As reviews of The Eagle seem to be tapering off (see the ‘Sword and Sandal’ section in our footer, e.g.) the Daily Mail comes out with a bit of hype for an upcoming television program on the ‘mysterious’ disappearance of the Roman legion portrayed in that movie (and, fwiw, also in Centurion). Tip o’ the pileus to Dorothy King for sending this one along:

For centuries, historians have puzzled over the disappearance of a legion of 5,000 battle-hardened Roman soldiers in northern Britain around 108 AD.

The ancient riddle, which has captivated storytellers, has just been dramatised by Hollywood in The Eagle, starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell.

Now, experts have revealed that the children’s book on which the film is based is more fact than fiction.

After helping to quell Queen Boadicea’s rebellion, and later crushing Caledonian tribes at the battle of Mons Graupius in Scotland in 83 AD, nothing more is recorded of the legendary Ninth Legion.

Historians were left baffled how thousands of heavy infantry soldiers could simply disappear. They suggested that the most likely explanations were that the legion disbanded and its members joined other units, or it was deployed to an eastern part of the empire.

Meanwhile, the myth-making continued. In 1954, children’s author Rosemary Sutcliff published The Eagle Of The Ninth, an adventure novel in which the heroic legion was massacred by Pict hordes in hostile mountainous terrain.

Now a group of experts say the elite infantry force was indeed defeated by a band of ‘barbarians’ in a military catastrophe that shamed the empire, prompting a conspiracy of silence.

The dramatic new evidence hinges on a single gravestone tribute and was brought to light by historian and film-maker Phil Hirst, whose documentary Rome’s Lost Legion will be screened next month.

‘The battle of Mons Graupius was thought to have marked the end of any serious threat to imperial might,’ he said. ‘But the discovery of a tombstone of a centurion stationed at the Northumbrian fort of Vindolanda shows the Romans were under attack from the north 20 years later.’

Historian Neil Faulkner, of Channel 4’s Time Team, said: ‘It is likely the insurgents formed a confederation of tribes. So what the Romans could have been facing was a rising of pretty well the whole of the north of Britain.’

Rome’s reaction after the Ninth’s disappearance lends weight to the theory. Reinforcements were drafted in to Britain to fight a major war at the beginning of Emperor Hadrian’s reign around 117 AD and the construction of Hadrian’s Wall was ordered.

Mr Hirst said: ‘The loss of the Ninth may have led Hadrian to realise that the total conquest of Britain was unachievable and a dividing wall needed to be built separating occupied territory from the barbarian hordes.’

Mr Faulkner added: ‘My guess is that the Ninth Legion was destroyed in a carefully executed ambush by northern tribes.’

Rome’s Lost Legion is on the History Channel on March 18. The Eagle opens in UK cinemas on March 25.

• via Hollywood film The Eagle on Rome’s lost Ninth Legion solves the riddle at last | Mail Online.

As often, there’s quite a bit of misinformation going on in this one, and it’s pretty clear that scholarship since Sutcliff’s novel came out (yes … a novel; I’ve never understood why historical fiction is often taken as the starting point for historical fact) back in the 1950s is being glossed over. Perhaps most importantly, the centurion’s tombstone thing isn’t a new discovery, if it’s the one I’m thinking of, namely the one which A.R. Birley published as “A New Tombstone from Vindolanda”, Britannia 29 (1998), pp. 299-306. The tombstone itself is broken and much has to be ‘filled in’:

I D[
2 T ? ANN[
3 CENTVR[
4 TVNGR[
5 DIORVM[
6T. INBELL[
7
8 FECTVS.[
9 FILH.E TARC[

Out of this, however, it is speculated (based on what would fit in the missing spaces and other features which you can track down Birley’s article for) that we might be dealing with a centurion named Titus Annius Rufus who was a member of the cohors Tungrorum — Birley speculates he may have been in command thereof, postulating the existence of an abbreviation of praepositus at the end of line three. Jumping to line six, it is clear our Annius died in battle (interfectus), and Birley speculates that what followed was an indication of who the enemy was (i.e. a barbaris or ab hostibus). On the basis that he died in a war against some Britanni at the time Hadrian came to the throne, the stone is assigned a date of 117 or thereabouts (the argument is much more detailed than that, but is still rather speculative).

That said, I really have no idea whether this is the stone which our ‘historian and film maker’ will be highlighting in his television program, but I can’t think of anything that was found recently that would fit (please correct me if I err in this regard). If it is, however, it should be clear from the above that it piles speculation upon speculation and really cannot be reliably used as evidence for the mysterious ‘disappearance’ of the Legio IX Hispana. We should also point out however, that there is evidence that the Legio didn’t actually ‘disappear’ when it is said to have.  Jona Lendering has an excellent overview of the Legio VIIII Hispana‘s history and it seems possible, if not likely, that it may have been in existence down to the early 160s A.D..

Poor Boris Johnson … another Classicist trying to manage in an increasingly unclassical world. He uses a word which is common enough in our discipline — euergetism — and the Daily Mail feels a need to gloss the term for the teeming millions. Some excerpts:

The super-rich must pay for schools and hospitals to stop the gap between rich and poor in recession-hit Britain becoming as big as it was in Victorian days, Boris Johnson has warned.

Drawing on his background as a Classics scholar, the London Mayor called for a ‘greater sense of euergetism’ – a word derived from Classical Greek that means philanthropy.

[…]

It is not the first time that Mr Johnson, who studied Classics at Oxford University, has used his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Ancient World to illuminate his arguments.

He drew again on his classical heritage when asked his political hero and villain.

His hero was Pericles, the great Athenian democrat, orator and general.

As his villain he picked Alcibiades, a Greek statesman renowned for his treachery.

Both men lived in the 5th Century BC.

Asked if he thought he would succeed David Cameron, Mr Johnson said: ‘I haven’t got a cat’s chance in hell of becoming Prime Minister,’ before adding mischievously: ‘As I’ve said before, if I was called from my plough to serve in head office, then obviously I would do my best.’

This is yet another classical reference – in this case to Cincinnatus, a Roman aristocrat who left Rome to work on a small farm before returning triumphantly to the city to lead its defence against invasion in the 5th Century BC.

[…]

The term euergetism was coined by French historian A. Boulanger, who derived it from a Greek word meaning ‘I do good things’ and describes ‘the practice of notables to distribute a part of their wealth to hoi polloi’.

The Oxford Companion To Classical Civilisation says that euergetism is ‘a socio-political phenomenon of voluntary gift-giving to the ancient community embracing the beneficence of Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors, whose subjects saw such philanthropy as a cardinal virtue of rulers’.

Tim Cornell’s book Bread And Circuses: Euergetism And Municipal Patronage In Roman Italy explains that: ‘Cities in the ancient world relied on private generosity to provide many basic amenities, as well as expecting leading citizens to pay for “bread and circuses” – free food and public entertainment.’

The term euergetism is very close in meaning to another word with Greek origins – philanthropy, which means ‘the love of humanity’ and is used more commonly to describe charitable and other good works funded by the rich.

• via Britain needs much more euergetism* says Boris Johnson the classicist | Mail Online.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought ‘philanthrophy’ was a rather wishy-washy word, and more suited to donations to museums and the like. Euergetism is more directed at actually doing good things for one’s fellow human being.

Tantalizingly-brief item from Zawya:

The Hama Archeology Department on Wednesday unearthed an ancient burial chamber dating back to the Hellenistic period.

The burial chamber, which was discovered during maintenance work in the historic city of Apamea, contains 6 graves dug into the earth, one of which contains pottery fragments from a cone-shaped burial urn.

According to custom during the Hellenistic period, these funeral urns were placed alongside the deceased’s body alongside some of their earthly possessions.

• via Syria: Burial chamber dating back to Hellenistic period unearthed in Apamea | Zawya.

I can already hear my readers saying “Who?”. Willi Dansgaard was a climatologist who pioneered checking Greenland ice cores and the like for evidence of climate change. From a Classics perspective:

Dansgaard later organised or participated in more than 19 expeditions to the glaciers of Norway, Greenland and Antarctica, and went on to develop ways to date gases trapped in the ice as well as to analyse acidity, dust and other influences on climate, including volcanic eruptions.

Thus, analyses of the acidity levels in ice cores have shown that a particularly large eruption produced of acidic fallout on Greenland for three years roundabout 50BC (possibly supporting accounts of a dimming of the sun after Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44BC, which is reported in the writings of Virgil and Pliny the Elder).

• Willi Dansgaard – Telegraph.

… which is one of the many ‘Bethlehem stars’ for the Classics set (along with Halley’s comet, which doesn’t quite match Julius Caesar’s assassination).

While poking around Youtube yesterday, I came across a pile of videos from the Hauenstein Center, which apparently hosted a conference called Barack Obama and the Lessons of Antiquity in which a pile of big name Classicists made some interesting comparisons. Near as I can tell, all of the talks are available, so over the next few days I’ll be posting them here. The first is Robert Garland on American Empire and Global Leadership (this is the first paper after Bruce Thornton’s keynote address, which I’ll post at the end … there are, of course, some introductory remarks prior to Dr Garland’s assumption of the podium):