What Happened to the Eagles?

[jkaler48]

Retired Eagles may have been lodged in various pagan temples and later destroyed as were many of temples themselves by Christian Romans. The Eagle ,unlike images of the Emperor, still used by the Legions during the Christian era but whole Legions as complete units fell out of use during the late Roman period. It would have been in keeping with religious practice at the time to view converting the metal in an Eagle into Christian religious objects as an appropriate disposition for a no longer needed military insignia. One can hope that a not quite devout Commander at the time may have chose to decommission an Eagle by burial or water deposit as one could therefore turn up someday. Even at the height of the Civil Wars the number of Legions and therefore Eagles wasn't large. One could also hope that one of the "Lost" Eagles could be found:
Battles where the Aquila were lost, units that lost the Aquila and the Aquila's fates:

53 BC - Battle of Carrhae. Crassus Legio X. (returned)
40 BC - defeat of Decidius Saxa at Cilicia. (returned)
36 BC - defeat of Mark Antony. (returned)
19 BC - Cantabrian Wars at Hispania. Legio I Germanica. (lost? and stripped of its title "Augusta")
9 AD - Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Legio XVII, Legio XVIII, and Legio XIX. (All recaptured)
66 AD - Great Jewish Revolt. Legio XII Fulminata. {fate?}
87 AD - Domitian's Dacian War. The Praetorian Guard. {fate?}
132 AD - Bar Kochva Revolt. Legio IX Hispana. {fate?}
132 AD - Bar Kochva Revolt. Legio XXII Deiotariana. {fate?}