Factual error: While Hadrian's Wall itself is accurately depicted, its use and meaning to the Romans is not. The Wall did not demarcate a line north of which no Romans soldier would venture out of fear of the locals. The area north of the wall was too sparsely populated to produce a serious threat to a sizable Roman force and the Romans would have regularly patrolled there. In fact just two years after the events in the movie are set, the Romans constructed the Antonine Wall 60 miles north of Hadrian's Wall, running approximately between today's Glasgow and Edinburgh. The plot more closely matches the experience of the Romans in Germania in AD9 when three Roman legions were wiped out in the Teutoburg Forest. The Romans went to great lengths to recover the Eagles lost in this defeat and did so through a combination of diplomacy and military successes.
The Eagle (2011)
1 factual error
Directed by: Kevin Macdonald
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell
Factual error: While Hadrian's Wall itself is accurately depicted, its use and meaning to the Romans is not. The Wall did not demarcate a line north of which no Romans soldier would venture out of fear of the locals. The area north of the wall was too sparsely populated to produce a serious threat to a sizable Roman force and the Romans would have regularly patrolled there. In fact just two years after the events in the movie are set, the Romans constructed the Antonine Wall 60 miles north of Hadrian's Wall, running approximately between today's Glasgow and Edinburgh. The plot more closely matches the experience of the Romans in Germania in AD9 when three Roman legions were wiped out in the Teutoburg Forest. The Romans went to great lengths to recover the Eagles lost in this defeat and did so through a combination of diplomacy and military successes.
Esca: How can a piece of metal mean so much to you?
Marcus Aquila: The eagle is not a piece of metal. The eagle is Rome.
Trivia: The director was not able to find a suitable Scottish Gaelic-speaking actor to play the boy of the tribe of Britons, so he cast Thomas Henry who is a native speaker of Irish Gaelic from Belfast.
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