AW Nr5 Okt2010.Indd 48 03-10-2010 08:30:52 the Debate
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THE DEBATE The fate of the Ninth The curious disappearance of Legio VIIII Hispana © ajbdesign.com Andrew Brozyna, IN 1954, ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF PUBLISHED A NOVEL ABOUT ROMAN BRITAIN. The last testimony of the presence of IT CAUGHT THE IMAGINATION OF AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF READERS WITH the Ninth Legion in Britain. Dated to AD 108, it testifies to a building project ITS TALE OF THE NINTH LEGION, DESTROYED IN THE MISTS OF SCOTLAND. A undertaken by the legion. BBC DRAMATISATION CAPTIVATED A FRESH GENERATION IN 1977. AND NOW A NEW MOTION PICTURE IS SET TO REVIVE INTEREST IN THE faTE OF THE LOST LEGION. BUT WAS IT REALLY DESTROYED IN BRITAIN DURING THE REIGN OF It was clearly a military building inscrip- tion, dating from the time when Roman HADRIAN? OR HAVE WE faLLEN FOR A MYTH THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LAID builders were gradually refurbishing TO REST FIFTY YEARS AGO? the early turf-and-timber forts and fortresses in Britain, and reconstructing their defences in stone. The find-spot By Duncan B Campbell survived, however, for scholars of the was close to the original location of day to reconstruct the original text: the south-east gate into the legionary On the morning of 7 October 1854, The fortress of Eburacum. So the inscription York Herald and General Advertiser “The Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan probably celebrated the construction of carried a short report, tucked away in the Augustus, son of the deified Nerva, the gateway, built by the emperor per bottom corner of an inside page. Under Conqueror of Germany, Conqueror legionem VIIII Hispanam (“through the the headline “Antiquarian Discovery of Dacia, Chief Priest, in his twelfth agency of the Ninth Hispana Legion”). in York”, it announced that workmen year of tribunician power [AD 108], digging a drain in the English town acclaimed imperator six times, ... A very interesting stone had unearthed a massive inscribed through the agency of the Ninth The newspaper’s correspondent, slab. Measuring approximately a metre Hispana Legion.” commenting on “the very interesting square, the slab was the mid-section of Roman stone”, wrote that “it is a a monumental Roman inscription, both Roman Inscriptions of Britain § 665 valuable discovery, inasmuch as it ends of which had broken off. Enough fixes a precise period when the ninth 48 Ancient Warfare AW nr5 okt2010.indd 48 03-10-2010 08:30:52 THE DEBATE legion was in York”. With hindsight, his Dessau’s Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae had lighted upon an inscription from assessment of the stone’s importance as ILS 1094 + 1100.) Minturno (Italy) on the Appian Way. It was a huge understatement. The missing inscription detailed detailed the career of Lucius Barbuleius Only a year earlier, the great German the career of Marcus Pontius Laelianus, Ligarianus (CIL X 6006 = ILS 1066). scholar Theodor Mommsen had begun who rose to the consulship in AD 144, Ligarianus began his military his Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum when he would have been aged in career as tribunus laticlavius legionis (CIL) project to catalogue the surviving his early forties. Several years earlier, IX Hispanae (“senatorial tribune of inscriptions from the Roman world. he had served as tribune of the Sixth the Ninth Hispana Legion”). Many He planned to publish a transcript of Victrix Legion, cum qua ex Germania prospective senators served for a year each one, and collect them together in Brittaniam transivit (“with which he or two as tribunus laticlavius. Some in giant folio-sized volumes devoted crossed over from Germany to Britain”). even served in more than one legion, to the various geographical regions of This event should have occurred in the biding their time until they qualified, the empire. The job of collecting the early AD 120s, for legionary tribunes at the age of 24, to enter the Senate Roman inscriptions of Britain fell to his were usually nineteen or twenty years as a quaestor. As he was consul in colleague Emil Hübner, and the York of age. It seems more than coincidental AD 135, when we can assume that he inscription duly appeared as item 241 in that a new governor, Aulus Platorius was aged around 40 (although men as CIL volume VII (Inscriptiones Britanniae Nepos, had arrived in Britain from young as 32 could hold the consulship), Latinae, Berlin 1873). Lower Germany during the summer of Ligarianus probably served with the In Mommsen’s day, one of the classic AD 122, so he perhaps brought Pontius Ninth Hispana towards the end of texts on Roman Britain was Britannia Laelianus and the Sixth Legion with Trajan’s reign, perhaps around AD 115. Romana: The Roman Antiquities of him. Like Horsley, Borghesi was puzzled Britain, written by the Northumberland As for the Ninth Legion, Horsley could by the fate of the Ninth Legion. He was antiquarian John Horsley, and published find no trace of it. Last mentioned in AD aware of the fact that, shortly before in 1732. Horsley would have welcomed 82 by the historian Tacitus (in Agricola AD 165, when a list of existing legions the York inscription with open arms. 26.1), its ultimate fate perplexed the was drawn up at Rome (CIL VI 3492 He lamented the fact that, between Northumberland antiquarian: “it might = ILS 2288), the Ninth Legion was not the departure of Agricola and the possibly be broke”, he wrote (meaning amongst them. He proposed that the arrival of Hadrian, the history of Britain that the legion could have been Ninth Legion had been overwhelmed was hidden in shadows: “the more so, destroyed), “or incorporated with the in a rebellion and had been replaced because we cannot borrow any light or legio sexta victrix” (a rather desperate by the Sixth, a solution that seemed assistance from any Roman inscriptions solution based on the misreading of a perfectly acceptable to his nineteenth © ajbdesign.com Andrew Brozyna, in Britain, there being none now extant, tile-stamp in which “this ninth legion century contemporaries. Mommsen, which we can be certain are so ancient is called legio nona victrix, tho’ the title for example, was happy to lend his as this”. of victrix belonged not to the ninth, but considerable authority to the theory: to the sixth”). The legions of Britain Unfortunately, there was no record “Under Hadrian, there was a terrible Nevertheless, by diligent study, Horsley of a legion having been “broke”, as catastrophe here, apparently an had identified the various legions of happened, for example, in AD 161, when attack on the fortress at Eburacum the Roman army in Britain. He knew the Parthians, “completely surrounding and the annihilation of the legion that, of the four original legions an entire Roman legion stationed stationed there, the very same Ninth which garrisoned the province under under Severianus at Elegeia, a place in that had fought so unluckily in the Claudius and Nero, legio XIV Gemina Armenia, shot it down and annihilated Boudican revolt.” had departed in AD 70. He also knew it with its officers” (Dio, Roman History that legiones II Augusta and XX Valeria 71.2.1). T. Mommsen, Römische Geschichte Victrix had remained for the duration Horsley did not consider the Book 8 (1885) of the Roman occupation. That left only obvious solution, that the Ninth Legion legio IX Hispana. had been withdrawn from Britain and However, as a native of Hadrian’s transferred elsewhere. The discovery of the York inscription Wall country, Horsley could not ignore enabled Mommsen to narrow the the abundant evidence of the presence The legion disappears chronology somewhat, because it of legio VI Victrix. And as a diligent In the meantime, others were taking a proved that the Ninth Legion was scholar, he was well aware that an keen interest in the fledgling science actively rebuilding the fortress during inscribed statue base, sketched in of prosopography, the study of persons Trajan’s reign. Thus, he announced that around 1420 prior to its disappearance and their careers from the evidence of the disaster had occurred “undoubtedly from Trajan’s forum at Rome, carried inscriptions. (This is a subject that has soon after AD 108”, adding that “this important information about this played a key role in the debate over was probably not caused by an enemy legion’s movements. (Broken into two the Ninth Legion, as we shall see.) In invasion, but rather by a revolt of the parts, it was published as CIL VI 1497 the 1830s, the Italian count Bartolomeo northern allied peoples, particularly + 1549, and reprinted in Hermann Borghesi, an accomplished antiquarian, the Brigantes”. Ancient Warfare 49 AW nr5 okt2010.indd 49 03-10-2010 08:30:52 THE DEBATE A British war? occurred only in AD 119 and 128, but the Sixth Victrix Legion was occasioned In Mommsen’s opinion, two passages coin expert Harold Mattingly believed by the destruction of the Ninth Hispana from ancient literature pointed to this that he could differentiate certain coins Legion. This had simply been an conclusion. Firstly, Hadrian’s biographer within this period on stylistic grounds. assumption first proposed by Borghesi enumerated the troubles that greeted The coins which display the figure of and followed by Mommsen. But if the the emperor on his accession in AD 117: Britannia he assigned early in Hadrian’s Ninth Legion was still in the province, reign, confidently explaining that fully operational, then clearly Hadrian “The nations that Trajan had these coins “celebrate the restoration had intended temporarily to increase subjugated were defecting, of peace in the North after the revolt the provincial army to four legions. the Moors were attacking, the under Trajan, in which the ninth legion Indeed, other troops were arriving, Sarmatians were making war, the was destroyed”.