Dan Snow's History Hit - Boudica: Queen of the Iceni

Episode Date: March 13, 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 DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. It's that time of the week when we dip in to see what our sibling podcasts are doing,

part of the History Hit Network. And today we're going over to the smash hit Betwixt the Sheets, the podcast hosted by the wonderful Dr. Kate Lister, who looks into the history of sex, scandal and society. But actually she's doing something a little bit different in this episode. She's looking at Boudicca, the queen of the Iceni tribe who took on the Roman Empire. Remembered as a warrior queen, but who really was she? It's a great episode. Enjoy.

Hello, my 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 Twixters, 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, Boudicca is someone who inspires us to this very day. Which is absolutely something for you to consider while you're sat in Pret-a-Manger waiting for your train. What do you look for in a man? Oh money of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the button. ERA! Now! ERA! Now! Yes social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful dance. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Whether you know her as Boudicca or Bodecia, whether she's buried under King's Cross Station or, checks notes, Stonehenge,

her legacy is a powerful one. How much do we actually 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 in 21 Women to find out more. Chariots at the ready Betwixters, let's do this. do this. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's one of our most favourites. 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 about buddhica that's what we're doing that's a pretty epic start to 2024 and anytime i'm talking about buddhica i'm happy so you know i used to think that until because i told my dad that i was talking to you about buddhica and he went have

you watched that new buddhica film and so i was like there's a new buddhica film and he went yeah you should definitely watch it it's on netflix k it's dead good and I duly watched it and then I texted him I was like what the shit was that and he's like it was wank trolled by your own father my own dad who deliberately set me up because I was thinking oh my god there's like a new Boudicca biopic. I should watch this. And then no hate to anyone involved. I'm sure they all worked very, very hard on it.

But yeah, I don't think Boudicca 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 is that you would think that Boudicca'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 is

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 Iceni were that most attempts to tell her story get kind of lost in those as and imagining them as kind of terrible mud people who could barely tie shoelaces let alone lead a organized rebellion against the great empire all right so we should probably start

with the with the absolute basic page one introduction to Boudicca who was she who is this person so Boudicca is generally called a queen, a kind of high level leading elite woman in the Iceni people, who are people that live in kind of East Anglia area, Norfolk, basically. And she's from Norfolk. So you can imagine her with a Norfolk accent, which is fun. And she's basically on that kind of fen edge area. And they are a client kingship of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Roman colonization of Britain. So they are one of the peoples that they don't fight the Romans when the Romans turn up. 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 Iceni 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. During the bit, we assume that Boudicca is growing up because we don't know how old she is. She could be anything between 18 and 65. But she grows up in a period where she's basically leaving the Romans alone. The Romans are 98% leaving the Iceni 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 colonizing and their empire building? Was they would just sort of turn up and go, look, lads, 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 gonna 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 where 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 a bother

and we'll do you an exchange. You pay us to leave you alone. We'll take some hostages and 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 buddhica 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, 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 force you to 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 heroic myth of the Celts that they fought tooth and nail and the whole 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 just won't have a fight, not a problem. If you want to run this, not a problem. 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. And we won't crush you. But then it never, ever really works out that 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.

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 Boudicca 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 try and paint a picture of what this culture was like, or the Iceni people in particular? What would Boudicca have been growing up? What would her life have been like? So what we do have very easily is a lot of archaeology. I'd almost forgotten about them the archaeologist sorry yeah i forget about you 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 iceni shows a culture which is largely homesteads so it's a really fun thing with in archaeology where you can always tell where roman influence has really taken 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 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 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 Icenaean called 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... There's none of the warrior burials that you get further up north. So 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 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 round houses. They do, unlike other places in the south of England, so there are places like St Albans, for example, and 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 Julius Caesar turns up and says,

I'm not talking to 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 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 Boudicca grows up. Yeah. Would they have called themselves the Icenia? 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, everything is just a Roman name and they're not that consistent with 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 a bit slapdash. You can be the king. They are quite slapdash. There's just a guy going, I'm not the king. I'm just a messenger. i was just standing here yeah 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 buddhica's life basically is 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 Prasutagus, who is the king, the chief, the head guy, and has two children. And then everything goes horribly wrong. Bollllocks so she's basically growing up in an occupation i suppose that we could say an occupied land she gets married she has some kids what goes wrong all right 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 okay the unsexy version not that the other version is sexy but it's the 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 died the roman governor and seneca the stoic philosopher said oh, 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 Pinkertons, 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 stoicism. 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 Boudicca's husband dies, he leaves his kingdom, quote unquote, to his daughters and the Roman soldiers turn up and beat Boudicca, rape her daughters and take all of the land and kick them all off.

I think it's a metaphor for Lucretia, basically saying that they're tyrannical and even the women aren't safe from being colonised by the Romans. It's a grittier version, isn't it? If you were going to make a film, you'd probably go with that one than people being angry at tax administration. 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. It 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 happened. This 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 Boudicca 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.

Dio is writing about 150 years after that. So he does at least have a connection to Britain. Dio 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 on their 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 that there was a woman called Boudicca 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 yeah by different authors did she have red hair? Whose idea was that? Why do we think of her as having red hair? I'd say that's actually from the time of Elizabeth I. Oh, right. She has lion-coloured hair in Boudicca, 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 that first translated into English during Elizabeth I's reign. And so the idea of a British queen standing boldly against foreign invaders has some nice parallels with Elizabeth in 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 used to be called Boudicca. 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 mistransliterated. 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

that in Dio, she's called Wodica 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 on oh she must have been so pissed off all right okay so Boudicca 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 Roman soldiers is there any kind of parallel for that like 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 a dispute around inheritance rights as a punishment? Not as a dispute around inheritance rights, but it would be as a weapon of war. A weapon of war, right. Yeah, it always has been. There are people that do research into rape as 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 buddhica 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 hostile takehumanize is something that the romans definitely do so if they were approaching it as a hostile hostile takeover basically of the kingdom and taking the area and they didn't plan on leaving people then absolutely that is something they would do we'll be back with emma and Boudicca after this short break. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Do we have any idea who her daughters were? Are they 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 sources. 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 her 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 CE. 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... No, no, don't even worry about it. 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 defense waiting. And as it happens, when she turns up, there are 200 men who don't have their full armor and who are genuinely quite surprised when 100,000 people come marching over the 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 Budokan 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 hell for leather. They just absolutely razed 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 Britons 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 god i mean it's it's so difficult 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. You're supposed to be our friends. Yes.

You promised. We liked each other. Yeah. Every time this happens, there seems to be real surprise because this is like a consistent thing that 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 gonna 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 colchester the ninth legion turns up and buddhica beats them and then that is really what causes shock that vibrates kind of across

the empire and really scares them because if they can fight a legion then that's a problem it's 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 that they're just on a on a rampage then they 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 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 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 center and has a lot of Roman bureaucrats there as well. 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 and 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 sacking 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 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'm never going to give either of us any power so we don't know how old she is though we're doing buddhica 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. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone,

including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. So if she was something, you know, 18 or 65 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 gonna get because we're not currently ruled by the Iceni, 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 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 emphasize 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 rout, it is a big thing

that goes on all day and many people die. And it is a hard won 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 Tacitus' thought. But we don't know where that was. There's about 100 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 Britons. And as soon as they go down, the Romans 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 god what an embarrassment

got me carried away there what if we just never mention that ever again what happened to buddhica then do we have any idea what she did so buddhica dies we know that for a fact she dies off screen basically tasta 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 center it around they say they gave her a big funeral but the pre-roman britons didn't do cremation or burial they did exhumation where you leave the body out so there's no big like monument to her or anything like that although people think for people for a while thought she was buried under parliament hill which is pretty funny seeing as she destroyed

london well 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 gonna be buried there you know feels like the romans would bury her there if they had caught her but i don't think that her piazzas was probably taken back to norfolk to be buried in the lovely fens instead but she dies pretty soon after the battle of whatling street and then that is the end of the rebellion and then everybody just kind of turns to rebuilding and that basically that crushes certain 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 i mean was it sort of confined like to a few scuffles

in the sort of the south of 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, weirded them out and it made them think less of the britons in general because the idea of being led by a woman to the romans was like inherently weak so it just made them which is part of the reason why when like it took them a bit of time to react because the idea they just were like oh okay because they're being led by women 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 of Britain altogether 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 a big one if this is going to be a problem then we'll just pull out she nearly 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 Nero acted quicker than he did, then potentially she would have.

And there's, you 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 dastardly 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 that's a new place that romans can be so she's famous they know if they'd caught 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 ker Although Caraticus managed to 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 are 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 periods.

She does. And it's interesting how kind of complex her relationship to Britain and British identity becomes. 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, it becomes much harder to be like, oh, the plucky English underdog fighting the imperial powers. But somehow, because British are really good at cognitive dissidence, they manage it. And so there's all these poems about her during the Victorian period when Britain reaches 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's 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 gymnastics there. 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 her how great she is her descendants will be rewarded with dominion over lands that caesars never saw oh brilliant yeah nice nicely done victorian pr team but 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 emmasouthern.com. They can buy my book, which has a whole chapter about Boudicca 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 historyhit.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 and society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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