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The Emperor Hadrian visited Britain in 122 AD bringing with him a vast number of soldiers, but decided that Caledonia was too much trouble for only a little reward ( yet they had thought it rewarding enough to invade three times ). In a decision designed first and foremost to block the constant punitive raids and daring invasions by the Picts into the Roman provinces, but possibly also ( like the main purpose of the Berlin Wall ), to stop the continual defection of peoples from the occupied territories, he gave orders to the army to abandon Caledonia and to mark and protect the northern boundary of the Roman Empire by building a massive wall the entire width of Britain, near the present border of Scotland and England. The tide had turned, the hunters were now hunted - the Picts had pro-actively seized the offensive.

Hadrian's Wall was an impressive structure, showing just how serious the threat from the Caledonians was. More than 80 Roman miles / 120 kilometres long ( 1,618 yards in a Roman mile; our mile is 1,760 yards ), the majority of it was built of stone, over four metres high, never less than 8 feet thick, with a shorter section in the west of turf but almost as high. It had in front a ditch, up to 12 metres wide and 4 meters deep and to the north a mound of earth parallel to the wall. On or near to the wall were sixteen forts, each one holding between 500 and 1000 troops. There was a network of mile-castles and turrets between them, and an infrastructure of roads to service and protect it. Sixteen years after Hadrian had ordered the wall to be built, he died, and the wall was still being built. In all it is reckoned that the Romans had to mine and move about 2 million tons of stone, rock and soil, to build this most massive and unique frontier structure in the Empire.

Most historians who are pro-Roman, have minimised or failed to realise that Rome taking on such a massive expensive, defensive project, proves they had a very high opinion of the fighting skills of the Picts, especially when you consider that no such expensive wall was built on any other Roman frontier and the fact that the Romans built not just one - but TWO walls to defend against the Caledonians. The walls are in reality a coast to coast Roman monument to the Picts, if not for their counter-attacks on the Empire - there would be no Hadrian and Antonine Wall.

The Romans tried again to suppress Caledonia. They moved about 120 miles north to the point where the West Highland Way begins, just above Glasgow. Here another wall was built named after Emperor Antonius Pius, the 'Antonine Wall', whose ruins can be seen near the start of the West Highland Way. This wall was thirty-seven miles long, from Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde to Carriden on the Forth and needed about 20,000 to guard and defend it. About 20 forts were built along its length. The Romans re-occupied much of the lands originally taken by Agricola but after less than 10 years of guerrilla war the Roman Legions were mass-attacked once again, with the wall and all 20 of its forts being lost. Roman casualties must have been exceedingly high. The Romans later returned to the wall, repaired the damage and set the 2nd, 6th and 20th Legions to defend the forts, but they were again attacked, overrun by the united Picts and forced to move back to Hadrian's Wall in modern England.

Caledonia was gaining quite a reputation in Rome. In 208 AD ( 128 years after the invasion by Agricola ), 40,000 Romans ( double the force of Agricola ), led personally by Severus - Emperor of Rome, returned to ruthlessly punish the Picts. Not just by war but by destroying their fertile agricultural land. His strategy was simple - ethnic cleansing of all Picts by sword and starvation. In the words of Dr. Colin Martin, Severus policy 'seems to have been nothing short of an attempt at genocide of the Caledonian population'. In actual fact, through giving orders to his 40,000 men to cut down large areas of forest - Severus foolishly created more fertile land. No doubt at the beginning of his campaign he butchered many small helpless villages, killing the elderly, women - even pregnant women and innocent little children, but soon when the Picts learned of his butchery they would have evacuated everyone in his path.

The Roman historian Deo Cassius states that Severus, 'fought no battle and beheld no enemy in battle array'. It became obvious that time was on the side of the Caledonians as things started to go wrong for the Romans. In what can only be described as poetic justice, the Romans began to run out of food, and 'experienced countless hardships'. It appears that the Picts used a scorched earth policy just as they did after the battle of Mons Graupius. Deo Cassius writes that the Picts sometimes deliberately left a few cattle in the path of the hungry army to draw them ever deeper into the heart of the country, presumably drawing them away from their supply fleet. The Picts shadowed and harried the Roman army using hit and run tactics, attacking stragglers or those who were separated, scattered or lost, but they kept their discipline of avoiding a pitched battle. Severus took ill and had to be carried most of the time in a litter. Deo Cassius records that those Romans who were too exhausted or too ill to walk, presumably as a result of hunger - were slain by their own men in order to avoid capture.

Severus called for a truce in order to agree a treaty and on the way to the meeting, as the Pict army watched his approach his own son tried to kill him in full view of the Caledonians. Deo Cassius notes of this event that, 'the enemy's force were likewise spectators'. The Romans made a treaty with the Picts who agreed to allow some forts and occupation troops to stay in central Caledonia. This treaty is often said to show only that the Caledonians ceded territory to Rome, but by implication it means that the Emperor himself, in return for this limited concession of the smaller part of the country - agreed to give up Rome's ambitions for all the rest of Caledonia. It seems it was a Pict war strategy to make a temporary treaty with a butcher like Severus - at least until they got the next harvest in.

According to the Romans the truce was broken a year or two later, so Severus prepared once again to personally lead the invasion of Caledonia. Deo Cassius recorded Severus' raging orders, 'Let no one escape sheer destruction . . not even the babe in the womb of the mother, if it be male; let it nevertheless not escape sheer destruction'. His bloody plans never reached fruition; the butcher died at Eboracum ( York ) in modern England on 4 February 211 AD. The Roman historian Spartianus, writes of Severus' son Antoninus who succeeded him that, 'With the enemy ( Picts ) he came to terms, withdrew from their territory, and abandoned the forts.'

What terms ? The Romans withdrew - end of story. Unless the terms were, 'Don't attack Hadrian's Wall' ! 'Oh no, said the Picts, we would never do that'. The Romans retreated from Caledonia - never to return ! The Picts had won the 130 year war of Caledonia - it was then that the war against Roman occupation of the southern British provinces began.

When miners were levelling the ground to build Bridgeness Miners Welfare Club ( to be used for social events and dances ), about 1919, a Roman graveyard was uncovered. When the graves were opened by Officials of the Scottish National Museum, they were found to contain the skeletons of Roman soldiers and numbers of coins and other articles. The coffins being made out of 2 inch thick slabs of stone were too heavy to transport and therefore still lie beneath Bridgeness Miners Welfare Club to this day. I think the Caledonians would have approved.

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 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. For the facts, as far as they can be discerned, are as thrilling as they are peculiar.

The Ninth Legion was one of the toughest and most experienced legions in the entire Roman Empire. It was raised in Spain in 65BC, hence its nickname, the Hispanica, although it would soon include soldiers from every nation. Julius Caesar was its first commander, as Governor of Spain, and led it in triumph after triumph. The men of the Ninth fought across the length and breadth of Europe for their beloved general: from the wide fields of Gaul to bitter battles in the Balkans.

Like all soldiers, they showed their affection for their great commander by singing obscene songs as they marched along, mocking Caesar's baldness or his notorious and numerous female conquests. Caesar didn't mind. As long as they continued to fight like lions for him, they could sing what they liked. Caesar himself made a couple of fleeting visits to the fog-bound and unknown island of Britain, in 55 and 54BC, claiming them, in an outrageous bit of political spin, as 'conquests'. They were nothing of the sort. It wasn't until AD43, under the Emperor Claudius, that the island was finally brought within the Empire, with the armed might of four entire legions - the IX Hispanica among them.

Yet ancient Britain was filled with proud and warlike Celtic tribes, and Rome constantly dreaded rebellion. While Spain and the entire coast of North Africa were kept at peace with a single legion apiece, Britain required three permanent legions. Even so, in AD61, the nightmare came true and much of the island erupted into bloody revolt, under Queen Boudicca. A brutal and corrupt Roman official was to blame. When Boudicca's husband died, the official ordered the seizure of his tribal lands, and had his Queen publicly whipped and her daughters raped for good measure.

Such an insult could not be endured.

The flame-haired Boudicca stirred her people to a fury, scorning the Romans under their Emperor Nero as 'slaves to a lyre-player,' and comparing Roman rule of her Iceni tribe to 'hares trying to rule over wolves'. The Queen led her vast tribal army south, striking terror into the hearts of the colonists. She fell upon Colchester and burned it to ground, and then did the same to Verulamium - now St Albans - and London. Even today, when deep foundations are dug in the City of London, the builders invariably encounter a stratum of reddish ash: Boudicca's burning. As many as 70,000 civilians were slaughtered, some in the cruellest ways imaginable.

'They could not wait to cut throats, hang, burn, crucify,' wrote the Roman historian Tacitus. 'In the groves of their terrible dark goddess, Andraste, they tortured their captives to death, sewing the severed breasts of the women to their lips, and impaling others on stakes driven through their bodies. 'No cruelty was too great. When the oppressed rise up against cruel oppressors, restraint is rare.' The first legion to face up to Boudicca was the Ninth. And despite their formidable reputation, in this first conflict they were routed. Massively outnumbered, they lost as many as a third of their number.

But their heroism won valuable time for the Governor of Britain, Suetonius Paulinus, to march south from Anglesey, down the Roman road later known as Watling Street - and even later, more prosaically, as the A5 - and meet Boudicca's furious onslaught head-on, somewhere in the flat lands of the East Midlands. Even then Paulinus was outnumbered, his legionaries of 10,000 facing 100,000 howling tribesmen. Yet this would have caused his veterans, the remainder of the Ninth among them, little concern. Odds of ten to one against? The Romans had faced far worse than that before.

They knew that in the end, what won battles wasn't weight of numbers, nor the chaotic onrush of vainglorious painted warriors, but years of weapons training, strict formation, and iron discipline. Sure enough, against the implacable shield wall of Roman legionaries, bristling with those short, squat, brutally effective stabbing swords, wave after wave of tribesmen broke and fell apart. The Iceni were utterly crushed. When Boudicca realised the day was lost, she took poison.

But it was also said that, as she lay dying, she put a curse on the legions that had destroyed her people - a curse that people would recall, some 60 years later, in very different circumstances. After Boudicca's rebellion, the Romans slowly and steadily set about subduing the whole island, pushing further north each year. Having conquered the powerful tribe of the Brigantes, the Ninth was stationed at the imposing legionary fortress of York. Sometimes the curtain of history parts and we get a poignant glimpse, and a moving reminder, that these soldiers weren't mere players in a Hollywood movie, but flesh-and-blood people like us.

A tiny tombstone was found at York recently, set up by one of those hardbitten, grim-faced legionaries, in memory of his little daughter. It reads: 'To the Gods, the Shades. For Simplicia Forentiana, a Most Innocent Being, Who Lived Ten Months. Her father, Felicius Simplex, made this.' Yet the northern border had still to be pushed back.

Beyond York lay the lowland hills of the Borders, and then the Highlands, home of many a ferocious and untamed tribe who were still raiding with impunity down into Roman territory. Caledonia, too, must be 'pacified' for Rome to feel safe. The capable new Governor of Britain, Agricola, led the surge. They called their enemy Picti - the Painted People.

The tribesmen of Caledonia were fine specimens of men, with reddish hair and huge limbs. They called themselves 'the last men on earth, the last of the free'. In even the coldest weather they wore nothing but primitive kilts of homespun wool, their bare chests and arms covered in tattoos depicting terrifying emblems of severed heads, shining suns, intertwined serpents and crossed daggers dripping blood. In time of war, though, they painted blood-red stripes across their faces, clad themselves in animal pelts, wolf skins and bear skins, clasped with brooches of red Hibernian gold, and decorated their spears with blue-grey herons' feathers. As they rushed into battle, their shaman priests, called the Druithyn in the ancient Celtic tongue, wearing deer's antlers on their heads, stood on nearby hillsides and raised their arms to heaven to summon the spirits of the dead.

They gashed themselves with knives, beat monstrous drums, burnt huge bonfires and howled in fury.

The Romans regarded them as nothing but sorcerers - and yet they still evoked fear. Only the strictest discipline and the finest command would prevail against such an enemy.

In AD84 the expeditionary force led by Agricola, including the men of the Ninth, finally met the Caledonian tribes in open battle, under the Picts' own brilliant commander, Calgacus, 'The Swordsman'.

The site of the mighty confrontation was called Mons Graupius, somewhere in the wilds of the Cairngorms, and the Roman legionaries were once again savagely triumphant. After the slaughter, records Tacitus: 'A grim silence reigned on every hand, the hills were deserted, only here and there was smoke seen rising - our scouts found no one to encounter them.' It was then Calgacus himself delivered his damning judgment on the whole Roman Imperial enterprise: 'They create a desolation, and they call it peace!'

Believing they had taught the rebellious Picts one final lesson, the Romans marched south. But a generation later, fresh rebellion broke out. Which was why, one bleak grey morning in AD117, the 6,000 men of the Ninth Legion tramped north once more. Little did those they left behind, the girlfriends, auxiliaries and townspeople of York, suspect that this would be the last they ever saw of them. Carrying sword and shield and finely-pointed javelin, along with full kit, weighing perhaps 40 or 50lb per man, the legion marched at the steady military pace of 20 miles in five hours. Having marched, they would then set down their kit and build a full camp, every night, including ditches and palisades and gateways, on exactly the same plan as any legionary fortress.

For every day a legionary wields a sword, went the saying, he spends a dozen wielding a shovel. Only the very fittest armed forces today could compete with that sort of regime. These were very tough soldiers, indeed. Yet the great loneliness of mountain and moorland and the trackless wild must have weighed on them. They would have glimpsed the occasional wisp of peat smoke, the huddle of turf huts among the gloomy moors, but no more. Their enemy would have eluded them, and they would have had only their meagre rations of bread and bacon and thin soup for comfort, only the endless rain or the first flurries of winter snow for company. And the mist. The mist would have been their worst enemy. For in the mist, the enemy might have closed in on them like wolves as they marched through the lonely glens and begun to harry them, to pick them off one by one. The fear would have begun to grow. Any stray legionaries the tribesmen captured would have been mutilated horribly and left disembowelled, slung over a wayside thornbush for their comrades to find.

And there would be worse horrors in store.

For there was the defeat of Mons Graupius for the Picts to avenge, and, a generation before that, there was the dying curse of a flamehaired queen called Boudicca...Somewhere out on those godforsaken Scottish moors, death closed in upon the brave, much-honoured IX Legion. Only the faintest rumours ever returned of what had befallen the men - rumours of some terrible battle one winter's day among the heather-clad hills, of an alien army led into some lethal mire. Of the red-crested foreigners fighting to a heroic finale in freezing rain and hail, a last small, wounded band gathered about their silver Eagle totem, fighting to the last man, the motto of every legion on their lips: 'Eagle lost - honour lost; honour lost - all lost.'

All we know for certain is that the IX Hispanica disappeared abruptly from the records, an entire legion vanished. A fresh legion, the VI Victrix, was brought over from the Lower Rhine to replace them and stationed at York in AD122. But one visible landmark remains testimony to the Ninth's disappearance.

When the new Emperor Hadrian visited Britain soon after, on hearing of the loss of the IX, he commanded a huge wall to be built, a wall studded with fortresses and watch towers, 80 miles from the Solway to the Tyne. We look at Hadrian's Wall today as a splendid monument of Roman power and confidence.

But really it was an admission of defeat - and of fear.

An entire legion had been eradicated as if at some sorcerer's command. Not a single survivor had stumbled back into camp to tell the tale. There were mysteries and horrors out there in the mists and the mountains of Caledonia which not even the Romans could face again. As in other timeless tales and enigmas that continue to haunt our imaginations, the Ninth Legion simply marched away, beyond our understanding. The tramp, tramp, tramp of those hobnailed boots on the straight Roman roads - and then falling quiet as the roads ended and they set off over the soft heather moorland...

They had disappeared from the pages of history - to become legend.