Emperor Trajan died on his way back to Rome in 117 AD, and although Trajan had already adopted his cousin Hadrian as his adopted son, he had not yet been proclaimed heir. Fortunately, under the impetus of the Empress Plotina, the Roman Legion in Syria agreed to support Hadrian as emperor, and soon the Roman Senate also issued an approval, agreeing that Hadrian would become the fourteenth Augustus of the Empire.
Hadrian's bust
Hadrian, like Trajan, was also born into a family of Roman military immigrants in Spain, and relying on Tulajan's care, he became a Roman parliamentarian at the age of 15 and a consul at the age of 30, which can be said to have risen to the top of the military and participated in strategic decision-making without grassroots experience. In this case, he was able to maintain a sober and objective strategic guiding ideology, which is very difficult, but it did create his defensive strategic thinking like Augustus and Tiberius.
After Hadrian ascended the throne, considering the high cost of war brought about by successive wars with the Parthian kingdom, he decided to abandon the mesopotamia plains conquered by the previous emperors a few years ago and restore the status of a semi-independent small kingdom of Armenia, and the Parthians certainly welcomed this peace agreement of free land. On the way back to Rome, Hadrian, who liked to travel everywhere, traveled to Thrace and Dacia, and several generals tried to launch a mutiny in Dacia, but were ultimately unsuccessful.
Map of Hadrian's Wall and the specific distribution of various strongholds and roads
Summarizing the things that Hadrian did in his 21-year reign, there were only two things, nothing more than tourism and building houses, he often traveled to the frontier provinces of the empire, and by the way, he built a large number of civil engineering in the local area, building defense fortifications, public buildings and temples. The most famous of these is presumably the walled + tower-style border fortifications named "Hadrian's Wall", which appeared not only in northern England, but also between the upper Rhine and the upper Danube in southern Germany, all to stop barbarian invasions.
However, when it comes to the reason for Hadrian's fortifications in England, anyone who is slightly familiar with Roman history will associate it with the story of the 9th Legion. The 9th Legion is one of the 30 legions demarcated by the pre-Turkish Legion, which may have participated in the Italian Allied Wars of 89 BC, then with Pompey in the conquest of the Spanish republican rebels, and with Caesar the tribes of Gaul, and after participating in the Civil War, the 9th Legion was disbanded for participating in two mutinies.
The bull totem of the 9th Legion, note that the early 9 was written as VIIII instead of IX
After Octavian ascended to the Roman political scene, he rebuilt the 9th Legion, which was not well known in the Second Civil War but received the title of "Spain (Hispana)" in the Cantabrian War. The 9th Army then conquered Pannonia, south to North Africa, and finally with Claudius to The Territory of Britain, becoming one of the four legions stationed in Britain. During the revolt of Queen Budica in 61 AD, the weak 9th Army suffered a great defeat and was wiped out by the barbarian army.
Around 80 AD, the 9th Legion accompanied the famous Roman historian Tacitus's father-in-law Agulligra on an expedition to Scotland, defeating 30,000 barbarian troops at the Battle of Grobius Hill, and after no major war in Britain, the legion also lived a quiet life in the local area, which was nearly 40 years. However, since the discovery in England in 1864 of a stone tablet recording the construction of a fortress by the 9th Army in Yorkshire in 108 AD, there has been no record of the 9th Army's activities in Britain.
The last record of the 9th Legion unearthed in 1864 in Britain
According to current archaeological results, it is generally believed that in the early days of Hadrian's reign, there was a serious riot in northern Britain that was extremely serious and not detailed in any Roman history book. In order to extinguish this rebellion, the Roman garrison dispatched four legions at a time. Although there is no documentation of the outcome of this rebellion, in 160 AD the Roman historian Franto pointed out in a letter to the then Emperor Aurelius: "When your grandfather Hadrian came to power ... How many Roman soldiers were killed by the British. This riot may have been an important reason for Hadrian's construction of fortifications.
The riot was initiated by the Brigants, who lived in present-day Scotland, belonging to the Celtic race, and the area in which they lived was also called Brigantia by the Romans, and the Brigants could be understood as "Highlanders" in the Ancient Celtic language, that is, the peoples living on the Scottish Highlands. According to archaeological remains, as early as 430 BC, the Brigants had settled in the Scottish region, and after the Romans landed on the British Isles, the Romans failed to occupy the northern part of Britain because of the repeated rebellions of the Brigants.
The Brigant warriors in Lost: The Ninth Eagle Regiment like to paint their faces with blue-gray grass and wood ash
The image of the Brigant people is restored
This mysterious riot and the eventual fate of the 9th Army has always been a topic of concern for historians, and in 2010 British director Neil Marshall made the story of the 9th Army into the film Centurion, which tells the story of the 9th Army in 117 when it was ambushed and destroyed while marching north to attack the Pittkes. The surviving Hundred Captain Quintus and others volunteered to infiltrate the enemy camp and worked hard to regain the flag and legion eagle insignia in the hands of the Pittkes.
In Centurion, the Pitts use fireball arrays to ambush the Romans
Look closely, there are still many embarrassing points in the film, not to mention the use of dumb and beautiful women in the film to lure the Romans into the ambush circle of the riot operation, the film believes that the destruction of the 9th Army is the Pitts living in the northernmost part of Scotland, obviously it is not right, the Pitts first appeared in historical documents at the end of the third century AD, although they are Celtic like the Brigants, but obviously the two can not be confused.
The self-proclaimed selling point in "Centurion" is actually a losing barbarian dumb female warrior
Earlier, in 1977, British directors Michael Simpson and Buzz Taylor made the subject into a 6-episode miniseries," The Eagle of the Ninth, which tells the story of Aquila, the son of the missing 9th Legion Command, who sneaked into northern Scotland with his free slaves to find the Flag Corps Eagle Emblem, and finally escaped from the Brigant with what he found with the help of the Legion's lost veterans.
In the miniseries "The Ninth Eagle Regiment", the Roman centurion is still wearing a muscle breastplate that appeared only later
In 2011, Hollywood director Kevin Macdonald brought the story back to the screen, the film "The Eagle", which, like the miniseries "The Ninth Eagle Regiment", did not describe the specifics of the collapse of the 9th Legion, but instead focused on the protagonist's adventures in Brigant territory and the mutual trust between the protagonist and his British slaves. Both films are based on Rosemary Satcliffe's historical children's book The Eagle of the Ninth, published in 1954.
Rosemary Satcliffe and the Ninth Eagle
Figure 11: The protagonist in Lost: The Ninth Eagle Regiment is still wearing anachronistic muscular breastplate
However, the 9th Army was supposed to have been severely damaged rather than annihilated in this rebellion, and according to some archaeological remains, a detachment of the 9th Army was stationed in the Dutch area between 120 and 130 AD. In 132 AD, Hadrian wanted to build a temple in Jerusalem, which triggered another great uprising of the local Jews, led by Kochba, known as the "Children of the Stars", and several Roman legions, including this detachment, were transferred to suppress it. 580,000 Jews were killed in the fierce battle, and the detachment may have been disbanded because of the losses suffered in this battle.
Oil on canvas: Kochba Jewish Uprising
In 155 AD, the Empire fought a mysterious war with the Parthian kingdom in the East, which is not recorded in detail in the history books, but according to experts, Roman legions were annihilated in battle. Some experts insist that the remaining detachments of the 9th Army were not disbanded in the Jewish uprising and eventually perished in this battle, two views that are the current mainstream theories about the outcome of the 9th Army, but both sides have debated for years, and no conclusive evidence can refute the other.
The 2007 Hollywood film "The Last Legion" also mentions the whereabouts of the Ninth Legion, saying that these legion veterans settled in southern Britain after the disbandment of the army, and later helped the last emperor Romulus who fled there to rebuild the regime. It was 460 years, 300 years after the mysterious Parthian War, and what a legion veteran who could still fight!
The guys in The Last Legion who claim to be Legion veterans and their descendants
Hadrian's Wall in The Last Legion
Speaking of Hadrian, although he married a wife, he had no children, because he was bisexual, or he liked boys more, and he even wanted to make his male girlfriends heirs. The first to receive this honor was the beautiful nobleman Verus, and Hadrian even spent a large sum of money to make the officers and men of the legion understand the emperor's thoughts. Unfortunately, Verus died soon after.
Later, he was made heir by Hadrian's other elderly friend, Anthony Pius, who was 10 years younger than him, and of course no one could get this favor. Anthony Pius was the nephew of Hadrian's wife (the so-called kiss-up-and-kiss?). ), and is kind, has always been known for its good character, which is a Kindred Spirit. In 138 AD, after Hadrian's death, Antony Pius succeeded him.
Anthony Asylum bust
The kind Antony Pius, because of his long employment in the imperial administration, had no interest in fighting wars, unless forced to do so, so that during the 23 years of his reign in Rome, the imperial borders were very calm, except for the small riots in Britain in 142, Mauritania in 152, and Egypt in 155. He himself was not as fond of sightseeing as Hadrian, and spent his whole life in the periphery of Rome, and under the concept of good governance, he liked to select people with a moral reputation like him rather than war adventurers to serve as governors of the frontier provinces.
In fact, Hadrian had even chosen a successor to Antoni Pius, the clever scholar Marco Aurelius, who was 45 years younger than him, and one of the conditions for Pius to become Augustus was that he had to be his heir. Thus, after the death of Antoni Pius, Marco Aurelius also ascended to the throne.