Eagle of the Ninth

...I still don't know how I didn't read Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth before. It is my favorite kind of old-fashioned (or new-fashioned) children's story: all about epic friendship and undying loyalty across a slightly uncomfortable status divide.* Marcus, young, painfully upright Roman centurion badly wounded in his second year of service; Esca, the young British slave he saves from the gladiatorial arena. Becoming fast friends; embarking on an adventure to recover the lost standard of the IX Hispania. Sutcliff is a brilliant writer, and she does quite a good job both capturing the Roman mindset and portraying the complexities of Roman-British interactions, hybridity, tension -- much better than one might expect for a book published in 1954.

And now I am feeling a strong urge to write fic -- possibly about the legal shenanigans that Marcus's friend the Legate has to go through to see that Esca's manumission is legitimate. Possibly in Latin...