FAQ

An eagle (or Aquila in classical Latin) was a prominent symbol used in ancient Rome, especially as the standard of a Roman legion. A legionary is known as an Aquilifer, the "eagle-bearer", carried this standard. Each legion carried one eagle.

The eagle had quasi-religious importance to the Roman soldier, far beyond being merely a symbol of his legion. To lose a standard was extremely grave, and the Roman military went to great lengths both to protect a standard and to recover it if it were lost; after the annihilation of three legions in the Teutoburg Forest, the Romans spent decades retaliating for the defeat while also attempting to recover the three lost eagles.

This is why Marcus says, when he explains the importance of the eagle to Esca in the film, that "The eagle is Rome ... where the eagle is, we can say Rome did that".

The eagle was the symbol of Jupiter, the most important god to the Romans. The legions' eagle standards were kept in his temple atop the Capitoline Hill when the legion was not abroad.

No, not even the original 1954 novel portrays them as the film does. Kevin Macdonald (Kevin Macdonald) wanted to create a culture "which no one knows much", and wanted to make it as convincing as possible at the same time. Macdonald described his view of the Seal people "They were a more indigenous folk than the Celts, who were from farther south ... They were probably small and dark, like the Inuit people, living off seals and dressed in sealskins."

Also, Macdonald's depiction was based on clues gained from places like "Skara Brae" and the "Tomb of the Eagles" in Orkney, thus he had them worshipping pagan symbols, like the seal and the eagle.

The Eagle is based on Rosemary Sutcliff's historical adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth (1954). It is the first of a sequence of novels that are connected through one Roman, and later British, family. The books are labeled as young adult fiction.

Yes. The 9th legion (Legio IX Hispana) disappeared around the 2nd century, but in quite unclear conditions (when, where, how). The wall of Hadrian (and others) existed, built to protect from Scottish tribes, but not necessarily due to a big defeat. One of the biggest happened in the first century, circa 9 CE, in Germania (Augustus was Emperor at the time), the famous "clades Variana" or Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where three complete legions, six cohorts of auxiliary troops and three squadrons of cavalry were slaughtered—15,000 to 20,000 men. The head of Roman forces was Publius Quinctilius Varus; the head of the Germanic alliance Arminius (who was his advisor and planned the trap). Arminius (Armin, Hermann) had lived in Rome as a hostage in his youth, where he had received a Roman military education—knowledge which he used in the battle.

For the theatrical release in the US, the aim was to get a PG-13 rating, hoping for a wider audience. The film is rather tame on things like "dirty language", nudity or violence, compared to the HBO TV series Rome, which deals with a similar historical era. But still it seems that there had been need for censorship to achieve the aimed PG-13 rating. The unrated cut, which can be found on the DVD released on June 21st, 2011, in the US, differs only slightly in running time, but several scenes with different material reveal modifications made for the theatrical release. These modified scenes can only be found in the rarely seen battle scenes in the film, which turn out to be a bit more bloody and more violent.