Rosemary Sutcliff "The Eagle of The Ninth"

Rosemary Sutcliff "The Eagle of The Ninth"

Category: Intermediate (B1-B2) Email
Rosemary Sutcliff "The Eagle of The Ninth"

 

Rosemary Sutcliff

Sometime about the year ad 117, the Ninth Legion of the Roman army marched north to fight the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again. In the early 1900s, in southern Britain, a wingless Roman Eagle was found buried under an old Roman town. These are facts. You can see the Eagle in a museum today.

But why did none of the four thousand men in the Ninth Legion ever come back? And the Eagle, that great gold and silver bird, which carried the honour of a Legion’s name ... why was it buried?

In the year ad 127, Marcus Aquila, a young Roman officer, comes to Britain. His father disappeared with the Ninth and Marcus cares deeply about the Legion’s honour and the lost Eagle. It would be madness, even with a friend, for a Roman to travel among the wild Caledonians north of Hadrian’s Wall, but when the chance comes, Marcus takes it...

 

Text Analysis: Unique words: about 1,400. Total words: about 14,830
Hard words: attack, blind, bog, chariot, cloak, feast, gladiator, god, holy place, humor, hunt, legate, legion, master, patrol, scar, seal, signal, slave, trail, tribe, war, whistle

 

  

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