Eagle Of The Ninth Quotes

“Looking back across the years, Marcus remembered that his father’s eyes had been very bright, like the eyes of a man going into action; and the light had caught suddenly in the great flawed emerald of the signet-ring he always wore. ”

“Marcus went to look. The sound of the hunter’s voice and a horse’s soft whinny gave him his direction, and making his way between the wood-pile and a tethered cock whose feathers shone with metallic colours among the duller hens, he reached the doorway of a stable hut, and looked in.”

“Before many days had passed, Marcus had slipped so completely into the life of the frontier fort that it seemed as though he had never known any other. The plan of the Roman forts was much of the same. ”

“Marcus’s hope of seeing the lost legion re-established is dashed, but he is able to bring back the gilded bronze eagle so that it can no longer serve as a symbol of Roman defeat – and thus will no longer be a danger to the frontier’s security.”

“Discharged because of a battle wound that has left him lame in one leg, a young Roman officer Marcus Flavius Aquila tries to discover the truth about the disappearance of his father’s legion in northern Britain. ”

“Disguised as a Greek oculist and traveling beyond Hadrian’s Wall with his freed ex-slave, the British native hunter Esca, Marcus finds that a demoralized and mutinous Ninth Legion was annihilated by a great rising of the northern tribes.”

″ In part, this disgrace was redeemed through a heroic last stand by a small remnant (including Marcus’s father) around the legion’s eagle standard. ”

“Rewarded by Rome for his services, he decides to settle as a landowner and farmer in Britain with his British wife, Cottia, and his freed friend, Esca.”

“Centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila had seen little of the Eagles until a year ago. His first ten years had been lived quietly with his mother on the family farm near Clusium, while his father soldiered in Judaea, in Egypt, and here in Britain.”

“in the little silence that had fallen between them, Marcus looked around him at the austere room in the yellow flood of lamplight, and to him it seemed beautiful.”