The classic image of a Roman eagle with outspread wings, carved in relief within a pediment. The original slab was unfortunately recut for use as a building-stone. Now in the Yorkshire Museum, York
It is a common belief that, back in the days of the Romans, one of their legions was destroyed by the ancestors of the Scots, variously described as Caledonians or, more often, Picts. The story crops up in print and online from time to time, and if we scratch away at the surface, it is usually a vague memory of Rosemary Sutcliff ’s book The Eagle of the Ninth that lies behind it. However, this appeal to a work of fiction as the ultimate source of the tale doesn’t seem to deter its proponents.
Sutcliff famously drew upon two completely unrelated facts, which she wove together as the basis of her novel. One was the discovery of a gilded bronze eagle statuette at the Roman town of Silchester in Hampshire during 19th-century excavations there. In an age when the discipline of archaeology was still in its infancy, many people wished to believe that here was the eagle standard of a Roman legion. However, even before Sutcliff put pen to paper, scholars and art experts had dismissed the idea as fanciful. The eagle, according to those in the know, had come from a civic statue of a Roman deity, and had survived by chance when the rest had been melted down and recycled by the townsfolk of a later age or, more likely, their enemies.
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