For nearly 2,000 years the secret of Rome's missing Ninth Legion has been shrouded in mystery, its ultimate fate argued over by generations of historians. The loss of an entire Legion numbering around 5000 men has been spun variously from a catastrophic defeat to an almost supernatural "mass vanishing".
"The Eagle Has Fallen" is an unravelling of that mystery. We reveal how the loss of the Ninth Legion was a truly catastrophic event: the devastating news was suppressed by Hadrian to safeguard his reign in a classic conspiracy cover up.
It was the first in a chain reaction of disasters which forced Rome to halt expansion and to create the largest frontier wall ever built in the Roman Empire. Written sources and new archaeology indicate where the Ninth met its end in the tribal lands of northern Britain.
Author Brian Young has spent some six years researching and writing about this incredible mystery.
Following on from two recent movies, "The Eagle" and "Centurion", there is enormous fresh interest in the disappearance of the Ninth Legion. This is the story of Romes most mysterious vanished Legion.
The might of Rome was waning the annihilation of the Ninth was the writing on the wall. This was the beginning of the end.