Fiction
In his fantasy novel Grail, the author Stephen R. Lawhead states that the legion was ensnared by the black magic of the witch Morgan le Fay, doomed to perpetually wander the mists of Lyonesse.
Lindsey Davis' character Marcus Didius Falco and his sidekick Petronius Longus both served in the legion during the Boudicca uprising in 60/61, while they were little more than boys (probably 19/20 years old). Marcus or Petronius have only referred to their service in asides, due to the bad memories of the uprising and the boredom in a cold, unfriendly country. The scenes of carnage and destruction in Londinium left a deep impression on both of them, with neither keen to return to Roman Britain. Novels that most directly refer to their service in Britain are The Silver Pigs, A Body in the Bath House and The Jupiter Myth.
It is also the Legion in which Optio Quintus Licinius Cato and Centurion Lucius Cornelius Macro serve in during the first five books of the Eagle series by Simon Scarrow. The books also cover Vespasian's career as commander of the legion and the invasion of Britain.
The story of the legion's role in Boudica's Rebellion and the subsequent suicide of its acting commander features in Imperial Governor, George Shipway's 1968 novel about Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.
Read more about this topic: Legio II Augusta
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)