Simpler Explanation for what happened to the Ninth Legion

[Onasander]

This is brainstorming, not a fully formed idea yet, so take a skeptical pic at it.... it's arisen from me being skeptical of the legend building largely unwarranted around the ninth, since only the 19th century.

 

The Theory

 

9th legion was.... simply disbanded and absorbed into the other units due to a sudden manpower shortage.

 

Ta-da.

 

Hence why the Romans mysteriously never bothered to talk about it, it wasn't from some apocalyptic battle to the death that the Romans just couldn't admit too.... they seemed rather willing to admit to past defeats, but because the truth was too boring and lame to ever muster a historians fingers to lift a quill about.

 

The idea that they would drag a legion from one nether region ALL they way to Armenia is outrageous. You would, Judea if by sea.... maybe feasible.... but the logic sucks, if your in a crunch for manpower, to reachout to such a far flung post for reserves. You take from posts closer, and have them call people further out to pull in a bit more to cover the security gap. Statistics and Logistics go hand in hand, yes.... extra troops might of existed really, really, really far away.... but the cost of transport was absurd.

 

Problems this face:

 

1) What would cause the demographics collapse that seems coincidentally timed.... ninth legion disappearing and then picts picking a fight? We assume these are casually linked, but may be a corollary of something else.

 

1A) Plague killed off the Romans enough to warrant dismantling the ninth, and reabsorbing them into other units.

 

Problem with this.... Plague would of hit the picts too, and countries ravished with plagues tend to be rather pacifists than belligerent.

 

2) Famine.... unlike death by plague, famine can work on a army, causing desertion and starvation, as well as send hungry refugees south.... for food, or for coin currency to buy food from tribes across the water. This theory would leave evidence.... coin catches would pop up in Ireland, or Denmark... and not necessarily in Scotland. Likewise, farming would contract.... land be worked less, especially less feral areas, roman food stuffs would appear in the archaeological record suddenly in higher bulk for a brief time.

 

2) Central Treasury couldn't balance the books.... a financial military famine.

 

The Romans were engaged in wars. Legions likely did send some men... perhaps not units, just volunteers. Many men were near enough to retirement, and Rome just couldn't justify sending so much gold to Britain when it was needed elsewhere, so instead of breaking broke, it bent and stayed solvent. Soldiers got a easy out, quick transfers, got their land.... and the military economy turned east.

 

The irony of this might suggest the picts fought less for food than because they stopped getting bribes, or loss economic incentives like before from Roman trade. This famine in currency lead to desperation on the pict side, as well as perceived weakness in fixed Roman positions. A easy political fix for any chieftain would simply be to simply blame the Romans and attack them.

 

 

 

So what kills this theory potentially?

 

1) Archaeology contradicting it.

2) Ninth Legion.... logically, would have to be the least infamous and honored legion in Britain... if your looking to merge units, and retain the identity of just one, you don't keep the less inspiring one around. If the Ninth was more honored, then it throws a monkeywrench into this idea.

[caldrail]

I did read somewhere that the 9th were dishonoured. Apparently they re-appear later in the Roman record somewhere but I don't have any details.

[Onasander]

It's like with my old unit the 1_501st.... it made the 101st Airborne famous during world war two, was the first parachute infantry unit in the U.S. Army.... but after Bergdahl, I have some doubts as to the long term survivability of the unit when downsizing starts cutting into the bone. It's likely to become a flag in the Pentagon, with some random MOS pushing paperwork for generals, keeping it "Alive". In every other sense, it will be dead.

 

From my understanding, the British just merge units, and the new units retain the heraldry and lineages of the old ones. I was tracking a unit that massacred a bunch of people here during the revolutionary war, and saw another unit of guys marching after returning from Afghanistan claiming to be descended from them. I was scratching my head at that one, but grasped the concept easily enough.... they have seemingly half the old British army absorbed into them.

 

I have also personally experienced in my old unit, the 501st, a silly game of taking our battalion.... keeping it's designation the same (roughly) and slapping it into different divisions for no real tangible reason.... Apparently just for the pentagons OCD needs. When I arrived, it was the 172nd... with a sword and ice capped mountains, then one day we were frantically told we were slapping this silly little round patch on with a teady bear, cause we changed, then they told us yet again it was the 25th Infantry Division, and they had the nerve to give arctic soldiers a Tropic of Lighting Patch.... a tropical leaf, while freezing my ads off in Alaska!

 

Then I did some digging around, and found we were secretly the Sixth Infantry Division all along... the Star of David was plastered in old buildings, which was their symbol, "The Jumping Jews". Apparently they informed the old Sixth Infantry Divisions Airborne battalion they were now the 1-501st one day, then latter on had the incredibly unclever idea of later scrapping the Sixth Infantry Division.... meanwhile all the bases stayed put.... we're still manned, and guys did exactly the same stuff.

 

There is inherently a lot of silly variability possible in how you handle the designation of units. British do it differently than the U.S., and sure other countries as well. It's not indicative the Ninth Legion died in battle just because they fell off the records.... it's the easiest thing in the world to reshuffle them into new designations.... while keeping the men all otherwise put. The Sixth Infantry Division didn't get wiped out during a cold war confrontation for example, yet did "disappear". Perhaps they were wiped out by Saddam's forces in the first gulf war? A historian 2000 years from now may come to just such a exciting yet very wrong conclusion.

[GhostOfClayton]

I vaguely remember that someone once postulated that they had a legionary HQ in Carlisle.  Can't find where I saw that now.  Doesn't seem totally beyond the realms of possibility, but they did find Luguvalium, and surely that wouldn't have been there if there'd been a legionary HQ nearby before. Would it?

[GhostOfClayton]

Forgot to say.  Caldrail - they reappeared in the Netherlands.

[caldrail]

Aha! My suspicions confirmed Ghost! This is the work of but one man.... That evil genius known as Moriarity...

 

Or maybe somebody lost the paperwork. Either/or

 

(Cheers though )

 

 

More details have come to light thanks to my netting ...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_IX_Hispana

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12752497

http://www.erminestreetguard.co.uk/Ninth%20Legion.htm1

Edited November 11, 2014 by caldrail

[Onasander]

If we are to accept the middle link, that the wall was built as a defensive measure, this runs into many questions I raised in my Hadrians Wall Brain Storming thread. It doesn't necessarily negate either Caldrails response that it was all just busy body work, in regards to me noting it was a backwards and ridiculous wall.... but it raises serious questions as to the nature of Hadrians rushed reform when he brought the sixth legion and ordered the wall built.... because the end result appears to of been a rather silly busybody blackhole of a project that focused less on actual defense in building a excellent defensive wall with top notch troops, and more of.... a exercise in the world's grandest plastering and plaster repair by low quality troops.

 

Honestly, I can't rule out a highly illogical snafu here... that Hadrian failed in designing the project right or getting his point across, but accepting the theory of Caldrails middle link (which seems reasonable in and of itself) and our previous results of our collective brainstorming..... none of this makes sense. At all.

 

The mystery here, the real mystery.... if we accept the Ninth Legion lost in British Battle Hypothesis is.... how could the Romans, especially Hadrian, of so brilliantly noted the need for a defensive wall, and yet so horrifically F this up in actual execution?

 

Inferior wall, more fashionable than defensive, low quality troops... not the crack troops we would expect... silly, humiliating work details involving useless repairs....

 

Just what were the Romans thinking.

[caldrail]

Hadrians Wall was a security zone, not a defensive work. It also kept troops busy with building and maintenance tasks besides patrols and garrisons on the milecastles (or gatehouses if you prefer).

[GhostOfClayton]

Hadrian's Wall wasn't such a grand departure from normal practice as you may think.  Certainly there were a number of precidents of similar (albeit not so grand) frontier systems.  Hadrian merely ordered one built that (in all probability) he thought may be there for some time - unlike the precidents at the time of their inception.  That is the first reason two thirds of it were built to a 'better' standard.  The second, I think, is down to the man himself.  We know he had a passion for architecture, and so would have wanted to have something grander than a turf wall.

 

The other popular theory about the high standard of the original plan for the wall (I disagree with it) is that to build a turf and timber wall, you need plenty of turf and timber; materials that would be in short supply over the crags; unlike stone, which (to be frank) there was bloody loads of.

 

As to the poor standard of the actual build, there is a very simple explaination that you won't find in any academic work, but I like to call it the "OK lads, he's gone" theory. 

 

And yes.  100% with Caldrail here.  The frontier system was all about control and demarcation, not defense.

[caldrail]

Two walls had been built in North Africa during the reign of Trajan to impede the movements of nomadic tribesmen. Although I'm unaware of any specific incidents, clearly the Romans thought they were either troublesome or a potential source of 'customs' taxation.

[GhostOfClayton]

and we must look at the Limes as another precident.

[caldrail]

Bearing in mind that the limes, basically interpreted as the 'limit' of Roman control, was not the actual territorial border as such (there was rarely any definable border without a convenient coast or river), but instead where the Romans decided to enforce it, and the actual line might change place from time to time. However the function was more or less the same. It wasn't a defense, but rather an impediment to control who got across the border and where.

[Onasander]

I like.... umm, I lived for over a year behind 2 1/2 kilometers of walls in Iraq. I saw the absurdly large network around Camp Victory/Stryker/Liberty.... to this day I can't comprehend from a aerial view it's overall design.... but fully grasp it was a armed city.

 

I lived in a era of fortified armed cities where walls actually mean something.... has a profound psychological effect.

 

I can't, nor I think you would get a Israeli or Iraqi or heck, even a Kuwaiti to sign off on the no defense idea. It just.... it's so very wrong from the bottom of my gut. If you build a wall, it's for either defense, or to keep people out. A big stone wall manned is.... defense.

 

For something, say to keep out intruders.... you would use something like the north african spanish possessions, like Ceuta or the US Mexican Border.... non defensive walls, largely unmanned, just a fence.

 

You build a wall like this (Hadrians), it's for defense.... but it's clearly half assed.

 

You gotta live behind a wall to grasp the importance of a wall I suppose.

 

Other examples, economic walls in China, around wealthy cities. Segregation compound in South Africa.... non defensive walls. The walls in Sub Sahara Africa are mixed.... highly effective concentration camp style walls. The Persian walls on the Caucausus was the best in the ancient world.... it pushed the Huns west... was pure defense.

 

Hadrians Wall looks like it was meant to be defensive. Just.... it's a joke at the same time.

[GhostOfClayton]

It's too easy to think of a wall as defensive, because 99.9% of the time, they're built to defend something.  Take for example a city wall.

 

This has the effect of levelling the odds between a weaker force (in the city) and a strong force (outside the city).

 

Now take Hadrian's Wall.  In this case, the stronger force is inside (the Roman army) and the weaker force outside (the various northern Celtic tribes).  Would the Romans want to even those odds?  Of course not. The practicality of this is that if the Romans were to fight ('defend') the Celts from the top of a wall, they can't bring into play their greatest strength, which is the ability to fight in huge numbers in carefully drilled ranks from behind a shield wall in the open. . . with Cavalry to keep the edges tidy.  No matter how many legions you have south of the wall, you can only fit a couple of infantrymen or so, per metre of wall, and the Cavalry are useless.

 

This is why the forts were moved to the wall line from the Staingate (about a mile to the south), and in many case built astride (rather than abutting) the wall.  With six gates to the north of the wall, they could get large numbers of troops and cavalry into enemy territory very quickly.

 

There's also no hard evidence of a walkway existing atop Hadrian's Wall, and many scholars have argued that it didn't exist, for just the above reasons.

[caldrail]

 

 

It's too easy to think of a wall as defensive, because 99.9% of the time, they're built to defend something.  Take for example a city wall.

It is in fact very unusual for a wall of any length to be defensive. Walls are, by design, impediments to travel and generally set there for that purpose. The same motives apply today. Barbed wire entanglments stretching for miles have very little defensive value - they don't protect defenders from enemy action - but they do impeded a crossing point.

 

Strategic Roman walls of the stronger kind, such as the two Trajanic Wals in Africa, Hadrians Wall in Scotland, and the late empire Trajanusic Wall in eastern europe, are still of dubious defensive value. Impediments to travel certainly, especially Hadrians Wall which sits on an escarpment, but the walls are not built to be defended, and if you look closely, the parapet is often barely wide enough for a soldier to wander back and forth along it in the cold small hours of the morning. Not entirely suitable for defending then, however sturdy or tall.

 

I'm not surer what you mean about moving forts from the Stanegate. Legionary forts did not change position - they remained south of the security zone. The Romans understood that linear defenses disperse troops too much, and preferred to concentrate reactive forcesd leaving auxillaries to patrol and warn of incursions.