I just watched a 2010 film called ‘Centurion’ which purports to portray the mysterious demise of the Roman IX Legion in 117 AD at the hands of the Picts of Caledonia. While it’s a fun yarn (if a bit blood-spattered) with lots of Scottish landscape and suitably ferocious if overdressed Pictish warriors (both men and a couple of rather hot women), the tale is hopeless from a historical perspective. It is loosely based on a 1954 novel by Rosemary Sutcliff called “The Eagle of the Ninth”. The 2011 film “The Eagle” was based more closely on the same book.
The story of the annihilation of the Roman IX Legion is true enough, but it took place in the south and half a century earlier. Also, it was tribes of Celtic Britons under the Iceni warrior queen Boudica who ambushed and massacred the Romans, NOT the Picts…
Here’s a short preview of the film:
The fact of the matter is that we know precious little about the Picts (‘Pict’ was a Roman nickname meaning ‘Painted Ones’ – we don’t even know what they called themselves) and what we THINK we know is largely legend and heresay. We know they were excellent artists and metalworkers based on their artifacts. We know they tended to be into painting and/or tattooing their bodies and that they went into battle with few if any clothes on. We know they had no written language so we have no historical records and don’t even know what language they spoke – although it was very likely a Celtic tongue closely related to the Brythonic language of the Britons (and largely mutually intelligible). They seemed to disappear into the mists of time around the time the Vikings began raiding north-east Britain at the end of the eighth century.