54 pages • 1 hour read
Rosemary SutcliffThe Eagle of the Ninth
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Frontier Fort”
The Eagle of the Ninth opens on a well-traversed road in southwestern Roman Britain, as the Fourth Gaulish Auxiliaries of the Second Roman Legion march to the fort of Isca Dumnoniorum. Leading the cohort of 600 men is Centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila, who at 19 years old has assumed his first command and will be responsible for assuming control of the fort. As he rides at the helm, Marcus reflects on the events that brought him to this point and the aspirations he is confident this career trajectory will fulfill. A decade before Marcus’s arrival on the island of Britain, the Ninth Legion, in which his father served as First Cohort, disappeared, and along with them their sacred eagle, the precious emblem entrusted to their care.
Marcus has specifically requested to serve in Britain, believing that the most promising opportunities for discovering the fate of his father’s legion will present themselves in the place from whence they vanished. Marcus has set his sights on advancing through the ranks to serve in the Egyptian Legion and intends to reclaim his family’s farmland in the Etruscan hills upon his retirement from the military. In the interim, his deep sense of paternal loss, desire to learn his father’s fate, and need to understand what became of the Ninth Legion have driven him to integrate this search into his military plans. Marcus has the added benefit of another familial connection to Britain: His father’s brother, Uncle Aquila, whom he has never met, resides on the island, and Marcus intends to make his acquaintance. As he rides, fond, vivid memories come to mind of his father’s emerald ring, the games they played together, the olive tree at their farm, and the topography of his home region.
In assuming responsibility over command of the fort at Isca Dumnoniorum, Marcus initially aims to maintain military order and dominion over the local British population. The departing commander, Centurion Quintus Hilarion, warns Marcus about the Druids and the significant power and influence they are capable of wielding. The Druids, he explains, have a mystic aura, and they are lauded by their people. Druids have the power to incite resistance and aggression in their followers, even though success may be unlikely, and despite the punishment they might receive for staging an uprising against Rome. The first chapter closes on the departure of the outgoing company of soldiers, coinciding with Marcus’s assumption of sole command.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Feathers in the Wind”
In the following months, Marcus acclimates to his role as commander of the fort. While he struggles somewhat with exercising authority over his ranking subordinates who are older and have more military experience, he strikes up a companionship with a centurion named Drusillus and feels that his command is running relatively smoothly. Marcus carries on as protocol instructs, learning the local language and setting about initiating minor improvements to the fort. Outside the fort, the rumor of a Druid in the district persists in his mind, as does the currently poor state of the harvest and the potential impacts the insufficient yield could have on the people living in the surrounding area. Outside a historically Roman region for the first time in his life, Marcus is conscious of how few aspects of the Roman lifestyle have been established in this community. While social interaction and commercial trade have become ongoing between the Romans and the Britons, Marcus does not see much of Roman permanence: “Here in Isca Dumnoniorum, Rome was new slip grafted on to an old stock—and the graft had not yet taken” (12), and this sensation is foreign to him.
In his leisure time, Marcus takes up hunting and enlists the help of a guide named Cradoc. Discovering a common interest as charioteers, Cradoc allows Marcus to try out his team of four horses, and they engage in a friendly wager as a measure of Marcus’s skills as a charioteer. Cradoc’s chariot is unfamiliar to Marcus, as the Britons are not allowed to use traditional Roman chariots like those to which Marcus is accustomed, but only a model approved of by the Romans for their use. Marcus has an exciting experience driving Cradoc’s horses, which fills him with elation and wins him Cradoc’s respect as a charioteer.
Invited to Cradoc’s home to select a hunting spear as his prize, Marcus encounters Cradoc’s wife, who is silent and standoffish. Among the spears in Cradoc’s possession, one is excluded from Marcus’s possible choices. Cradoc explains that this spear belonged to his father, and Marcus admires it, noting the attractive feathers that adorn it and its excellent condition. On his walk back to the fort, Marcus feels a sense of unease despite how much he enjoyed the afternoon, and it occurs to him that the state of Cradoc’s father’s spear has much more in common with one maintained for practical use by a warrior, rather than one cherished as an heirloom.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Attack”
Marcus is awakened during the night, summoned to the watch stations atop the fort’s wall. The soldiers on duty have registered a disturbance of an indeterminate nature, and Marcus appraises the situation, concluding that the mists and lack of moonlight have obscured what is likely only a herd of cattle gone astray. Marcus briefly considers his options, then decides that he would rather be laughed at for being overly cautious than risk not raising a defense. The soldiers are called to battle stations. Without warning, a wave of Britons ascends the wall of the fort in “a flowing up and over, like a wave of ghosts” (22), surrounding and engaging Marcus’s men on all sides. The frenzied battle wanes as dawn approaches, and Marcus and Centurion Drusillus assess their situation. The cresset signal fires are lit, indicating trouble and summoning reinforcements, but the mists obscure the signal smoke. Centurion Drusillus suggests that even once the mists depart, the signal may not carry because the Britons have been known to destroy the neighboring signal post when they attend to stage an attack.
The Britons advance again, and in this second wave, among the tribesmen in the fray, Marcus notices a man clad in dramatic robes and crowned with a headdress adorned with a crescent moon. Marcus recognizes this man to be a Druid and orders the bowmen to shoot him. The second attack ends with 80 of Marcus’s soldiers either dead or wounded. Soon, the mist clears enough for the signal to be received, but a rush of Britons has appeared on approach, as have the Second’s returning patrol. Marcus leads 50 men beyond the wall to protect and escort this returning patrol. With British charioteers now bearing down on his men, Marcus realizes that the chariot and team of four horses at the lead is one he himself has driven, now manned by its owner, Cradoc, who wields his father’s feathered spear in his hand. Marcus realizes that the fate of the men around him depends on his ability to disable the chariot. Filled with a sense of responsibility and fraternity toward his fellow soldiers, and with quiet resignation that he is about to meet his death, Marcus breaks formation and places himself directly in the horses’ path. Just as they are upon him, Marcus leaps up to tackle Cradoc, crashing the chariot, which crushes him in the destruction.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Last Rose Falls”
Marcus is in a state of semi-consciousness as he heals from his complex injuries. When he begins to acclimate to his surroundings, overwhelmed by excruciating pain, he learns that he has been unconscious for seven days, tended to by the fort’s surgeon. The most serious of his injuries is a broken bone in his thigh and a cluster of wounds around it, caused by splintered wood from the chariot. He is relieved to learn that the signaled reinforcements have reached them and that order is established once again. In the customary Roman putative response to insubordination, the town has since been burned in its entirety and the surrounding fields salted, rendering them inhospitable to crops.
Marcus learns from Centurion Drusillus that both Cradoc and the Druid have been killed. Not yet aware of the implications his injury will have on his career, Marcus is initially frustrated by the installation of a new fort commander, but he accepts that protocol dictates there must be someone at the helm while he is recovering. Though he is visited frequently in his convalescence, Marcus spends much of his days in isolation, sequestered in his chambers as he recuperates, aware of the passage of time and goings on of the fort around him, and consumed by physical pain. His exclusion from the operations at the fort raises his suspicions. Eventually, Marcus is told that his service with the Eagles is at an end as his incapacitation is so severe as to render him unsuitable for duty. The gravity and finality of the official announcement are devastating to him, as all hope of achieving the goals upon which he had staked his future is dashed by his inability to remain in the military. Marcus decides to go to the home of his Uncle Aquila, grateful for a place to go to despite his heavy-heartedness and eager to find out if his uncle and his father are anything alike.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
When the Romans invaded Britain in AD 43, they did not expect the level of resistance they were met with. The Romans presumed that the people native to the island were primitive and barbarous but quickly realized that Britain was populated by tribes that, having battled one another long before the Romans arrived, were entrenched in warrior culture. The Roman Army faced skilled combatants in the Britons, who mounted an impressive resistance, and whose fierce desire to maintain their self-governance was undeterred by the harsh consequences of their uprisings. By AD 127, the approximate year in which The Eagle of the Ninth is set, the native peoples of Britain had adopted disparate attitudes toward the Roman rule in their midst. While regional and individual compliance with the Roman Empire’s occupation and imposition were more common in the South, where Isca Dumnoniorum (in 21st-century Exeter, England) was constructed, pockets of defiance throughout the island presented significant opposition and danger to Rome’s army. When Marcus joins the auxiliary Second Legion as a Cohort Centurion, his desire to uncover the circumstances surrounding his father’s end are incentive enough to seek a less-than-illustrious first command in such a rural location. In the first chapter of The Eagle of the Ninth, there is no indication that Marcus experiences any doubt or uncertainty about his military career path, which serves to render his ejection from service all the more devastating and disorienting as he is forced to consider a new plan for the rest of his life.
Raised in Clusium, or 21st-century Chiusi, a town in the Etruscan Hills 100 miles north of the city of Rome, Marcus is distinctly Roman in his appearance, attitude, and values. The power and influence that the Roman Empire has held during his lifetime, over vast swathes of territory, have led him to center his own culture, leaving him initially indifferent to the perspectives of those he meets in the novel. With his presumptions about the superiority and supremacy of Rome, he is puzzled to find out that many of the people native to the lands conquered by the Empire are so vehemently resistant to Roman oppression. Although he has been warned about the Druids and their ability to influence the tribes, Marcus’s faith in Rome’s prowess supports a kind of naiveté until he is confronted with all the native Britons are capable of.
The attack on Isca Dumnoniorum dramatically alters the course of Marcus’s life and does so before he has had the chance to establish himself as a soldier. When he makes the decision to stop Cradoc’s chariot, it is with the belief that his actions will result in his death; Marcus never considers for a moment that he may live while his military career might end. With his father’s disappearance and the death of his mother two years later, Marcus has no social or emotional attachments outside of the Roman Army. The Army is his connection to his father and his family’s traditions, and therefore, in losing his career, he has also lost his entire social support system and his sense of purpose in life. When Marcus was a child, before the Ninth Legion disappeared, Marcus’s father told him that he and Marcus would be responsible for restoring the glory of the Ninth Legion, thus creating an expectation since childhood that Marcus would always have a career as a soldier: “Presently it will be your turn. It has fallen on evil days, but we will make a Legion of the Hispania yet, you and I” (3). Marcus has never considered any other path or occupation, and without the benefits he would have been entitled to had he retired in the conventional manner, Marcus has no resources with which to pursue other avenues, like the repurchase of the Aquila farm he had always intended on. These chapters constitute the decimation of his world as he knows it, leaving him feeling inept and stranded.
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