Boudica - An Ancient History 101 Special Event (Part 1: The Prelude to Destruction)
with Lexi Diggins, Ben Paites and Kate Sumnall
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Yes, it's the end of Series 1, so I have pulled together a very, very special double episode that's going to last this week and next. As a Brit, we're going to be talking about an ancient story that's very close to my heart, the story of Boudica. In this first episode, we're going to set the scene, welcome you into Iron Age Britain, tell you about the people who lived there, their architecture, their culture, and their interactions with ancient Rome. We're going to talk about who Boudica was, what her life was like, what did she look like, what did she wear, where did she live, who was in her family, and we're going to talk about what drove this woman to burn three cities down to the ground. Now, I told you this is a special event for the end of the series, so I don't have one guest expert, I don't have two, I have three! So let's kick off by asking them to introduce themselves.
Yes, hello, I am Ben Paites. I am Senior Collections and Learning Curator at Colchester Museums, and my background is in Roman archaeology specifically, but mainly objects and telling stories through objects.
Hello, I am Kate Sumnall. I am the curator of prehistory at London Museum. I frequently arm wrestle the Roman curator over that lovely bit of time where is it still prehistory, is it not? I'm going to claim it. Similarly to Ben, I love artifacts and their power to really tell us about people's lives in the past.
Hi, I'm Lexi Diggins. I'm an archaeologist with experience in late Iron Age and early Roman sites, and I was also a guest curator at Verulamium Museum. Boudica was one of my focuses for that exhibition, which was all about stories of Iron Age and Roman women and artifacts that bring them to life.
So we have experts from all three cities that Boudica attacked. This is wonderful. I'm not sure anyone's attempted this before. It's going to be exciting. So first question, can we be sure that Boudica was a real person?
Lexi:
So we don't know 100% that she did. There's no grave or physical evidence for her, but we do have some ancient sources for her and from her and from the rebellions that she led.
OK, so the rebellion is definitely real. Boudica as a figurehead, probably real. Is that fair to say?
L:
I think that's fair to say, and we know about the rebellions from two Roman historians, Tacitus and Cassius Dio.
Ben:
So yeah, I was going to kind of mention the sources because the sources are really interesting, and I'm sure we'll go into much more depth on those throughout this. It's almost like a Robin Hood, isn't it? It's this idea that there's a person that's been created in the mythologizing of this event. And this event definitely happened because I'm sure as all three of us would say, the archaeological traces for that are there in each of our towns. So there definitely was something that happened around 60/61 with mass destruction in major Roman settlements in Britain. And this is the thing. Again, we're probably going to chat about the name a little bit of Boudica, and there is this thing around Boudica.
Is that definitely an actual person? Does Boudica just mean victory, which it kind of does in the language at the time? Is this just like a fictional character that's been created to lead this campaign that the Romans faced? And again, being a woman, does that make in the Roman kind of eyes something even more shocking to Roman audiences who are reading those the few people that might have read those texts? And of course, there would have been more texts that haven't survived. Reading Tacitus and Cassius Dio, they were likely influenced by other sources that haven't survived to this day. So is she this figure created by Roman authors to show how terrifying and wild and different Roman Britain was? Or was she an actual person who was there called Boudica? And we don't have an answer for that, sadly.
It would be the ultimate case of nominative determinism, wouldn't it? So we're talking about 60/61 CE, and we talk about Roman Britain. When does Roman Britain begin?
Kate:
See, I would very much argue that there is no date. You know, we can talk about the different comings and different dates and Caesar and then the 43 conquests. Those are nice, neat lines. But in terms of contact between the Iron Age Britons and the Roman Empire, that has been going on for much longer because Iron Age Britons weren't this little insular, isolated community. We can see that there are so many links across the continent in terms of trade, in terms of movement of people. And so that then wider contact with the empire, we can see that spreading and then doing what populations have done throughout time of movement of people, movement of ideas, movement of concepts. It's fluid. And so, yeah, I always push back upon that notion, right, we wake up, brand new day, here we are. We are now Romans. That's it. Iron Age is dead and gone and over. And it's also we know that Britain was divided. It wasn't one coherent whole. So neither can we talk about it as a pan-country sort of thing. Of bits definitely became more Roman than other bits. And that notion of the communities that were here that were British, they continue on, sometimes almost untouched by that Roman influence.
Assuming for the moment that Boudica is a real person, where in this area is she living?
Ben:
So from what we know, Boudica was the queen in inverted commas of the Iceni or Ikeni or however you want to pronounce them, the group of people that were living in what is modern-day Norfolk. Now there is a settlement that is in just outside of Norwich, Castus and Edmonds, which has Iron Age origins and was clearly a large significant settlement at that time. So it is highly likely that that was the settlement she lived in. And her people lived in, her family lived in, that was where this rebellion started. Sadly we don't have a Boudica was here graffiti on any of the buildings to know for certain, as is often the case with archaeology, we have to speculate a little. But given the textual sources and the archaeological evidence that's been found, it's likely that that was where she was. So rather than call her queen of the Britons, we're actually dealing with a geographical area with lots of different tribes. What are some of the other tribes that are perhaps close to the Iceni? So down in our neck of the woods, we've got the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes. They're the big tribes that are kind of Essex, London area pushing into some of the other home counties.
Again, obviously these tribal boundaries, we don't know for certain because they were never really drawn out. So we don't have maps that show where these tribes were. We just know where some of them were based roughly and Romans then speculated where these tribal boundaries were. Using the word tribe is a very modern sense. Were they tribes? Were they even coherent cultural groups of people? How do we define what they were? I know people who have discussed, do we even call Boudica a queen? Were kings and queens a thing at this time? We don't really know a huge amount. And it's because it is prehistory. So this is the time where we don't have the writings. So it's hard to really know what these different groups of people were like and where they specifically were. And a bit like modern day county borders. So I grew up on the border of Essex and London and depending who I spoke to, depending on whether I said I was from London or Essex. So I think possibly the same thing was happening back then as well.
K:
For administration purposes, people like a nice neat line on the map. And I don't know that that's how Iron Age Britons, especially later Iron Age Britons, really understood the land, understood the landscape. Because London always falls into a little bit of a gap if you look at the maps which try to plot out where these groups of communities were based and the extents of their power. And that's often drawing around the coin evidence. London just seems to be a bit of a black hole. We've got Kent and the Cantiaci that sort of come up. We've got the Trinavantas above, the Catuvellauni as well. And it just seems to be a little bit of a black hole which also feeds into that historical account of there was no London before the Romans. As a prehistorian, oh, there were definitely people living here occupying this land and understanding it. And the Thames was so important. And we've got so much important things that have gone into the river, including dead people, that it's not an empty landscape. But because we cannot ascribe, yes, this was the land of this group of people, it does make me wonder then about how separate the communities were and whether we've got in the landscape these big coming together places. We've got evidence of feasting and celebrations and trade and connection. We know about the movement of people. So I think this notion of a boundary, a border may have been more porous.
L:
I think this is where archaeology can be quite helpful actually, because there's evidence of sort of a difference of status in burials during the Iron Age period. And there's even evidence of women being considered higher status. There's evidence of a woman who was buried with a chariot, for example. There's evidence of high status objects like beautiful bronze mirrors, even weapons actually. So I think just to Ben's point about we don't know whether there were queens and maybe Boudica wasn't considered a queen within her own people. I think there's definitely evidence to suggest that there were hierarchies within the Iron Age. And perhaps the label king or queen isn't perhaps what they would have used themselves, but they definitely had powerful elites. I think that would be an acceptable way of describing it, definitely based on some of the excavation burial goods that have been found. That does give us an insight into how these people were living before Britain became part of the Roman Empire. So they were already living in hierarchical groups.
It wasn't that sort of it was a lovely utopia where everyone was equal, definitely not. We know that there were some people that had more power and more spending power as well because we find evidence of Roman imported goods. So to Kate's point about when does Romanization start and when does the Iron Age begin and end, there is this liminal space where there's influence from the Roman Empire and people within Iron Age Britain who have the money and power to import goods and export goods and unfortunately people too because there's evidence of enslavement. I think that's where archaeology can really, really help to bring some focus to that time.
K:
I think it's also, and I don't know if you want to get into this now whether this is a question for later, is around how we interpret and understand power and status and this notion of kings. The accounts that we do have, the written accounts are from that Roman lens which is coming from a patriarchal society delineated by rules and procedures and very ordered with military might making sure that their way wins essentially and that's what the Romans are reinforcing and that's what's been picked up in more recent history to reinforce this western priorities that focus around the accumulation of wealth, power which equals social status, this is what's good, this is what's desirable and we apply that lens to understanding history and it's only in the more recent years that we've really questioned and pushed back on on trying to find our notion of what our society looks like and can we see that in prehistory? Can we see that at different points in time? So yeah, Lexi's exactly right. We can absolutely see different people, different statuses in Iron Age society but also to pick up on that term of Romanization and that idea that in trading with the Roman Empire and making use of wine and olive oil and Samian pottery that they were taking on elements of Roman society as they were meant to be used I think in London with Harper Road woman burial we've definitely got evidence where those elements of Roman society are actually fitted into Iron Age life and standards and faith and beliefs and so they're taking something and very much not using it in the intended way but fitting it into their ideals which is interesting I think.
B:
Yeah, definitely. I think there's other evidence of that not just in Britain but in other parts of Europe too where elements of Roman living are taken on but blended with local customs particularly around religion and I think that's still but we know that that's still carried on even when Britain was technically part of the Roman Empire. I think that was very much the Roman way of colonizing and I use the colonizing word as well quite tentatively. They were very much about bringing people on board. They knew that they could control people better if they felt they had traces of their former life still in place and this is where you get those syncretic traditions those gods that are blended those practices that are clearly blended they're doing what they were doing before but with Roman things so it's sort of a way of assuring power within a recently conquered province but you do see it as Lexi says you do see it across the empire but you also see it later on it's not just at the beginning you see it last quite far into Roman occupation in Britain.
So let's talk about Boudica; when she's living in Iron Age Britain, what kind of buildings were people like her living in and what kind of settlements would she be living in?
L:
Again sort of from an archaeology point of view there wasn't much stone used in the Iron Age. There was stone and it was used but the day-to-day living when we're on Iron Age sites we find postholes that's what we find so we know that most of the buildings are made of timber and of clay as well unfortunately you know timber doesn't survive very well unless it's in water and so on site what we find are evidence of sometimes really large buildings and round houses as well so the style is timber and there is some evidence sometimes of stone being used but in terms of the types of buildings they were small most people were living in small round houses and then there are larger houses presumably and this is again a huge presumably because we don't know but the larger buildings we think they've been used communally or for people who were more wealthy and had more status and then in terms of the types of sites when we think of the Iron Age we often think of hillforts so these are heavily fortified sites in an elevated position presumably for defensive purposes they often have enormous ditches around them in fact that's reflected in the site that I'm based near now so the original Iron Age settlement in St Albans was called Verlamio, and it was on the ridge of a hill overlooking the valley - actually that site's not that dramatic geographically because Hertfordshire's not known for its hills or mountains - it's quite a flat place Hertfordshire! And obviously in other parts of the UK some of these Iron Age hillforts are really dramatic because they are quite elevated so that's my archaeology take from working on sites and thinking about sites but I'd be really interested to hear about what the others think.
B:
I wanted to touch on that idea of the hillforts because these are well the first in Britain the first really big scale clearly defensive structures that you start to see and it's not just about positioning and the strength of the defences they can be over quite a large area so here in Colchester the Iron Age settlement that was here before the Romans settled along the River Colne which is out towards Stanway-Lexton Way which is west of Colchester huge site, vast and that's all the ditches and the embankments and all of that periphery stuff that you create when you create a hillfort it's not just the settlement where the people are living it's how you adapt the landscape to fit your needs and Colchester and London and St Albans all had these quite significant fort sites near to them or at those sites before the Romans arrived, and that's what drew the Romans to them, is they set up their military presence close to those. Partly to keep an eye on them but also so that the Iron Age people knew that they were there they could see them just down the road in their own forts which were much smaller, but much more regimented and structured filled with thousands of soldiers. It's the scale of these things in the late Iron Age, especially in Europe there are some in Europe which are just phenomenal and we do have written accounts of these as well. The Romans do talk about these oppida, these large settlements in these places which were clearly heavily defended and fortified which tells us a lot about what was going on in the late (for us it's the late first century BC, early first century AD,) - what's going on in terms of social, political, military (if you want to call it military) life at that time, because clearly there was something happening.
So we've been given this narrative, particularly in… I'm thinking Asterix and Obelix… of Romans - cosmopolitan, massive cities, their legions, 'civilisation'... and then you have us, living in "mud huts", and I'm using that in air quotes, but that doesn't sound like it's a very accurate description?
K:
It's propaganda essentially, it is just lining things up ready for the Romans to bring their civilisation and their education. And if you look at the early Roman settlement in London, yes it smacks of that Roman order, but it's built from timber, it's built from earth and walls, thatched roof. They are rectangular structures as opposed to the Iron Age mainly circular structures, circular houses, the round houses, but in terms of building materials it's very similar technology-wise, and that speaks to what this bit of the country looks like. It's heavily wooded with the rivers that run through it, and it would have had the trackways and routes that connect the different communities as well. So the Romans were just coming and kind of like inserting themselves into that pre-existing landscape.
So what was it about the British Isles that interested the Romans? What did we have that they needed?
B:
Lead, resources, tin, silver, all the resources - physical resources, that was kind of a big thing.
So not necessarily culture?
B:
Well I don't think they came for the culture but they stayed for the culture. The Romans did, and even historians, some historians today, talk about this idea that the Iron Age was not… like the Romans brought art and culture to Britain. If anyone looks at any Iron Age metalwork, the quality and the beauty of those objects is stunning. There is no way you can say that the Iron Age people of Britain and bronze age to be honest there is no way you can say that these people did not have skill, or talent, or creativity, or any of those things, and we know that likely a lot of that performative culture, when we think of the wider arts as well, they did have that because they did have performance. They had something like a bardic tradition where people would sing stories and share things. The issue we have is a lot of this hasn't survived. The other thing that we think maybe would have existed is things like textiles. Textiles may have decorated these roundhouses and been beautifully decorated and created a real sense of opulence and decadence, and things like that, but because all we get as Lexi says is postholes, for a long time people thought well it's nothing there. It's just a load of wood.
L:
Yeah just to echo what Ben's saying the objects that we have found as archaeologists from the Iron Age are absolutely beautiful. A lot of the bronze mirrors were really sought after, even by the Romans, that had been made in this culture and this culture this sort of very highly stylized, often with animals and plants. It isn't just found in Britain - it's found across Europe within other cultures and tribes. So it's incredibly beautiful and is much more beautiful actually in some ways than some of the Roman objects you find, or Roman influenced objects. Also just on the textile point actually, when I was trying to find out about textiles that people might have worn particularly Boudica might have worn, there is some evidence from bog bodies. There's a bog body that was found in the 19th century in Jutland which is Denmark, and it's the Holdremose woman. One of the things that was found on this woman was that she was wearing a plaid material, which I suppose we could describe as some people called tartan, and there's evidence of colours, very bright colours being used that would look like yellow or orangey red and blue. And the blue is woad which we do know about because we know that the Romans talk about that being put on faces of Iron Age people. So there is evidence that bright colours were used in textiles. Also we know that fur was used and suede was used because this woman also was wearing a fur lined wool cloak, so there's this other evidence as well of other bog bodies being found and other textiles being preserved. So just thinking about culture again, there's definitely a culture of beauty and style and colour in the Iron Age.
So we're talking about eras aren't we, the move almost between 'Iron Age' to 'Roman Age', again those are in quotes, but it doesn't sound like one date, suddenly we all woke up Roman; it sounds like there was a long period of cultural interaction. Was that a dialogue that was mutually beneficial for both parties or is there a little bit of friction that we can see before 60/61?
K:
I think it definitely served Rome's purposes and this was a technique that's worked very well with them when acquiring new land and new resources, is to work with this notion of client kingdoms. And it just meant that they could spread their military forces out further, so relying on building these relationships, and there was the perceived benefit of 'you get to keep your land, you get to keep your power, but you are working under the Roman administration' and it almost seems it's a win-win situation. I think until you get to the situation where that client king dies, which leads us to the whole Boudica situation, but yes it's very much as long as you do things the Roman way, it feels beneficial for all - the problems come when you have that disagreement about how that actually works.
So that brings us neatly onto Boudica's husband, who is he? What's his name? What's his rank in Iron Age Britain?
K:
Oh the pronunciation is probably wrong based on I've mainly read this no one has heard this said but I don't even know how archaeologically we agree to say I'm gonna go with Prasutagus. He was in charge of the Iceni according to the Roman accounts, and Boudica was his wife/partner/significant other. He was the one that signed this agreement with Rome to be able to hold on to control of his lands for that mutually convenient arrangement. So yeah that's who he is, and then with his death, it was very much assumed that his intention was that half would go to Nero the emperor and that half would go to his daughters. It isn't documented that it goes to Boudica, but it is very much depending on how old those daughters are whether Boudica would have continued on in that leadership role until the daughters were of age. That we don't know, but it is the difference between the understanding of how power passes between what we know of the Iron Age Britons and how power passes for the Roman Empire. In the Roman Empire it's very much down the male line.
Women can't really hold power in the legal sense much fewer limited rights whereas it very much looks like with the strong matriarchal line in Iron Age society, that power transfers down the feminine line, and so it could well be of just the two different cultures and the two different perspectives that are not aligning that caused some of this friction.
So perhaps if Boudica had given birth to sons, we'd have a different situation?
K:
I don't know I think this was a very convenient way for Rome to always get control of the power of 'we'll set up this client kingdom, but ultimately when our arrangement is with you as an individual, and when you die it's all coming to Rome anyway.'
B:
When you think of the Roman style of political power passing on as well for the Romans, emperors anyway, that a lot of them (if not the majority) had adopted heirs as well, so this idea of heredity and going to your biological children if you die, that was also something the Romans were like 'ah maybe not, you know you need to pick the right person to rule' and if the right person didn't come along, then you know you'd pick your own right person from someone else who's around. So that's probably it as Kate says, even if Prasutagus had had sons they would have said 'yeah but they're not Roman enough, they probably should have someone else take control' and I think whatever happened they would have tried to seize power then.
L:
I agree. I think expediency is key to the Roman way of doing things. I was just going to mention as well, there's earlier evidence of conflict and displays of wealth and how people use power with another so-called Iron Age queen: Cartimandua. She doesn't sound like the nicest woman, but she's an earlier leader of the Brigantes who are a tribe in the north, over a really large area apparently, almost from one side of Britain to the other, and she actually is quite traitorous… offers up the former partner, I think, to the Romans. I think is very much influenced by wealth and power, again we don't know how much of this story is propaganda as well because we only know about it because of Tacitus, certainly power dynamics in Britain at the period just before, I mean even before Caesar's first incursion into Britain, there's obviously power dynamics and conflicts happening within the tribes of Britain, with the leaders as well. It's quite difficult as a modern woman, thinking about how gender might have played a role in the Iron Age or how maybe it didn't? Thinking about the Roman Empire and how things were done there and the importance there was whether you were a citizen or not, one of the things I found quite interesting when I was researching Boudica and was just trying to kind of take my own modern lenses off when I was thinking about power dynamics… it is quite interesting that Boudica doesn't emerge from a vacuum, as if there are no other powerful women before her. I see her more as in a kind of a movement of earlier power dynamics with quite strong women in the Iron Age, so yeah, I thought that was quite interesting just to think about.
K:
I think you are exactly right and I think you've made this point before that we need to not romanticize the past. It wasn't all lovely holding hands and skipping through the daisies. We know that Iron Age communities were violent, settled disputes, engaged in warfare, from the osteological evidence that we have in London. We've got human bones from men, women and teenagers, from children! All with cut marks on them that have come from bladed weapons as well as some trauma marks, and we know that they were engaged in the enslaving people, in captives and moving enslaved people around. I don't think it's black and white in this, 'these are the good guys, these are the bad guys'... everyone's got potential to do things in a different way to what we maybe think with our modern sensibilities.
So if Iron Age Britain isn't a monolith, it's not a singular group of people, is Rome treating each of these individual groups in a very similar way or are they adapting their approaches? Can we even tell if they're able to adapt their approaches depending on which leader they're talking to? Are they playing them off against each other?
L:
I think they are, I think there's evidence in the sources for individual approaches being made and alliances being made and alliances being broken, which in a way is also quite a modern way of doing things too. They're having to adapt to who they're dealing with and they're probably thinking 'who can we form an alliance with that's going to benefit us?' I think one thing we may be able to agree on is the fact that they're very pragmatic, we know what they want; they want power and they want control and so they're going to look to the easiest ways to do it. They're going to try and build relationships with the leaders, hence the client kingdoms or queendoms, so I think there's definitely evidence for that. Certainly in the sources, things being quite turbulent, which you can understand when you look at all the different tribes or kingdoms within Britain during that period of time.
With these tribes or kingdoms, whichever term we're using at the moment is it a fair assumption to say that they view themselves as allies of Rome? They're not really quick to pick up on the fact that they are now subjects of Rome?
L:
I think actually they do know what's going on because you know as Kate and Ben have mentioned before as well, that we know that there's been communication, discourse, trade with the empire for a really really long time pre any invasion. I don't think we should underestimate the intelligence of some of the leaders and some of these people in Iron Age Britain in these communities. Not everyone would know because some people are just trying to survive day to day, but yeah I think they would have known. I think one of the things that when you think about the past that we forget is personality and value. As now we have leaders who we maybe perceive have strong values that are good, and then they behave in a completely different way to the way that we thought they would, and then other leaders who maybe we're not so sure about but then in their actions they actually turn out to be looking after everyone much more, and I'm sure that's the case with the tribal leaders during the Iron Age as well. I think though that they would have understood what being part of Rome could mean, both the good and the bad, so the good maybe being perceived as some of the cultural, well so-called cultural things like heating, underfloor heating! And access to maybe a different way of life that some people might have really enjoyed, you know there's evidence certainly in Roman Verulamium that people were really enjoying living in their big villas. But obviously not everyone is wealthy, not everyone has access to that lifestyle, and then the downside obviously is that you have to suddenly start paying taxes in the form of maybe your wheat, your crops that you're growing. You have to give a certain percentage of those to the Roman Empire and there'll be other kinds of taxes as well and the way you live, the way you're governed, your laws - that all changes. So I guess leaders, because I know leaders must have just been weighing up some of them might have been thinking about their communities and thinking 'well how is this going to be good for us or bad for us, how should we play this?' and some of them probably a bit more selfish and just thought 'well is my family going to be wealthy? Great!'
K:
I think there's also a question of proximity as well so there were some communities that were closer to the front line as it were, and those communities that sort of like facing onto the Channel or the coast… it all feels a lot closer a lot more imminent than the communities that are out to the west Wales, northern Cornwall, who may well feel 'no we're quite good, this isn't a problem anywhere near our doorstep, thank you very much', but you also got to remember that one thing that they may have agreed to… The situation changed. So yeah, there was that level of taxation that may well have been agreed with, but it went up as well because at the time of Boudica, we've also got the uprising around Wales as well, and so a lot of the military forces were really focused on trying to repress that. That took money. At the same time that London is being set up with all the infrastructure; the ports being built, the roads are being built, the buildings all along it, so more money's needed for that as well. And then there's all the money that's going to the wider empire from Britannia, so you know of what may have started off as the agreement 'oh there'll be some taxes, it won't hurt that much', the ask is steadily growing more and more. And it rapidly becomes apparent it's not an 'ask'.
So I am presuming Prasutagus and his peers… the emperor at the time is Nero. I'm guessing they're not hopping on a boat and chatting to Nero every time they have a question or need clarification on something. So what is the Roman infrastructure for dealing with all of these tribal leaders in Roman Britain?
B:
So the Romans tended to set up camps near to the strategic places that they felt were important, especially in the early period. So Colchester for example was a really significant settlement in the Iron Age, towards the end of the Iron Age at least, and so they straight away went and put their Roman fort, their military outpost, very close to where the Iron Age settlement was. And it's this idea that the panopticon, that kind of 19th century thing with prisons, is this idea that you don't necessarily have to see the people in charge, but knowing that they're close by will make you act in a certain way. And so that's what the Romans were doing, they made sure their presence was everywhere, as we've said that Roman things were coming into the area long before the Roman occupation officially started, but they increased that. You see Roman coinage coming in, you see all these kinds of very Roman things, and of course with coinage you get the image of the emperor on the coins and that is a big way of showing who these people are in charge, and a constant reminder as you do your trading at markets or wherever that these people are the people who are in power, because they're the ones that you need to pass from hand to hand to get the things that you need. So yeah, it's a lot of threat with some action, (so again, before the Boudican event there were protests, there was rebellion, they would have been pushing back,) and then that happens for the whole 400 years that the Romans are here, to be honest! There's constant rebellion, constant pushback sometimes even from people who consider themselves to be Roman! But that's the Roman approach, is that if you have a military presence, the idea is that the soldiers being close by will be enough to deter people from rebelling.
L:
They loved their administration as well, didn't they! And they I divided some of the tribal areas into civetates, so these units that they could then control and collect taxes through. We also see power in stone as well, so there are monuments to various other procurators and to emperors that we find on sites. It's just reminding the local population 'this is what you're part of, you're part of a much bigger empire, we like to run it in a particular way.' So they'll have known the names of the people that were allegedly controlling them, the procurators and people like that.
So when Prasutagus dies and he's supposedly split his will in half - half to Nero, half to his daughters - Rome decides' no, we're having it all.' Is that what we would use as an example of the 'ask' is getting bigger and that Boudica wouldn't have expected that Roman response?
K:
My reading of the situation is that the Roman soldiers, when Prasutagus died, the Roman soldiers pretty much moved in to seize the land and so Boudica moved to protect her daughter's inheritance, perhaps to protect her people, to protect her land. But it's also the reaction to the steadily increasing rising in taxation and just that that Roman forceful control.
So we're told in the sources that when Boudica is protesting about the will, the Romans pillage her land, she is flogged in front of her people, and her daughters are sexually assaulted. Now this comes from Roman sources. Do we have any sources from Britons at this time?
K:
I don't know about sources, but it is about controlling women, and the male form of controlling women, and public humiliation and asserting dominance, and to make a show of it to try to prevent anyone else from thinking about doing similar. So it was very much a question of force and show, and I think in that Roman way they utterly underestimated Boudica, and the outrage, the deep deep anger that would be felt that was sort of like an accumulation of not just what happened in the Iceni land, but also the wider picture and what's going on along the Welsh communities as well, that are revolting against this. This isn't just something… it's not a one-off occasion. It is all indicative of something much bigger that's going on.
L:
There's evidence in Roman triumphal arches and monuments of so-called barbarians being trampled underfoot or being conquered as prisoners and kept as enslaved individuals. So that's a common narrative certainly I think.
K:Coins as well.
B:
Yes and we have that in Colchester as well, one of the things this is of course slightly and actually this would have been before, this is before the Boudican attack, and kind of that whole event, is that you have lining most Roman towns you have the cemeteries and in those cemeteries you have tombstones, and one very common theme within tombstones is the Roman soldier or cavalry person trampling the barbarian. We have that here in Colchester: Longinus Stapesi who himself is a migrant (would have been from Bulgaria) - in his tombstone there is an image of him on his horse and underneath is this trampled 'barbarian' - in air quotes - figure, and walking, as an indigenous person, walking past these Roman settlements and seeing your people being subjugated in the funerary iconography that you would see everywhere, that all certainly have an effect on you.
So it doesn't sound like in art, in the literature, it doesn't sound like the Romans are ashamed at all of the way that they're treating the indigenous population, they're actually quite proud of their foreign policy?
K:
It's all framing in the language that they use, about how Boudica is physically described, how Britons are described, the use of the term barbarian as well. These writings are a form of documenting history and events, but it's propaganda, it's entertainment, and I don't think there is any, at least not at the high level, of there is no… qualms about the method to get to being in control. Yeah, I think the emperor downwards it's all very ruthless.
B:
I think we also have to remember with especially with Tacitus it's who Tacitus was and why he was writing because he was the son-in-law of Agricola, who he's basically writing about, and it's an entire, it's this entire thing. Clearly there's a lot of really important historical information in this, and we can learn a lot about what happened, it's very much showing how great his father-in-law was that's how it's written, because he was the savior of this whole event!
K:
It's also not written at the time it's what, 50 years afterwards?
B:
Decades later.
L:
Decades afterwards, yeah.
B:
And Cassius Dio is almost a century, isn't it?
L: It's a long time afterwards, so yeah.
B:
It's kind of the thing with these sources, is that there would have been other sources about Boudica at the time. We know that from some of the things Cassius Dio mentions later on, that isn't mentioned in Tacitus, obviously Cassius Dio would have got that from somewhere because certainly, he wasn't present nor would have known anyone present at the Boudican attack, unlike Tacitus. So these things would have passed down the line and been written but sadly didn't make it to us today, and we are limited to these three sources: two from Tacitus and one from Cassius Dio, all of which are biased and have that Roman lens, and all these other things just to make it even more difficult for us to know for certain who Boudica was and what happened and why, although it does seem like a lot of what was written given other events from Roman history, it's likely that that is quite accurate. The Romans did love to humiliate people who dared to try and oppose their way of life and especially had horrific views about women and their ability to rule and their position within society, so whether it is true or not? It wouldn't be surprising if everything in those texts was true.
L:
Would it be helpful to read out the translation of Cassius Dio's description of Boudica?
Yes please!
L:
In stature she was very tall in appearance most terrifying in the glance of her eye most fierce and her voice was harsh a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips around her neck was a large golden necklace and she wore a tunic of diverse colors over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch this was her invariable attire she now grasped a spear to aid her in terrifying all beholders.
I mean it's a vivid description isn't it?
L:
Yeah
B:Sounds great!
It does it also sounds the complete opposite of the traditional Roman matron…
L:
Yep Yes I think that's the whole point isn't it! Well it was meant to be sensational wasn't it in this description.
B:
And I don't know how many Romans got close enough to see the fierce glint in her eye… So you know the fact that that was recorded and passed down, I think that might be a little bit… I mean I'm not saying she didn't, but you know the accuracy of it is a bit questionable isn't it.
K:
It's also meant to other her, and maybe you know of in the translation, the reference to tawny hair is translated as the red hair, but it's interesting in one of the books that I was reading is referencing Cleopatra as well, who whilst predates Boudica, she would have been within living memory of the Romans and it's rumored that she had red hair as well. So we've got a history of other strong women across the continent, across Africa as well, that are coming into contact with the Roman Empire… of these strong powerful women: warriors, mothers, lovers… it's the complete package that doesn't quite fit into the Roman neat idea of a woman's role in society.
L:
Yeah and I think interesting, sorry to go back to that tiny point about color of hair, I think the original word was xanthi which can mean also yellow or it can be… xanthos can be a range of colors: gold, yellow, reddish yellow and it's been used to describe the substance gold, sand and lions as well apparently, so it could suggest sort of like a rich fiery yellow or a light brown color with red tones, but I think that is that whole point that you said at the beginning that it's it's all about othering these individuals, these women, and I think in other texts about the Celtic (well I hate using the word Celtic) but the tribes in Britain and in Europe, the non-Roman tribes were… they're often described as having golden hair or red hair as well.
B:
I would love to go into linguistic discussion in going deep dive into the different kind of words used throughout both Tacitus and Cassius Dio… I will say I can read Latin, I can't read ancient Greek, and it's important also to say Cassius Dio is written in Greek. So that's where there's also this other difference, and the Greeks were the ones who described the sea as 'wine dark', so you know in terms of describing color, they're not the best necessarily to go for accuracy! Although of course that was early, early Greek writing, not later Greek writing, but still I think language is a really important one - this is another thing that influences our modern understanding of who Boudica was and what happened, is because of different translations that have happened throughout history, and of course the whole thing around her name as well is potentially either a mistranslation or mistransliteration, or kind of transferring of… I mean people have created the story of a monk getting some spelling wrong but it could have been anyone! And we didn't really have standardized spelling in the English language until much later in history, so people would have been spelling words as they heard them, and people still do that today. Sometimes you see on social media, the way people write, people will spell things out the way they hear it without really thinking about how it should be 'should be' in air quotes spelt according to the dictionary definitions and things like that. Language is another factor in our kind of mythologizing of Boudica I think.
K:
I think there's a slight rabbit hole is also the question of we know from the Roman accounts that woad would use painting skin, hair was spiked up using lime so it got to be white spiky and hard… is it possible that Boudica may have changed the color of her hair for battle? To make herself look more fearsome, more identifiable on a battlefield in her chariot, you know we very much think that modifying our appearance in that way of tattoos, dying hair, makeup is a modern thing. Oh no, oh we've been playing around with that for a very long time.
L:
I agree with that. I think there's evidence, certainly in grave goods, these beautiful mirrors… why would you be even own a mirror if you're not interested in looking at yourself, modifying potentially how you look, but not maybe for the reasons people might do it now? There's evidence in the sources for the woad being painted on and the hair being, like you said, Kate, being sort of spiked up with lime. I think there's evidence of it being used to not just for war, to look more aggressive and frightening, but also maybe as a sort of distinctive tribal cultural identity - 'we belong to that people, from that part of the country, and this is how we like to look.'
K:
We know the brooches may well have been used in that way, so I think it entirely maps that appearance may be as well. On the question of mirrors, I've done a bit of a deep dive into mirrors because of the one included in the Harper Road burial. Yes, for appearance, but also they're powerful objects because you can manipulate light with them and so you can use it to reflect light into dark places, there's also the potential to scry with them, to use it in magic and divination. Mirrors are strongly associated with female graves, not necessarily for the appearance aspect, you know again as centering women and beauty, but also about it's about power and the ability to communicate with, maybe see the future, maybe communicate with the dead. The Iron Age Britons had a huge world that extended beyond the physical literal, we can see that in their treatment of the dead, so you know I think there's a lot to it, definitely.
So we've talked about Boudica's appearance, and how the Romans might have thought about it compared to how she and her peers might have thought about it, now let's talk about her thoughts. And of course, we have to rely on Romans again for this. Tacitus doesn't go as much into it as Cassius Dio, who gives her a big speech where she conveniently spells out her motivations. What does Cassius Dio say about her motivations and can we see that this is just a Roman trying to make her look worse, or is he trying to potentially consider her real motivations?
L (reading Dio):
You have learned by actual experience how different freedom is from slavery, hence although some among you may previously (through ignorance of which was better) have been deceived by the alluring promises of the Romans, yet now that you've tried both, you have learned how great a mistake you made in preferring an imported despotism to your ancestral mode of life, and you've come to realize how much better is poverty with no master than wealth with slavery. For what treatment is there of the most shameful or grievous sort that we have not suffered ever since these men made their appearance in Britain? Have we not been robbed entirely of most of our possessions, and those the greatest while for those that remain we pay taxes besides pasturing and tilling for them all our other possessions? Do we not pay a yearly tribute for our very bodies? How much better it would be to have been sold to masters once for all, than possessing empty titles of freedom to have to ransom ourselves every year. How much better to have been slain and to have perished than to go about with a tax on our heads. Yet why do I mention death, for even dying is not free of cost with them? Nay, you know what fees we deposit even for our dead, among the rest of mankind, death frees even those who are in slavery to others. Only in the case of the Romans did the very dead remain alive for their profit.
L:
I don't think he likes tax men does he?
It certainly sounds like he's making it clear he thinks Boudica has a bit of a point.
L:
Does anyone else agree that he's also grinding his own axe in this?
B:
I think so and I think that was quite a common thing for, again I know we're saying he's writing in Greek, but he's still a Roman writer, and writing in the time and the culture of the Romans, and there was a tradition for a lot of Roman writers to put their own thoughts and feelings into their writings. Even historical accounts, they will adapt and make it to show their own personal gripes and things, so it's spot on for a bit of Roman writing.
So we know what Cassius Dio is saying about her motivations. Do they match up with what we think might have been her real motivations?
L:
Somewhat actually, somewhat, because he puts these words in her mouth. He says 'but to speak the plain truth, it is we who have made ourselves responsible for all these evils, we allowed them to set foot on the island in the first place instead of expelling them as we did with Julius Caesar, and in that we did not deal with them while they were still far away as we dealt with Augustus and with Gaius Caligula.'
In the sense that if we accept that it may have been true that there was this deal done with her husband, with the king, to come to some sort of agreement with the Romans and try and live in peace (albeit having to pay taxes) then that is all blown up when Prasutagus dies. The Romans, they basically want to take over and not allow her and her daughters to to rule as partners, in that sense you could say that these words do echo that, but he's glowing everything up, he's exaggerating everything. She's basically… It's like a dramatic theatrical, almost Shakespearean. It's like a Shakespearean speech that he puts in her mouth, actually, I think, that's what it reminds me of a bit.
So are we as historians ever going to be able to work out what she thought and what she wanted?
B:
I think a lot of that is true, as Lexi says. I'm certain the taxes and the Roman control and all that was probably a big part of her frustrations, but again the catalyst is of course the raping of her daughters and the beating of her, I think, because there are undoubtedly cases in history where you have kind of tax disputes and trade disputes and people argue, and sometimes it can lead to war, but I think in this instance this is very clearly the response of a person who has been pushed to the absolute emotional, mental limit because of what they've had to suffer through, what their families had to suffer through.
And the sheer level of destruction that she puts on Colchester, London, St Albans, and possibly other places (there are conversations of burning and destruction in other parts of the country at this time, whether that's her or people inspired by her we don't know,) but this was widespread. This was so destructive, the fact that we have this 'destruction horizon' in the archaeological layers of each of these towns, because plenty of other towns have been destroyed historically, some by natural causes, some by human conflicts and war, but it was just so thorough and so damaging.
L:
And she would have known what she was taking on. She would have known already how brutal the Roman army can be in Britain because she would have known about what happened with Cartimandua, and how she was rescued by the Roman army and how the rebellions were quashed brutally. I think it must have been something personal to her and her family to basically risk everything, really wasn't she, she was putting everything on the line.
B:
She had nothing to lose.
L:
She had nothing to lose, no that's the feeling I get, she had nothing… well I think it's there, isn't it? That she had nothing to lose. To go up against the Roman army is huge, isn't it really? When you think about it, she would have seen what had happened to other people who went up against the Roman army, so yeah I agree with you Ben, I think it was personal.
K:
It was also powerful messaging of in terms of the selected targets. It's two cities) and London wasn't a city yet,) but London was utterly associated with the Roman lifestyle, the Roman goods, the soldiers, it was a British version of Rome in a way of that was being built there, so it was strategic. It was a selection. What we can see in London is that we've got that burnt layer that Ben was just mentioning and the massacre of the people that remained within it of everyone that was able, left and then Tacitus describes them as being 'those that are frail by sex, by age, or who don't want to leave their home,' they're the only people who stay, and they are utterly massacred. And it's burnt except for the roundhouses. There are roundhouses that are in the London area, that are near the River Walbrook and in Southwark as well, that are not burned, so it isn't just 'I will set fire to everything', there is still the selection. The choice.
So we're pushing it back against the narrative that she's a silly little woman who doesn't realise that she's biting off more than she can chew, she knows what she's going up against ,she knows that maybe the Iceni aren't able to do it by themselves, and we're told that she unites some of the neighbouring tribes. Do we know who she's uniting with against the Romans?
L:
The Trinovantes, who were a neighbouring tribe. She's not able to persuade the Catuvellauni; they have a documented path of being quite Roman-friendly and being a client kingdom. That would explain also why Verulamium becomes one of the one of the main targets as well. Trinovantes is more your way, Ben.
B:
Yeah, and that's because of proximity, I guess. We said Boudica comes from the area that's now Norfolk, and so if you're going to head towards the nearest Roman big important settlement Camulodunum, Colchester. That is the place to head to, and that is where the Trinovantes were. And the Trinovantes had had a horrible time as well, this is the thing. It wasn't just the Iceni who had suffered under the Romans. We know the construction of the town here in Colchester involved the enslaved people from the local area, so people who resisted the Romans were enslaved and forced to build within their own homeland, essentially, which is a horrific thing to have to suffer through. So they were already fed up… and I mean that's a very minimal way to put it, but they hated the Romans too, and so they were an easy group of people to win over for Boudica and of course as she then traveled down, she would pick up bands, groups mini armies of people to gather together to reinforce her numbers as she headed to Colchester. And the other thing to kind of mention at this point I guess, she was lucky she did so well in that the big vast majority of the Roman army at this time were not in the area. They were up in the northwest of Wales, supposedly fighting the Druids or however it's described, fighting some people up in northwest Wales on the island of Mona. So Boudica's army is gathering momentum and actually this is the perfect time, because even if she was acting spontaneously and was like 'right I've had enough, let's go kill the Romans,' the Roman army was basically not really around Colchester, London, St Albans… they had a very minimal military presence in Colchester, it's believed that they kind of just fled as they knew this was coming along. The civilians stayed and hid within the town, we know someone was sent off to the the governor who was I think in London at the time, to go and mention 'oh there might be an army coming, we should probably do something.'
K:
But they also sent 200 up [from London to Colchester] for help, and it was only 200 that they were able to send, which seems like it's probably the personal guard for the procurator who's in London at the time. I'm not sure if the governor's there.
L:
I think it's probably not too much of a stretch to think that Boudica would have had people loyal to her that would have been probably acting as military spies, and would have known that most of the Roman army were in Anglesey. I think that may have been a plan coinciding with what happened, also actually 'let's do this because the army are not nearby.' She wasn't stupid, was she? We know she wouldn't have risked it otherwise, it would have been absolutely suicidal attempt, wouldn't it? If they'd been nearby.
So we're going to end this episode on a bit of a cliffhanger. We understand why Boudica's angry, next week come back for Part Two of this episode, where we see that anger unleashed.
Ben, Kate, Lexi and I will be talking about exactly how Boudica destroyed three cities, how the Romans responded, and how Boudica met her end, but we're also going to be talking about the afterlives of Boudica in history books, in legends, in pop culture.