Anybody who’s interested in ancient Rome will probably have heard of the 9th legion. This elite fighting group consisted of 5000 men and was one of Romes finest legions, having taken part in campaigns in Hispania, Gaul and Britain.
The 9th legion was formed in 65BC and after many great victories in battle became known as one of Romes finest veteran legions, with their only significant defeat coming from the Celtic warrior queen Boudicca in 61 AD.
The reason the 9th legion is so famous amongst historians isn’t due to its fighting skills, but rather its disappearance. In 122 AD there is a record about how the 9th legion was replaced at Eboracum, a Roman city in Britannia, but as for what happened to it remains a mystery.
It seems the legion was somehow completely wiped out somewhere in Britannia, as there are no records of the legion being recalled back to Rome or moved elsewhere. The most likely and agreed upon theory is that the legion marched into Caledonia, which is modern day Scotland and were ambushed by its tribes.
At the time Rome had captured more territory than any other civilisation in existence, but the one piece of land they couldn’t settle in was Scotland. Somehow the Scottish natives managed to stop the Romans from settling and cased the Emperor Hadrian to build a wall separating their country from Roman territory.
As for the treasure it isn’t what most people would think, with hopes of some kind of chest filled with coins or a priceless Roman artifact, but instead it comes with the army itself.
All of the available evidence seems to point towards the legion being ambushed, as it was deployed in the country as the furthest northern legion, and would have been on the front line with the Scottish. The last record of the legion comes from 120 AD, two years before it was replaced, and Hadrian’s wall was built in 128 AD after he visited the country and saw it wasn’t possible to capture the land to the north, so he built a wall to keep them out of his territory instead.
The point of the battle would have been the site of thousands of Roman deaths, which means thousands of genuine suits of Roman armour, weapons and anything they had on them being trampled into the mud.
Many of these things would have been taken from the site or destroyed, but hundreds of pieces would’ve been trampled into the mud and starved of oxygen, allowing them to be preserved. Whoever is able to locate the battle site of the 9th legions last stand would find a huge number of Roman coins, weapons, uniforms and whatever else they had on them.
Some Roman coins and medals can go for ridiculous amounts of money, and anything from the legendary 9th legion that’s in reasonably good condition for its age would have buyers from round the world lining up to bid on them.
Unfortunately Rome didn’t record the last location of the legion or what its last orders were. This helps the claim of it being wiped out, as they didn’t like to keep records of such crushing defeats and preferred to simply “lose” the records and replace the men, hoping no one really notices. Rome had to look as strong as possible and details of how one of its finest fighting units was massacred is something they’d rather keep quiet, so its any ones guess where this battle could have taken place.
If you’re thinking of grabbing a metal detector and heading to the wall, the one thing most people seem to agree on is that the battle most likely happened within 30 miles of the wall, as the locals wouldn’t have allowed them to reach further to protect their own settlements, but this still leaves an area of several thousand square miles.
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