Thanks for quoting that poem, Pectinarius. It's always interesting to hear of literary parallels.

You asked before if my reading of The Eagle of the Ninth was spoiled by the knowledge that the Ninth Legion had been "found" by historians and archaeologists, and had merely moved locations.

In truth, before you mentioned this, I had no idea that this was the case, and I would be very interested to hear the findings of those who have investigated this. The basis of Sutcliff's novel were simply that the Ninth had vanished into thin air, and she married this with the discovery of a Roman eagle without wings. Although the discovery of the later history of the Ninth Legion does undoubtedly remove some of the mystery from the whole affair, it doesn't take away from the power that the book has in many other respects.

Sutcliff painted a picture of the fort that Marcus takes command over in a very few words. She captures the feel of an out-of-the-way working barracks, with its own characters and its own history. The plant that had been put in a pot by a previous inhabitant of the fort, for example, brings to life the reality of an ever-changing population, as cohorts rotated and legions were posted to different parts of the Empire.

Much of the rest of the story concerns the search for the lost Eagle of the Ninth, and touches upon honour and the tensions between two societies, the Roman occupiers and the wild tribes of the North. Marcus's loyal freed slave, Esca, accompanies him on the quest first to find the Eagle and then to escape with it.

What made the book special for me were the evocative descriptions of place, and the sense that the characters were creatures of their culture and societies. Those on either side of the divide could relate personally with each other, but the greater ties of clan pulled them almost inexorably in other directions.

But some characters did cross the divide, such as Esca - a loyal friend to Marcus, though he is from the Iceni. There is another figure, a former legionary, who lives among a tribe north of the Wall. Until he encountered Marcus, he thought he had put his former life totally behind him.

This mix of people and place, and an adventure story that takes place through the wilds of northern Britain, are a potent combination, and makes this book still well worth a read.