The Invincibles of the IX Legion

The Invincibles of the IX Legion






The tomb of a centurion has made historians reopen the case of the IX legion

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The Hebrew warriors who were the sworn enemies of Rome had orders to never try themselves in open battle against a Roman legion of veterans. There was no enemy of Rome able to withstand a trained Roman legion says Giovanni Brizzi the greatest historian on the Roman period . a legion was five thousand men plus 5,000 auxilary troops. this force was able to control an entire region.
THEY were trained in all forms of warfare and were armed with the best weapons of their age, that of the imperial Roman one and were unbeatable. This explains that after Caesar there were few battles fought by a Roman legion.With this in mind the defeats have been far more interesting to historians than the victories especially if a defeat led to the complete massare of a legion. For instance the disappearance of the Spanish legion has always been a mystery. They were sent to put down the (43ad) the resistance of Bodacia and her army and it was thought or has been thought that this was their last battle. This was true until a centurions grave revealed that this legion were still fighting twenty years later. Historian Neil Faulkner put up the idea that the last of the Spanish Legion was when they fell victim to an ambush. Another historian Phil hirst says that after this defeat Hadrian built his wall to keep out the Northern tribes.

Brizzi isnt convinced with these ideas. He thinks that a legion could well have fallen victim to an organised ambush but could not have been beaten in open battle by picts and scots.

The XXI Rapax fell to an ambush by the Sarmati and in the Teutonburg forest three legions fell to the Germans but according to new findings the IX did not get massacred by the British. With all probability they were transferred to Turkey to fight the Parthians.

There they fell to the last man in an ambush at Elegeia in Armeniain 161 AD . The governor Sedazio Severiano fell with them.

To support this theory or idea is an inscription found in Petra.

The myth may be greater than the reality as an air of mystery has always surrounded the Spanish Legion.There is the idea that this legion fought the Chinese. In Han archives there is this; a group of soldiers in strange helmets fought at first against the Chinese then with them.These may have been the Spanish Legion who were fighting the Parthians on the extremeties of the Roman empire.