Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Who Really Was Boudica?

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

She's the warrior queen who took on the mighty Roman Empire, but who really was Boudica?Separating facts from the myths we've read can be tricky, but thankfully Kate is joined by the wonderful Emma Southon, author of A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women, to find out the truth and explore our most reliable sources.What happened when Boudica launched a surprise attack on the Roman headquarters in England? What is her legacy? And why has her story come in and out of favour through the ages?This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. How are you doing? I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. But before we can continue with this show, I have to give you the fair dues warning. And here it is.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. And if you can't take every single one of those boxes, get out now, run away while you still can. and for the rest of you, let's do this. Oh, hello, betwixters. You are probably wondering why I have asked you to meet me here on Platform 10 at King's Cross.

No, no, no, no, we're not here to queue for the Harry Potter photo opportunity. We're here because rumour has it that the first century warrior queen who stood up to a Roman army is buried right here below our feet in central London. She was a formidable figure by all accounts, and while there's plenty of myth around her life for us to unpick, including where she might be buried, Budika is someone who inspires us to this very day. Which is absolutely something for you to consider while you sat in Prettamonga, waiting for your train. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my voice needs. by just turning enough and pushing the body. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society.

With me, Kay Lister. Whether you know her as Budaica or Bodicea, whether she's buried under Kings Cross Station or checks notes, Stonehenge, her legacy is a powerful one. How much do we actually know? know about this incredible woman's life. What does it tell us about how we view women throughout history? And why has there been so much fuss around how you pronounce a name? Well, today I am

joined once again by the glorious Emma Southern, author of History of the Roman Empire and 21 women to find out more. Chariots at the ready, betwixters. Let's do this. Hello and welcome back to But Twix the Sheets. It's one of our most favorites. It's only Emma Southern. How are you doing? I am delighted because I'm back. It's a new year. I'm back on betwixt the sheets. How better could I start 2024? Well, talking about Boudicca, that's what we're doing. That's a pretty epic start to 2020. It is. And any time I'm talking about Boudicca, I'm happy. You know, I used to think that until, because I told my dad that I was talking to you about Boudicca and you I went, have you watched that new Budica film?

And so I was like, there's a new Budica film? And you went, yeah, you should definitely watch it. Yeah, the Netflix one. It's on Netflix, Kate, is dead good. And I duly watched it. And then I texted me, like, what the shit was that? And he's like, ah, ha, ha, ha. It was wank.

Troll by your own father. For my own dad, who deliberately set me up. Because I was thinking, oh my God, there's like a new Budica biopic. I should watch this. And then I, no hate to anyone. involved, sure they all work very, very hard on it. But yeah, I wasn't particularly... I don't think Budica herself would have been particularly chuffed with that one.

I haven't worked up the courage to watch it yet and you're not selling it. Eventually I will. Give it a swerve, I think. But you know what's kind of weird about that? You would think that Budica's life, or at least the myth that's around her, somebody would have made an absolutely knockout film by now. And there just isn't one, really. No, she gets stuck in all these myths as the problem.

I mean, most of what we know about her is quite mythy because we know loads about approximately a two-year period and absolutely nothing about the before and after that two-year period. But you could make a good one just about that period. But she gets, there's so many kind of myths and misconceptions about what early Roman Britain looked like and what the Isini were that most of attempts to tell her story get kind of lost in those as an imagining

them as kind of terrible mud people who could barely tie shoelaces, let alone lead a organised rebellion against the great empire. All right, so we should probably start with the absolute basic page one introduction to Budica. Who was she? Who is this person? So Budica is generally called a queen, a kind of high-level leading elite woman in the Isini people, who are a people that live in kind of East Anglia area, North Africa. basically. She's from Norfolk. So you can imagine her with a Norfolk accent, which is fun. And she basically on that kind of fen edge area and they are a client kingship of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Roman colonisation of Britain. So they are one of the peoples that they don't fight the Romans when the Romans turn up. So the Romans have turned up officially in 43 CE with Claudius and have subjugated everybody with the sheer overwhelming power of their

terrifying army. And the Isini at first are like, okay, fine, we'll do you a client kingship deal, which is that we promise not to rebel against you and we will pay taxes and tribute and you promise not to murder us all and we'll all be happy. And that seems to be going all right for about 15 years, like during the bit we assume that Budica is growing up, because we don't know how old she is. She could do anything between like 18 and 65. But she grows up in a period where she's basically leaving the Romans alone. The Romans are 98% leaving the Isini alone and they're living a relatively happy life,

making bronzes and being really obsessed with horses. Nice. Was this quite a common Roman deal then when they were doing their colonising and their empire building, was they would just sort of turn up and go, look lads, like look at all the shit that we've got. There are fucking loads of us, by the way. I don't think that you're going to be able to win this. Why don't we just strike up a little deal here?

Was that quite common? Basically, yeah. And so, like, the invasion of Britain and an invasion of a lot of places is that they would turn up. There'd be like, yeah, there's loads of us. We've got terrifying war implements and loads of armour, and you do not seem to have any of those things. So, what do you do?

We won't slaughter you, because that's very, you know, that's a bother. And we'll do you in exchange. You pay us to leave you alone. We'll take some hostages. We'll agree. And then eventually later, they would usually crush them horribly because what happened was that the Romans would usually then start behaving as though they owned the land anyway,

which is what happens with Budica. So because they're, that's a nice way of saying it, bastards, they, it's the politest way of putting it. they will basically trigger rebellions repeatedly across the whole empire by just acting like they own the place and like they're better than everybody else. And like the people that they are living alongside are not their equal partners in the ruling of this land, but actually peasants that they can crush into oblivion and treat as however they want, which is what they do. And that's usually what triggers a rebellion in any given place. At one point they trigger a

rebellion in Judea because a Roman soldier marches into the second temple during Passover and farts on someone. Oh dear. See, that, it's just silly that, isn't it? It's just a really stupid reason to start a rebellion, and it's just because Roman soldiers were not fun people. I guess it's like the old protection racket, isn't it? It's just they basically turn up and say, give us money and we won't kill you, basically. We won't kill you, yeah, and we do also expect you. We are going to turn up and then force you to, like, feed us. And we're going to be absolute dicks. And we're going to push over your stuff often. Yeah.

And we're going to be really awful every time we turn up to take our money. Because, see, when you said that, I thought that's actually quite sensible. Because you get this sort of this heroic myth of the Celts that, you know, that they fought tooth and nail. And, you know, like the whole, you know, going into Scotland, the braveheart thing of like, no, you will not take our freedom. I quite like the idea of them going, yeah, actually, no, that's fine, lads. If you want to run this, not a problem. We will just, we just won't have a fight, not a problem. If you want that bit, we'll have this bit and everybody will be happy.

That's what the Romans sell people. That or, you know, and we won't crush you. But then it never, ever really works out of the way. So they're doing this in Britain, which at the time was a lot of different kingdoms ruled by different groups of people who seem to be, they spend as much time rowing with each other as they do with various invading people. Yeah. What, because I know that when we're talking about Celtic Britain in particular,

sources are really thin on the ground because they didn't, like, Budica wasn't writing a diary that we've still got. There wasn't any kind of first-hand accounts. What we've got is mostly the Romans writing about them. But could you like try and sort of paint a picture of what this culture was like, or the Aisini people in particular? Like, what would Budaika have been growing up? What would her life have been like?

So what we do have very easily is a lot of archaeology. I've almost forgotten about them, the archaeologist, sorry. Yeah. I forget about it too, because the idea of being in a trench is horrifying. Yeah, but God bless him, other people don't mind trenches, so they dig stuff up and tell me about it, it's brilliant. So the archaeology of the Isini shows a culture which is largely homesteads. So it's a really fun thing in archaeology,

where you can always tell where Roman influences really take. over because corners become a thing in houses. Like everybody's building round houses and then the Romans come and start building rectangles. So they're kind of very into round houses. Okay. These newfangled corners come in later. Newfangled corners. They seem to be highly decentralized. So they don't really seem to have like an elite person in the center particularly. They potentially have a leader, but it's not like there's one big house and lots of little houses. Everybody's living in largely the same size of kind of house. They're farming. they're seemingly lacking in a particular social hierarchy.

There's a quote from one of the academics who studies the ICNia and it calls the settlements in a splurgy pattern. So they're just kind of everywhere. There's just houses all over the show. It's more of a commune than a kingdom. Yeah, basically. And they don't seem to be particularly, like, there's none of the warrior burials that you get further up north.

So, like, those big chariot burials are all from Yorkshire. They seem to be pretty chill, to be honest. They are really into horses. So on all of their artwork, they're really into bronze work. So there's lots of horses on their bronze work. And they have lots of, they would decorate their horses with lots of beautiful buckles and things like that. But for the most part, they seem to be living their life, doing farming, doing highly skilled metal work, living in their roundhouses. They do, unlike other places in the south of England, so there are places like St. Orban's, for example, and very,

various other places down in Sussex and Kent that get really into corners and importing Roman and continental pottery. And they don't seem to be that massively into it. They're very into round things and their own pottery. But they just seem to be doing their own thing, living pretty chill, not that hierarchical. One of the interesting things about pre-Roman Britain before they have any contact with the Britons is that they don't seem to be that hierarchical. And then they come in contact with the Britons. And Julia Caesar turns up and says, I'm not talking to all you. pick one guy and he's going to be in charge of you and basically forces hierarchy on the people

of southern Britain and so that one guy then becomes the person who talks to the Romans and then he then becomes then the Romans just call him their king so the idea of having a king is really a function of talking to the Romans which is really funny because even how much they hate kings I'd never heard that before so that's how Boudicabedha broke up yeah Would they have called themselves the Issenia? Was that a Roman name for them? Do we know what they called themselves? That's a Roman name for them.

As far as we know, like everything is just a Roman name and they're not that consistent with what they call people. But they would make up a name for somebody either based on where they are or the first person that they talked to or somebody said. It's just, it's a bit slapdash. You can be the king. They are quite slapdash. It's just a guy going to go, I'm not the king.

I'm just a messenger I was just standing here and the Romans come in and kind of impose what they think they see and then and then go home again and leave the chaos behind them

but yeah so Budica's life basically is one either where the Romans just showed up and they sent some representatives and said okay fine we'll be clients of the empire just leave us alone

or she was born into that world but she was probably already alive when they signed up to the idea. And then she's married to Prasoturgus, who is the king, the chief, the head guy, and has two children. And then everything goes horribly wrong. So she's basically grown up in an occupation, I suppose that we could say an occupied land.

She gets married, she has some kids. What goes wrong? Okay, so there's two versions of what goes wrong. There's the version that everybody kind of knows, and there's the less sexy version because it's about taxes. So the unsexy version, not that the other version is sexy, but it's the more narratively interesting, I suppose, is that when the Romans turn up, the other thing they do is lend money to everybody and give money to everybody. And when Claudius, the emperor, the Roman governor and Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, said, oh, actually, remember all that money we gave you, we would like it back immediately and demanded hundreds of thousands of Sesterces back from. people who had spent it on building stuff.

And then they also took loads of weaponry. So they took their weapons from them. So what you have at this point is, Seneca sends what are basically Pinkerton's, like bailiffs round to all of the British tribes to beat people up until they pay him, which is something that people don't talk about when they talk about stochism.

And they've also, because there's been a rebellion somewhere else, they take away all their weapons. So they basically emasculate them and impoverish them and then force them to pay loads of taxes on top of that, which is very stressful. And at the same time, they're building Colchester and basically treating everybody in the area like unpaid labor or enslaved people

and as if they're not people at all and kicking them off their land and basically acting like colonial, imperialist occupiers of a land, like stealing it, treating people as though they're not human, and taking away all of their dignity. The other version is the version that Tacitus tells, which is basically a metaphorical version of that, which is that Budaker's husband dies. He leaves his kingdom, quote, unquote, to his daughters,

and the Roman soldiers turn up and beat Budaqa, rape her daughters, and take all of the land and kick them all of it off. I think it's a metaphor for Lucretia, basically saying that they're tyrannical and even the women aren't safe from being colonized by the Romans. It's a grittier version, isn't it? And if you were going to make a film, you'd probably go with that one, than people being angry at tax administration. Yeah, it's real hard to make. As we know from the beginning of that first Star Wars film, it's real hard to make tax and trade particularly narratively exciting.

So unsurprisingly, people usually go with the slightly more violent one. And it's more kind of emotionally, you know, you can see why Tacitus went with it because your immediate reaction is, God, that's awful. And then they force them to pay back loads of money doesn't really have the same shock value. When it comes to sources, so you've got Tacitus who's writing about it. I'm not sure who the other person is, but how reliable are they?

Were they in Britain? Had they visited Britain? Is there a chance that this could just be just a story that maybe it was just invented by Tacitus? He was just a bit bored. So it definitely happens. It definitely turns up in a bunch of sources. So definitely happened. She definitely existed.

Tacitus is writing about 60 years later, 50 years later. But his father-in-law was in Britain, was the governor of Britain, and fought in this war against Budaqa as a soldier. So he does have at least a first-hand source. And him and his father-in-law are like besties. So he gets a lot from his father-in-law. So he does at least have a connection to Britain. Daya is writing about 150 years after that.

So he's almost 200 years later and has less of a connection. So it's from Dio's more kind of fictional version that we get the image of Boudicca that everybody knows so that picture of her that everybody has in the head that's on the statue with the flowing hair and the massive sword and the flowing cloak and that she's got a scary voice and is giant like a man.

That's from Dio. So he embellishes in a more fictionalized fashion. But effectively what you get is when you get down to the bare bones of the story that they both tell it is that there was a a woman called Budica. She rebelled because the Romans were awful. She did a lot of damage and scared them quite badly, but they were able to beat her and then she died. Right. Okay. So we're kind of tracking along a sort of a similar narrative with just additional bits, I suppose, being added by different authors. Did she have red hair? Whose idea was that? Why do we think of us

having red hair? I'd say that's actually from the time of Elizabeth the first. First. Oh, right. So she has lion-colored hair in Buda-so, so like dark blonde hair in Dio, sorry. And then Tacitus and Dio and those ancient sources are rediscovered during the Italian Renaissance, which kind of overlaps eventually with the version, they're first translated into English during Elizabeth's the first reign. And so the idea of a British queen standing boldly against foreign invaders has some 90s. parallels with Elizabeth and Spain and so they kind of make her, her tawny hair suddenly becomes very

red. Right. That's a good PR spin. Props to the Elizabethan marketing team there. That was very good. It is. And then when Victoria gets into her, she suddenly, they start emphasising her motherhood which is why her children are on that Victorian statue.

They're very good at PR. So what about her name? Because I'm sure she's been called Bodice. And now it's Boudicca. What happened? That is actually the same thing, which is during those first translations in the Elizabethan period during the Tudors, it was mis-transliterated. So from the original, there's two Cs in the version of Tacitus that we have. And somebody wrote it as B-O-U-D-I-C-E-A.

It's not helped in Dio. She's called Woddica with a U, which is not very helpful. But basically that's how it ended up in English as Bodicea. And then eventually, after about 400 years of people saying, that's not a C, that's not an E, it's a C, it trickled down into people catching. Oh, she just has been so pissed off. All right, okay. So, Budica, something happens. We're not quite sure what happens.

Like this narrative around she was beaten up publicly and her daughters were like sexually assaulted by loads of Romans. soldiers. Is there any kind of parallel for that? Would that have been like a normal Roman? I mean, I know that they were vicious bastards and we've had you on the podcast before to tell us just how vicious they were. So they could certainly come up with that if they wanted to. But would that, from the kind of research that you've done, would that be in line with like a dispute around inheritance rights as a punishment? Not as dispute around inheritance rights unless it would, but it would be as a weapon of war. A weapon of war. Right. And yeah, you know, it always has been there are people that do research into rape as a weapon of war.

And also like one of the problems weirdly and horribly that Tacitus has with Budacca is that she doesn't take slaves. She just kills people. And it's very much a weapon of enslavement as well. Sexual violence as a way to dehumanize is something that the Romans definitely do. So if they were approaching it as a hostile takeover, basically, of the kingdom and taking the area and they didn't play. on leaving people, then absolutely that is something they would do. We'll be back with Emma and Budica after this short break. Do you have any idea who her daughters were?

They're named anywhere? They are not. They don't fight the Romans. So they don't get a name. You have to do something quite extraordinary. Yeah, to be a woman with a name in Roman source. Yeah, and even then we'll probably get your name wrong. And yeah, we'll spell it nine different ways.

Yeah. Oh, right. Okay, okay. So something happens. Looks like a husband's dead. then what happens? Like what kind of time period is this and what do the sources tell us happened? So this is 5960 and what she does is builds a coalition of peoples in southern England, certainly including at least the big tribes in kind of Cambridgeshire and Essex.

And she marches on Colchester, which is at that time the capital of Roman power in Britain. It is where they built their first camp. They have built a giant temple to Claudius as a divine man, which they all find hilarious. And it's where all of the kind of Roman bureaucracy is at the time. And she not only manages to build this coalition, which is impressive, because the main thing that the Romans say about the British peoples is that they spend more time fighting each other than they do the Romans, because they all have these many historic hatreds.

But she also has people inside Colchester who infiltrate and who keep telling the Roman powers within there that there's nothing wrong. Everything is fine. I don't know. That bit of dust you see on the horizon is nothing so that they don't. Yeah. Nothing. Everything's fine. So that when Romans try to make plans to like, oh, maybe we should, should we fortify this?

They're like, no, it's fine. Everything's okay. It's clearly a clever plan to make sure that there is no defence waiting. And as it happens when she turns up, there are 200 men who don't have their full armour and who are genuinely quite surprised when 100,000 people come marching over there, absolutely no hills of Essex in order to destroy the city, which they do. They burn it to the ground. They besiege the temple where the soldiers hide and then kill all of the Roman representatives

and completely obliterate the town, really. There's a Budakan destruction layer, which is a nice thick layer of ash and burnt material, where you can see that, which is very useful for archaeology, but you can really see how much that anything that could burn did burn. Scorched Earth policy then. So they just went health leather.

They just absolutely raised it to the ground. They do. It's a very clear statement of attack on Roman power, on Roman administrative and colonial power. and that they do not want this in their country and they want it gone. They don't want to see the Temple of Divine Claudius. They don't want to see these big walls. They don't want to see Roman corners.

They want good old-fashioned roundhouses. But they just don't want any of it. They burn it down in protest. And this really shocks the Romans who thought until that point that they were pretty much invulnerable in Britain. Had there been any documented rebellions amongst the Britain against the Romans before this? Yes. So there's one a few years before, which is what ends with the Romans taking everybody's weapons away or trying to take everybody's weapons away. At the time, the reason that there's no real army in Southern England at that time is that most of them are in Wales, fighting in Wales, and where there's real resistance to the Romans, and they are attempting to eradicate the druids there. So there's some real resistance there. There's really strong resistance down in the southeast as well. But there had not been very much in the south and southwest,

kind of around London, Essex, Kent, Sussex. That area had been mostly on board. So this is the first time that there's a really big sustained rebellion in that area. I mean, it's so difficult in it to know what the reaction to that would have been because it's just people writing about it later on.

But I would imagine that absolute shock and horror and completely unprepared for it. You know, you're supposed to be our friends. Yes. You promise. each other. Yeah, though every time this happens, there seems to be real surprise, because this is like a consistent thing,

but the Romans make a deal with somebody, they then treat the other side of the deal horribly, and then that side rebels. And then they're like, but you promised you wouldn't. Guys. Yeah. Why would you promise if you're going to do this? And so, yeah, I think that there was real shock.

And then the real, real shock comes that a legion does come to the aid of Colchurch. the 9th Legion turns up and Budaka beats them. And then that is really what causes shock that vibrates kind of across the empire really scares them because if they can fight a legion, then that's a problem. It's scary if they are willing to fight the actual army. And it takes some time for lots of legions to be able to come together to fight, to kind of put them down.

And during that time, they managed to get through a good five or six other towns. So they're just on a rampage then. So they don't stop at Colchester and go, well, that was enough then for us, lads. And they don't. They go in the sources. So in Tacitus and Dio says they go down to London. London is a completely Roman town. It is a Roman trading town and has like no previous habitation really and burn that down and just kill

everybody. And that's where Tacitus says that he's really baffled by them because they don't engage in war commerce, which is taking slaves. He's like, you could make loads of money off of this, which is normal to him, but they just, they don't want to do that. So they just kill everybody, which is worse, I guess, I'm not sure. And then they also take on St. Albans, which is like an administrative centre and has a lot of Roman bureaucrats there as well. In the archaeology, you can see that there are destruction layers in other towns as well. So parts of South London, which previously were, like until the 19th century were different towns have also been burnt down and some in slightly to the east as well, like in Surrey.

So potentially they really went around and hit a lot of colonies, little Roman towns. But they really burnt down everything and really killed a lot of people. Dio has all of these really graphic descriptions of them doing appallingly violent things in order to show how barbarous they are. So he has a genuinely bizarre and horrific description of them cutting the breasts off of Roman elite women and then sewing them to their mouths, which is awful. And also, how do you even think of that? If you're sack in a city, that takes a lot of time. It would take ages and how would it even work?

Who's got the sewing kits? Yeah, and who would even think of it? Nobody would think of that. No, that's just nonsense. So for your money, he's saying that just to... to like really hammer home how awful they are. Yeah. It's a kind of trope of power that if you give a woman a power,

then they will go mad and become unnaturally cruel. It's true, though. I would agree with that. Okay. So I never going to give either of us any power. So we don't know how old she is, though. Do we budica at this time? There's no sort of sense of...

I mean, this sounds like menopause to me. That's what I think is going on. Yeah. The kind of argument from silence is that if she was really young or really old, one of the sources probably would have mentioned it just because it would be weird enough to mention. So if she was, you know, 18 or 65, then people would be like, oh, wow, that's unusual. So she's probably, you know, probably in average adulthood, like 20s to 40s, because that would be like, it's not worth commenting on when you're in that age.

That makes sense. Okay. So I'm going to get, because we're not currently ruled by the Isini, I'm going to guess that this particular rebellion, it didn't last very long. So was it just that the Romans got their shit together? And like what happened? What was the downfall of this? After a couple of really bad massacres and destructions of towns,

the governor who's called Suetonius, basically has to pull out of fighting in Wales and give up his dream of conquering Wales to come back to England. and stage a pitched battle. And all the sources have these big descriptions of this massive battle that really emphasise this idea. They have that the Romans are very clever and logical and trained and the Britons are just a big, mad rabble of idiots. So in tits on women's faces.

Exactly. And all they're doing is just kind of running around in various directions and barely just a mob, whereas the Romans are good and in lines and ordered. And so that is the image that they very much want to give you. And so the Romans pick this battleground that is advantageous to them and they choose one that has woods behind them and quite a narrow entrance so that they control where the British are, which is in fairness, very clever. And then they have a massive battle. And it is however much they want to pretend that it's a route, it is a big thing that goes on all day and many people die. And it is a hard

one victory over Boudicca's forces, but in the end, the Romans break through their lines and as soon as the line is broken and they start to flee, the story is that the Britons have brought all of their carts and all of their families and their supplies with them, and they have blocked off their own escape route. And so when they try to escape, potentially out of lack of tactical ability, because pitched battles are not something that Britons really do, and they lose. virtually every single one of them, which is why they stop having them after a while. And potentially just arrogance that they have won so much that it doesn't even occur to them

that they are not going to miss this one. They're not going to lose this one. That's Tastas's his thought. But we don't know where that was. There's about a hundred different potential places where the Battle of Watling Street took place. Everybody wants to find it. But it ends in a brutal defeat for the Britain zone. As soon as they go down, the Roman just start cutting people down basically and slaughter everybody, which ends up with the entire rebellion basically being crushed in that one battle. After that there is the tiniest flicker of an idea that people are trying to get it back together, but it's just so there's such a bad defeat and the force of the Romans is so overwhelming

that everybody basically just goes back to work and it's like, God, sorry, what an embarrassment. I've got been carried away then. What if we just never mention that ever again? What happened to Budika then? Do we have any idea what she did? So Budica dies. We know that for a fact. She dies off screen, basically.

Tacitus says that she poisons herself because of the defeat, which is his version of a compliment. And Dio says that she dies of illness. And without her, there's nothing to centre it around They say they gave her a big funeral but the pre-Roman Britons didn't do cremation or burial they did exhumation

when you leave the body out so there's no big like monument to her or anything like that although people think people for a while thought she was buried under Parliament Hill which is pretty funny as soon as she destroyed London I heard she was buried under King's Cross

yeah that's another one Again, she did quite hate London, so it feels like an insult to bury her. It's not going to be buried there. No. It feels like the Romans would bury her there if they had caught her. But I don't think that her periodish was probably taken back to Norfolk to be buried in the lovely fens instead. But she dies pretty soon after the Battle of Watling Street. And then that is the end of the rebellion.

And then everybody just kind of turns to rebuilding. And that basically, that crushes. rebellion in the south of England, at least, like it is, just it never really happens again. How famous was this rebellion at the time? Was it sort of confined like to a few scuffles in the sort of the south of Britain? Or was this something like in Rome that they had heard about? And what was the reaction to a woman leading the army? Because what I know about the Romans, I'm sure you can back me up on this, is that they were quite a patriarchal bunch of people. It wouldn't have gone down particularly well with them

That a woman was doing this No, I mean it baffled and weirded them out And it made them think less of the Britons in general Because the idea of being led by a woman Two of the Romans was inherently weak So it just made them Which is part of the reason why when It took them a bit of time to react

Because they just were like Oh okay, whereas they're being led by a woman They must all be rubbish But in Rome there was certainly a reaction Nero was really freaked out by it and talked about pulling out with Britain all together after the destruction of Colchester. He was like, oh, maybe this is just too, like, I didn't, I don't, I'm not really interested in war. I don't want to start one.

If this is going to be a problem, then we'll just pull out. She really won then. She did. And this is one of the reasons why she's so famous. Like, partly she is remembered in Roman history because she genuinely does damage them. And because it's just kind of a weird, funny story to them that she's a woman who led an army. but also because she really did nearly push them out of the whole province and she nearly ended the occupation of Britain

and had their Nero acted quicker than he did than potentially she would have. And there's rebellions constantly all over the Roman Empire, but this one is one that people remember more than others because it has that novelty factor and also nearly one factor that most don't. So it definitely causes ripples in Rome with people really freaking out about what's happening.

And they are interested in what's happening in Britain where there's another rebel called Caraticus, who is betrayed by another British woman who is kind of the dastidly evil version of Boudicca called Cartamandua. And he's so famous in Rome when they take him, they have like street parties to celebrate his capture because there is a genuine interest in what's happening in Britain

as a new place that Romans can be. So she's famous. They know. If they'd call her, then they would have had some fun doing a parade of her through the streets, but they didn't. Thank God. I'm no wonder if she did take poison then. You can totally see why that would be a better result than being enslaved by these fuckers. Yes.

Although Caraticus managed persuade Claudius to let him go and he ended up living quite a nice life with his wife and children in Rome. Oh, right. Okay. So she might have had that. I doubt it because she was a woman. But, yeah, if she took poison, then you can totally see why. because having just watched all of these horrible slaughters and then gone, oh no, this is not.

Like if they get me, this is not going to end well for me. No, there's no happy ending here is there at all. And what's interesting, well, there's lots of stuff that's interesting, but the ripples of this have felt throughout the Roman Empire and then it's almost like we forget about it for a few hundred years. And then it's unearthed again. And then the myth takes on new dimensions, doesn't it? because we all love a warrior queen

and she becomes different things to different period. She does, and it's interesting how kind of complex her relationship to Britain and British identity becomes. Like she totally makes sense. Like her rediscovery comes about in like the 15th century and it makes sense of kind of Britain at that time is not really an imperial power yet, but it is fighting off Spanish imperial power.

and the Spanish are like the big power and so they really take to her as an image of plucky British underdogness fighting the bad European powers but then when Britain becomes a massive imperial power and becomes the imperial power in the world becomes much harder

to be like oh the plucky English underdog fighting the imperial powers but somehow because British are really good at cognitive dissidents they manage it And so there's all these poems about her during the Victorian period when Britain reaches kind of the height of its power about her because she's so plucky and good and she fights off the decadent Romans who obviously, as we all know from like, you know, she's fighting Nero.

Nero is a baddie. Everyone knows Nero's a baddie. She's fighting them off. Because of that, God rewarded her with an empire, which is even bigger than the Roman Empire. Oh, see, look at the mental gymnasium. I know. That is some impressive shit, isn't it?

Yeah, and that's what's on the side of the statue. It's, you know, something about how, because of how a great she is, her descendants will be rewarded with dominion over lands that Caesar's never saw. Oh, brilliant. Nice, nicely done Victorian PR team. You can't fault the Victorian PR team. Like the mental gymnastics that the British Empire could do were never anything but impressive. Absolutely.

Emma, you have been fascinating to talk to you always are and if people want to know more about you and your research where can they find you? They can find me at emma southern.com. They can buy my book, which has a whole chapter about Budica and her evil twin Cartamandua in it, which is a history of the Roman Empire in 21 women, or my podcast, which is called History is Sexy.

Fabulous. Thank you so much for joining me today. You have been an absolute superstar. A delight as always. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Emma for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on everything from the history of sex work in America to Viking sex, all coming your way.

This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.