The Eagle of the Ninth

Summary

Around AD 117 the Ninth Legion, the Hispana, marched north from Eboracum into Caledonia to put down a rising of the tribes and was never seen again; its bronze eagle standard was lost with it. Some years later Marcus Flavius Aquila, whose father commanded the legion's First Cohort and vanished with it, arrives as a young centurion to command a cohort of auxiliaries at the frontier fort of Isca Dumnoniorum in the far southwest of Britain. He makes a friend of Cradoc, a local British chieftain with whom he hunts, but a rising stirred up by the Druids breaks over the fort. Marcus holds it, and in a sortie to save a relief column against a charge of war chariots he is badly wounded in the leg. The wound ends his military career. He convalesces at Calleva with his Uncle Aquila, a retired soldier writing a book on siege warfare, attended by the old servant Stephanos. At the games in the town's amphitheatre Marcus moves the crowd to spare a defeated young gladiator, Esca, son of a chieftain of the Brigantes taken in war, and Esca becomes his body-slave. A second painful operation on the leg succeeds, Marcus tames a wolf cub he names Cub, and he befriends Cottia, a spirited girl of the Iceni being raised by Romanized guardians next door. He frees Esca, who chooses to stay with him as a friend. When the Legate Claudius Hieronimianus, visiting with the young tribune Placidus, mentions rumours that the Ninth's eagle has been seen in a tribal temple in the north and could become a rallying sign for a new war, Marcus resolves to recover it and restore his father's name. With Esca he travels beyond Hadrian's Wall disguised as a wandering Greek oculist, Demetrius of Alexandria, selling eye salves. In the wild country they meet Guern the Hunter, once a soldier of the Ninth, who has married among the tribes and tells how the legion, weakened by desertion and ill-feeling, was surrounded and destroyed. The trail leads to the Epidaii, the Seal People of the western Highlands, whose chieftain's household Marcus has treated as a healer. At the Feast of New Spears they see the eagle, stripped of its wings, in their holy place; at night Marcus and Esca steal it and flee. Pursued across the hills, they are helped at the last by Guern, and they bring the eagle home. The authorities decide not to re-form the Ninth, so the eagle is quietly buried at Calleva; Marcus receives a grant of land in Britain, Esca is made a Roman citizen, and Marcus looks forward to a life in Britain with Cottia and Esca. Oxford University Press published the novel in 1954 with illustrations by C. Walter Hodges. Sutcliff's foreword ties the story to the wingless bronze eagle dug up at Silchester, the site of Calleva, in the nineteenth century.

Top Lessons

• A son's duty to his father's name

  Marcus cannot bring his father back, but he can recover the standard his father died beside and learn the truth about the legion. His quest is an act of filial piety, undertaken at real risk, with no promise of reward.

• From master and slave to friends

  Esca begins as a captive bought for Marcus, and the turning point comes when Marcus gives him his freedom and Esca stays by choice. The journey north reverses their places, for in Caledonia it is Esca who knows the tribes and the land.

• Seeing the other side

  Sutcliff writes from inside Roman Britain but lets the British tribes keep their own dignity, gods and grievances. Cradoc, Esca, Cottia and Guern's adopted people show that the conquered are not simply enemies, and Marcus ends by choosing Britain as his home.

• Courage after injury

  Marcus's wound takes away the career he was born for, and much of the middle of the book is about his discouragement and slow recovery. His later courage is that of a man who has lost something and found a new purpose, not a young soldier's untested daring.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Three strands may interest a historian of medicine. First, Marcus's chariot wound: the first treatment at Isca leaves the leg crippled and painful, and at Calleva a surgeon reopens it to remove what was left in the wound, a plausible picture of Roman military surgery, which could clean, probe and close wounds but not prevent long disability. Second, the disguise: Marcus travels as a Greek oculist with a box of eye salves. Itinerant eye doctors were real in the Roman provinces, and small inscribed stone stamps naming oculists and their collyria (eye ointments) have been found in Britain and Gaul. Marcus's success with common eye complaints gives him entrance to the Epidaii. Third, the book's long middle section on convalescence, discouragement and adapting to lameness is often read in light of Sutcliff's own lifelong disability from Still's disease; that connection is a reading, not something the novel states.

• Chapters IV–V

  Marcus is wounded under the chariot charge at Isca and learns that the leg will keep him from serving again.

• Calleva chapters (around Chapters VII–VIII)

  A surgeon at Calleva reopens and cleans the badly healed wound in a painful operation that finally lets it mend.

• Chapters XI–XVII

  Marcus works his way north as the oculist Demetrius of Alexandria, treating eye ailments with salves among the tribes.