December 10, 2014 • 23 mins
The story of the Ninth Legion is a favorite among history fans who love a good mystery. But is there really any mystery here, or is the story of their fate more mundane? Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from houseworks
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Polly
cry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And the episode that
we're doing today kind of brushes up against another one
of our episodes, the one that we did on Budica
(00:21):
a while back, and it involves a Roman legion that's
been speculated about for decades. We've gotten a number of
requests for this one, but the most recent came from
listener Alexandra. And already, if this is one of your
pet things, you probably know what it is. There is
a lot of modern interest in the Ninth Legion, also
known as the ninth Spanish Legion, or you'll see it
(00:43):
written as Leggio nine Hispania, and a lot of that
popularity stems from uh this book that was written in
the early nineteen fifties by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and her book,
which is called The Eagle of the Ninth, tells the
story of a Roman soldier looking for his father's lost legion,
and it was wildly popular when it was published, and
it's continued in its popularity through the decades. There have
(01:05):
been numerous television and film adaptations of it. I mean
as recently as just a couple of years ago. It's
one of those things that's become so ingrained in modern
culture that people sometimes just take it for straight history,
which is a little bit dangerous because while the book,
which by the way, was aimed at young readers, it
was like a uh kind of the equivalent of a
(01:26):
young adult novel. Uh. It was researched historically, but at
the end of the day, it is a historical adventure novel.
It is not a history book. And in Sutcliffe's book,
the Ninth Legion vanished in the mist while battling in Scotland,
and in the forward for the book, she wrote, quote,
sometime about the year eighty one seventeen, the Ninth Legion,
(01:47):
which was stationed at Bericum where York now stands, marched
north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes
and was never heard of again. No one knows what
happened to the Ninth Legion after it marched into the
north learned mists. First, I will say, I'm our convention
is normally to use B, C E and C E.
I'm using a D there just because it's a direct
(02:08):
quote and also this is not really accurate. Uh, there
is a gap, there's there's missing information about what happened
to the Ninth, but it's not quite so sensational, is this.
So there's actually been a great deal of debate about
the fate of the Ninth among historians and a lot
of research which has turned up evidence of their existence
(02:30):
after one seventeen. And while the mystery element of it
has grown the speculation of it into this legend that
really I understand the appeal. It sparks the imaginations of
storytellers and history buffs alike, But really this is one
of those case where cases where it's almost about bookkeeping,
and it's it's really mostly a matter of tracking down
(02:51):
timelines and events and the evidence. We have to sort
of see where the likeliest stories intersect. It's kind of
like doing historical Occam's Reaser. So that is what we
were talking about today. Uh, And we'll start with a
little bit of background on the Ninth. Yes, so we know,
I mean, the Ninth Legion was a real thing. It
did exist, It was raised sometime in the sixties b c. E.
(03:14):
The Legion fought in Gaul under Julius Caesar in fifty
eight b C. And in Hispania in the summer of
forty nine b C. There's this long and storied history
of all their triumphs and defeats and even some revolts
from within. But we're going to pick up in forty three,
in the year forty three, and that's common era when
(03:34):
the legion was instrumental in invading Britain under Claudius. We
know that four Roman legions garrisoned in Britain under Claudius
and Nero. There was the fourteenth Victorious Twin Legion, which
left Britain in seventy c E. The Second Augustine Legion,
which remains during the Roman occupation of Britain, the twenty
(03:57):
Victorious Valerian Legion, which like the Second Augustine, was in
Britain throughout the Roman occupation. And then there's the Ninth Legion,
which we don't know when the end state was for
its garrison. Yeah, and these were there were certainly other
legions that came into Britain, but these were the first
four that were sent into Britain by the Romans. And
(04:18):
while we have fairly certain knowledge of how those first
three on this list and those that came after were
either conquered or disbanded, or went on to other activities.
The Ninth Legion remains a little bit slippery. We do
know some things about it for sure, though. We know
that the Ninth Legion was involved in the rebellion in Britain,
the Budica lad and that was in sixte C. After
(04:40):
that they were moved to York, where they built what
would become the foundations of the city as it exists today.
And the last known mention of the Ninth in actual
historical accounts is in a D. Two c. E. And
that's by the historian Tacitus in Agricola. Tacitus rites of
the Ninth Legion quote it might pa pssibly be broke
(05:01):
or incorporated with the Leggio sexta Victrics. And this use
of the word broken in this translation means demolished or decimated.
So Tacitus is saying that the Ninth was either wiped
out entirely or it joined up with the sixth Legion
and one a list of the existing Roman legions was compiled,
(05:22):
and the Ninth was not on that list. Yes, so
we know that somewhere between. Uh. You know, this historical
mentioned by Tacitus in one sixty five, which is an
eighty year period. Somewhere in there they stopped being a thing.
But before we get into kind of modern research and
and what we have been able to surmise based on
(05:43):
archaeological records and research records. So far, do you wanna
take a quick word from a sponsor? Sure? All right,
So going back to kind of the modern research on
this topic. Bartolomeo Borghese, who was an Italian count that
was doing search in the eighteen thirties, while he was
tracing the career of a Roman politician named Lucius Barbarus,
(06:06):
Ligarianas noticed this gap in the knowledge of the Ninth
and what they had been up to. Uh Like Garrianas
began his career with the ninth Hispaniel legion, and that
was not unusual. It was fairly common for politicians on
a senatorial track to serve in the military for a
brief period, usually for one or two years, before they
(06:26):
reached the age of twenty four, because at twenty four
they would become eligible to enter the Senate as you know,
low ranking officials. Lagarianas became a consul in one thirty
five c e. And he would have been at least
thirty two at this point. That was the youngest age
that he could have been considered for the position, although
it's pretty much believed he was closer to forty. This
(06:48):
means that he would have been serving in the Ninth
Legion around one fifteen C, so that's well after the
last historical mention in the year eighty two. And then
in eighteen fifty four, and inscribed slab was unearthed in
York by construction workers while they were working on digging
out a drain, and this slab appeared to be the
(07:10):
middle section of a larger piece. It's about one meter
square and hona ism is inscribed the Emperor Caesar Nerva
Trajan Augustus, son of the deified Nerva, conqueror of Germany,
conqueror of Dassia, chief priest, in his twelfth year of
tribunis in power a d one o eight, acclaimed imperator
(07:32):
six times through the agency of the ninth Hispanian Legion,
and this piece uh is important because of that date.
This piece was found near one of the gates of
the fortress ever ak Um, and it may have been
a dedication inscription that it was celebrating the completion of
the Gate. And that date, as I said, is incredibly
(07:52):
important because this is suddenly the next record that we have.
It's not in the written history, but it is an
artifact that's clearly links the ninth Hispanian Legion to the
year one oh eight, because that means they were in
York at that point. So now we have moved forward
the last historically known point of their existence. Writing in
(08:14):
eighteen eighty five, German historian Theodora Momson suggested that maybe
the Ninth had indeed fallen in a rebellion at some
point and then had been replaced by the sixth Legion.
His theory, which was based on historical study, was that
an allied group, which was likely the Celtic tribe the Brigands,
had revolted and then overtaken the Ninth, and for evidence,
(08:37):
Momson points to the troubles mentioned by Hadrian's biographer related
to the situation that Hadrian found when he became the
Roman emperor as as one of these uh evidence pieces
that this is how the Ninth ended. So many of
the people that were conquered by Hadrian's predecessor Trajan were
at this point rebelling and rising up in military actions
(08:57):
against the Roman Empire, and that included the people's of Britain.
Momson's second piece of supporting evidence is a letter written
by Marcus Cornelius Fronto to Marcus Aurelius, and he references
Hadrian's loss of men at the hands of the Jews,
which is Hadrian's Jewish War and very well documented, and
(09:17):
at the hands of the Britons in the same sentence.
Though a British war is not clearly part of the timeline,
there's some circumstantial evidence of it. There are coins that
were mented under Hadrian that feature Britannia, and some scholars
have interpreted as marking a significant military action in Britain.
While Momson's original position was that this war which destroyed
(09:40):
the Ninth was around a hundred and eight C. These
coins are often believed to mark the British Wars having
fallen somewhere between one seventeen and one nineteen, but this
isn't universally accepted, and Momson kind of uh adjusted his
timeline a couple of times based on you know, these
findings and others. UH Coin experts have dated some of
(10:02):
these coins as falling actually much earlier in Hadrian's rule,
and other theories include the idea that the coins were
actually minted in one twenty two, which is when Hadrian
traveled to Britain himself. So debate about the coinage as
evidence of the timeline kind of continues. One of the
problems of figuring out the fate of the Ninth Legion
(10:23):
is that clearly, even when you look at existing evidence,
it's still open to interpretation, and one of the examples
of this has to do with the Sixth Legion. So
while it is documented that the sixth Legion entered Britain,
there was a little bit of a logic leap made
to assume that they were actually there to replace the Ninth,
(10:45):
and this assumption is usually credited back to Bartolomeo Borgaz
in the work he was doing in the eighteen thirties,
and it does appear that Momson was using Boorgaze as
a source and seemed to think that the assumption was
pretty sound based on the timing and logic of the situation.
But the sixth as a replacement legion is not actually substantiated.
It's kind of just a case of the Ninth going
(11:06):
missing from the historical record. Around the same time that
the sixth showed up in Britain, Hadrian was also moving
other troops into Britain in one nineteen, possibly as a
lead up to the start of the construction on Hadrian's Wall,
which was in one twenty two. So to single out
the sixth as a replacement for the ninth doesn't quiet
(11:26):
hold up. And now we're about to get to some
interesting modern evidence. So before we do that, do you
want to do another quick word from a sponsor? Sure, okay,
So getting back to some interesting modern archaeological finds. Uh.
In nineteen fifty nine, a roofing tile with the stamp
of the ninth Legion was found in the Netherlands in
(11:47):
a legionary fortress at Nimakon called Huonerberg. It was not
the only artifact bearing the Ninth's mark to be found
at that site, and these discoveries were a bit of
a revelation because prior to the nine find almost all
of the artifacts found at nimaking Fortress were marked with
the stamp of the tenth Gemina or tenth Twin Legion.
(12:09):
The tenth Twin Legion are documented as having been in
the fortress near the end of the first century, but
the Dacian Wars under Trajan in the early years of
the second century required them to leave. There are also
some tiles at the Hunnerberg Fortress that are marked vex
brit and they that indicates that they were associated with
a detachment from Britain. Archaeologist Jewels Bogaers believes that these
(12:34):
actually have been associated with mixed troops rather than men
from just one legion. This really leaves the question of
the pieces that are marked with the seal of the
Ninth Legion. So while the artifacts bearing the Ninth Legion
seal haven't been precisely dated, they're really believed to be
early second century pieces. And one of the most interesting
(12:56):
aspects of these artifacts is that they bear the stamp
as L E G V I I I I H
I S P SO Legion nine Hispania, and in this
instance there's a V and four eyes as the Roman
numerals for nine, rather than what we've come to know
in the modern sense of I x SO. Ninth Legion.
(13:18):
Stamps from York, however, do have the Roman numeral as
I X for nine. For the most part, items found
in Britain retain the I X version version of the numeration,
whereas those found on the European continent used the V
and four eyes version. This is somewhat significant because near
a villa about ten kilometers away from the fortress, a
(13:41):
horse harness pendant was found and it uses the I
X conventions to indicate nine, suggesting that some members of
the Legion who had been garrisoned in York eventually made
their way towards Germany. Yeah, so that becomes significant, uh,
that they suddenly found this one variation that is known
(14:02):
to be from York in Nimahon. Uh. And then there
is this additional body of evidence about sort of what
happened to the Ninth and that has to do with
former Ninth Legion members who then rose to offices in
the Senate Lucius and nineties. Sextius Florentius moved from his
service in the Legion to a proconsole position and then
(14:24):
a governorship and that's in office he was appointed to
around one seven. Because of the time frame between his
military service and his governorship, really no more than five
years could have elapsed. That means he was serving with
the Ninth as late as one two, well after they're
characterized as having been vanquished. Similarly, Quintus Numissius Unar, another
(14:48):
member of the Ninth, is on record as a console
in one sixty one CE, and as this is normally
a post that a man would have achieved in his
mid thirties to early forties, that would have put his
fighting around the of twenty around the year one forties,
so that then puts it much later than many historians
have credited the Ninth was still being around. Now. It's
(15:08):
possible that he could be some sort of outlier to
the normal career system and that he didn't achieve the
same office milestones in the same age time frames as colleagues.
But even so that would only scoot the numbers around
a little bit. Like we're talking about it, it would
be like a twenty year difference, because if he was,
the idea of him making this console position in his
sixties would really be super duper strange. So we have
(15:32):
some popular possibilities to explain what happened to the Ninth Legion.
One is that they were vanquished in a skirmish in
the midst of Scotland around a T two c E.
That one's not really super held up since we have
definite evidence beyond that. Another is that the Ninth were
trapped in an uprising against the Roman occupation of Britain
(15:55):
sometime around one seventeen or one nineteen. And then we
get to my favorite one. That's that they just vanished
into thin air during one of the above. They were
just taken by some mystical form. Yeah. And the fourth
one is maybe the least exciting, but to me it
seems like the most logical. Yeah, that's that they were reassigned,
(16:17):
maybe sent towards Germany, and eventually they were either dispersed
or absorbed, either in whole or in part into other legions.
I have to confess that I kind of like the
Brigadoon explanation. They just vanished, it just went. So there
is enough evidence of post Britain Ninth Legion presence, or
(16:39):
at least members of it, that the idea that they
just vanished in the eighties or in uh, the one
teens is pretty thin. And we do know that, you know,
later after the eighties, Roman soldiers fell in large numbers
to the Britain under Hadrian. So it is certainly within
the realm of possibility that enough of the Ninth fell
that their significance as a legion was pretty significantly diminished,
(17:02):
and it's not outside the realm of possibility that the
remaining soldiers went on to other legions. While a lot
of the really more sensational versions of the story of
the Ninth saying that they vanished failed to take into account,
is that if an entire legion of accomplished soldiers really
had just vanished into thin air, then we'd probably have
(17:23):
a lot of accounts of it. Instead, we just have
a lack of accounts of what happens. So it's not
really the legion that vanished, it's just sort of the
legion that faded away, and it's the historical record that's
really god missing. Yeah, I mean, I think, to me,
what makes the most sense, and again, you know, this
is my speculation on it is is just that you know,
(17:44):
it's slowly sort of started to fall apart, and they
may have lost a lot of men, and some of
those men went on to other things, but they they
just stopped being noteworthy enough to be included in the
record until the point where it kind of ham petered
out so much that there wasn't a hard end stop
to it. Kind of an Occam's razor kind of thing.
That's definitely the simplest, the most logical explanation. Yeah, and
(18:09):
I feel bad. I feel almost like, um, mean, because
I know there are people that love to speculate on
what happened in the ninth Legion, and I get it,
but I just for my thinking, you're certainly welcome to
continue to speculate along those lines, but for my thinking,
it just makes more sense that, like we said, they
just kind of stopped being significant. Yeah. Well, and when
(18:31):
it comes to our history mystery kind of episodes, I
feel like the response we get is kind of divided
between the people who love the mysteries and the fact
that we ultimately get to the end of the episode
and like we don't know that it's fine, and then
we have other folks that are like, we got to
the end of the episode and we still don't know. Yeah,
it's interesting. A lot of the the stuff that I
came across even while researching this, you know, as I said,
(18:53):
there have been a lot of film and television adaptations,
and anytime one of them, you know sort of is
in the mid to its pre release promotional push, like
there will suddenly crop up a lot of articles around
that time talking about it, and those are the ones
that are usually like and they there's no clear evidence
as to what happened. But then if you read a
lot of people that are sort of more in depth
(19:15):
ongoing historians about it, they're like, well, it's more just
like it's not a mystery. It's just kind of like
a shrugger. Yeah, it seems like it just kind of,
you know, fell apart and tendrilled out, and then the
just wasn't there anymore, not so much a mystery as
like a a non noworthy end. Do you have some
mysterious listener. It's not so mysterious, but it is cool,
(19:39):
and it's from our listener, Alicia, and it is about
it's referring back to an older podcast on the Conto earthquake,
and she says, Hi, ladies, I've just been steadily catching
up on years of stuff you missed in history class,
and I finally reached an episode that I know something about.
I just listened to the Great Conto Earthquake of episode
and really enjoyed hearing about the morseless sidle and historical
(20:01):
aspects of the disaster. In your podcast, you make reference
to the photographs of the disaster, which made me think
about an exhibition that I helped curate through a museum
studies course at Mills College. The exhibition featured woodblock prints
that were commissioned to document the disaster and in turn
also influenced artistic styles. The prints were very interesting to
work with, an absolutely beautiful, albeit horrifying, because many depict
(20:23):
the firestorms and their aftermath in vivid detail, records of
which are not available via photograph. The show, titled Reverberations
Japanese Prints of the Conto Earthquake, included about twenty woodblock
prints from the Mills College collection, many dozens of old postcards,
and a video. We also hosted a print making workshop
in an online exhibition catalog with essays examining various aspects
(20:47):
of the artworks and their intersections with society. Unfortunately, the
catalog has disappeared, but I did save some images of
the prints and the essays that I helped write. By
this point, I'm sure you're wondering, but what does any
of this have to do with cat fish, which was
in the subject line of her email. Well, there is
a Japanese myth that a giant wiggly catfish lives under
Japan and it's pinned down by a gatekeeper. Earthquakes are
(21:10):
caused when this catfish breaks free. There are a bunch
of societal, spiritual, and socio political aspects of this belief
in our essay Explorers how woodblock prints communicated these beliefs
and their impact on post earthquake Japanese society during the Tokugawa,
Meiji and Thai show area Eras. I thought you might
find this aspect of the topic interesting, so I uploaded
some images the essay and other goodies so you could
(21:32):
check them out for yourself. I'm pulling together my thoughts
for this email. I also found this blog post. She
linked to a blog post in a slide show with
more examples of woodblock prints that similarly capture what's going
on here. This is very fascinating. I did not realize
that there were This is stupid on my part or
just ignorant kind of blind spot historically woodblock prints of
(21:56):
historical events like kind of as news the pretty good.
I've missed this completely, so now I'm excited because it's
another sort of I fear it will be a rabbit
hole situation. I may lose time that I probably should
be spending doing some other work, but I cannot resist.
I want to look at everything now because it's cool
and I didn't. It never occur to me. They're really beautiful,
(22:19):
I said, I feel ignorant to have that blind spot.
But thanks to Alicia. One time I was there and
that somebody was doing a demonstration of how they carved them.
It was really cool. That's super cool. I'm like blown
away by the whole concept art and history together in
new ways for me anyway. As so, if you know
(22:40):
of cool things like that, or if you just want
to share your thoughts on an episode or kill us
about your link to something historical, you can do so
at History Podcast at house to works dot com. You
can also connect with us on Twitter at missed in
History and Facebook dot com, slash missed in History and
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dot com slash missed in History. He would like to
(23:01):
purchase some missed in History goodies, you can do that
at our spreadshirt store, which is missed in History dot
spreadshirt dot com. If you would like to research a
little bit of something that we talked about today or
linked to it anyway. You can go to our parent site,
how stuff Works, type in the words a Roman empire
in the search bar, and one of the articles that
comes up is ten most long lived Empires in History,
(23:21):
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(23:42):
Because it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from houseworks
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Polly
cry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And the episode that
we're doing today kind of brushes up against another one
of our episodes, the one that we did on Budica
(00:21):
a while back, and it involves a Roman legion that's
been speculated about for decades. We've gotten a number of
requests for this one, but the most recent came from
listener Alexandra. And already, if this is one of your
pet things, you probably know what it is. There is
a lot of modern interest in the Ninth Legion, also
known as the ninth Spanish Legion, or you'll see it
(00:43):
written as Leggio nine Hispania, and a lot of that
popularity stems from uh this book that was written in
the early nineteen fifties by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and her book,
which is called The Eagle of the Ninth, tells the
story of a Roman soldier looking for his father's lost legion,
and it was wildly popular when it was published, and
it's continued in its popularity through the decades. There have
(01:05):
been numerous television and film adaptations of it. I mean
as recently as just a couple of years ago. It's
one of those things that's become so ingrained in modern
culture that people sometimes just take it for straight history,
which is a little bit dangerous because while the book,
which by the way, was aimed at young readers, it
was like a uh kind of the equivalent of a
(01:26):
young adult novel. Uh. It was researched historically, but at
the end of the day, it is a historical adventure novel.
It is not a history book. And in Sutcliffe's book,
the Ninth Legion vanished in the mist while battling in Scotland,
and in the forward for the book, she wrote, quote,
sometime about the year eighty one seventeen, the Ninth Legion,
(01:47):
which was stationed at Bericum where York now stands, marched
north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes
and was never heard of again. No one knows what
happened to the Ninth Legion after it marched into the
north learned mists. First, I will say, I'm our convention
is normally to use B, C E and C E.
I'm using a D there just because it's a direct
(02:08):
quote and also this is not really accurate. Uh, there
is a gap, there's there's missing information about what happened
to the Ninth, but it's not quite so sensational, is this.
So there's actually been a great deal of debate about
the fate of the Ninth among historians and a lot
of research which has turned up evidence of their existence
(02:30):
after one seventeen. And while the mystery element of it
has grown the speculation of it into this legend that
really I understand the appeal. It sparks the imaginations of
storytellers and history buffs alike, But really this is one
of those case where cases where it's almost about bookkeeping,
and it's it's really mostly a matter of tracking down
(02:51):
timelines and events and the evidence. We have to sort
of see where the likeliest stories intersect. It's kind of
like doing historical Occam's Reaser. So that is what we
were talking about today. Uh, And we'll start with a
little bit of background on the Ninth. Yes, so we know,
I mean, the Ninth Legion was a real thing. It
did exist, It was raised sometime in the sixties b c. E.
(03:14):
The Legion fought in Gaul under Julius Caesar in fifty
eight b C. And in Hispania in the summer of
forty nine b C. There's this long and storied history
of all their triumphs and defeats and even some revolts
from within. But we're going to pick up in forty three,
in the year forty three, and that's common era when
(03:34):
the legion was instrumental in invading Britain under Claudius. We
know that four Roman legions garrisoned in Britain under Claudius
and Nero. There was the fourteenth Victorious Twin Legion, which
left Britain in seventy c E. The Second Augustine Legion,
which remains during the Roman occupation of Britain, the twenty
(03:57):
Victorious Valerian Legion, which like the Second Augustine, was in
Britain throughout the Roman occupation. And then there's the Ninth Legion,
which we don't know when the end state was for
its garrison. Yeah, and these were there were certainly other
legions that came into Britain, but these were the first
four that were sent into Britain by the Romans. And
(04:18):
while we have fairly certain knowledge of how those first
three on this list and those that came after were
either conquered or disbanded, or went on to other activities.
The Ninth Legion remains a little bit slippery. We do
know some things about it for sure, though. We know
that the Ninth Legion was involved in the rebellion in Britain,
the Budica lad and that was in sixte C. After
(04:40):
that they were moved to York, where they built what
would become the foundations of the city as it exists today.
And the last known mention of the Ninth in actual
historical accounts is in a D. Two c. E. And
that's by the historian Tacitus in Agricola. Tacitus rites of
the Ninth Legion quote it might pa pssibly be broke
(05:01):
or incorporated with the Leggio sexta Victrics. And this use
of the word broken in this translation means demolished or decimated.
So Tacitus is saying that the Ninth was either wiped
out entirely or it joined up with the sixth Legion
and one a list of the existing Roman legions was compiled,
(05:22):
and the Ninth was not on that list. Yes, so
we know that somewhere between. Uh. You know, this historical
mentioned by Tacitus in one sixty five, which is an
eighty year period. Somewhere in there they stopped being a thing.
But before we get into kind of modern research and
and what we have been able to surmise based on
(05:43):
archaeological records and research records. So far, do you wanna
take a quick word from a sponsor? Sure? All right,
So going back to kind of the modern research on
this topic. Bartolomeo Borghese, who was an Italian count that
was doing search in the eighteen thirties, while he was
tracing the career of a Roman politician named Lucius Barbarus,
(06:06):
Ligarianas noticed this gap in the knowledge of the Ninth
and what they had been up to. Uh Like Garrianas
began his career with the ninth Hispaniel legion, and that
was not unusual. It was fairly common for politicians on
a senatorial track to serve in the military for a
brief period, usually for one or two years, before they
(06:26):
reached the age of twenty four, because at twenty four
they would become eligible to enter the Senate as you know,
low ranking officials. Lagarianas became a consul in one thirty
five c e. And he would have been at least
thirty two at this point. That was the youngest age
that he could have been considered for the position, although
it's pretty much believed he was closer to forty. This
(06:48):
means that he would have been serving in the Ninth
Legion around one fifteen C, so that's well after the
last historical mention in the year eighty two. And then
in eighteen fifty four, and inscribed slab was unearthed in
York by construction workers while they were working on digging
out a drain, and this slab appeared to be the
(07:10):
middle section of a larger piece. It's about one meter
square and hona ism is inscribed the Emperor Caesar Nerva
Trajan Augustus, son of the deified Nerva, conqueror of Germany,
conqueror of Dassia, chief priest, in his twelfth year of
tribunis in power a d one o eight, acclaimed imperator
(07:32):
six times through the agency of the ninth Hispanian Legion,
and this piece uh is important because of that date.
This piece was found near one of the gates of
the fortress ever ak Um, and it may have been
a dedication inscription that it was celebrating the completion of
the Gate. And that date, as I said, is incredibly
(07:52):
important because this is suddenly the next record that we have.
It's not in the written history, but it is an
artifact that's clearly links the ninth Hispanian Legion to the
year one oh eight, because that means they were in
York at that point. So now we have moved forward
the last historically known point of their existence. Writing in
(08:14):
eighteen eighty five, German historian Theodora Momson suggested that maybe
the Ninth had indeed fallen in a rebellion at some
point and then had been replaced by the sixth Legion.
His theory, which was based on historical study, was that
an allied group, which was likely the Celtic tribe the Brigands,
had revolted and then overtaken the Ninth, and for evidence,
(08:37):
Momson points to the troubles mentioned by Hadrian's biographer related
to the situation that Hadrian found when he became the
Roman emperor as as one of these uh evidence pieces
that this is how the Ninth ended. So many of
the people that were conquered by Hadrian's predecessor Trajan were
at this point rebelling and rising up in military actions
(08:57):
against the Roman Empire, and that included the people's of Britain.
Momson's second piece of supporting evidence is a letter written
by Marcus Cornelius Fronto to Marcus Aurelius, and he references
Hadrian's loss of men at the hands of the Jews,
which is Hadrian's Jewish War and very well documented, and
(09:17):
at the hands of the Britons in the same sentence.
Though a British war is not clearly part of the timeline,
there's some circumstantial evidence of it. There are coins that
were mented under Hadrian that feature Britannia, and some scholars
have interpreted as marking a significant military action in Britain.
While Momson's original position was that this war which destroyed
(09:40):
the Ninth was around a hundred and eight C. These
coins are often believed to mark the British Wars having
fallen somewhere between one seventeen and one nineteen, but this
isn't universally accepted, and Momson kind of uh adjusted his
timeline a couple of times based on you know, these
findings and others. UH Coin experts have dated some of
(10:02):
these coins as falling actually much earlier in Hadrian's rule,
and other theories include the idea that the coins were
actually minted in one twenty two, which is when Hadrian
traveled to Britain himself. So debate about the coinage as
evidence of the timeline kind of continues. One of the
problems of figuring out the fate of the Ninth Legion
(10:23):
is that clearly, even when you look at existing evidence,
it's still open to interpretation, and one of the examples
of this has to do with the Sixth Legion. So
while it is documented that the sixth Legion entered Britain,
there was a little bit of a logic leap made
to assume that they were actually there to replace the Ninth,
(10:45):
and this assumption is usually credited back to Bartolomeo Borgaz
in the work he was doing in the eighteen thirties,
and it does appear that Momson was using Boorgaze as
a source and seemed to think that the assumption was
pretty sound based on the timing and logic of the situation.
But the sixth as a replacement legion is not actually substantiated.
It's kind of just a case of the Ninth going
(11:06):
missing from the historical record. Around the same time that
the sixth showed up in Britain, Hadrian was also moving
other troops into Britain in one nineteen, possibly as a
lead up to the start of the construction on Hadrian's Wall,
which was in one twenty two. So to single out
the sixth as a replacement for the ninth doesn't quiet
(11:26):
hold up. And now we're about to get to some
interesting modern evidence. So before we do that, do you
want to do another quick word from a sponsor? Sure, okay,
So getting back to some interesting modern archaeological finds. Uh.
In nineteen fifty nine, a roofing tile with the stamp
of the ninth Legion was found in the Netherlands in
(11:47):
a legionary fortress at Nimakon called Huonerberg. It was not
the only artifact bearing the Ninth's mark to be found
at that site, and these discoveries were a bit of
a revelation because prior to the nine find almost all
of the artifacts found at nimaking Fortress were marked with
the stamp of the tenth Gemina or tenth Twin Legion.
(12:09):
The tenth Twin Legion are documented as having been in
the fortress near the end of the first century, but
the Dacian Wars under Trajan in the early years of
the second century required them to leave. There are also
some tiles at the Hunnerberg Fortress that are marked vex
brit and they that indicates that they were associated with
a detachment from Britain. Archaeologist Jewels Bogaers believes that these
(12:34):
actually have been associated with mixed troops rather than men
from just one legion. This really leaves the question of
the pieces that are marked with the seal of the
Ninth Legion. So while the artifacts bearing the Ninth Legion
seal haven't been precisely dated, they're really believed to be
early second century pieces. And one of the most interesting
(12:56):
aspects of these artifacts is that they bear the stamp
as L E G V I I I I H
I S P SO Legion nine Hispania, and in this
instance there's a V and four eyes as the Roman
numerals for nine, rather than what we've come to know
in the modern sense of I x SO. Ninth Legion.
(13:18):
Stamps from York, however, do have the Roman numeral as
I X for nine. For the most part, items found
in Britain retain the I X version version of the numeration,
whereas those found on the European continent used the V
and four eyes version. This is somewhat significant because near
a villa about ten kilometers away from the fortress, a
(13:41):
horse harness pendant was found and it uses the I
X conventions to indicate nine, suggesting that some members of
the Legion who had been garrisoned in York eventually made
their way towards Germany. Yeah, so that becomes significant, uh,
that they suddenly found this one variation that is known
(14:02):
to be from York in Nimahon. Uh. And then there
is this additional body of evidence about sort of what
happened to the Ninth and that has to do with
former Ninth Legion members who then rose to offices in
the Senate Lucius and nineties. Sextius Florentius moved from his
service in the Legion to a proconsole position and then
(14:24):
a governorship and that's in office he was appointed to
around one seven. Because of the time frame between his
military service and his governorship, really no more than five
years could have elapsed. That means he was serving with
the Ninth as late as one two, well after they're
characterized as having been vanquished. Similarly, Quintus Numissius Unar, another
(14:48):
member of the Ninth, is on record as a console
in one sixty one CE, and as this is normally
a post that a man would have achieved in his
mid thirties to early forties, that would have put his
fighting around the of twenty around the year one forties,
so that then puts it much later than many historians
have credited the Ninth was still being around. Now. It's
(15:08):
possible that he could be some sort of outlier to
the normal career system and that he didn't achieve the
same office milestones in the same age time frames as colleagues.
But even so that would only scoot the numbers around
a little bit. Like we're talking about it, it would
be like a twenty year difference, because if he was,
the idea of him making this console position in his
sixties would really be super duper strange. So we have
(15:32):
some popular possibilities to explain what happened to the Ninth Legion.
One is that they were vanquished in a skirmish in
the midst of Scotland around a T two c E.
That one's not really super held up since we have
definite evidence beyond that. Another is that the Ninth were
trapped in an uprising against the Roman occupation of Britain
(15:55):
sometime around one seventeen or one nineteen. And then we
get to my favorite one. That's that they just vanished
into thin air during one of the above. They were
just taken by some mystical form. Yeah. And the fourth
one is maybe the least exciting, but to me it
seems like the most logical. Yeah, that's that they were reassigned,
(16:17):
maybe sent towards Germany, and eventually they were either dispersed
or absorbed, either in whole or in part into other legions.
I have to confess that I kind of like the
Brigadoon explanation. They just vanished, it just went. So there
is enough evidence of post Britain Ninth Legion presence, or
(16:39):
at least members of it, that the idea that they
just vanished in the eighties or in uh, the one
teens is pretty thin. And we do know that, you know,
later after the eighties, Roman soldiers fell in large numbers
to the Britain under Hadrian. So it is certainly within
the realm of possibility that enough of the Ninth fell
that their significance as a legion was pretty significantly diminished,
(17:02):
and it's not outside the realm of possibility that the
remaining soldiers went on to other legions. While a lot
of the really more sensational versions of the story of
the Ninth saying that they vanished failed to take into account,
is that if an entire legion of accomplished soldiers really
had just vanished into thin air, then we'd probably have
(17:23):
a lot of accounts of it. Instead, we just have
a lack of accounts of what happens. So it's not
really the legion that vanished, it's just sort of the
legion that faded away, and it's the historical record that's
really god missing. Yeah, I mean, I think, to me,
what makes the most sense, and again, you know, this
is my speculation on it is is just that you know,
(17:44):
it's slowly sort of started to fall apart, and they
may have lost a lot of men, and some of
those men went on to other things, but they they
just stopped being noteworthy enough to be included in the
record until the point where it kind of ham petered
out so much that there wasn't a hard end stop
to it. Kind of an Occam's razor kind of thing.
That's definitely the simplest, the most logical explanation. Yeah, and
(18:09):
I feel bad. I feel almost like, um, mean, because
I know there are people that love to speculate on
what happened in the ninth Legion, and I get it,
but I just for my thinking, you're certainly welcome to
continue to speculate along those lines, but for my thinking,
it just makes more sense that, like we said, they
just kind of stopped being significant. Yeah. Well, and when
(18:31):
it comes to our history mystery kind of episodes, I
feel like the response we get is kind of divided
between the people who love the mysteries and the fact
that we ultimately get to the end of the episode
and like we don't know that it's fine, and then
we have other folks that are like, we got to
the end of the episode and we still don't know. Yeah,
it's interesting. A lot of the the stuff that I
came across even while researching this, you know, as I said,
(18:53):
there have been a lot of film and television adaptations,
and anytime one of them, you know sort of is
in the mid to its pre release promotional push, like
there will suddenly crop up a lot of articles around
that time talking about it, and those are the ones
that are usually like and they there's no clear evidence
as to what happened. But then if you read a
lot of people that are sort of more in depth
(19:15):
ongoing historians about it, they're like, well, it's more just
like it's not a mystery. It's just kind of like
a shrugger. Yeah, it seems like it just kind of,
you know, fell apart and tendrilled out, and then the
just wasn't there anymore, not so much a mystery as
like a a non noworthy end. Do you have some
mysterious listener. It's not so mysterious, but it is cool,
(19:39):
and it's from our listener, Alicia, and it is about
it's referring back to an older podcast on the Conto earthquake,
and she says, Hi, ladies, I've just been steadily catching
up on years of stuff you missed in history class,
and I finally reached an episode that I know something about.
I just listened to the Great Conto Earthquake of episode
and really enjoyed hearing about the morseless sidle and historical
(20:01):
aspects of the disaster. In your podcast, you make reference
to the photographs of the disaster, which made me think
about an exhibition that I helped curate through a museum
studies course at Mills College. The exhibition featured woodblock prints
that were commissioned to document the disaster and in turn
also influenced artistic styles. The prints were very interesting to
work with, an absolutely beautiful, albeit horrifying, because many depict
(20:23):
the firestorms and their aftermath in vivid detail, records of
which are not available via photograph. The show, titled Reverberations
Japanese Prints of the Conto Earthquake, included about twenty woodblock
prints from the Mills College collection, many dozens of old postcards,
and a video. We also hosted a print making workshop
in an online exhibition catalog with essays examining various aspects
(20:47):
of the artworks and their intersections with society. Unfortunately, the
catalog has disappeared, but I did save some images of
the prints and the essays that I helped write. By
this point, I'm sure you're wondering, but what does any
of this have to do with cat fish, which was
in the subject line of her email. Well, there is
a Japanese myth that a giant wiggly catfish lives under
Japan and it's pinned down by a gatekeeper. Earthquakes are
(21:10):
caused when this catfish breaks free. There are a bunch
of societal, spiritual, and socio political aspects of this belief
in our essay Explorers how woodblock prints communicated these beliefs
and their impact on post earthquake Japanese society during the Tokugawa,
Meiji and Thai show area Eras. I thought you might
find this aspect of the topic interesting, so I uploaded
some images the essay and other goodies so you could
(21:32):
check them out for yourself. I'm pulling together my thoughts
for this email. I also found this blog post. She
linked to a blog post in a slide show with
more examples of woodblock prints that similarly capture what's going
on here. This is very fascinating. I did not realize
that there were This is stupid on my part or
just ignorant kind of blind spot historically woodblock prints of
(21:56):
historical events like kind of as news the pretty good.
I've missed this completely, so now I'm excited because it's
another sort of I fear it will be a rabbit
hole situation. I may lose time that I probably should
be spending doing some other work, but I cannot resist.
I want to look at everything now because it's cool
and I didn't. It never occur to me. They're really beautiful,
(22:19):
I said, I feel ignorant to have that blind spot.
But thanks to Alicia. One time I was there and
that somebody was doing a demonstration of how they carved them.
It was really cool. That's super cool. I'm like blown
away by the whole concept art and history together in
new ways for me anyway. As so, if you know
(22:40):
of cool things like that, or if you just want
to share your thoughts on an episode or kill us
about your link to something historical, you can do so
at History Podcast at house to works dot com. You
can also connect with us on Twitter at missed in
History and Facebook dot com, slash missed in History and
missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and at pinterest
dot com slash missed in History. He would like to
(23:01):
purchase some missed in History goodies, you can do that
at our spreadshirt store, which is missed in History dot
spreadshirt dot com. If you would like to research a
little bit of something that we talked about today or
linked to it anyway. You can go to our parent site,
how stuff Works, type in the words a Roman empire
in the search bar, and one of the articles that
comes up is ten most long lived Empires in History,
(23:21):
which is a pretty good read. Uh. You can also
visit us at our history site missed in history dot
com for all of the episodes, show notes, blog posts,
all kinds of historical goodies uh, and we encourage you
to visit us there and at how stuff works dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(23:42):
Because it how stuff works dot com
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