The past sleeps lightly at Olympia. Recall the opening sequence of Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 film, Olympia. In a misty landscape of ruined buildings, broken columns, and weeds run wild, a Greek temple stands amid the wreckage. Statues appear and then waken to life; a naked athlete throws a discus, another a javelin – this heads towards a bowl of fire. Another naked youth lights the Olympic torch and holds it high. It is carried from hand to hand in a relay and then reaches the stadium in Berlin, home of the 1936 Olympic Games, which the film is meant to celebrate. Adolf Hitler salutes the spectators, 100,000 strong.

These four poems are compulsory set texts in the Latin AS level syllabus prescribed by the UK examining board OCR from 2012 to 2014. There is at present no appropriate commentary on Book 3 of the Amores. Fortunately the Bristol Classical Press quickly responded to the situation by commissioning an edition of the four specified poems (using E. J. Kenney's Oxford Classical Text) from Jennifer Ingleheart and Katharine Radice, and this will be published later in 2011; but it was felt that Greece & Rome could help to plug the gap by reviving in some form the ‘Critical Appreciations’ that it published between 1973 and 1980; in these, a schoolteacher's close analysis of a selected text was juxtaposed with one by a university teacher.

In the circumstances, it seemed best to cover all four poems, and so the decision was taken to assign one to each author. However, the tradition of thirty-odd years ago is preserved in the fact that two of the present contributors teach in schools and the other two at a university. Two of them, incidentally, were trained at Cambridge and two at Oxford. The commentary on 3.5 contains more reference to scholarly debate than the others: for all its literary complexities this poem has struck many as a misfit and its authorship is a matter of debate (Kenney brackets it in the OCT). Thus, it seems better to face the difficulties than to ignore them. Throughout we hope to suggest lines of interpretation, and to stimulate debate – and disagreement.

One of the most abhorrent events of Nero's reign, as viewed at the time and by commentators thereafter, was the premeditated murder of the emperor's mother Agrippina in March AD 59, which some have felt marked the end of the ‘five good years’ of Nero's reign, the quinquennium Neronis. The murder took place, not in Rome as many others that disfigured the Julio-Claudian dynasty, but on the Bay of Naples, more particularly on the Gulf of Pozzuoli at or near the resort of Baiae, modern Baia.

The emperor displayed his role as commander-in-chief through his actions as the soldiers' supreme benefactor, martial portraits on the coinage and imperial art, and speeches to particular army units. The fortunate survival of the text of Hadrian's speech at Lambaesis provides us with an exceptional record of how the emperor showed both an awareness of military techniques and empathy for the rigours of army life. In times of crisis, the emperor could address the soldiers directly, in order to ensure their continuing support for his rule. As a study on imperial witticisms has shown, what the emperor said was as important as what he did for the purpose of defining his role within the Principate.

In recent years, a series of reports have appeared in the British press about the fate of Iraqi interpreters employed by the British forces in Basra. As well as the day-to-day risk of death or injury in the course of their work, interpreters have been vulnerable to reprisals from insurgents who view them as collaborators and traitors. There have been a large number of documented cases of Iraqi interpreters being murdered, often in an especially brutal manner. Many other cases have gone undocumented, in part because of the tendency for interpreters to work under pseudonyms and even wear masks to conceal their identity, making it difficult to identify a particular victim as an interpreter. The issue of protecting interpreters came to a head in 2007 with the handover of Basra to Iraqi administration and the subsequent withdrawal of British troops. A special protection scheme was set up, whereby those who had worked for the British forces for twelve months would be eligible for resettlement in the United Kingdom. The issue, however, has remained a contentious one: many interpreters were ineligible for resettlement or did not want to move to the UK, and many of those who did accept resettlement found themselves economically disadvantaged and socially marginalized. One group of Iraqi interpreters have taken legal action against the British government.

Some time about the year A. D. 117, the Ninth Legion…marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again.

During the excavations at Silchester nearly eighteen hundred years later, there was dug up…a wingless Roman Eagle, a cast of which can be seen to this day in Reading Museum. Different people have had different ideas as to how it came to be there, but no one knows, just as no one knows what happened to the Ninth Legion after it marched into the northern mists.

It is from these two mysteries, brought together, that I have made the story of ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’.