The Ninth Legion: Did They Disappear?

It's one of history’s most compelling cold cases. What happened to the Ninth Legion, a crack unit of 5,000 Roman soldiers who vanished from the historical record without a trace? Tristan Hughes is joined by Roman historian Dr Simon Elliott to investigate the fate of the legion that helped conquer Britain. Was the Ninth wiped out in a bloody defeat on Rome’s northern frontier, or did it meet its end thousands of miles away in the East? Sifting through the surviving Roman records, can Tristan and Simon finally uncover what really happened to Rome’s most famous missing legion? MORE The Roman Secret Service Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000636789981 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vToc8Zli1s2C8xvR6iZU6?si=IEhxbZR8SmOS60AQry1LKQ Julius Caesar’s Invasions of Britain Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ancients/id1520403988?i=1000528488190 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0adTUBAmaS2J5fETceVPL8?si=f141732b5556419b Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Robin McConnell. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch HERE https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Want even MORE Ancients? Sign up to History Hit for early access ad-free, plus exclusive subscriber-only episodes. PLUS with a History Hit subscription you can watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 1:05Tristan Hughes?

  It'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 Nine 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 second century AD. But 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,

• 1:46Tristan Hughes?

  I'm pleased to welcome back friend of the podcast and Ninth Legion expert Dr. Simon Elliott. I'm Tristan Hughes. Welcome to the ancients.

• 2:07Tristan Hughes?

  Simon, it is a pleasure to have you back on the show. It has been too long. How are you doing?

• 2:13Speaker 02

  I'm doing really well. I love coming on the show with you, mate.

• 2:15Tristan Hughes?

  You've come down to our new studio in our History Hit office.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 2:20Tristan Hughes?

  Exactly. You know, we're adding new stuff, new books, new artefacts to it every week.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Where are my books, by the way?

• 2:26Tristan Hughes?

  I know, I know. Sorry. That was an oversight.

• 2:30Tristan Hughes?

  You keep churning out book after book after book, but one of your most popular, one of your favourites, and one of our favourite topics that you've covered, that we've both covered together in the past, is the story of the Ninth Legion, Rome's Ninth Legion. This is one of the great debates slash mysteries of ancient Roman history, isn't it?

• 2:49Speaker 02

  It is, absolutely, yeah. Basically, it's the only Roman legion where we literally don't know what happened to it.

• 2:54Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 3:05Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:11Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Secondly, it was lost in the south of Britain. Third, it was lost in the northern empire along the Rhine and Danube. And finally, it may have been lost on the eastern frontier.

• 3:23Tristan Hughes?

  So those are kind of the four big theories with the story of the Ninth. And that's kind of what we all, we all think of when someone mentions Legio Nine Hispana or the Ninth Legion. You go straight away to the, 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. You can actually explore so many parts of the Roman military story through what we have surviving about the Ninth.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It'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 Rosamund Sutcliffe published in 1954, The Great Rosamund 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. Influenced Hollywood movies, so you've got 2011, The Eagle with Channing Tatum. I'm just, it's a great movie, by the way. Very good Lorica segmentata, even though it's leather, but it still looks very good.

• 4:32Tristan Hughes?

  Even though there's a running testudo, if I remember in that.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  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.

• 4:47Tristan Hughes?

  Hmm. Yeah, that's like a Teutoburg Forest slash Ninth Legion slash Boudicca kind of mix, that Centurion. We could, we could do a whole nother discussion on our reflections of that movie.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  All goes very, very wrong for the Romans.

• 4:59Tristan Hughes?

  But 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?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  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.

• 5:19Tristan Hughes?

  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 Legion. And we have several of those surviving in different contexts.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  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, the 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 Raphinus. Now, Raphinus was a signifer from the Ninth Legion. A signifer is a standard bearer carrying a signum standard.

• 6:08Tristan Hughes?

  And it shows, and that is a fantastic artefact. I remember seeing it as well many times. 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 I say, this key member, this standard bearer of this legion that are so closely entwined with York's origin story.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And also, if actually, 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, 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. There's a story right in front of you and it's real. So a real story with real agency from a real standard bearer, from the real Ninth Legion.

• 7:13Tristan Hughes?

  And I think this is one of the key things I want to get across with, 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 Raphinus 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 Ninth. It is not all just about the mystery of what happened to it.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  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 Britain's Missing Legion, that was a BBC History Book of the Year in 2021. 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 about real people who really lived and participated in things that we talk about today.

• 8:15Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Big figures like Boudicca, Roman invasion of Britain and so much more, as we delve into. But 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 first century AD and into the second century AD.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:33Tristan Hughes?

  Can you give us a sense of what a Roman legion was like at that time? What do we mean by a Roman legion?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  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 first century B.C., lorica, hammata, chainmail, helmets, scutum shield, a couple of pillen heavyweight throwing javelins to pierce armour and then the gladius hispaniensis sword and a pugio dagger, they're all armed 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.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  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. So they become super loyal, which is why in the first century B.C. you end up with legions, which includes the Ninth Legion created around this time. The legionaries are super loyal to whichever Roman warlord, I call them, recruited them.

• 9:44Tristan Hughes?

  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 protector 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 first century B.C. From that 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.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

• 10:13Tristan Hughes?

  And they're entwined with the Ninth Story as well, are they?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yes. 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 eighties B.C., 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.

• 10:45Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  So 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 used to invade Britain in his second campaign.

• 10:57Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, so that's their first taste of Britain, is it?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Fifty-four B.C., yeah, absolutely. So the Ninth comes to Britain in fifty-four B.C. And then later you go towards the end of the century and it plays a full role

• 11:08Speaker 02

  in the Cantabrian Wars in northern Spain, which is where it first gets its cognomen hispaniensis. Because it fights well, it fights well and that gets shortened to Hispania.

• 11:17Tristan Hughes?

  Right, so that's where we get the nomen, isn't it? The cognomen, do we call that?

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Cognomen, yeah.

• 11:22Tristan Hughes?

  The cognomen for the legion, the Ninth Legion, which is legio nine Hispania.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:27Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  It's the biggest.

• 11:37Tristan Hughes?

  Augustus.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  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. So the Cantabrian War is the last major campaigns fought by Augustus effectively. When, in fact, it spans his renaming from Octavian through twenty-seven B.C. into becoming the first Emperor Augustus. So it spans the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, the Cantabrian Wars.

• 12:07Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 12:21Speaker 02

  So the key date here is actually nothing to do with the Ninth Legion. It's AD nine, Teutoburg Forest, the Varian disaster, when you get three Roman legions wiped out. So Augustus inherits sixty 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 sixty legions, so he rationalises that down to thirty, then loses three. And it stays at twenty-seven for a period, okay? So what happens between the Cantabrian Wars and the Roman invasion of Britain? So firstly, the Ninth Legion, as one of the twenty-seven in around AD fourteen, finds itself based on the Danube.

• 13:02Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Probably at Carnuntum.

• 13:04Tristan Hughes?

  And that's another key frontier of the Roman Empire at the time, isn't it?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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 Panonia, which later becomes Panonia Superior and Inferior, and Carnuntum's the anchor and later becomes the capital, provincial capital of Panonia Superior. So the Ninth Legion around AD fourteen is based there with two of the legions. And actually, legionary fortress is for 5,500 to 6,000 men. So if you get eighteen thousand to twenty thousand 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.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  And of course, the Romans send to Texas very seriously. The rebellion is put down, the legions are all admonished, may have been decimated. So the Ninth Legion may have been decimated. So this is the first time there's a black marking against the Ninth Legion, one of three. The first time there's a black marking against the Ninth Legion in AD fourteen. 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 Panonia again, when in AD forty-three, the improbable Claudius becomes the emperor. And Claudius needs a big political win because no one expected him to become the emperor, least 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,

• 14:36Speaker 02

  mythical, Game of Thrones-esque, Tolkien-esque Britannia.

• 14:39Tristan Hughes?

  So why do you say that? Why do you say mythical, Game of Thrones, Tolkien-esque Britannia?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Because this is a place which the Romans know very little. Even after Caesar's two incursions, fifty-five and fifty-four B.C., this is a place that terrifies the Romans. More than anything, it's because it's not within Menostrum, that they're sea in the Mediterranean, which they now dominate. It's across Oceana, the terrifying North Sea and what we call the English Channel, 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.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  It took the Romans forty years to conquer and actually have within their province Britain up to the line of the Solway first time. It's very difficult to do. So Claudius needs a hail Mary. He appoints Aulus Plautius, his leading general, and then the governor of Panonia, to lead the invasion in AD forty-three. He comes up with three of the legions, which are in Gaul at the time, which are Legio to Augusta, Legio fourteen Germina, Great Roman Legion fourteen Germina, and twenty Valerio Victrix, another great Roman legion. And then he has Aulus Plautius with his own legion, which is the Ninth.

• 16:05Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, so the Ninth is Plautius's personal legion?

• 16:08Speaker 02

  In Panonia, to join the three, and they're the three which invade Britain in AD forty-three.

• 16:12Tristan Hughes?

  So they have four legions all together when they join up. And they invade, the Ninth Legion presumably, if it's Plautius's legion, must play a key role in the invasion and the years following, right?

• 16:23Speaker 02

  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 does nearly go wrong. I 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.

• 16:39Tristan Hughes?

  You think it's the Medway?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  In Kent, it could be, it could be the Stowers, it could be.

• 16:42Tristan Hughes?

  The River Aran, maybe?

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Maybe, depends where you think the land is, Tristan, obviously.

• 16:46Tristan Hughes?

  The Sussex.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  But there is a major river crossing battle, which the Romans 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 Roman Britain at all. I mean, the jeopardy level involved is the same as Paulinus later fighting Boudica, which we'll touch on later, because the Ninth has a part there as well. So this is a, this is a sanguineous battle. The Ninth plays a major role. But the Romans do win, they cross the Thames, they go to Camulodenum, which is the capital of the Cativaloni

• 17:19Speaker 02

  in Essex, modern Colchester. And this is where Claudius arrives with his elephants, stays for sixteen 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. So at that point, the province which the Ninth has taken a huge part in establishing is the southeast of Britain.

• 17:40Tristan Hughes?

  Officially, that's the end of the invasion phase of, well, taking the Roman conquest of Britannia, isn't it?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:48Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 18:00Tristan Hughes?

  What's next? There's more of Britain to take over for the Romans, right?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  So this is the phase when I'm leading my tours, I call it the great Roman Britain bake-off. Bake-off because it's all about layer cakes. It's all about layer cakes. So if you imagine the Romans in the south east of Britain, the line of the territory is basically Essex through to the Solent. Effectively, that's what you're talking about. The most Romanised of the former late Iron Age tribes, there's probably Cantiaci in Kent.

• 18:30Tristan Hughes?

  And London's almost in the middle of that, on the Thames, that the Romans found, it's like, this is our new centre.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. A mercantile centre, not the capital at the time. But from that point, Alice Plautus has 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 Alice Plautus has 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 aren't having it. Most of them actually don't want the Romans there at all. And so it's a hard slog. And what Plautus does is he basically puts 20 Valerian victorics in charge of

• 19:18Speaker 02

  consolidating Colchester as a provincial capital. He sends the later great Roman Emperor Vespasian, a fan of, I'm a big fan of Vespasian, as you know, to the southwest, famously conquered the southwest with two Augusta. He sends 14 Germania 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 British urban landscape. Because it's the Ninth Legion which found Leicester, it's the Ninth Legion which found 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.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  So a stop line which runs broadly from Lincoln through to Exeter becomes the Fossway, the Roman route way from the southwest to the northeast. And that stops there for broadly a decade.

• 20:17Tristan Hughes?

  Shall 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 movement north. You mentioned Leicester there first and then Lincoln, both founded before Boudica, we think, don't we?

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

• 20:33Tristan Hughes?

  And Longthorpe as well, is that a town in the area that's kind of got a ninth connection to it?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely. If you go through, if you go down entire region, so you're going from Colchester, you're skirting around the territory of the Arkenai. 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. So you Peterborough and then you're moving northwards. Anything founded then by the Romans is by the Ninth Legion.

• 20:57Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 21:14Speaker 02

  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. So the Romans had to fight the whole way. And I think where, 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 hillfort 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. So they're all Roman forts. So a lot of the built infrastructure there today and the roadways there today

• 21:58Speaker 02

  were established by this campaign by the Ninth Legion in the late AD 40s, early AD 50s, which is amazing.

• 22:05Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. And I wanted to mention that because otherwise we can easily skirt over, you know, the Ninth marches 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, what is more invisible at this time is actually maybe the the engagements they had to fight along the way to get further north.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  And to me, that's a great point, Tristan. That to me is why I 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 Centurion for being a slubbingly soldier 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.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  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 2000 years ago, who was there in a place I am today. That's why I love being an archaeologist and historian.

• 23:31Tristan Hughes?

  They're marching north, they're probably fighting once in a while on their way north as well. They almost certainly are fighting their way north. And then you mentioned earlier that client state, that Iron Age tribe in Norfolk, the Iceni or Iceni, 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.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Black mark number two.

• 23:57Tristan Hughes?

  So what happens in 60 AD and how is this event? And this character, this warrior woman linked to the Ninth story?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  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.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  So 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 Boudica, the Queen of the Arkenai. Boudica, it's all about Boudica, 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. I 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 after Roman loot. Remember, this is very early in the province.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 25:17Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Most people, most people, most people. And this revolt of Boudica heads south and it heads towards the provincial capital, Colchester. So you have the legate, later a very successful warrior governor in Britain, Serialis, who's the legate of the Ninth Legion, commander of the Ninth Legion in Lincoln. And he's given a task to defeat Boudica before he gets to the provincial capital. So he goes south, not with the whole legion, but with a number of exilations, 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. And they fail to intercept Boudica

• 26:06Speaker 02

  getting to Colchester first. So Boudica sacks Colchester, torched, burnt to the ground, and 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 Boudica after the event, as it's heading towards the new mercantile town of London on the Thames. And what happens? He gets absolutely hammered. So he gets so badly beaten by Boudica that he flees with his cavalry, leaving his legionaries and auxiliaries to be slaughtered.

• 26:49Tristan Hughes?

  So he's abandoned most of the hardened Roman citizen legionary soldiers.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Black mark, terrible black mark for the legion. And he hides for the rest of the revolt in a fort. Doesn't come out again until Paulinus defeats Boudica. After Boudica sacked St Albans and then after Paulinus, the governor, has come back from Wales and has defeated Boudica somewhere probably along the line of the A5 Watling Street. And that's only when the Ninth Legion sort of raises its head above the parapet again, because its legate's been hiding. Black mark number two.

• 27:23Tristan Hughes?

  So the Ninth Legion has pretty significant battle scars, loses, can we probably say thousands of men in the Boudican revolt?

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Well, if I say 3,000 men from the legion and they got slaughtered, 3,000 men. So, so, yeah.

• 27:36Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah. So basically, most of its battle strength is lost. But the Boudican 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 Ninth Legion back up to strength?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  It's the first of two instances in the story of the Ninth where you get an emergency expedition being sent to Britain to reinforce the north. Okay.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Absolutely, I believe that these reinforcements were basically deployed to help bolster the remnants of the Ninth Legion in Lincoln.

• 28:14Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting, okay. Because the Ninth Legion doesn't stay in Lincoln much longer after that. It's only a few years before they're heading even further north, right?

• 28:23Speaker 02

  We're approaching Tristan, we're approaching black mark number three. Number three is coming. So we go back to Serialis. So Serialis, nominously defeated, hiding cowardly during the Boudicca revolt. But he's supporter of the Flavians in the year of the four emperors. And 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.

• 28:55Tristan Hughes?

  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 South West. When he comes to power, and as you say, Serialis is a big supporter of this new emperor, Vespasian.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  So Serialis is back in favour. Turns out amazingly, he's not an idiot after all. Given the right troops, obviously not the Ninth Legion, and he can actually do a decent job. So, 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 Belanus, then you move on to Serialis, then Frontinus, and finally, and we'll come to the great Agricola in a second. So, so the important thing in the governorship of Serialis is that he's given the task by the new emperor Vespasian of winning martial glory for the new dynasty. It'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 civil war for an emperor.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  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.

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• 31:51Tristan Hughes?

  This is also the time where we mentioned Rafinus earlier, that standard bearer. He's alive and he's a member of the Ninth Legion and he's one of those soldiers. He's one of the, he's a member of the legion that then receives the orders to march north from Lincoln. And where do they all go?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  York. So this is where York comes from. York is another founding of the Ninth Legion and it's another legionary fortress. So it becomes the legionary fortress and Lincoln gets turned into a Colonia settlement for veteran retired soldiers. So, 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, later, a sort of a provincial capital after Severus divides the province of Britannia in half. But it's the home of the Ninth 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 AD 70s, into the early AD 80s.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And we have, for me, one of the greatest Roman Britons, if not the greatest Roman Britain. If you ask a Mancunian who the greatest Roman Britain is, it's Agricola, the great warrior governor Agricola. And Agricola is also, like Frontinus, tasked with conquering territory for the Flavians. And Agricola spans all three Flavian emperors. He spans Vespasian, briefly Titus, and then Domitian. And it's Agricola who leads the Ninth Legion and all the other four legions in a five

• 33:27Speaker 02

  year campaign to conquer the far north of the whole of the main island of Britain.

• 33:36Tristan Hughes?

  And for context, by this time with Frontinus as well, the Romans have largely subdued the 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?

• 33:48Speaker 02

  The coast.

• 33:48Tristan Hughes?

  The coast as well. Exactly. And they're getting their lead mining and the like. Not fully pacified, of course. Conquest of Anglesey as well.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:56Tristan Hughes?

  So that's all been done.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:57Tristan Hughes?

  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 Ninth Legion plays a part in it.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  It's so important. It plays such a role in our world today, doesn't it? Because 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, as we'll no doubt come to at the beginning of January. So Agricola is tasked with conquering the very far north. And actually, to cut the story short, he gets all the way through to the Moray Firth. So it's around Aberdeen, it's in Aberdeen Shire. And in AD 83, you have a major battle at Mons Graupius, which if it took place, is

• 34:54Speaker 02

  probably in the Banacki Range, south of the Moray Firth. And there, the Romans finally subdued the tribes in the far north of Britain. The Romans claim success. The whole of the main island of Britain is conquered. Agricola orders the classic Britannica regional fleet to circumnavigate the whole main island. So Britain's been conquered and then Domitian orders a monumental arch to be built at Richmond, clad in Carrara 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?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  So the Romans are on the line of the Moray Firth, but we'll go back a year. So, so we're going to go to black mark number three. So go back a year to AD 82. As the Romans are grinding their way up to Aberdeen Shire, 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, you 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.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  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 is mentioned in history.

• 36:50Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  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 that 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.

• 37:31Tristan Hughes?

  Explain yourself.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Well, it's lost to Boudica.

• 37:34Tristan Hughes?

  Yep.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  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.

• 37:44Tristan Hughes?

  Because it fails when it intercepts Boudica and it's brutally, well, thousands of its troops are killed.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Saughter. And then it's almost wiped out again, if you believe Tacitus writing about his own father-in-law being a hero, in AD 82, in Tacitus's fourth year campaigning in the far north. So, 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.

• 38:12Tristan Hughes?

  And to repeat your first kind of black mark all those years earlier, when it revolts.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:16Tristan Hughes?

  You know, at the death of Augustus, wasn't it?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Around the turn, yeah, Augustus Tiberius.

• 38:20Tristan Hughes?

  So, yeah, so three, you know, difficult periods for the Ninth Legion in the space of less than a century.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  It's like, it's like the most rubbish legion.

• 38:31Tristan Hughes?

  So that's the last mention of the Ninth in history.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:35Tristan Hughes?

  In a written down account. And crucially, for our topic today.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:39Tristan Hughes?

  For the Ninth Legion, this will ultimately see them returning to their main base at York.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, the question is for how long?

• 38:46Tristan Hughes?

  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, and 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, this word vexillations. Now, can you first explain what a vexillation is and then I'll explain more?

• 39:15Speaker 02

  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 standards in the legionary fortress and only ever comes out when the whole legion's on the march. It's very important for this story. And then you have a number of others. We've spoken about the sigmas standard as one, but also you have a vexilla. Now, 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.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  You 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.

• 40:10Tristan Hughes?

  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 Northumberland, Northumbria and Cumbria today. And I believe at certain locations, in particular, the modern day border city of Carlisle.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:31Tristan Hughes?

  Which is also found around this time. Amazing Roman work going on there with Frank Geico and his team at the moment.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 40:36Tristan Hughes?

  You've also got tile stamps with, I can't remember if it's legio, if it's shown as legio one X or legio V one, one, one, one.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  The latter.

• 40:47Tristan Hughes?

  It's the latter.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  The latter.

• 40:48Tristan Hughes?

  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 that 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?

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. But if you go right to the end of the first century AD, you have three legionary fortresses in operation. You have Cirelawn in southeast Wales, which is to Augusta. You have twenty Valerii victriks in Chester. And you have nine Hispania, which is in York. All of them cycle legionaries onto the far northern frontier, wherever it is at the time, along 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 vexillations stationed here, there and everywhere along the Ninth, at the frontier in the north. That's exactly what you would expect.

• 41:49Tristan Hughes?

  So now let's recap. We've got to the kind of the end of the first century now, haven't we?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:53Tristan Hughes?

  So what are the key dates at the moment?

• 41:54Speaker 02

  So we have five key dates. The first one is AD eight two, 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 one O six in the reign of Trajan. And this says this was built by the Ninth Legion, AD one O six. And that's the last time it's ever mentioned in writing.

• 42:25Tristan Hughes?

  So that's kind of where we're beginning to next, okay?

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Date two.

• 42:28Tristan Hughes?

  Yep.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Last time in history, last time in epigraphy. Then we have Hadrian arriving in AD one twenty two with a new governor and a new legion, six victriks, 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, one twenty two, the Ninth isn't in York. Then in the one twenties, Hadrian's Wall is built. And 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 one sixties, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, you have a column erected in Rome.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  And this lists all the excedent 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 italic, and they're listed. The Ninth Legion isn't there. So the last time it's mentioned in history is AD eighty two.

• 43:31Tristan Hughes?

  Yep.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  And by AD one six six, it's not in existence.

• 43:36Tristan Hughes?

  And we are basically now at the time of kind of AD one O seven, one O eight, 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 centre of the Yorkshire Museum today. And as you say, it is the rebuilding of the legionary fortress's gateway at York. And it mentions the year in which it was built. And they do the year by saying which emperor it was. It was Emperor Trajan, wasn't it?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:08Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  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 in 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.

• 44:32Tristan Hughes?

  And said by one hundred and twenty two 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 between that kind of, in that decade between one O seven AD and about one hundred and twenty two AD, seems sometime around then, the evidence, what we know at the moment, is the Ninth Legion has gone from York completely and is not even involved in the building of the wall, which suggests it has just gone.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  And we have one other piece of evidence between the erection of the gateway and, and the epigraphy in the reign of Trajan and the visit of Hadrian. And this is our second expeditio britannica. So when Hadrian becomes the emperor in one one seven, 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

• 45:57Speaker 02

  who is based with legio three Augusta on the Saharan frontier. So you have, and he's the primus pilis, 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 four thousand 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 it's a problem.

• 46:33Tristan Hughes?

  And does this bring us to theory number one as to what happened to the Ninth Legion? And 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?

• 46:57Speaker 02

  We're going to go back to the eighteen fifties.

• 46:58Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Tristan, to a terrifying, fearsome looking chap called Theodore Monson, who was the leading sort of Roman historian of the day, he was 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.

• 47:26Tristan Hughes?

  And who were the Brigantes?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  So the Brigantes are broadly the British confederation in the north of modern England into the Scottish borders. So if you draw a line from the Dee, Chester through to the Wash, go all the way up to the Clyde fourth line, Brigantes, it's a catchall 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 is destroyed in York.

• 47:59Tristan Hughes?

  And 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?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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 might, may have happened. So you get Theodore Monson. And 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, Marcus's father is the legate of the Ninth Legion. And then it marches into the far north of Britain.

• 48:49Tristan Hughes?

  So this is different.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:50Tristan Hughes?

  With Brigante's revolt, it's this idea that, you know, sometime between one O seven and roughly one, one, two, two, there's a big revolt by the Britons, but in the areas, you say, of kind of the borders, Cumbria, Northumbria today. The more popular version, you know, in, in regards to kind of pop in media and so on today, is that idea that it wasn't a Brigante's revolt, but instead the Ninth going further north into what is today Scotland.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Goes into the far north of Britain, into modern Scotland and disappears.

• 49:19Tristan Hughes?

  And is there any evidence for that at all?

• 49:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 49:20Tristan Hughes?

  No, okay.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  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, that the Ninth Legion was lost in the Far North.

• 49:35Tristan Hughes?

  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 Brigantes, where Hadrian's Wall is ultimately built, that the Ninth Legion might have been a casualty of a revolt by the Brigantes sometime between 107 and 122, the building of Hadrian's Wall. That's kind of theory number one, is it?

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. I mean, you could, basically, if you look at the lost in the Far North of Britain theory, you have Munson's theory that it was lost in a revolt which overrun York, no evidence of it whatsoever. You have Rosamund 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 Brigantine 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, no evidence at all.

• 50:31Tristan Hughes?

  And then it's theoretical then if maybe that defeat did inspire Hadrian to build Hadrian's Wall. It's a big statement right in the aftermath, but once again, that's theory, that's theory, we don't know.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  True. And also at the time, I mean, Hadrian had already been on a visit to the Rhine frontier where he'd been building fortifications, not in stone, but he'd been building the northern lines, the emas, on the Rhine 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. So that is why it's so easy to link the loss of the Ninth Legion, first to this second in the AD 110's emergency expedition, and secondly to Hadrian's visit with six victories.

• 51:20Tristan Hughes?

  And then the building of Hadrian's Wall.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:22Tristan Hughes?

  So that's a lost in the north of Britain, kind of theory number one.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:25Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:35Tristan Hughes?

  That the Ninth Legion was lost further south. What's this?

• 51:39Speaker 02

  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 Boudicca revolt, the provincial capital moves to Londinium, so it's now the provincial capital. And it's thriving again as a city, it's absolutely thriving. 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 across to the continent and into the Mediterranean. So it's absolutely thriving.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  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 Wallbrook 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. This is the Wallbrook. And the Wallbrook goes from the Thames into tributaries, which then go outside the Roman boundary. Later becomes the Roman Wall around Morgate. And in these tributaries, lots of individual skulls have been found dating from around this period,

• 53:01Speaker 02

  which many people think were beheaded. And remember, beheading is a big deal in the Roman world, you know, the Romans truly believed that dying is a transition to the next phase of living. So to behead someone, you're, you're removing their ability to transition into the next phase of living, it's a big deal. So some people interpret these skulls, which date from around these times, being evidence, and there's hundreds of them, 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.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  So 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?

• 54:14Tristan Hughes?

  And you can still see the remains of that fort today.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  You can.

• 54:16Tristan Hughes?

  Well, near, well, where the Museum of London used to be.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 54:20Tristan Hughes?

  What's it called? What's that part of London called?

• 54:22Speaker 02

  So, 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. That's, that's almost unique in the Roman world, actually, having a fort built within the religious boundary. So something major's happened, 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 happened 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.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  And that's where you get the memorial done, that's you.

• 55:18Tristan Hughes?

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• 55:25Speaker 04

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• 55:31Tristan Hughes?

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• 55:37Speaker 04

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• 55:48Tristan Hughes?

  And guess what? We're also now on YouTube. After Dark, a podcast from History Hit.

• 56:09Tristan Hughes?

  So 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 or it was lost in Britain between, let's say, 110 and 122 AD. So those are the main theories suggesting that the Ninth, the reason why the Ninth disappears from Britain is that it was destroyed in Britain.

• 56:44Tristan Hughes?

  But that's not the end.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 56:46Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Which, which by the way, would not be unusual.

• 57:03Tristan Hughes?

  That would not be unusual.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  So, so, so it's absolutely possible that's what happened.

• 57:08Tristan Hughes?

  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 of achievements mention service in the Ninth Legion. You have an amazing tomb at Petra, Petra and his Sextus Florentinus, if I remember correctly. And I can't remember if he was a governor or a legate, he was a senior position in the Ninth Legion. And that seems to date to the 120s around that time. You then have a surviving mention in a fort in Algeria, the amazing fort of Lambysis.

• 57:53Tristan Hughes?

  I think you've been there, haven't you?

• 57:54Speaker 02

  I've been there, absolutely. I call it the York in the South.

• 57:56Tristan Hughes?

  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 numiscious unior, which always seems to be dated, but it's a bit, you know, it's 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.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:20Tristan Hughes?

  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. It was in fact relocated and endured for much longer. So that, that, that's the evidence for these, these, these other theories that emerge, don't they?

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Which, 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, the reality is, and we're going through these one by one, we've got two more, 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, because all this evidence can be interpreted in different ways. It's like a historical detective story.

• 59:09Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's get into this first non-lost in Britain theory.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:13Tristan Hughes?

  Which is lost on the river Rhine. So what's this evidence here and what's the theory?

• 59:17Speaker 02

  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 Nymargon. So in Nymargon, you have stamped tiles from the AD 110s, which are stamped by the Ninth Legion. Intriguingly, by the way, it's V1111.

• 59:37Tristan Hughes?

  Like at Carlisle.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Exactly right. So, so the only other place, by the way, where you get the Ninth written like that is in the inscribed inscription, the Trajanic inscription in York. So, so it's really interesting, actually. So you might be tracing the same vexilation moving around the Western Roman Empire. What we do know with Nymargon though is that in the AD 110s, um, 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. So as an interim, their own emergency expedition, a number of vexillations from other legions went there. And one of them was from the Ninth.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  So it's not evidence that you have the whole legion there, just that you have a vexilation there.

• 1:00:25Tristan Hughes?

  And that's the evidence which then people use to say it was then potentially destroyed fighting against people on the Rhine or on the river Danube. That's theory number three.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  And the key thing then is to look at the opportunity for the legion to be lost.

• 1:00:36Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  So you need an enemy. So the two major conflicts that you, which is why I say the Rhine or the Danube, the two major conflicts that we're dealing with here are firstly, Trajan's conflicts against the Dacians. So, uh, these are in the 100s, two campaigns against the Dacians. And we know for a fact, every military unit that's part in that, because it's very well written up by the contemporary sources. And the Ninth not there. And the second one is with the Markmanic wars, which include conflicts on the Rhine and Danube, but largely on the Danube in the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

• 1:01:12Tristan Hughes?

  So that's quite a late one in the story.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  It's a later one. And again, that lasts for a number of decades. The key thing there is again, we have records of every military unit involved and there's no mention of the Ninth.

• 1:01:23Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  And I think actually those two conflicts are so well recorded.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  You know, it's at the height of the, the Nerva Trajanic period, later with Trajan, one of the best written up Roman emperors of, of all of them. That, that, that we'd know, there's no mention of it. So, so for me, I don't think so.

• 1:01:43Tristan Hughes?

  No, I would argue that that's the weakest of all the theories, that it was lost on the Rhine or the Danube. And which leads us to the last theory.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Tristan Hughes?

  Which is, this is a really compelling one. I find this one very interesting.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  I do too.

• 1:01:52Tristan Hughes?

  That it was relocated to the eastern part of the empire. So the far east of the Roman Empire at the time.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  So you have three candidate conflicts there where, where you, we, we know the, the Romans lost a lot of troops.

• 1:02:03Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  So again, we, I, I use the word sanguineous, where the Romans fought, they, they, 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 troops in action and they're still losing. You have firstly, we go to the reign of Trajan. Trajan's, uh, second major campaign was in the east against the Parthians.

• 1:02:27Tristan Hughes?

  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 have that other key power at the time, the Parthians.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah, the Persians, later the Sassanid Persians in our, in our period, the, the Parthians. So you have Trajan's conquest of Parthi, Trajan is one of the few Roman emperors to conquer the Parthian empire. Successfully captures and sacks the Parthian capital, Tessiphon. Um, and then probably the only Roman emperor who got all the way through to put his toes in the Persian Gulf. And 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, the, the huge continental river valleys of the Targaryen 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.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Hellenistic, large Jewish populations who are doing exceptionally well. And this conflict, as he comes back, is known as the Kitos War or the Second Jewish Revolt. Because it's 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 Kokhba Revolt, which is a very, very, very brutal revolt focused around Judea, uh, where the Romans almost certainly lose at least one entire legion. And so it could be that.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  And then you go through to the beginning of the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus and the Roman Parthian War in the early AD 160s. When, um, at the change of, uh, imperial leadership, Volagases, 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. Severianus, who is the Roman governor of Cappadocia, which is the province buffeting on Armenia. So we're talking about eastern modern Turkey, um, and the border with modern Iran, um, decides he'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, martial glory for himself at the beginning of the, the new sort of reign of the Diarch emperors.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  And he gets wiped out to a man and he commits suicide. And that whole legion is wiped out. Okay. But we don't know its name. So, so that is a very good candidate, maybe for the Ninth being wiped out.

• 1:05:05Tristan Hughes?

  I do quite like, 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 result, 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.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Gone.

• 1:05:26Tristan Hughes?

  Yes. But that is kind of the four main theories, two where it's lost in Britain.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Tristan Hughes?

  The other two 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.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Tristan Hughes?

  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?

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  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, I mean, what you could make a very good case for actually, and some people do, is that in 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.

• 1:06:12Tristan Hughes?

  Right, okay.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  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, you, in the Principates, certainly of the first half of the Roman Empire, that never happens. And also you're getting rid of an aquila eagle, you know, that, that's as, as bigger sort of a black spot, PR disaster as anything you will have for a Roman emperor. You 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 in the Teutoburg Forest.

• 1:06:43Tristan Hughes?

  We were talking earlier and I can't think of any examples.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  I can't.

• 1:06:46Tristan Hughes?

  From, you know, post Basilevactium of voluntary disbanding of legions.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  No, completely agree, completely agree.

• 1:06:55Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  So, so we're down to one of the four then.

• 1:06:57Tristan Hughes?

  So it's one of the four. Let's wrap it up now. Which theory do you like the most?

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  So for me, it, it's like everything else, isn't it? When, when, uh, uh, unless we have an incredible archaeological find of like huge amounts of Roman armour buried from mass burial pits, um, 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 way, shape or form in the late 110s in Britain.

• 1:07:42Tristan Hughes?

  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 Brigante'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?

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  I think in particular with the Hadrianic revolt idea, there's a huge piece of history missing to us today around the accession of Hadram. We don't know. Something bad happened in Britain when Hadram became the emperor, like really, really bad. And then you get this emergency expedition coming over and then the emperor and then a new legion and then a new governor. So, 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.

• 1:08:23Tristan Hughes?

  It's a fair enough point and I, 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 Ninth Legion varying from Petra to Algeria to Rome, which do seem to go into almost the mid second century AD, which to me shouts out, I mean, that the Ninth 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 Ninth again. People are still mentioning their previous service in the Ninth, which does make me think that it was, you know, there is a lot of merit to the relocation argument and that

• 1:09:08Tristan Hughes?

  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 is 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.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  No, no, in actual, well, the reality is we don't know.

• 1:09:42Tristan Hughes?

  It's a fair argument, I think.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  No, I agree, I, I agree. I absolutely, completely agree. One thing really does fascinate me, I'll, I'll leave you with a question actually Tristan for me. The Romans went absolutely out of their way to recover 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 Tutoburg Forest in AD9 in the Varian disaster. Why did the Romans try not to recover the Ninth Legion's eagle?

• 1:10:13Tristan Hughes?

  So 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 then there seems to be no case, right?

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Or, 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, the north west of modern Scotland and recovering the eagle, maybe that's where it went.

• 1:10:44Tristan Hughes?

  Why doesn't Septimius Severus go and recover the eagle then?

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Far too sensible, far too sensible.

• 1:10:48Tristan Hughes?

  If that's another story. Okay, okay. Well, we'll leave it on that. We've explained the theories, we've explained that, but I think at the end of the day, I hope what we've got across in is very detailed. I think perhaps this is the most detailed analysis of the Ninth Legion story anywhere on the internet and discussion at least. It's 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 exploring the stories that we actually do know from the Ninth. Its importance 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.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  And what I'd add is, I really hope that when Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender are listening to or watching our broadcast, they, they repost it so their, their followers can view it too. So they, they realise what a key role they played in the modern cultural narrative about the Ninth Legion.

• 1:11:41Tristan Hughes?

  They have. The Ninth Legion story will not be going away anytime soon. Simon, this has been absolutely brilliant. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book all about the Ninth Legion.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  Roman Britain's Missing Legion through Pen and Sword Books, available as a paperback now. It's actually my bestselling 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.

• 1:12:04Tristan Hughes?

  Simon, just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  What an absolute pleasure, mate.

• 1:12:13Tristan Hughes?

  Thanks 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 The Ancients. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.