I watched an interesting movie about a Roman Centurion who takes it upon himself to recover the Eagle totem of the lost 9th Legion. I thought it was very well done and was quite interesting. To a point.
The film makers did a great job on the Romans. They took all sorts of time creating everything to look historically accurate. And then they take the Romans north of Hadrian’s Wall and it all turned to crap. Evidently the film makers want the Romans to look clean and shiny and the Scots to look like they are soggy and smeared in scat. Until they get very far north and run into the Huron Tribe of Native Americans. They called the tribe the Seal Tribe, supposedly some primitive Celts of some sort, but I forgot I was watching The Eagle and thought I was watching Last of the Mohicans. I take umbrage at this. The Scots of this time were indeed rather primitive and rustic… but they didn’t look like Indians and they didn’t shave their heads and they didn’t build silly little tents on the edges of north facing cliffs. The film makers had a hard time filming on that location because of wind and rain blowing down their tents and such. That should be a clue. If you are wearing layers of Columbia Arctic Gear, Rain Gear and you have to keep putting the set back together… you can probably imagine that the Early Scots in that area were not shaving their heads, running around naked with ash smeared all over them and living in wig-wams. They probably had long hair, wore a lot of furs, and built houses of some sort that could stand up to the weather they are living in. Even the early Scots had a distinct culture and society. They had standards of dress and hygiene. Just because they were not Roman didn’t mean they were cave-men.
So The Eagle had great Romans… and the Scots were rubbish.
Wasn’t this area dominated by the Picts at this point in time?
They were a large clan at that time, yes. But unlike the band shown in “Centurion”, they were very peaceful, farmers mostly.
But they were good enough fighters to keep the Romans out. 😀