black ships before troy rosemary sutcliff

The Museum of Reading, which now houses the Silchester eagle, states that it 'is not a legionary eagle but has been immortalized as such by Rosemary Sutcliff'. Sutcliff wrote in a foreword that she created the story from two elements: the disappearance of the Legio IX Hispana (Ninth Legion) from the historical record following an expedition north to deal with Caledonian tribes in 117 and the discovery of a wingless Roman eagle in excavations at Calleva Atrebatum ( Silchester).

It has been adapted a few times, most notably as the 2011 film The Eagle. The book has also been published as The Eagle. The sequence loosely traces a family, of the Roman Empire and then of Britain, who inherit an emerald seal ring bearing the insignia of a dolphin. It is the first in a sequence of novels, followed by The Silver Branch, Frontier Wolf, The Lantern Bearers (which won a Carnegie Medal), Sword at Sunset, Dawn Wind, Sword Song, and The Shield Ring. The Eagle of the Ninth is one of Sutcliff's earlier books, but may be her best-known title. Rewarded by Rome for his services, he decides to settle as a landowner and farmer in Britain with his British wife, Cottia, and his freed friend, Esca. Marcus's hope of seeing the lost legion re-established is dashed, but he is able to bring back the gilded bronze eagle so that it can no longer serve as a symbol of Roman defeat – and thus will no longer be a danger to the frontier's security. In part, this disgrace was redeemed through a heroic last stand by a small remnant (including Marcus's father) around the legion's eagle standard. Disguised as a Greek oculist and travelling beyond Hadrian's Wall with his freed ex-slave, the British native hunter Esca, Marcus finds that a demoralized and mutinous Ninth Legion was annihilated by a great rising of the northern tribes. The story is set in Roman Britain in the 2nd century AD, after the building of Hadrian's Wall.ĭischarged because of a battle wound that has left him lame in one leg, a young Roman officer Marcus Flavius Aquila tries to discover the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion in northern Britain. The Eagle of the Ninth is a historical adventure novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1954.

Black ships before troy rosemary sutcliff