. I don't think I completely buy it, but I do quite like it, that idea that maybe that was the Ninth. And as I said, that would have happened only a few years before that final piece of evidence you mentioned earlier, when you have the list of all the legions in 168, sometime around there, right? When you have the Ninth legion definitively not there anymore, which would make it quite a recent loss. But that is kind of the four main theories, two where it's lost in Britain, the other

1:03:02two where it's relocated to the continent. But in all the ones we've actually covered, we've kind of gone to the extreme, this idea that it had to be lost, it had to have been destroyed. Could it easily have just been the case that they just thought after a while, this Ninth legion has been suffering defeat. It's pretty ignominious history it's got. Do we just disband it? Well, we've established it's a bit of a rubbish legion, haven't we? It's a bit of a rubbish legion with three black marks against its name. Possibly, possibly. I mean, what you could make a very good case for, actually, and some people do, is that

1:03:34in one of the conflicts it fought in, whichever one of the ones we've covered, it lost so many troops that actually it wasn't thought worth rebuilding again. So actually what they did, they just distributed the surviving troops to other units and then things carried on. But if that was the case, it would be unique. Because to my mind, in the Principates, certainly, the first off the Roman Empire, that never happens. And also, you're getting rid of an Aquila eagle, you know, that's as big a sort of a black spot PR disaster as anything you will have for a Roman emperor.

1:04:07You lose an imperial eagle, you're not going to do that. I don't think you're going to do that unless the eagle's actually captured, like the three and the two to Berg Forest. We were talking earlier, and I can't think of any examples from, you know, post-Baslovactium of voluntary disbanding of legions. No, completely agree. Completely agree. That's interesting. So we're down to one of the four. So it's one of the four. Let's wrap it up now. Which theory do you like the most? So for me, it's like everything else, isn't it?

1:04:38When, unless we have an incredible archaeological find of like huge amounts of Roman armor buried from mass burial pits, or we have the most incredible find in the Vatican Museum of a manuscript, which has been hidden away for a thousand years, which no one's ever been able to give access to, we'll never know. Right? So it comes down to common sense for me. So of those four, for me, it makes most sense based on the dating that it was lost in some

1:05:09way, shape or form in the late 110s in Britain. So you think it's in Britain. And do you think you're not kind of making an answer whether you think it was like kind of Briganti's revolt or in the south of Britain? You're leaving that a bit open, are you? But you just think it's around that 110s area? I think in particular with the Hadronic revolt idea, there's a huge piece of history missing to us today around the accession of Hadrian. We don't know. Something bad happened in Britain when Hadrian became the emperor, like really, really bad.

1:05:39And then you get this emergency expedition coming over and then the emperor and then a new legion and then a new governor. So common sense says something bad happened in Britain. Whether it was in the north or south, I don't know, but I think it happened in Britain. It's a fair enough point. And I see the merit in the argument. For me, the bit that I can never get my head around, and many people have argued this better than I have, but it is those bits of evidence that I highlighted earlier of those mentions of the Knight Legion varying from Petra to Algeria to Rome, which do seem to go into almost the

1:06:15mid-second century AD, which to me shouts out, I mean, that the Knight must not have been destroyed by that time or suffered a damnatio memoriae kind of defeat so that there's never any mention of the Knight again. People are still mentioning their previous service in the Knight, which does make me think that it was, you know, there is a lot of merit to the relocation argument and that it was moved somewhere else and probably did suffer a defeat, as we've covered, probably in the East, may well be in Armenia or may well be in the Third Jewish Revolt, and that the Ninth

1:06:50is then disbanded after that, that it's not revived again. I just think that we cannot put aside those archaeological, those inscriptions that survive from outside of Britain that seem to suggest the Ninth does endure longer than the 110s AD. But I know you've got to come back to this. No, no. Well, the reality is we don't know. It's a fair argument, I think. No, I agree. I agree. I absolutely completely agree. One thing really does fascinate me. I'll leave you with a question, actually, Tristan, if I may. The Romans went absolutely out of their way to

1:07:25recover the eagles they lost in the first century BC, fighting the Parthians in the East. The Romans went absolutely out of their way to recover the eagles they lost in the Teutoburg Forest in 89 in the Varian disaster. Why did the Romans try not to recover the Ninth Legion's eagle?

1:07:43So that would make sense if it was the Armenia one, where you say people were, everyone was lost to a man. There's no attempt there. But that could be any legion and there seems to be no case, right? Or if it was lost in the far north of Britain, which the Romans never later fully conquered, then they never got the chance to get the eagle back. So when Rosemary Sutcliffe is riffing on the fact that she has Marcus going up to the northwest of modern Scotland and recovering the eagle,

1:08:14maybe that's where it went. Why doesn't Septimius Severus go and recover the eagle then? Far too sensible. Far too sensible. Far too sensible. Okay, okay. Well, we'll leave it on that. We've explained the theories. But I think at the end of the day, I hope what we've got across in this very detailed, I think perhaps this is the most detailed analysis of the Ninth Legion story anywhere on the internet, discussion at least, is that yes, there's the mystery. Yes, there's the many theories. That's a fun part. But what I always love getting across is that the Ninth Legion is so much more than that. I've actually loved

1:08:44exploring the stories that we actually do know from the Ninth. It's important in the role of the Roman invasion of Britain. The insight you get from exploring that story into so many other stories that are easily overlooked. And what I'd add is, I really hope that when Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender are listening to or watching our broadcast, they repost it so their followers can view it too. So they realise what a key role they played in the modern cultural narrative about the Ninth Legion. They have. The Ninth Legion story will not be going away any time soon. Simon, this has

1:09:16been absolutely brilliant. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book all about the Ninth Legion. Reverend Britain's Missing Legion through Pen and Saw books available as a paperback now. It's actually my best-selling book simply because there's so much interest in the story. It's a great story and I highly recommend it to all your listeners and viewers. Simon, just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. What an absolute pleasure, mate.

1:09:43Thanks for joining us today on The Ancients. Now you can hear our many other chats with Simon on the podcast, including an episode on the Roman secret service and one on Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain. Links to those episodes are in the show notes. Please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling kind and generous, do give us a five-star review. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Plus early access, ad-free podcasts and exclusive subscriber episodes on

1:10:18The Ancients. Sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.