Sarah's Reviews > The Eagle of the Ninth

In 117 AD/CE, the Ninth Legion of the Roman Army marched into the mists of Caledonia (the land known today as Scotland). They were never seen again.

The standard-bearer of the Legio IX Hispana, who held aloft the golden eagle as they marched, was the father of our hero, Marcus Flavius Aquila. Marcus was a lad of twelve years when his father vanished. Now a young adult eager to prove his mettle, Marcus himself serves as a Roman officer in Britain.

He is discharged after a grievous battle wound that gives him a slight limp. While recuperating in the house of his uncle, Marcus has nothing but downtime in which to ponder the fate of his father and the standard he carried into the Caledonian mists.

He also forms three fast friendships. The first is with Esca, a young Briton whom Marcus purchased as a manservant-slave to save him from the gladiator fights. The second is with an orphaned wolf cub, named simply Cub, whom Esca adopted when on a hunting excursion that killed Cub’s mother. The third is with Cottia, a British girl being (unwillingly) raised as a Roman by the family next door.

When he has sufficiently recovered, Marcus, accompanied only by Esca, decides to go north, beyond the wall of Britannia, and follow the trail of the Ninth Legion into Celtic lands unknown. His intent: to bring back the Eagle, and restore the honor of his father’s Legion.

Content Advisory
Violence: There’s a gladiator combat where men and beasts are slain, although Sutcliff spares us the worst of the gore. There’s also a battle sequence that focuses more on Marcus’ state of mind than the carnage around him. Another battle towards the end of the book has minimal bloodshed.

Sex: Marcus nicknames Cottia a "little vixen." This is a reference to her red hair and ferocity, but he probably also calls her that because he finds her rather, well...



Language: Nothing.

Substance Abuse: Everybody drinks wine and beer because the water back then was a sanitation hazard.

Nightmare Fuel: The Celtic Feast of New Spears features some rituals that could be rather frightening to younger kids, including men prancing about wearing dead animals (the emblems of their clans) on their heads. The being here called the Horned Hunter (also known as Cernunnos or Herne) has a strange presence in the book—the main characters don’t believe in him per se, but almost fear that he might spring on them as they go about their task—and he’s kind of spooky even though he never materializes.

Conclusions
This is my first Sutcliff book, and my only complaint is that somehow I did not find out about this book’s existence until recently. Ah well. Better late than never.

What an outstanding novel. Nearly every aspect of it is perfect. The characters have such vibrancy and depth, especially Marcus and Esca.

Marcus, unlike most young Roman men in fiction, is a gracious and humble fellow who cares so deeply for the honor of his father and people, but thinks nothing of his own pride and even life.

Esca is quiet, observant, loyal, and deep. The way the lads develop over their journey is amazing, from master and servant to brothers in arms. They were able to transcend the prejudices of their respective cultures and have one of the strongest literary friendships I’ve ever seen.

These two are the main focus, but the supporting cast is wonderful too. Guern is particularly lovable, Tradui is intriguing, and Tribune Placidus is just one of those smarmy little pseudo-villains that one loves to hate.

Cottia reminds me a bit of Éowyn with her desperate desire for freedom, not to mention her penchant for standing in the wind with her bright hair billowing out from under her cloak. My only complaint with her is that she should have been in more of the story.

But Roman society in those days kept men and women apart most of the time. The only way, unfortunately, that Cottia or any other girl could have participated in an adventure like this one, is by disguising herself as a boy, which wouldn’t have worked in this case anyway because Marcus and Esca would have recognized her instantly.

Cub is a delight, the fiercest of all hunters yet the doggiest of dogs, who nearly starved himself to death when his master had to leave him behind, and greeted him with a flurry of tail-wagging and slobbery kisses when he finally came home.

The desolation and ferocity of Roman Britannia is the baseline of the story, and Sutcliff paints the environs richly with her well-chosen words. The only way to make the moors, the old forests, and the Lowlands even more forlorn than usual is to step back to this ancient era—before Heathcliff and Catherine, before Macbeth and the three witches, before even King Arthur rose from the ashes of Rome and Druidism. The few settlements are lonely little lights in the mist.

And as you can imagine, the people living in those settlements are rather nervous. Rome is far away, and reinforcements take a while to reach the lime-cliff shores of Britain. A fell sweep of northern Celtic tribes could push the Romans back into the sea. Even the gladiator fights, which were aggressively festive events in Rome itself, are portrayed here as being nearly as nerve-wracking for the viewers as for the combatants. Sutcliff masterfully evokes the tension and dread that the Roman colonists must have lived with on a daily basis. With all the Biblical fiction I’ve been reading lately, it’s interesting to see how the Western and Eastern frontiers of the Empire paralleled each other. The Celts and the Judeans had nothing culturally in common beyond their fierce independence, and both lands seethed against their overlords.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable book. I’m hugely impressed with Sutcliff’s storytelling ability, and I can’t wait to read the adventures of Marcus and Cottia’s descendents.

P.S. A movie based on this book came out a few years ago, starring Channing Tatum as Marcus and Jamie Bell as Esca. It looks like a highly enjoyable film in its own right, and I could easily picture those two actors as the heroes of the story. However, I’m annoyed that the movie appears to have written Cottia and Cub out of the story entirely, and the subplot about Esca (view spoiler)[turning on Marcus and enslaving him (hide spoiler)] is even worse. That’s like Frodo turning on Sam in the Return of the King movie, only here it was deemed important enough to be shown in the trailer. I’m still curious to see it, but those elements worry me.

P.P.S. Apparently modern scholars are pretty divided about what became of the Ninth Legion. Some say that they never vanished at all, others that they went missing in Parthia during the bar Kokba revolt, at the opposite end of the Empire from Britain. Isn’t this the same legion that wound up in China in the Rick Riordan timeline?