Having read the book The Eagle of the Ninth, I found this a really interesting series. It had never occurred to me that the legion could have been lost in the Rhine region or transferred to Parthia. Weighing up the evidence, it seems to me most viable they were indeed lost on the northern frontier....What does everyone else think?

I tend to take the boring approach and think that Legio IX Hispania was simply dissolved and the remaining members moved into other legions after its numbers were reduced on the Rhine.

Yeah Im with Adam here... I think the same.

Interesting you both think this. Why do you think this is the strongest conclusion based on the evidence?

Hi all,

Great to hear your comments on this. It was a really fun series to make. Personally I am tending ever more these days to lean towards the theory that the Ninth Legion was taken out of Britain, sometime during either the reign of Trajan or Hadrian and was lost / disbanded somewhere on the continent. Probably on the Eastern frontier, after suffering a major mauling (3rd Jewish War perhaps, or Parthian War in early AD 160s). The inscriptional evidence is really remarkable and does seem to pour water on the once red hot idea that the Ninth marched north into modern day Scotland, was annihilated and suffered a 'damnatio memoriae'

I really enjoyed the series and the fascinating analysis of evidence (such as it is).

I live within 20 miles of the large Brigantes camp at Stanwick North Yorkshire and suspect the 9th may have been involved in its history years before the legion disappeared. Again frustratingly there is a lack of evidence though leaving us all to conjecture.