History's Mystery: Did Boudicca's curse cause 6K Roman warriors to vanish without trace?

DailyMail.uk ^ | 24th April 2009 | William Napier

[yankeedame]

Legion of the Damned: Did Boudicca's curse cause 6,000 of Rome's fiercest warriors to vanish without trace?

Over the course of its ...1,000-year history, Ancient Rome gave rise to many extraordinary stories which live on to this day.

...No wonder Hollywood has always loved Rome, whose ...sheer spectacle have given rise to great epic movies from Ben-Hur to Gladiator.

Mystery: The unexplained disappearance of the 6,000 legionaires
from Ninth Legion in Scotland is the inspiration behind two
competing films

Yet the latest movies... comes not from the heart of Rome, but from a remote northern province...we now call Scotland, but which the Romans knew as Caledonia.

Both films (still in production) concern the Roman Ninth Legion and the bizarre fate that befell them in the mists of the Scottish Highlands around AD117.

The Eagle Of The Ninth will vie with rival project Centurion, starring British actor Dominic West and Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, to do this epic tale justice.

Hadrian's Wall is the only visible
landmark that remains testimony
to the Ninth's disappearance
- an admission of defeat by
the Romans

The Ninth Legion was one of the toughest and most experienced legions in the entire Roman Empire.

It was raised in Spain in 65BC, hence its nickname, the Hispanica,...

[donmeaker]

I like Robert E. Howard’s take on it. Part of the Bran Mac Morn series.

[infidel29]

one for the list

[aruanan]

Did Boudicca's curse cause 6,000 of Rome's fiercest warriors to vanish without trace?

Any way of retooling that curse for today's Washington?

[aruanan]

The Eagle Of The Ninth

This was also the title of a very good book by Rosemary Sutcliff. Others that I've read include Dawn Wind, The Lantern Bearers, The Silver Branch, Heather, Oak, and Olive, Tristan and Iseult, and Warrior Scarlet.

[DeLaine]

Interesting ping

[OneWingedShark]

>>Did Boudicca’s curse cause 6,000 of Rome’s fiercest warriors to vanish without trace?
>
>Any way of retooling that curse for today’s Washington?

LOL - Good thought.
It made me smile.

[Twotone]

Great article! I visited the Cairngorms last October...very pretty area.

[Little Pig]

Probably not *that* mysterious. There are a lot of peat bogs in Scotland, and if you’re quick and have a lot of help, legionaries are just as easy to stab in their sleep as anyone else. Wiping out a legion over a week up in the Scottish hinterlands would have been far too quick to get a message to Rome for help. There may even have been such a message, but it may have run afoul of bandits on the way, or some other traveling mishap.

[mware]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5bxT-j9UOQ

[SunkenCiv]

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[Verginius Rufus]

Boudicca was the widow of Prasutagus, the king of the Iceni, a tribe in East Anglia. Tacitus tells of her under the year A.D. 61 (Annals XIV, chapters 31ff.). Hadrian's Wall is in northern England near the present-day border with Scotland and wasn't built until about 60 years later.

[tet68]

A lesson from the article, one Obama and his minions should
keep in mind.

‘When the oppressed rise up against cruel oppressors, restraint is rare.’

[Condor51]

After a quick read on this, I think The Ninth Legion became Hippies, deserted en masse and went to Canada. Once there, they lived in communes and sat around smoking dope.

Or... they were all beamed up by Space Aliens. Just like with the Knights Templars who all disappeared in Oct of 1307.

[kabumpo]

I read all of those in junior hisgh school — I loved them.

[aruanan]

I had to read a piece of historical fiction for a children's literature course in college. Even though Warrior Scarlet really would be prehistorical fiction, it counted for the coursework. I thought it was going to be pretty dreary, but Sutcliff was great and I tried to find everything else she wrote. It's sad how little some kids are reading now. I know someone in high school who told me that he had never read a single book. He was amazed that I go through a novel every day and a half. I told him that in junior high I was reading a book a day. I told him that the reason I knew so much about so many things was through my own reading and that, if he were to depend on what was in his school textbooks, he would know next to nothing. Well, if he would read as much as he watches TV or plays video games, his life would be so, so different.

[kalee]

Britain herself has a mysterious vanished battalion. It happened at Gallipoli during WWI.

The story of that vanished battalion, said Winston Churchill in 1919, was “the greatest unsolved mystery of this century”

http://user.online.be/~snelders/sand.htm

[wildbill]

Didn’t we have a thread recently that stated that the red-hair gene was part of the makeup of the Neanderthal.

That would make the Scots that fought the Romans and the English the most direct descendants of the ancient clans of the Neandethals. No wonder they seemed different to the Romans.

Or maybe not.

[ZULU]

Sorry to discourage your dreams but the Ninth carried on according to links in the Internet before finally disappearing as most legions eventually did.

Chances are a lot of the rank and file of the Nona Hispana were Celtiberians and relatives of their foes in Britain. Match that with the almost neurotic discipline of the Legion and you have the kind of fighting force which can face odds of over 10 to 1 and win.

Fnatasy and fact get conflated in the production of a good novel, e.g. the Real King Arthur and the character in Le Morte D’Arthur.

[colorado tanker]

There seems to be quite a controversy about this, but the recent and more prevalent view seems to be the Ninth rotated out of Britain, probably to the Rhine.

I'm sure the movies will still be good fun, though.