This cast bronze figure of an eagle, known as the Silchester Eagle, was found in the Basilica of the Roman town of Calleva, near Silchester in Hampshire, on the 9th October 1866 during excavations undertaken by Revd J. G.Joyce.
The bird is posed with its wings outstretched, its head raised and turned to the right. The original wings are missing, but it is clear, from the careful modelling of the feathers beneath them, that they must have been extended and raised.
In 1962, Jocelyn Toynbee described the eagle as ‘by far the most superbly naturalistic rendering of any bird or beast as yet yielded by Roman Britain’. It has captured the imaginations of generations of people, including Rosemary Sutcliffe and her novel The Eagle of the Ninth.
