Rome's Lost Legion: The Story Of The Ninth | Mystery Of The Ninth | Timeline

my name's dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video [Music] [Applause] it is one of the great mysteries of ancient history in the early 2nd century a.d a roman legion vanished from the historical record they're not there so at some point in the second century something happens to them they disappear they're disbanded something here you've got five and a half thousand soldiers of rome's elite fighting army what happens to them we do not know what happened to it it literally disappears from history it remains one of the mysteries we need to find out now with the help of leading experts i'm going to dive deeper into the story i'm going to be traveling across britain visiting some of the key sites associated with the 9th legion on this island from the central role it played in helping extend rome's control to a brutal run-in with britain's most famous warrior queen the question of what's happened to the knight legion has fascinated people for centuries this is the story of the ninth legion [Music] i've always been interested in roman history for as long as i can remember but one of the key things that really sparked the interest was when my dad read to me this book the eagle of the ninth when i was six or seven years old first published in the 1950s it was written by rosary sutcliffe and the story centers around a roman legion the ninth legion sent north from york to crush an uprising beyond hadrian's wall but the legion never returned it was destroyed and its precious eagle standard was lost rosemary sutcliffe was a fantastic author i mean she she's somebody who suffered through illness throughout her entire life and and didn't get out much but her imagination was amazing and when the eagle of the night came out it was such a captivating story i guess i mean archaeologists can look at it today and say there are certain parts which don't quite ring true anymore but the idea of a legion being lost in northern britain about a son trying to find out what happened to his father about uh sort of loss of honor trying to recover this eagle and pinning it all to an archaeological discovery this archaeological discovery was the silchester eagle discovered in the late 19th century this roman bronze cast eagle is extraordinary its talons are clawed over as if gripping onto something its head is tilted slightly to the right although it is now not believed to be a legionary eagle it inspired rosemary sutcliffe to write her famous novel rosemary succliffe makes that brilliant link of saying this is possibly the eagle standard of the ninth legion and if it was why is it in sealchester in southern britain in berkshire and not anywhere near york where they may have died so creating this fantastic story about people going north and spoiler alert uh retrieving the eagle and bringing it south and giving it an honourable burial so it it's a it's a fantastic story and it's a real sort of boy's own heroic tale although a fictional story the eagle of the ninth has its roots in one of the great mysteries of ancient history in the second century aed rome's ninth legion legion nine hispana disappears from the historical record vanishes over the decades over the centuries there have been many theories put forward as to what happened to this lost legion but for me what is just as interesting what is just as amazing is what we do know about rome's ninth legion what we do know in particular about this legion during the just under 100 years that we're for certain sure that it's spent in roman britain filled with military successes but also some disastrous defeats the story of the ninth legion that we do know is worthy of an epic in its own right and its story deserves to be told by the first century a.d the roman empire dominated the mediterranean possessing one of the most formidable military forces in history rome's conquering army was divided into legions each one a unit containing just over 5000 soldiers every legion had its own extraordinary story and the ninth legion was no exception now the interesting thing is that there were at least two ninth legions so the first ninth legion originates in the eighties bc in the social wars in the later roman republic and this then becomes an elite fighting force it fights with caesar throughout all of his campaigns in gaul the sanguinis con conquest of gore when he himself claims he killed a million and enslaved a million well part of that story is the ninth legion the original ninth legion this ninth legion almost certainly came to britain in at least one of caesar's two incursions to britain in 55 and 54 bc and this same ninth legion then participates in his later campaigns fighting pompeii in the balkans macedonia and in greece the battle for salas and then in north africa and then in spain it's an elite legion but the year before caesar's assassination in 44 bc it is disbanded and we don't know why but in true roman fashion within two years it's reformed so after caesar's death octavian reforms it and it again becomes another elite legion so it fights through all the major campaigns of the latest civil wars it fights at philippi then when he becomes augustus after being called emperor for the first time by the senate in 27 bc it fights in his cantabrian wars in spain so so it's participating in all the major conflicts of octarian later augustus reigns so this is an elite legion but the ninth's record of service was soon stained by an infamous event for the first time uh we we see it in a negative light because there's an occasion when it rebels and interestingly this is a theme which you can see then threaded through the rest of the history of the ninth legion no longer is it this bright shining light this true heroic roman legion but suddenly things start over time over a long chronology to go wrong in this first instance in the beginning of the first century a.d you have this this rebellion this insurrection involving the legion ultimately the legion then comes back into the front line again of the roman military and latterly it is chosen as one of the four legions to take part in the claudia invasion of britain and owless plautius on behalf of the emperor claudius ad43 and it plays a key role in the invasion by the end of 43 a.d the romans had reached kamiluddin and modern-day colchester and here the emperor claudius received the surrenders of british chiefs the invasion was at an end the province of britannia was declared it had ended in success the emperor claudius he had his conquest but for the ninth the fighting was far from over we've got roman troops essentially heading west and northwards it's vital to go west because although the tribes predominantly in the south and east or on rome's side they understand the need for good relationships with rome and a lot of their leaders of a pro roman to the west you've got the good mineral resources you've got the gold in central wales you've got lead and tin in the west country you've got a whole range of sort of materials which will make britain economically viable if you can start mining that so it's vital that the troops go west and start to incorporate that bit into the roman empire but the trouble is going west is you've got tribes and people who've had no history of contact with rome so they're not necessarily on rome's side they haven't traded with rome resistance remained in the west riled up by a british leader called keraticus that's a problem because the emperor claudius has gone back to rome and said it's all over the conquest is complete and yet there's still this character who is loose who is causing trouble it's that sense if you can't complete the conquest until keraticus is brought back in rome in chains or is dead so he becomes the major target for the romans they have to get him if they can convince the rest of the roman empire that the conquest of britain is finished yet as rome was dealing with keraticus and this resistance in the west the ninth was heading in a different direction the ninth legion is going up the east coast as far as we can see i mean the good thing about the roman legions is they also whenever they're building a fort they stamp their tiles so we've got a lot of numbers we can see the second legion is going down towards dorset and exeter uh the 20th and the 14th legions are going up into wales um up towards anglesey and the ninth legion seems to be going up the eastern seaboard going towards lincoln and then up eventually towards york so to begin with the ninth isn't involved directly in the war against kuraticus but it is involved in trying to make sure that the eastern side of britain is kept secure and more critically the northern frontier is secure because to the north you've got this uh the the tribe the brigantes which is a massive tribal confederation really from southern yorkshire right there up to northumberland covering an immense area if they're peaceful and if they can be persuaded to be on rome's side then the rest of the soldiers can move into wales they can start hunting down keraticus and also the ninth can stop keraticus from going northwards and trying to ferment rebellion up there too so they have a very important role early on but they're not directly involved with the with the war against the british leaders by 60 a.d the ninth legion had played a central role in helping rome establish the fledgling roman province of britannia it had played a key role in the invasion it had played a key role in the breakout campaigns it had established itself on rome's northern edge founding a legionary fortress at lincoln but it would be then that the ninth faced its greatest challenge to date a massive british revolt led by one of the most famous warrior women in our islands history boudicca was the queen of a british tribe called the icini who are a roman client tribe or a client state so actually nominally they were allies of rome and the romans did deals with some of the populations where they conquered the territory if it would save them time in the conquest of the more difficult parts of the territory do a deal with one of the tribes which are more acquiescent and this is the icini who are in north norfolk so doing a deal with them allowed the legion of the ninth to actually start its campaign in the midlands and the north um all well and good however jump forward to 80 60 61 buddhicus husband dies and in his will he's left his kingdom as a client state his kingdom half to his daughters and half to rome now when you're a client state the usual way of doing things is for the monarch who dies to leave all of his kingdom to rome so this actually gets the backs of the romans up and there's trouble and the romans sent troops to force the icenai to give up all of their territory all of their portable wealth possibly to the romans and this sparks an insurrection some of the stories we hear at this point are of the roman moneylenders calling in their loans to the aristocratic nobles of the icenai who they've lent money to to become effectively roman to build grand public buildings to wear togas to educate their children in latin in rome and by calling in the money they're bankrupted so an insurrection takes place also we hear from the primary sources that maybe boudicca herself was ill-treated and her daughter's raped as well whatever the truth there's a major problem and a rebellion starts and it becomes a conflagration eventually the whole of the south east erupts into flames and we have the booty can revolt for the ninth station to the northwest this was a major problem now at the time of the buddhical revolt the ninth legion is based in its very recently founded legionary fortress at lincoln it would have had vexilations based further south but the majority of troops would have been at lincoln however given that the revolt is in north norfolk they're the first responders and imagine the scene you've got boudicca marching down from north norfolk she's approaching colchester the provincial capital where claudius early earlier announced the province of britannia to exist the commander the legato of the legion serie alice decides to put together an emergency force from the ninth legion probably no more than two thousand men so less than half the legion so vexilations of legionaries and also maybe auxiliary is a special auxiliary recovery and they hotfot it down to try to intercept boudicca as she marches from north norfolk down to colchester but things didn't go as planned first they get there too late so when they get to colchester it's been torched and all the roman colonial settlers there have been killed secondly when they eventually do engage boudicca and her force which by this time may have amounted to maybe a hundred thousand we're only talking about two thousand romans here so even though of those hundred thousand native britons in revolt uh only a small percentage may have been actual warriors still the odds against the romans here are huge nevertheless serie alice with his 2000 men tries to intercept boudicca and he's defeated to the extent where he runs away so the legionary legate the general in charge of the legion legs it and he goes with his guard cavalry and they go and hide in a fort nearby until the booty can revolt put down so the first story we have of the ninth legion fighting a battle in terms of the booty can revolt is very negative indeed the battle was a catastrophic defeat for serialis and his portion of the ninth legion it was the first major military disaster that we know of that the romans had suffered on this island by the end of the day perhaps as many as 2 000 legionaries has perished boudicca's revolt would ultimately be put down at the battle of watson street and in its aftermath but the damage boudicca and her warriors had dealt to the ninth legion was severe it was in desperate need of replenishing and we hear in the aftermath of the revolt two thousand more legionaries being sent to britain many of whom would have been sent straight to the ninth to replenish that dented legion and we know the knife was replenished because soon enough we hear of this legion back in the field once more now if we jump forward in time to the 80 70s the ninth legion comes back into focus again but with the same guy involved the same roman leader serialis but this time serie alice isn't the failed legionary legate having lost his battle with boudicca he's now rebuilt his reputation uh with the flavor the new flavian dynasty in the context of the batavian revolt and he becomes the governor of britain and he gets given orders to uh create wealth and create glory for the new flavian dynasty and he gets told to conquer the far north of britain which includes the brigantes tribe in the north and the ninth legion gets given orders to march north and begin this conquest process the first thing they do is they march to the riveroos where they then build another legionary fort and this is today's york [Music] york has its fair share of extraordinary roman history in 306 a.d constantine the first better known as constantine the great was proclaimed emperor here by his soldiers probably very near to where i'm standing now at the principia the heart of roman york which is today underneath york minster almost a hundred years earlier another roman emperor septimius severus he came to york too he established it as his capital for three years when he went campaigning further north in the heartlands of what is today scotland he ultimately died here in 211. and hundred years more than a hundred years before that that was when york was first established as a legionary fortress with the ninth legion it's quite surreal to think that all this incredible roman history well it began with legion nine hispano the ninth legion were the builders of roman york they established here in the year 71 a.d the first roman structures in this part of the country the first fortress of ibarakum which was initially built out of earth and timber and then was later rebuilt in stone and you can still see remnants of it here in york today york as we understand it today is essentially a roman creation uh it's a legionary fortress for the ninth now legions are usually put they're not on the front line they're often away back and it's the auxiliaries the less well-paid troops that do the policing duties but york is established as a major center point a major node in rome's conquest of britain and that's the night so the ninth is the most northerly of all the legion so we've got the um we've got the 20th legion at chester we've got the second um at um kelly and south wales but the ninth is primarily that unit on the northern front so it's role has always been heading northwards probably of all the legions it better understands the brigantes the tribes to the north those soldiers of the ninth legion stationed at york were helping keep an eye over large swathes of territory owned by people such as the brigantes and archaeology survives that tells us more about one particular figure we're very lucky in the yorkshire museum to have some wonderful tombstones that provide really personal insights into individuals this is one of them this is the wonderful tombstone or two marker of an individual called lucius ducius ruffinus this individual lucius was a soldier in the ninth legion and by looking closely at his two marker we can tell a lot about him if we look at how ruffinus is depicted in the tombstone we can learn a lot about his role within the ninth legion you can see that he's holding a decorated pole in his left hand now that's a standard and this tells us that he had a specific role in the legion as a standard bearer there would be one of these per century that's around 80 soldiers and they would support the centurion who was the head of that group they had a very specific role in battle they needed to make sure that all the fighting soldiers knew where their centurion was to keep morale up and it was by holding this decorated pole high within the melee that they were able to do this it's a very important and also a very dangerous role because they were holding this standard they weren't able to protect themselves with a shield what's so fantastic about this object is that it puts a name a face and a personality to a member of the ninth legion unfortunately we don't know exactly when rafinus died but we we think it's quite likely that he was one of the first soldiers that was stationed here in roman york so one of the builders of the city not all of the 9th would remain in and around york during the late 1st century a.d detachments or vexilations were sent across britain as well as to the continent for service on the rhine but its most significant campaign would be under the command of one of the most renowned roman governors of britain agricola is one of those governors of britain for whom we actually know quite a lot and that's because his son-in-law tacitus wrote a biography in fact it's less of a biography it's more of a sort of hagiography it's it's a very sort of um positive story about how great and wonderful his father-in-law was and all the wonderful things he did for rome but it's useful from our point of view because it gives us sort of a year by year account so agricola is probably the only roman governor who could actually claim to have conquered the far north of britain and part of this process in his campaigns from let's say 80 78 through 83 involved directly absolutely directly the ninth legion the ninth legion at the time one of full roman legions in britain playing a key role in his campaigns marching from the north of the province remember at this time the board is probably around the solway firth to the time so we're going north into the scottish borders and then we're going further north into five and then further north into the upper midland valley just shy of the highland line and then we're going even further north towards the more lowlands so this is a real attempt to conquer the far north of britain one key place where we see the remains of extensive military activity by agricola is in perthshire and then they get to around um a place called inch toodle in perthshire um and that's where they build a leadry fortress it's the big fort in scotland the next nearest being um york they don't quite finish that but we know they're campaigning around there they're building their forts in around persher [Music] i've come to the remains of our doc roman fought in scotland now the fort here was first constructed by the romans in the first century a.d during the flavian period and the remains of the flavian fort here can be seen as very extensive the far reaches of the ditches visible to this day here our dock is a roman fort in central scotland in perthshire and it's one of the best surviving examples of its type anywhere in the roman empire as you can see from the massive ramparts and ditches around its perimeter it survives in really good quality condition the fort itself um it's an incredibly well preserved fort a number of rampart and ditches still survive it's on the route into the highlands um just slightly north of that we seem to get a fortified signaling chain um ardor has a key role in that it is pivotal it is controlling activity in this area obviously when you visit our dock today it's it seems quite quiet and peaceful the wind blowing across a relatively empty field you get to the ramparts and then you get an idea of the majesty but what that does is hide the hive of activity that you'd have had going on there you would have had these wooden barrett blocks you would have had the headquarters building you've got to imagine the noise of hundreds of men you'd have had soldiers on guard at night time and you've really got to imagine something that's quite busy and often it's good to actually have a think about when you've watched some film or a television program that's actually shown the roman army the battle scene at the beginning of gladiator when they all come back and they're in the camp afterwards and it shows you an image of something that's really quite dirty and smelly and i think you've got to help you've got to conjure up this isn't this lovely windswept moor this was a busy active place full of soldiers so our dock it's beautifully preserved of all of these deep ditches these fortifications you can just imagine what it would have originally looked like with a wooden wall surrounding it it's an absolutely astonishing sight and it may also very tentatively have a link to the ninth legion now when i say tentative link to the ninth i mean very very sensitive we have no evidence that the ninth was ever here but the key for me was that we believe that this fort was first constructed as i mentioned in the flavian period so probably during the campaign of agricola in the north of which we know the ninth served some thoughts you're lucky enough to find something that actually gives you a date like a coin hoard or something that actually has a at the latest date which at least helps you to do that we don't have that evidence for our dock but we do have plenty of evidence shown that was occupied in the 80s a.d so very much contemporary with agricola's campaigns and would have been occupied when he was operating in scotland could the ninth legion have been here at some point during that campaign it's possible but we don't know for sure [Music] by 1882 agricola's campaign in the north had met with some astonishing success he had constructed forts as far north as perth including perhaps this one beautifully preserved at our dock he had secured the land south of the firth and the clyde he had campaigned on the islands to the west and he'd even according to his son-in-law tacitus contemplated a future invasion of ireland but agricola's campaign was far from finished agricola returned his attention to the north using the fleet an army in tandem to pressure his foe the caledonians who put up a fierce resistance the caledonians went on the offensive attacking forts and damaging roman morale the caledonian assaults were terrifying and seemingly relentless as the ninth legion was about to find out to combat this caledonian aggression agricola decided to divide his army into three separate sections the weakest of which according to tacitus was the ninth legion now why was the ninth the weakest well perhaps some of the unit was elsewhere at the time but now the ninth was exposed and the caledonians pounced the ninth legion somewhere probably in the upper midland valley so just shy of the highlands is in a marching camp and remember a roman military unit specifically a legion at the end of every night when they're campaigning in enemy territory builds a marching camp this is to defend itself from being attacked overnight which proves very relevant here because on this given evening in 1882 so we are told by tacitus the roman historian in his agricola the native britons in the far north will call them the caledonians attack in force completely out of the blue and almost overwhelm this entire legion of 5500 men in its marching camp according to tacitus the sentries were caught off guard and the caledonians got into the camp itself what followed was anarchy it must have been hell on earth the ninth unprepared the enemies swirling all around them a nightmare [Applause] most roman forts are designed certain troops can get out they don't want to sit behind their walls penned in they've got multiple gateways they can get out as quickly as they can they can form up in the field and then they can fight an enemy as they're trained to do so but the night they're caught in their fort so the ninth legion is in danger of being overwhelmed by the caledonians who are attacking enforce tacitus says that agricola arrives in the nick of time to save the legion from being annihilated he sent reinforcements he sent his cavalry and just in the nick of time whilst the ninth were holding out they managed to get some sort of order agricola's reinforcements came and routed the attacking caledonians the ninth was saved from total destruction but the damage it had suffered was severe we don't know how many losses they suffered but they go from being a premier fighting unit to one that has suffered significant losses and later on at the at the major battle of mons graupius the legions and specifically the ninth does not take part agricola sends all his um less well-paid auxiliary soldiers into the front line they get moaned they like cannon fodder you know it doesn't matter how many of them die because they're not ultimately roman but the legions are kept in reserve and it might be that groups like the ninth have been so badly mauled by that stage that they're not fighting fit and therefore they're not actually able to do the job this deadly night attack on the ninth legion is an extraordinary story but did it really happen the archeological record and water sounding to the ninth are two very different things we don't have any information that the enemy was burning down the fortification um we've got no archaeological evidence of that the text itself says they just killed a few people it doesn't say they were burning it down so we don't really know what was happening um we've not found any evidence of dead roman soldiers that have obvious marks of being slaughtered we don't have the same indigenous population we don't have any sort of battle site so the archaeology is not clear um in terms of the ninth legion we don't know where it happened when it happened and we have no archaeological evidence for that doesn't mean say it didn't happen just means that we haven't discovered that or perhaps tacitus was just spinning a bit of a tall tale there what's so interesting about this infamous night attack this mauling that the knight suffers in scotland is that this is the last literary reference we ever hear of the ninth legion it's the last time the ninth legion is ever mentioned in history ever that's it never again mentioned in history so what happened to it in the next episode we look at what the archaeology can tell us you know that's the point where they disappear so it did not take part in building the wall for whatever reason it wasn't around by then in britain the possibility of them being lost somewhere on the rhine or just a disbandment as we dive into the mystery of the lost legion you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, ninth legion, 9th legion, roman history, ancient history, julius caesar, ninth legion eagle found, roman mystery, roman legions

Id: MK45PRm4zTo

Length: 32min 19sec (1939 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021