Legion of the Damned: Did Boudicca's Curse Cause 6,000 of Rome's Fiercest Warriors To Vanish Without Trace?

Over the course of its majestic, turbulent and bloody 1,000-year history, Ancient Rome gave rise to many extraordinary stories which live on to this day.

Tales filled with unforgettable, larger-than-life characters who, whether heroes or villains, seem – like Shakespeare’s brilliant, but fatally ambitious Caesar – to ‘bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about…’

No wonder Hollywood has always loved Rome, whose ferocity, passion and sheer spectacle have given rise to great epic movies from Ben-Hur to Gladiator.

Yet the latest movies inspired by the barbarous magnificence of the ancient world comes not from the heart of Rome, but from a remote northern province on the edge of the Empire, and an ancient legend that continues to haunt the imagination.

A province we now call Scotland, but which the Romans knew as Caledonia.

Both films (still in production) concern the Roman Ninth Legion and the bizarre fate that befell them in the mists of the Scottish Highlands around AD117.

The Eagle Of The Ninth will vie with rival project Centurion, starring British actor Dominic West and Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, to do this epic tale justice.

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April 28, 2009