Roman Britain's Missing Legion by Simon Elliott

Author:Simon Elliott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The IXth Legion and London’s Hadrianic War

To be clear, what follows is pure speculation given there is no evidence at all of the IXth legion’s involvement at any stage during any Hadrianic War in London. However, as detailed earlier, there is also no evidence at all that it served in the region of modern Scotland, even though as the most northerly legion it must have done, nor any evidence regarding a dramatic fall from grace in the far north as discussed in Chapter 4. Therefore this hypothesis deserves our attention, if only to provide balance regarding the various other theories regarding its demise. Two principal scenarios are covered here, one with it being the victim and one the protagonist, both assuming that legio IX Hispana survived into the AD 120s.

In the first instance, we have the IXth legion (or a significant part thereof) being called down from its legionary fortress in York to deal with a major incident in the provincial capital and suffering so badly at the hands of the rebels that it disappears from history. This might seem unlikely given the distance from Roman York to London along Ermine Street is some 325km, especially as it would also have left the northern border significantly understrength. At the time the other two British legions were actually closer as the crow flies, with legio II Augusta at Caerleon 275km away and legio XX Valeria Victrix at Chester 317km away. However, the Ermine Street route was effectively a direct trunk road down to Londinium, while both the other two legions would have had to travel to Wroxeter in the Welsh Marches before they could pick up Watling Street and then head south-east. One short cut open to the Caerleon-based legio II Augusta was to pick up Akeman Street at Gloucester and then head to St Albans, but even this route was more circuitous than Ermine Street, the route the IXth legion would have taken. Further, the two legions on the west coast were almost certainly engaged in policing operations in Wales, its interior always a recalcitrant part of the province. In this scenario the majority of the Walbrook skulls (in the context of headhunting or mass beheading) would then be either those of slain legionaries, or those of the rebels after they had been later defeated, presumably (at least in part) by auxiliary cavalry with Gallic or German ancestry. The arrival of Sabinus’ expeditio Britannica might then be considered a response to any disaster in London, or as detailed in the previous chapter a short-term stopgap to secure the northern border before the arrival of legio VI Victrix with Hadrian in AD 122. However unlikely this all sounds, it should be pointed out that legio IX Hispana had form here, this again harking back to the Boudiccan Revolt of AD 60/61. This was the defeat of its then legate Cerialis with a significant part of the legion when failing to prevent the sack of Colchester. Such was the scale of this

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