New evidence for annihilation of Ninth Legion in Britain?

[Nathan Ross]

It is interesting that, as an epigrapher/prosopographer par excellence, Eric Birley thought that one of these (I can't remember which one, off hand) was probably as late as AD 140, until he realised the implications. In other words, if there had been no pressure to remove the legion ca. AD 120, we would most logically have seen it surviving up to ca. AD 140.

This was Q Numisius Junior, I think - Consul in 161, also attested as tribune of IX (CIL X 5670). Birley originally put the tribunate, as you say, at 140. Keppie believed that the consul was the son of the tribune, in order to maintain the destruction of the legion around the 120s. (Mor, Two Legions, the same Fate? Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 62, 1986, p269)

- Nathan