In Our Time - Boudica

Episode Date: March 11, 2010

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and mythologisation of Boudica.On the eve of battle with the Roman Empire, an East Anglian leader roused her forces by declaring: 'It is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I am avenging lost freedom'. Her name was Boudica, warrior Queen of the Iceni.In 60AD, Boudica's husband Prasutagus died and Roman troops tried to incorporate his lands into their Empire. Soldiers publicly flogged Boudica and raped her daughters. In retaliation, she led an army of tribesmen and sacked Camulodunum, modern day Colchester, before marching on London. Such was the ferocity of Boudica's attack that she came close to driving the Roman Imperial power out of Britain before she was finally defeated.Boudica was largely forgotten in the Middle Ages, but her image reappeared during the rule of Elizabeth I as a striking symbol of female power and heroism, before being denigrated by Elizabeth's heir, James I. In Victorian Britain, Boudica once again emerged, this time as a symbol of British Imperial power. The challenger to the Roman Empire had been transformed into the icon of the British Empire and to this day her statue stands guard outside the Houses of Parliament.With Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in Folklore at Cardiff University; Richard Hingley, Professor of Roman Archaeology at Durham University; and Miranda Aldhouse-Green, Professor of Archaeology in the School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff University.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in 61 AD, an East Anglian queen took on the might of the Roman Empire and lost. Her name was Budica. The events of Budica's rebellion and defeat are graphically related

by the great Roman historian Tacitus and is set against the backdrop of an empire in decline. It's a tale of a leader fighting for freedom against an ancient superpower. But it's also the story of a woman savagely wronged, wreaking horrific revenge on a state that had promised to protect her. Budig's resistance has been retold and re-edited throughout history. She's been depicted as a freedom fighter and a barbarian queen, as an icon of British strength and independence

and as a warning against the corruption of female power. In the 19th century, she was immortalised as a statue outside the houses of parliament, ironically transforming the rebel against the Roman Imperium into the champion of the British Empire. To this day she stands guard over the city that she destroyed almost 2,000 years ago. With me to discuss the life and mythologisation of Budica are Juliet Wood, Associate Lecturer in Folklore at Cardiff University,

Richard Hingley, Professor of Roman Archaeology at Durham University, and Miranda Oldhouse Green, Professor of Archaeology in the School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff University. Miranda, before we talk about Budak, Can you give us some idea what Britain was like in the first half of the first century AD? I think the first thing perhaps to say is that Britain was not an entity. It was very fragmented.

There were tribes, polities all over Britain. And the area which I think interests us today is the southeast, which by the time of the Claudian invasion in AD 43, was already becoming very softened up to Rome. And there were aristocrats. It was a very elitist society. and people were already beginning to turn their eyes towards Rome. So on the one hand, you have a very rural, non-urban society,

but on the other, there are certain people who are already beginning to get influenced by Rome to have Roman goods and perhaps send their sons to Rome to be educated. So it's already, by the time of the Claudian invasion, becoming quite a kind of almost a Roman part of the world. Why do that happen? Is that because they were just drawn to the centre of power, like people, I suppose that's where they're at. They always are, aren't they?

I think it's partly that, and I think it's a new way for aristocratic Britons to show how powerful they are. Rome is new and exotic, and whereas people used to show their wealth and their power by the ownership of land, the kind of new ways began. So people began to think, well, if I become sort of Roman and sophisticated and urban, then I will gain more power. You've said the South East, but the Isini who are going to come to, we're talking more about what we now think of as East Anglia, aren't we? That's right. They're on the sort of periphery of this.

The icenia are quite interesting because the archaeology shows that they are really quite separate. They are becoming part of the sort of Roman orbit, but they are also very distinct in terms of their identities and they remain somewhat separate and somewhat aloof from what was going on further south.

So we're talking about tribes, several tribes, maybe a dozen are more tribes who have allegiance to the tribe. In their idea of a Britain or in England, of course, it's completely remote. It doesn't exist at all. What's the shape of the Roman Empire at the time and was Britain significant in it? Why did Claudius want to invade it?

Claudius, the stammerer people were remember from Robert Graves. Well, that's the whole point. I think Claudius needs a persona. He needs some credibility and so what he does is to look towards the very edge of the known world. Britain was regarded as almost mythical. Some people, some Greeks and Romans thought that Britons were not even human, that had sort of tales and, you know, were very peculiar,

waited about in the mud all day, covered into twos. And so the idea of conquering the uncivilised, the edgy places, the dangerous places across the ocean over the edge of the known world was something which would give Claudius immense credibility. So psychologically Britain was immensely important to the Roman Empire. Slightly dodged with what you said at the beginning, though, isn't it? The English-arish regards were sending their sons over to Rome and presumably telling people that we don't write a twos and later on in Monag.

I've got to hold back on that one. They may be, but most Romans would believe that Britain was very uncivilised. These were very exceptional people who went to Rome. And Claudius, I think, would hype up the idea of the mythology and the edginess of Britain. Juliet Wood, the evidence of Budig's life is drawn from two Roman writers, Tacitus and Cassius Dio. Can you tell us about them and how strongly they are as evidence? Well, one of them writes in Latin and one of them writes in Greek, although he's a Roman writer. Neither of them are there at the time, although Tacitus sources are probably sort of closer and more authentic.

He's not too far away, though, if you give glistens of an idea. They're not. I mean, he's within a century. They're kind of within a century, and with Tacitus considerably less than a century. But I think the thing is that they are very much writing from an outside perspective. and I think that's really the critical thing is the perspective they have on Britain is the classical world's perspective. So this business about Britain being an edgy place, a dangerous place, a place that needs to be civilised

is what is critical about them. So they sort of see these people as other, what anthropologists would describe as other, as people who are not Roman. The other thing, and it's particularly strong, I think, in Tacitus, is that Tacitus is also using his position to criticise the Romans. He's basically sort of saying, look, you're in danger of getting soft. Look at the dangers, in particular with Tacitus, look at the dangers of female rule. And this is

where specifically Buddha comes in, because she's seen as an offence to the natural order, which is male rule, not female rule. And he implies that if you have a female ruler, you're going to have decadence and destruction and chaos and all of the things which he actually ascribes to to Budaka. Can we just talk a little bit more about Tacitus? He's thought of as the greatest prose writer, the greatest historian by some people, but he wasn't too far away.

I think what we underestimate completely is the strength of the oral tradition. The problem that we have with Budica and all that lot there is they didn't put anything down in writing, not in description. So we think we don't know about it, but the oral tradition can be very, very strong. And he was well within sight of her.

And he got the letters from his relation. and he got all those wonderful war reports that kept sending back. So he's plenty of stuff. It's true, but I think you have to be careful with oral tradition because oral tradition is not necessarily unwritten, written tradition. And I think it is very, very easy for it to become channeled. And I think certainly with Budaka, one really has to ask questions

what exactly is it that they're doing? Even to the point of sort of questioning, you know, was Budika, Budika? Tacitus may actually be farther away from this, although he's close to the events. He may be farther away from any sense of what the Aisini were like than we realize. Well, can you tell us a bit more about the Aisini? Yes, I can sort of say that we don't have any sort of direct archaeology. I mean, this is another problem, is that we kind of have to reconstruct the Aisina in terms of what we have elsewhere.

So we tend to present them as a rather more generalized Celtic tribe rather than sort of a specific archaeological tribe. And I think there again we have problems. If you look at what we know about Budaqa in her speech and the battle, well, what we know from other sources about Celtic battles doesn't suggest that this is a particularly credible thing that Tacitus is doing. We know from other sources that before a battle the Celts, there would be a lot of noise, a lot of music,

the individual fighters would be sort of boasting one against the other. And this picture of them sort of standing there while Budika and her daughters kind of make a chariot circle round the field doesn't necessarily ring true. So the answer is saying, I mean, it's quite interesting we could all go home really. Are you actually saying that you don't think that Budica exists, even though Tacitus, a totally respectable historian writing just a few years after her death, talked about her and described buttles in which he took part. He couldn't get away with it, could he?

Well, I suspect he probably could. There are other sources where they are sort of describing things which we, several hundred years later, sort of assume we're true about the Celts, which now we kind of look at and we think, well, maybe the Romans kind of... It isn't as if Tacitus is making her up or lying. I'm not questioning Tacitus' kind of belief in what was going on.

But I do think that we sometimes assume oral tradition. Sometimes it's now the end of that. We're just talking about Budika here. I mean, does she or does she not exist? It's a very good starting one for the programme. What do you think, Richard, Richard Hingley? I'd talk about the archaeology, really, and the problem we have with Budica is that we have no archaeology. So we have the taxual information, and we have three accounts for two from Tacitus and different writings,

and one from Cassius Dio. But we can't locate her archaeologically. now the only archaeological evidence that we might try and tie in with her is a number of Iron Age coins which have a name on them which has been taken to represent Pratatagus who Tacitus tells us was Budica's husband or partner now that's the only archaeological evidence and even that issue is debatable that she existed

I mean I'd probably take a slightly different track I understand what you're saying and I don't strongly disagree but I think Tacitus's readership in Rome would know about what had happened in Britain 30 or 40 years before. So I don't think we can dismiss Budica as a historical figure, but we can't locate her archaeologically. The one thing that we can use to locate her, which is archaeological, is the six layers of burnt deposits in the three towns that Tacitus tells us

that Budica had destroyed, Colchester, London, and Verulamium, which is modern-day St Albans. these layers of destruction seem to occur about 60 to 61 AD, we've got dating material in those deposits. In London, they're up to half a metre thick and they cover destroyed buildings and that is some quite impressive evidence

that some of the actions that Tacitus writes about did occur but if we look for Budakur herself, really we can't locate her archaeologically. And does this worry? I don't think it worries me. I think it has worried archaeologists in the past. I'm interested in Budica as a historical figure and the way she occurs throughout time in history.

I do believe she existed. We don't know that Budicus are name. It means victory. So she may be partly a historical elaboration. It doesn't worry me. Well, let's talk about the historical elaboration as well as Budica herself. If she did exist, it's getting more and more interesting.

But she had a husband. if she existed. Prasotagas, who died in 60 AD, so when she was about 30, and according to she became leader of the Aisini. How unusual was it to have a female leader at this time?

Budica is made to say by Tacitus that it's common for the Britons to follow women into war. Now we have to bear in mind the points that have been made already to the fact that the Romans or Tacitus actually is fascinating.

by female rule. The Romans found female rule abhorrent as a concept. They were really worried about the idea of female rulers. Why were they so worried? Cleopatra, partly. Cleopatra of Egypt was a very negative figure in Roman terms. So there's a Roman concept that rulership is wrong. The emperor is not a king. Kings themselves are difficult figures in Roman terms. A female leader is more problematic. Now, it's interesting. just to complicate things a bit further. We do have evidence for another female leader in late Iron Age Britain, and this is Cartamandua.

In the Manor, with the Brigante. Yes, that's right. Carter Mandira is a pro-Roman woman, but she still gets turned into effectively a monster by Tacitus in his writings. But there's another reference which I bring up, which I think is problematic and is being ignored, because Tacitus writing in the Agricola

talks about a queen of the brigantes who ran a war against the Romans. Now it tends to be assumed that Tacitus is making a mistake and means of Queen of the Icini, but he says the brigantes, it could be that we've got a third female war leader in late Iron Age Britain fighting the Romans, and we know nothing further about it, or it could be that the reference to the Icini in Tacitus of Agricula and that's, sorry, Tattis as annals, that's the only reference to the Isini linking the Isini to Budica

is actually a mistake for the big grantees. Well, let's assume there was a Budica, let's assume she was married to Prasotagos. Let's assume he did die in 60-ish AD, and he left his country to half to Budica, and his tribe, and half to the Roman Emperor, which was one of the traditions at the time, because they were a client state.

clever Claudius cave in and instead of wasting time conquering people, he just federalised them and made them client states and let them get on with being what they were to a great extent. So he did that. Let's take the story as we have it, as it were, from Tacitus with amendments, but let's take that story. Can you explain, Miranda, what happened then? Well, Prasatagos was a client king, as you said,

and when he died, he actually left his estate. He was very wealthy. The Asini were very wealthy, perhaps gained a lot of their wealth from salt, salt production and distribution and he actually left his estate partly to the Emperor Nero and partly not actually to Budica but their two daughters

and so she was cut out of this well which was quite interesting now the treaty... How old did the daughter she was only 30 how old of the daughters? Well I think they were sort of prepubescent I think they were around about 11 or 12 30 in that sort of age and what I think we need to remember is

that the client kingship, the treaty that existed between Presotagos or any individual client king and the emperor, was a personal one. So at Prasotaga's death, Rome was technically within its rights to reassess the situation and have the option of turning the Icenian territory into part of the province. And as it was wealthy, that was something that was very attractive. There is a saying that says, it's only under bad emperors. that parents leave half their estate to an emperor. And I think what Pressertagos was trying to do

was to safeguard at least part of his estate by giving half of it to Nero. So we have a situation where you have tremendous instability, volatility, and what happens is that while the Roman governor, Sotonius Paulinus, is up in North West Wales trying to beat hell out of the druids on Anglesi, the finance officer, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer, DCA nos Katters, decided that I see he was right for the pickings and he goes in with soldiers and slaves decides to mop up

Iceland assets. Budica objects saying I'm a queen. He says no you're not and she is flogged and her daughter's raped according to the writers and that is huge humiliation because if we read between the lines Prasotagos was almost certainly a Roman citizen and if he was a Roman citizen, the chances are Boudica was one as well. And that is something you don't do to Roman citizens. So D. Cianus Cattas was operating totally illegally in the treatment

of Boudicca herself and of course the daughters. Can we take that up a little Richard? Let's say she was a Roman citizen. Let's go along with the story. Why, it's already, Miranda's already raised that. Would you want to elaborate on that? Why that would be so offensive to Roman citizens reading

Tacitus or hearing of this at the time? Although female leaders were abhorrent to Romans, the Roman Empire believed in cooperating with pro-Roman local people. Now, we know that Pratatagas must have been pro-Roman. He couldn't have been a friendly king of the Roman Empire without being pro-Roman. So his wife and his children would have also been clients and friends of the Roman Empire. So to have Roman officials and slaves actually abusing the family. in that way would be an absolutely abhorrent thing for Romans in Rome, the Roman elite in Rome,

and it would have shot them deeply. Especially if we don't realise it just occurred to me a few minutes ago, these children must have been very young, the daughters, if we're talking in that way. Extremely young, and in fact what you're doing in flogging Budica, the rape of the daughters, if that happened, that is something far more than rape, because what you're actually doing is interrupting and violating the whole of Icenian tradition and the whole of the Icenian future, because you're actually compromising, you are taking away the children's virginity, possibly impregnating them,

and therefore you are humiliating to the nth degree the Iceny, and that is, I think, what is so abhorrent. Juliet, we're going along with the story. So Budika and the Asini, they join with another tribe, so we read, Trinnovantes. and then can you tell us what happened? She rose up against this outrage. She did, and she rose up quite quickly against the outrage, according to the sources, and moved very, very quickly.

First to Colchester, where not only did they sack Colchester, but they also destroyed the temple in which there are a number of retired Roman soldiers and their families. So you begin to get a balance between what has happened, the insult that has been sort of done to Budaica and her daughters, kind of balance with insults against sort of other Roman citizens so they're kind of beginning to kind of balance these scales once she does that she then moves towards London

sort of Sotonius comes back onto the scene but knows he can't defeat her He comes down from Anglesey knows he doesn't have enough soldiers and so he sort of allows her to sack London and then there is

a brief period while Suetonius kind of gets his soldiers together, gets his plan together. And then she sacks virulamium and then is the final battle, the side of which we don't know, this very, very contentious final battle in which Budaqa's forces are defeated. And they're defeated, it's very clear from the sources, they're defeated because Rome is the better fighter, the better organized, the more civilized. And by this time, there have been enough atrocities on Budaqa's part for the say the scales to be to be balanced. It ends by saying either Budaika takes poison,

she and her daughters take poison, or she dies of grief or she dies of illness, but certainly she's removed. Brandon. I think there are a couple of things to say there. One is that it's not just the insult to Budica and her daughters, it's also the context is, and this is why the Trenavantes come in,

is because of huge taxation. So the Trenavantes, A, are dispossessed from their ancestral town. So many English uprisings have been about taxation. I know. I know. So first of all, Camelodunum, or Colchester, is taken over by a legion of veterans and settled. So they're dispossessed from their lands. They are then made to pay for the Temple of Claudius, which is, you know, an insult to them.

So they're made to pay for this hideous sort of icon of Romanitas in Colchester. So there's already a lot of bubbling up from the tribes about taxation and about how hideous that was. But the other thing to say about the sacking of the cities that Juliet mentioned, is that Paulinus, the governor, quite clearly was interested in conquest, conquest, conquest, and no consolidation, because none of those Roman cities had defences. And so Budica and her troops could just walk in and take them. Can you tell us, Richard, on the archaeological evidence, you'd expect, they took the temple, which we read, rather, I wish there was just an oral tradition, we didn't have to refer to these things,

and much more reliable. There's actually people who had an oral tradition thought that words were more reliable than text, or sex could be corrupted. Anyway, you'd have thought there been lots of remains of body. Now, there aren't, are there? So what are we talking about? No, there are very few remains of bodies in the three towns that were sacked. There are a few human remains in Colchester in the correct layers.

But the towns will have been cleared up by the Romans. They're all rebuilt later on. So we wouldn't necessarily expect large numbers of dead bodies. I think the thing I would expect is large numbers of dead bodies. is large numbers of dead bodies on the final battle site where the runs defeat the Britons. Now we have some figures from Cassius Dio. He's about a century later than Cassieus.

He's far less reliable. He gives us the flame hard, fierce talking, fierce-eyed, so we owe him of debt. Yes, I mean, he had a major impact on later representations of Budica because that's the only description we have really of an ancient Britain. that vivid description of Budika's appearance but the battle site itself should actually be very helpful to us if we could locate it

because we do have a number of Roman battle sites in Germany from the first century AD now if we could find Budika's battle site and we don't know really where to look should be in the West Midlands perhaps we might find pits full of dead bodies animals and humans and broken armour and weapons if we could find that

that would really help us to answer some of these issues for it at the moment? A lot of people have looked for it and a lot of people claim to have found it, but the description we have of the battle site from Tacitus is very, very general and nobody has found any convincing archaeological material. It may turn up one day.

But it's now, it was anywhere, at one stage it was anywhere between Primrose Hill and North Wales, but now they think it could be around about rugby, don't they? Yeah, there's a very strong idea that the battle site was close to Manceter in Warwickshire. The trouble is,

that Tacitus's description is very, very general. He describes a valley with trees to either side, an open ground in front, and there are thousands of places within the territories that we might look which fit that description. And really, Mancetta, there's some reasons to believe that could be a good place to look, but there's no conclusive evidence.

Miranda. I think the other thing that perhaps is the case is that the Romans would not wish to allow the battlefield to become a kind of martyrs site. So there may very well have been a deliberate cleaning up process, that took place after the final battle to make sure that it didn't remain as a kind of monument to British freedom.

I agree with that, but there's another possibility which is that there might be a victory monument. I mean, victory monuments are built at battle sites sometimes, and actually building a victory monument to illustrate this major victory of a much larger army of Britons might actually be a Roman statement of power. We know they're supposed to have actually

attack the Britons after the battle and really set back the recovery of Britain through their military actions against the surviving Britons. So a victory monument could be a possibility but we haven't found it. The numbers that have come down to us from these writers are 230,000 Britons

and 10,000 Romans, which is the wrong way around for British history. We're supposed to be the underdogs, but still. And the 10,000. trained Romans, as Richards mentioned, they put themselves. So we told, in front of a thick forest behind them on either side, so they're protected

from the back with a plane in front of them, and they're trained soldiers, and the Aisinae used to just rushing ahead with inadequate weapons, and they're slaughtered. Yes, it's a kind of classical military maneuver of how a disciplined group of people can outmaneuver a far

larger but undisciplined enemy. And I think you can really see kind of Tacitus playing the Roman car here. So that it also, it's one of those areas which kind of fulfills some of the notions of what the Britons were like, what sort of Celtic tribes generally were like,

large numbers of people, but with no kind of coherence, which of course is actually, to some extent, at odds with what Tacitus tells us happens before the battle, which seemed to be quite an organised one, in which kind of Buda go and daughters make this circle with the chariot. So one feels that, you know, again, so often Tacitus is trying to do two things at once. He has

a certain sneaking admiration for the noble savage and he's worried that the Romans will become corrupt. So he's kind of emphasizing that if you remain civilised, if you remain strong, if you don't get soft, this is the kind of success you can

expect. But on the other hand, he also wants to say, look, you know, these savages have an element of nobility about them, which you also should be should be following. So I think one has to take that in context, not in accurate numbers, but in terms of what Tacitus is trying to tell his audience. What about that magnificent speech, Tacitus's speech? It isn't all that long, but it is not,

this is Budica, Egypt before the battle. It is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I'm avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters. Rome has gone so far that not our very persons, nor even age or virginity are left unpolluted. I mean, and then she gets cracking after that, isn't she? It's wonderful, but it's like nothing else I've ever come across in any Celtic source anywhere. Again,

it's much more Roman ideas of good kingship than it is anything, anything else. There's a rush to get in. We'll start with Miranda then to you, Richard. One of the fascinating things about the Roman writers and particularly Tacitus is that you've got some wonderful gender bending here, because you've got

Budica as a very masculine woman, but on the other hand the antithesis is Nero, the emperor, who is effeminate and decadent. So you've got a wonderful play on gender there. So you've got this sort of male woman among the Britons pitting herself against an extremely female effete and a feminine emperor. So you've got this lovely sort of juxtaposition and contrasting everything being turned on its head. Richard.

I agree with Juliet that we can't trust Budica's speech at all. I mean, we don't know that anybody at the battle who would have heard Budika would have been accessible. to Tacitus or the sources that Tacitus uses. However, there's another angle which I think is worth bringing in. Pratagas must have been pro-Roman, as I mentioned earlier. Now, Budica is Prasatagas's partner

would probably... I'm not being sure, but he's not his wife. We don't know, do we know? We don't know, do it? No, we don't. Let's not go down there again, right? I think what I'm trying to think about is that Budika would have been exposed quite largely to

Roman culture. Budicaa might well have been literate we would expect Prashtargas to be a Roman citizen Now Budica may be thinking in Roman terms partly we see her as a violent ancient Britain through Tacitus or a noble warrior through Sassitus But she may have actually been quite Romanised Miranda then Julia

One of the things that I've been playing with is the idea that perhaps Budica was not ever pro-Roman Because we've got evidence from the brigantes and elsewhere that very often even within families, they'd be pro and anti-Roman factions. And one of the things that would explain the extreme treatment of Budika and her daughters after Prasatago's death was that she was actually anti-Roman and that she was part of an anti-Roman faction. And that actually makes a lot of sense.

Even if she were a Roman citizen, she may well have been waiting for her chance. Julia? Yes, I think this is, again, assuming Budigua is real and I think it's perfectly sensible to assume that for this discussion. the sentiments, the rhetoric, is very much Roman rhetoric rather than Celtic rhetoric. And the reason I keep harping on about that is because that really becomes important

when Budica becomes subsequently seen as a mouthpiece for Celtic or British or kind of different sorts of ideas. But I think the rhetoric that we actually get from Tacitus is very, very Roman rhetoric. I mean, it was a technique that he used several times. Is it not permissible as a legitimate historical imaginative leap? I think it's absolutely permissible.

I think the problem becomes not so much what Tacitus is permitted, but how we kind of are trying literally to interpret Tacitus and reconstruct this picture of Budica and this picture of a kind of ancient British Celtic past. So I think the subsequent is the problem. I don't think, I'm not arguing with you, Miranda, but I don't think we can separate things too simply because we can't assume if Budica is anti-Roman,

which we may well be. that she'd necessarily not be knowledgeable about Latin ways. Oh, indeed. I mean, you know, learning Latin as a way of fighting Rome too, learning Roman ways, military ways. You know, if the Britons that actually followed Roman military examples, they might have won that battle in which they largely outnumbered the Romans. So, you know, I'm drawn to what you're saying,

I think particularly because we find it quite difficult to find very much evidence in the territory of the Aisini for much in the way of Roman culture. around the time of Budica? How significant was this rebellion in terms of Britain's relationship with the Roman Empire, Miranda? I think it's fair to say that it was crux time for the Roman Empire and for Nero

who almost decided to abandon Britain and it was touch and go as to whether Britain remain part of the Roman Empire at all because the catastrophe of the Budycan rebellion was such that Britain was left extremely weak and the empire was left weak because there was always the possibility

that other recently annexed provinces would look to see what was happening in Britain and think, ah, it is actually possible to overthrow our Roman yoke. So it was an extremely dangerous time for the empire. And what's interesting is that just after the Budican rebellion,

Nero puts in a new finance officer who is actually a gall. He is not a Roman. He is a Gaul. And that is very much a gesture of reconciliation to try and rebuild Britain. The other thing Nero does is to recall Paulinus. Paulinus went on a savage slaughter streak after Boudicard. I mean, he really sort of completely sort of went off the rails then. He was recalled and the next few governors of Britain are people who are administrators.

They are conciliators. They are consolidators. Totally different from Paulinus, who is a flamboyant conqueror. And it's clear from those governors and from their governments. Rick and Vitai, that these were chosen in order to try and rescue Britain. The other factor in that equation is that there are pro-Roman Britons at the same time. I mean, we believe that Togadubnas lived through this period and actually probably cooperated with the Romans. Again, this is, you know, this is debatable, but we shouldn't imagine that the whole of Britain is rising up against the Romans. There are people within Britain who are probably siding with the Romans and helping the Romans.

If Pudhika had won, that would have fallen apart. and that supports the idea that then the Roman Empire would have had a major problem. But you know, it wasn't the Britons fighting the Romans, which is a point that was made early on. It was some tribes in Britain fighting the Romans. Juliet, so we're moving on to what happened to the name, what became of her as a myth,

and as an important player in our history from then on. There was a little reference from Gildas in the 6th century saying there was the lioness. But he doesn't mention Budak. This is the antiquarians looking at. It has. Maybe we had lots of different lionesses. I think we might have. I think we might have. I don't have to spend too much time on him. No.

We'd lose our, we don't, no mention at all, we'd lose the classical writers, really. It's the so-called Dark Ages, which is debatable. It doesn't all the matter. They come back in the Renaissance and, Polydor Virgil, much and so, then we get going. What do we get going with? It's partly to do with, ironically, the beginning of the British Empire. It does. It's Britain kind of refining its past. I mean, having lost the Geoffrey of Monmouth myth, the Trojan origin myth, Britain has to kind of find another national myth. And interestingly, Polidur Virgil knocks the Jeffrey on the head

and reintroduces the notion of Budaica, the classical sources. The reason you get so many different names is that there's no sort of, they're reading different kind of classical sources. There's no kind of good addition of Tacitus, and they don't have paleographical techniques. so you get Budigah, Voidicea, Vodasio, Vodas, Voida, Bundigar, I mean, you're all kinds of things. And then you get the idea that the word means victory. And then you get the idea that the word means victory as well,

because they're starting to speculate on the sources of these. They're applying the techniques of modern history in their infancy, but they are applying the techniques of modern history. But they are actually having trouble with the past because they still have many of the same attitudes as the Romans do to the nature of rulership, which is queens are a bad thing. and that female rulers are an affront, a danger to the natural order.

So they present Budika as negative, not quite so negative, perhaps. And of course they run into this problem that this is happening during the Tudor period and up parts Elizabeth I first. Who claims Budica as some sort of ancestors, I understand it, Miranda. Indeed. Example of a great source of strength. Look, you had a great queen and you've got to know. Red-haired.

Red-haired. Like Budica as a golden hair, fatten. And interestingly, if you actually look at pictures of Mary, her half-sister and Elizabeth, whereas Mary is presented as a stern but very female person, in images of Elizabeth, she's seen as very, very masculine and extremely powerful in a kind of male way. And so you've got the sort of buddicamist reenacting itself, reinventing itself, in the persona and the projected persona of Elizabeth I. Can you give us a bit of detail of how this is taking?

taken on by Elizabeth or her court or her spokespersons? I'm not sure how direct it is. It is very much we've been here before. It is admissible because it's happened for in the remote past. Well, there is one very direct one in that after the defeat of the Armada, there's a poem where Budica's speech before the Romans and Elizabeth's speech at Tilbury are paralleled, at least by implication. And you get this notion that kind of Elizabeth is Budika,

but she's not destructive because she's the Virgin Queen and Britain is in Violet, whereas Budika is the totally unruly woman. So they kind of keep the good bit of Budika and drop it. The other one where you get it, which is quite amazing, is this picture of Budika in Hollinsheds Chronicles, which is clearly based on Elizabeth's portrait when she was first a young queen, so she's got flowing hair.

but tucked under her arm is this hair that Budaka released before the battle. So they're trying to say it. And she released the hair. H-A-R-E, yes. She's got long hair as well. It wasn't a severed head. The bunny rabbit. She's got the bunny rabbit.

She's got the hand. She has more important than the bunny rabbit. Determines the battle. So they get this notion of the battle leader. But Elizabeth never actually leads the battle. She gives it. this speech at Tilbury, or we think she gives this speech at Tilbury, she never actually leads the battle, she allows the men to lead the battle. So she's kind of the good bits of

Budika without the bad bits of Budaga. Yes, the other thing that struck me is that it's easy to use positive aspects of Budica because she's a very complex figure. So you can draw on those positive aspects and ignore the negative or you can draw on the negative aspects and ignore the positive. And the other representation of Elizabeth as Budikor or Budikar is Elizabeth's actually later than Elizabeth's reign. It's by John Speed in the early 17th century, who again illustrates Budica as a clothed woman using the account from Cassius Dio,

the description of Budica's appearance. And she's very much addressed as a fairly civil Britain. She's still barbaric, but she's not as barbaric as her predecessors. And then we heard the Beaumont-Mletcher play on Bonduca, Bonducah, is that? And that's James I first. and her role shifts them, doesn't it, on when James comes in? Yes, I mean, that play is actually roughly contemporary with John Speed,

but unlike John Speed, who makes her very positive, Fletcher makes her a very, very negative figure. He actually calls her a varago. That's the word he use, which is a woman with masculine characteristics. It had a very, very specific meaning. And then Queen Victoria, sorry to John, but never mind. I mean, Queen Victoria adopts Budica, and what does she see, why does she, what does she see,

she Budica as? Well, Budica... Oh my, she's Boadicea at this time, which is a much nicer word, yes. We'll call her Boiseo. We'll call her Boiseo. We'll have a little relief from Budica, shall I? Back to the five syllables.

Well, Budika has become Boadicea basically by now. She's become very domesticated. She's no longer fierce. This is what's happening in the 17th century with speed. So by the time it comes to Victorian times, they can make a play on the name.

Budica is Victoria. Boadicea is Victoria. Victoria is Victoria. And of course, Victoria is Boa decia is Boa. both the leader of the empire and a good woman at home. She's the perfect wife. So really our Tacitus figure

has changed tremendously by this time. And you really get her being both imperial and domestic at the same time. And the thing there that it becomes very interesting is she becomes a pageant figure. And you get all these wonderful Victorian and Edwardian ladies dressing up as Budaka, using their pony carts as chariot

and putting their baby brothers in the slave cages. and it's all terribly, terribly proper. And great statue is raised. She's given a Persian side. She is. But in Wales, the statue of Budaqa in Cardiff shows her as a mother between her two daughters, not a chariot and sight. Really in England in Lake Victorian times, she's an imperial icon. And the reason is because she's seen as partly ancestral to the current British

and she fought a massive empire. but she's actually sort of dislocated from that idea of resistance and warfare and built into the idea that the British have inherited their imperial mantle from the Romans. So ironically, she becomes a symbol of British imperialism when her major act was to fight against a world empire. Miranda. There's a wonderful stained glass window in the town hall in Colchester. It's the Queen's window, and it represents all the British queens that had an influence on Colchester.

and it was dedicated or given to the town by a committee of ladies in 1902. And Budaqa is mentioned as Bodhis, and above that inscription is a picture of a very young, very beautiful woman with long golden hair and a large spear. Why do you think she keeps recurring, Juliet? Well, I think because there's an ambiguity at the start, this is always a very good thing if you're going to be a myth because it allows space for kind of reinterpretation

and because she's part of a past you can do kind of more things with the past than you can with the present I mean it's very much the other country concept of the past and also because you can put her into the public sphere into the domestic sphere into the sphere of imperial and into a cultural sphere of sphere as well she kind of fits because of her fragmentary source.

Well, you started by telling her she may not be real, Juliet. You've ended up by, we've had her realised anyway, in this programme. Thank you all very much. Miranda Aldous Green, Juliet Wood and Richard Hingley. Next week we'll be talking about the Norwegian painter Edmund Munk and his most famous work, The Scream, thought by some people to capture the torment of existence in a godless world. Thank you for listening.

If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research. To find out more, visit BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4.