The Ancients - Boudica

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Boudica has become a hero of British folklore. An ancient queen, her leadership of the Iceni in an uprising against the forces of the Roman Empire in around 60 AD is echoed around school classrooms. But what evidence do we have for her actions, appearance and eventual defeat? And how was she portrayed by the Romans in comparison to her contemporaries. On this Platinum Jubilee, we have put all of our Boudica content into one episode. Listen as Tristan speaks with Caitlin Gillespie, the author of ‘Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain’ about Boudica's power and our differing memories of her.This episode was published in two parts on 7th March and 21st March 2021.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, today marks the beginning of the special Platinum Jubilee Anniversary weekend in the United Kingdom, celebrating 70 years of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the throne. And so today we're going to be talking about an ancient Queen of

Britain. Well I hesitate to say Queen because she's never explicitly mentioned as a Queen but we can likely assume that she was because I am of course talking about Boudicca. Boudicca, because I am of course talking about Boudicca. Boudicca, the Iceni royal figure who led a revolt against Rome in 60-61 AD. Now today we are joined by Professor Katlin Gillespie to talk all about Boudicca. We initially released this podcast over a year ago in early 2021, but we split it into two. But today for this rerun, we're combining those two episodes into one big Boudicca episode with Katalin, and I hope you enjoy it. So without further ado, to talk all about Boudicca, here's Katalin. Katalin, thank you so much for coming on the show.

It's wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me. No problem at all. This is an amazing topic. Boudica, you've studied the life of this ancient Iceni queen, and particularly, can we say, with a focus on her portrayal, on how she's described in the sources, and also looking at the archaeology too. Yeah, absolutely. So my background is more on the literary side of things. Yeah, absolutely. So my background is more on the literary side of things. So what I was really interested in investigating was her different portrayals in our ancient authors. So working primarily with Tacitus and Cassius Dio, and then seeing if the archaeology could help me better

understand aspects that those Roman authors do not pay attention to. So things about daily life, things about the Esseni, things about her people that we really don't get in the Roman historians. And you mentioned them right there. So we have two main literary sources for Boudicca, Cassius Dio and Tacitus. We do. So the unfortunate thing is that neither of those Roman historians were in Britain at any time. Both of them are working with prior sources and prior historians, prior primary accounts that we do not any longer have. So Tacitus is working in the late first, early second century CE. He's under a new era of freedom of speech under the emperors after the death of Domitian.

And so under Trajan, he's really working with a newfound freedom in recording history, which leads to a different kind of bias. Tacitus, when he talks about Boudicca, maybe he has referenced or has access through his father-in-law, a man called Agricola, law, a man called Agricola, who was in Britain, maybe at the time of Boudicca, but more under Vespasian, and then became the leader of that colony for seven years. And then Cassius Dio, who's working even at a later date, so later under the Severan emperors, and he's also writing in Greek, so we have a different layer of remove there. Neither of them have access to the language Boudicca would have been speaking in her native context, but we get a much richer flavour from at least having two different accounts. Much richer flavour from these two different accounts. They sound like very interesting literary sources as we're going to get on to. But also the archaeology too, what we've discovered

in eastern England and the area of Boudicca, that can also help us with untangling the story of Boudicca. Yeah, absolutely. So we're talking about an area that is still in the early stage of the Roman occupation. So if the main advent of the Romans into Britain started with Julius Caesar, who was rebuffed. And the Britons, certainly in our Roman historians, like to reference that a lot, how well they were able to keep off of the Romans. They then continued to keep off the Romans until the era of Claudius. So Claudius sent one of his generals, a guy called Aulus Plautius, into Britain in the early stages of his principate. And then we get in that middle of the first century CE, the ongoing conflict between the Romans and the Britons. And we see evidence of that

in the creation of new towns, in the takeover of local towns by the Romans or the incorporation of local towns into the Roman idea of empire. So with the election of local magistrates, if they are willing to be a Roman colony or a Romanized municipium. And so we'll see on the level of the archaeology shifts in the style and the makeup of the homes, as well as the creation of more public buildings on a kind of Roman model. You don't see really Romanized baths or a theater or these kinds of public buildings on the level of what we see beginning in the first century until that time. So with Boudicca,

we say on the level of archaeology, a very, very distinct layer in both what is now modern colchester so camaludinum and in modern london so londinium which was the political center as well as verulamium which is right next to what is now saint albans and you see a distinct layer in the stratigraphy where she burned or where her army burned especially colchester and there is evidence for that conflagration that supports the history even if we don't have physical evidence of say buddhica as an individual herself we have evidence of her people and how her army really worked through and made their mark on those three cities in particular, and maybe other places in between.

Well, Katalin, you mentioned Boudicca's people there. So let's just talk just before the outbreak of Boudicca's famous revolt. At that time, in like the mid first century AD, what do we know about the Iceni? Yeah, so the Iceni are fascinating. And there's so much that we could talk about. I think one of the main takeaways is that they are a very well established people. They've been around for a while. They have numerous towns and areas of civilization in East Anglia. And we have evidence of a lot of horse trappings, what I'll say. So they were people who were both farmers and they were working with agriculture, but they also were horsemen.

And so you'll find bridal bits and all of these sorts of things. And so we get that then echoed as well in their monetary commerce. So they were also people who had their own money. And you'll see a lot of horse imagery on that money. You'll also see faces. And we're still trying to work out exactly the meaning of the words that are written in a Romanized script around those faces. You get something that maybe looks like Esupratus. So maybe that is someone related to Boudhica's husband prasutagus maybe that is a

marker or just a name for a leader in general like he is the priest king or some sort of composite leader but you have a monetized economy you have areas of great wealth and so when the iseni are taken over by the romans you get again these pockets where people buried their money and their jewels and their wealth and then fled assuming that they would return. You also get things like vast numbers of these torques so neck rings that are usually in precious metals sometimes gold. We get a reference in Cassius Dio to the fact that Boudicca was wearing one of these. It's something that Celtic peoples would have worn as a mark of nobility metals, sometimes gold. We get a reference in Cassius Dio to the fact that Boudicca was wearing one of these. It's something that Celtic peoples would have worn as a mark of nobility probably,

but it becomes a very distinct reference to the wealth of this people as well as their value or the value that they might have placed on luxury items and that they were also a society that had elites or that had different kind of social statuses amongst them. Well, Katlin, you mentioned there how Boudicca in Cassius Dio, she talks about the gold talk around her neck. So it sounds like from that source, we do get an image, shall we say, of her appearance. Absolutely. So Cassius Dio is very creative with his appearance of Boudicca. Dio is very creative with his appearance of Boudicca and if anyone has read their Livy she looks very similar to a Gaul who is fought by Manlius who gets surnamed Torquatus because this Gaul who's just huge think a giant and in Livy's account he's wearing a gold torque and

he's wearing a multi-colored cloak and he's wearing all of these fancy weapons. And that makes him a different kind of enemy that then is defeated by this guy called Manlius in a great feat of ingenuity more than brute strength. Now, when Cassius Dio takes that image over,, he attributes it to a woman, but she's wearing this multicolored luxuriant garment that is a marker maybe of royalty or of wealth. And she has her gold torque. Her hair is kind of flowing down. Maybe it's blonde, maybe it's red. In his account, it's essentially the color of fire. So whatever that means to you, her eye glints sharply, right? And she speaks in a very powerful, almost manly sort of roar in her voice as she's calling

to her people and urging them or exhorting them to fight as well as their ancestors did when they pushed off Julius Caesar and his Romans. So you get this image of a larger-than-life woman that echoes other references to larger-than-life Celtic peoples. So we have to create a worthy enemy, even if there is not so much archaeological evidence of that particular image. We do get the idea that she is wearing a similar style garment that we get in the accounts of Caesar concerning the Gauls and the Britons and others concerning what those Celtic peoples would have worn, which is obviously very different to Roman styled armor. And so just before we dive down into this Parsecasius die, which is absolutely remarkable,

dive down into this part of Cassius Dio, which is absolutely remarkable. Katlin, what causes Boudicca, this larger than life figure, to revolt, to go to war against the Romans? There is a lot going on there as well. And also that is going to depend on your sources. So when we talk about Cassius Dio, he seems to think it is primarily about taxation without representation, if you want to say that. So when the Romans came into Britain, they would have conscripted men into the Roman army to fight on their behalf. They would have taxed the local peoples. And in his

account, that was the primary reason for Boudicca's revolt is that they were being taxed out of house and home and weren't getting really anything in exchange for that. They didn't need Roman protection. They didn't need this incursion into their local lands. Tacitus, on the other hand, makes it far more of a domestic or a family issue. So in his account, Prosutagus, Boudicca's husband, had created what is called a client kingship relationship with Rome, where the emperor Nero allowed him to remain in charge of his peoples in exchange for Roman protection if he needed it, etc. So the Romans didn't always have a Roman placed in charge, but they worked with the local peoples to create this exchange.

Now that doesn't really work when Prasuticus dies. That relationship doesn't go to his wife. It falls apart. Nero, who is famously absent in most external affairs, has very little interest in foreign affairs, is keeping up appearances in Britain because it looks good for the memory of his adoptive father Claudius. Nero doesn't really pay attention to what's going on and so when Prasutagus dies that relationship falls apart. The Roman army moves in. They beat up Boudicca and assault her daughters and take over her land and enslave all of her relatives and do whatever they will with her family and friends and so she gathers together not only her people, but also a number of allies amongst the Trinovantes and other local peoples. And they revolt for tax reasons, maybe, but more

so that their entire livelihood and their lives and their customs and their culture is being reworked and insulted, as well as their bodies. A couple of things there Katniss, first of all the Roman actions it sounds like they're being brutal they're being almost perhaps what the Romans might call it barbaric and the Iceni are horrified victims of this but the other part is so interesting from what you mentioned there was how also the extent of unity how many tribes Boudicca is able to gather together for this role, this seems unprecedented for Britain at that time. the Britons gathered together in numbers unlike any before under the leadership of a woman and that they were initially very, very successful. So two things there that I think about when we think about unity is one, that these peoples hadn't gathered together before. And two,

they didn't really have a formulaic mode of warfare. So they're not training in the way that Roman soldiers are. They're not as organized, perhaps. And so when you have all of these people coming together in numbers that any estimation can range from maybe 80,000 to 120,000 to more or twice that many, Cassius Dio is very good at exaggerating numbers. For effect, Tacitus is a little more conservative, but both of them are guesstimating at best. Quick tangent slightly, because we sometimes say the Iceni tribe or the Trinovantes tribe or the Catevelone tribe, but calling them tribes, is this really correct? It's a really good question and it's kind of a modern reworking that is not very accurate calling them tribes or peoples or groups or clans none of these words

really work and so i try to avoid it and just say the iseni but you're absolutely right to point out this idea of tribes has all of these modern connotations that are not really workable in that ancient context. And we don't have a local word or a Celtic word that I know of that can be applied to each of those groups without difficulty. So that's a very good tangent and a very good reminder that our modern perceptions and our modern vocabulary doesn't work with the ancients as well. And so that's part of the reason it's so important to know not only the latin and greek but also pay attention to those celtic languages and everything that we can try and suss out about the connotations of particular lexical

items fair enough so let's go back then to buddhica haranguing the britons gathering together all these people but cassius dio's speech at time, we've mentioned her appearance already, but Cassius, he portrays Boudicca in several different lights in this speech. Yeah, so his speech for Boudicca is very lengthy. And this is one of the highlights of his history is that he, at least in the remains of Cassius Dio's history that we have, does not give extensive speeches to women all that often. He gives the wife of Augustus, Livia, a very lengthy speech about clemency on an occasion when Augustus's life is threatened. But now we have this Boudicca speech where she is focusing on some ideas that seem very Roman, right? How important is the value of freedom over slavery? And this comes up in any other Roman speech. It's also an idea that comes up in any other speech of

especially Britons who are also fighting against the Roman incursion. So we have Caraticus, we have Calgacus, we have these other major leaders within the first century. And she emphasizes, at least in his text, that overtaxation is another form of servitude. So that losing one's means of living is similar to the state of servitude when you're serving the Romans for the sake of profit. Now that's one side of the coin, but then she also gives the whole history of the Romans in Britain. We've done this before. We deflected Julius Caesar. We dealt with Augustus. We dealt with Caligula. Now Caligula never really made it to Britain, but that's a whole another story. So we are capable of this kind of action. She also emphasizes, again, this idea of unity. So she mentions,

we need to fight together as maybe kinspeople. For she says, I regard you all as my kinspeople, since we all inhabit the same island, since we all, at least in the Roman context, are called by the same name. So the Romans just make up this name, the Britons. This isn't really a thing that Boudicca and the various peoples of Britain would have called themselves at this time. And so she also recreates this idea of unity for they all live in this very isolated a little bit or this very distinct community being on the island. And she also emphasizes then the differences between the Romans and the Britons. The Romans, she says, they're weak. They can't stand the cold and the weather and the wet and they can't even swim well

and they love having fancy meals and taking baths and eating bread and all these things that she regards as luxury items and that the Britons are enduring. They can deal with any kind of weather. They can survive outside without tents if they need to. They have a surplus of bravery because this innate and built up endurance. And so because of this very clear difference, she ends with this famous phrase.

She says, let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves, which I think is just so great that she finishes with this flourish. And it's really about what it means to be a Briton versus what she, in Cassius Dio's perspective, would have said, this is what it looks like to be a Roman. And this is why we are inevitably going to win. And talking about animals, Catherine, what's the religious link in this speech? So thanks for pointing that out. Of all of the things she says in Cassius Dio's lengthy account, Cassiostio's lengthy account. She prays to a goddess Andraste or Andarte or some goddess that it's not totally clear her name. Cassiostio is trying to render a Celtic name into Greek. And so

she makes a sacrifice to this goddess. She lets a hair run away from her garment and she reads that path of the hair as a good omen and now she says I thank you oh goddess Andraste Andarte I call on you I'm a woman you're a woman and I'm just like other women who have ruled over other peoples but indeed I'm actually more powerful I'm more capable than say Nytocras or Semiramis who ruled over Egyptians I'm even better than the Romans when they were ruled over the Empress Messalina or Agrippina mother of Nero because the Britons are more masculine there's no other way to say it that she says Nero is just a guy who wants to play the liar he doesn't engage in war he wants soft couches and incense and all of this and she even calls him by a feminized term so what we would call Domitia instead of Domitius so calls him the feminine name

Lady Domitia Nero rule over the Romans but not over me and you and so she gives this prayer to this goddess and in conjunction with the appeal to her people this really gets them going. Well it gets them going and where is the first place that Boudicca targets? So first their main target is Camulodunum, so modern Colchester, because that is the center of Roman power. It is the center that was created as a Roman colony, taken over from the local peoples. And so because that was the center of the first Roman invasion, that seems a very good place to start. And so she and her army wreak pretty incredible damage on colchester they burn it to the ground and at least in cassius dio's account they're not very nice to

those they take captive they're pretty atrocious in their treatment of their victims especially the women which is maybe adding another whole gendered aspect to this, both the idea of Boudicca as a female leader, but also the idea of this goddess Andate to whom they were indebted for their initial victories. So after Colchester, they march on London, and then, at least in Tacitus' account, they march on one further city, that is Verulamium, before facing off the Romans in actually a battlefield that we

don't know exactly where that was so a battlefield that is somewhere in that area and there are a lot of different claims about exactly where that final conflict was. It's really interesting you mentioned the Colchester ancient Camelotian being like the heart of Roman Britain was it quite a symbolic place did it have pieces of architecture that epitomized this Roman overlordship over this part of Britain was there a clear sense for those who were under Boudicca that this was really the first town that they wanted to completely destroy this Roman encroachment shall we say on their way of life that's a great question and a great segue into what does it look like to have a Roman-style town? Now, you might have markers like a forum or a

temple or a theatre. At Camuludinum in particular, they were building, and the Romans had honoured their initial encroachment into Britain by building a temple to the deified Claudius. So the emperor Claudius was the one who took credit for the initial conquering of Britain. He was in Britain for all of about 18 days, leaving the real work up to his generals. But nevertheless, we have that evidence for a temple to the divine Claudius. So it makes very good sense for Boudicca to use her goddess to then defeat or to erase the presence of a very imperial structure, such as a temple to a divinized emperor to whom the locals were supposed to pray and there were even locals who were made priests and curators of this divine cult. So by destroying that very, very clear marker of a Roman religiosity or a

Roman ideology of rulership and divinity, they really got at the heart of what was the Roman impact at that time. And these sackings, you mentioned how afterwards she goes to Londinium with her army, of course, there's the massacre of part of the 9th Legion as well at that time. It's just really interesting compared to how we started it talking about how the Iceni are the victims of greedy, brutal Romans, but is the brutality of Boudicca's army really stressed at this point in the story? Absolutely. So the brutality of her army, especially in Cassius Dio, Cassius Dio is very elaborate

about what happened to the captive bodies that Boudicca's people took. And he says that this kind of human sacrifice was made in the name of Andraste, so that you're making a human sacrifice in honor of the goddess. And we have reference to this idea of human sacrifice as being a druid sort of thing. So one of the reasons that Claudius was very harsh against druidic practices is because there was this belief by the Romans that they practiced human sacrifice and tried to read the entrails of human in the way that the Romans read the entrails of, say, a sacrificed ox. So there is this religious element, but there's also this idea that human

sacrifice is the worst kind of crime that you can commit and so Dio is very elaborate about exactly what happens to those bodies Tacitus is not as elaborate Tacitus is very interesting because he says they essentially took no prisoners with the implication that they were killing a lot of people and he notes a couple of ways in which they are executed but then he says that they took no prisoners and they took no spoils as if they knew that their wins were limited right as if they knew that they weren't going to be at this for a long time so he gives Boudicca and her army a bit of insight that they know there are going to be repercussions for their actions and even if they had cast off Julius Caesar and some other Romans,

that this is a different thing, that now the Romans are there. And of course, the Esseni had attempted to revolt 10 years earlier and been completely annihilated, those who led that earlier revolt. And so they know that this is a different kind of military situation. Throughout June on Not Just the Tudors, we're honoring Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee by focusing on queenship in the 16th and 17th centuries. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and all this month with my guests I'll be exploring the coronations of Tudor Queens, Queens in Shakespeare, Queens Regnant and Queens Consort. Then there's the Queen who ruled over the Spanish

Netherlands and the female Swedish King. You heard that right. So for a month of all things magisterial and monarchical, look no further than Not Just the Tudors, wherever you get your podcasts. and so when is the next time in the story captain that we really get some insights via the ancient sources talking about buddhica's character the part of the story where the sources really try to describe buddhica again i would say the next real part of the story that both of our authors focus on is that final battle. So it's interesting that they have these initial successes. They burn this city.

They burn this city. They maybe burn a third city. They don't take prisoners. They don't take spoils. But here's really where I'm going to pause my narrative again. And we see the power of Roman historians to both fast forward and then go in slow motion. And so that final battle is this extended slow motion moment where you can essentially see the cameras and the drones above the battlefield and focusing in on Boudicca's eyes and her

glower before that final conflict. So when Suetonius and Paulinus and his Romans finally get back from Mona, where they were destroying a Druid center of worship, and they take on Boudicca and her army, we get, as is very common in Roman history, paired speeches. So both generals give a lengthy speech. Boudicca speaks first in Tacitus, generals give a lengthy speech. Boudicca speaks first in Tacitus and then Paulinus replies and his reply echoes a lot of what she has to say. She in Tacitus's account is a little more extensive at this point where he has her riding in a chariot with two of her daughters showing them off as proof of Roman brutality and calling upon each of these different groups. So we have a unified image, but also her attention to each of these pockets of different

people, and she calls upon them to follow her leadership as a woman, says that it's not totally out of the ordinary for Britons to follow a woman, emphasizes that the Romans have no respect for age or sex in who they are brutalizing, emphasizes that the gods are clearly on her side, and challenges really the men amongst the army to stand up and prove themselves as men, either conquer or die trying. She says, this is my promise as a woman. If you don't follow it, you all can live in servitude. So she has this very clear challenge and we set up a battlefield almost like a theater. So all of the wives are in wagons along the sidelines. If you picture a theater and we know it's in an enclosed space that seems like a theatrical. Now the Romans chose that space because it meant that even though they had fewer

numbers, they could attack more easily. So there's a plus minus to that idea. But there is this very clear theater of war where we have observing audiences and maybe because we have the observing audiences identified as the women amongst the Britons we have a little bit of sympathy at least towards their cause even if we are in Tacitus's ideal audience we are Roman elite readers so she calls upon her men to live up to their identities as Britons and as men and then Paulinus has his say over on the other side of the battlefield, and then they clash. And both of our authors have various accounts of how that final battle goes down. It's really interesting. You can really imagine that Hollywood kind of

stage, can't you? You said with her riding on the chariot in front with her daughters. And it really seems to emphasize what we've been saying from Tacitus's speech there that on the one hand she's portrayed as this warrior woman this dux femina I believe is the phrase you use but at the same time referring to her daughters she's a mother too. Absolutely so I have a lot of sympathy for this portrayal I think it shows a lot of different sides to the conflict and invites us as readers to see a different perspective that she is a mother. She has at least two daughters of possibly marriageable age who have been brutalized by the Roman army. And there's that level. And then she's also a woman who's just lost her husband. She is a woman who's been then placed into this position of somewhat leadership.

It's unclear really if she took this on her own or if she would have been the heir apparent as the leader of her people. She is also a religious figure who at least is able to read omens and to call upon a very specific goddess. She's doing so many different roles that allow us to see an encapsulation of her people in just one individual. So I have a lot of sympathy for her being put into an impossible position and making something of it. Do we have any other British queens around this time in ancient history that we can use as possible comparison to Boudicca? We have a negative model. So amongst the Brigantes who are on the western side of Britain, we have a woman called Cartamandua, who was a leader and is

identified actually as a queen. So none of our Roman sources call Boudicca a regina. She is a dux femina. She's a female general. They call this woman a regina, right? So an actual queen. She, for various reasons, who knows, was not the most morally upright of women and took up with her husband's steward and then divorced her husband and had all of his family killed. And so he kind of rises up against her and the Bergantes side with him. But Cartamandu is another client regent of Rome, so she actually has the Roman army on her side. of Rome so she actually has the Roman army on her side so she calls on the Roman army to help her out and is able at least initially to defeat her ex-husband and regain this composite Roman local rule so she's a very negative model that we have as a comparison we don't have a lot of other women who are mentioned in our texts as being queens or female generals certainly in this region. So we've got to

just before this big expectant battle we've had the pre-battle speeches but it doesn't go exactly too well for Boudicca. No the Romans are very well trained in how to negotiate various types of battle situations. They have a number of different kinds of troops at their disposal. They have auxiliaries. They have people who are on the flanks. They have this composite army from various areas of the empire. And then Boudicca's people are a little bit disorganized in both of our texts, and they don't use the geography, the topography to their advantage. Whereas just previously in Boudicca's speech, she said, we know how to engage in this landscape. We know how to endure the cold and the weather and we can fight from within the woods and do this guerrilla warfare. And the Romans don't know how to do any of that.

Now, when the Romans choose a narrow defile for their final battle, it means that not all of Boudicca's people can go against the Romans at the same time. So they get killed off one by one and the Romans are able to easily conquer them and slaughter a great number. And even in Tacitus' account, they even kill the women and the animals that pull their wagons who are watching from the sidelines. So it is a complete and utter disaster for Boudicca and her people and again in Tacitus' account Suetonius Paulinus and his Romans keep chasing down any of the remnants of that army

as if they'd suffered an individual injury he says so as if Suetonius Paulinus took this to heart that the Britons would dare attack the Roman center of that colony while he was away. That's interesting. You mentioned while he was away. So let's focus on that because you also mentioned earlier the island of Mona. First of all, what is the island of Mona? And what do you mean by he was far away when the revolt breaks out? Yeah, so Suetonius Paulinus is the Roman governor, is also the general of the Roman army. And he would have been centered at Cumulodunum or Colchester, which then became this colony and settled a lot of Roman military veterans in the area, et cetera, et cetera. But he took it upon himself to attack a druidic center of worship at Mona, which is modern

day Anglesey. So he went over to that island with his army. And this island was not only a druidic center of worship, but was also a center of refuge. So I also mentioned before that prior to this conflict, there had been essentially ongoing revolts and attempts to eradicate the Romans from Britain by the local peoples. And in some accounts, those who had lost took refuge amongst the Druids at this center. So there are various groups here. Suetonius Paulides leads his army across. He's met on the shore by not only the Druids and these former leaders of revolt and revolutionaries,

but also women who are crying out in kind of a frenzied manner, almost like Bacchans. So those female worshippers of Bacchus who allow themselves to really be free. And they're fighting with torches and they're fighting with screams. And the Romans are initially shocked and they pause for a second to gather some information I guess because that is quite a sight to see and then the general says be men friends and let's do what we came here to do and so they also completely defeat that group of people and set up a Roman leadership over that island. They burn the sacred grove. So a lot of these druidic practices wouldn't have taken place in something that we're picturing like a Roman temple.

A lot of them take place outside in nature. So in very, very sacred groves, this is not something that you do. Even if you are in a state of war, you do not burn sacred spaces. Now, I just said that Boudicca burnt the temple to Divine Claudius, so there is a little bit of parallelism here that while she's doing this, Suetonius is burning down her people's sacred center of worship. In any case, they are busy on this island when the reports are brought to suetonius palinus that colchester is also burning and he should probably get back it does kind of feel like a right back at you that whilst he said these groves are being burnt in anglesey

at a similar time you have this symbol of rome this temple to the divine emperor who's just died, also being burnt to the ground. That's astonishing. Yeah, that there is absolutely this parallelism there in what does it mean to really attack a people's, it might not be to just kill their leader, it is going to be to attack those most sacred institutions that they value above and beyond everything else, like the divine. So if you have this sense that a lot of that Druid worship was not only attractive, but it was, at least according to Julius Caesar, it originated in Britain. So it's the foundation.

It is the origin story of this religious practice. is the origin story of this religious practice, and you're attacking that origin, which to my mind is even worse than the temples to divine Claudius, because Claudius wasn't the best emperor, if we remember. And even though he was divinized, many Romans made fun of that. And there's a whole mockery of that event in the Apocolocantosis, or the pumpkinification of the Emperor Claudius, which is this Manipian style satire about what happens when Claudius dies, and he goes to get judged in the underworld. So he wasn't really on the same level as say, either the druids or certainly what we get the sense about Andraste. Interestingly on that you mentioned how revolt sometimes doesn't end with the death of the leader so let's go back to the aftermath of the final clash at the Bast of Watling Street

what do we think happens to Boudicca after this clash? It's good that you bring that up because at some point she does die and this is where our sources differ and their differences betray a very interesting authorial bias. So in Tacitus, you have this account of a noble suicide. So the apex of Roman leadership is that the captain goes down with the ship or if you are losing a battle, then the general will commit suicide either by rushing into battle and fighting to the death, which is something like we get with Catiline, or they will commit suicide like Brutus and Cassius rather than allow themselves to be taken hostage and paraded as a prisoner of war. Certainly for non-Roman people, Boudicca would have been brought to Rome, paraded in a triumph alongside

all of these spoils and that kind of thing. Instead, Tacitus says that she poisoned herself and committed suicide instead of being taken hostage. Cassius Dio says she just got sick and died and her people gave her a very elaborate funeral, but that at the moment of her death and at the completion of that funeral, the revolt was regarded as completed and ended and over. So we do have, in this case, the sense that the death of the leader is the death of that revolt. And in Tacitus, we have a clear reference point in that she dies like Cleopatra, right? So Cleopatra famously did not go down with the ship at Actium when her final battle against Octavian and his army was lost. She fled back to Egypt. But again, prior to being taken hostage or paraded around in Rome, she chose to commit suicide by the poison of two asps.

Boudicca has a similar idea here, I think. That is really interesting now you go talk about these comparisons between Boudicca and other women in ancient history at this period so let's focus on a few of them now and let's keep on Tacitus because I know another name that's been mentioned is Lucretia. What's the possible link between Boudicca and this figure called Lucretia? this figure called Lucretia? So Lucretia is one of these figures who doesn't say much, but what she says is incredibly powerful. So if we're going back to the very early history of Rome and the account primarily of Livy, although others talk about Lucretia, at the end of the period of the kings, so 510-509, Lucretia was sexually assaulted by the son of the Roman king, one of the Tarquins. And the ways in which that story play out are maybe not the focus for today, but it is another story of assault in the same way that we get with Boudicca's daughters.

And then she, again, like Boudicca's daughters, becomes a symbol. then she again like buddhica's daughters becomes a symbol and she says she calls her husband and her husband's best friend a guy called brutus and her father and her father's best friend to hear her story and to admit that she does not want to ever be a symbol of unchastity she wants to be a symbol of its opposite of of this great value for the Romans, which is called pudicitia, sexual morality or chastity or whatever you want to call it. And in order to do that, she feels like she can no longer live. And so she takes a sword and stabs herself. And in her dying words, she calls upon these men that she has called to bear witness to her story and she challenges them to be men and avenge her death her wrongful suffering and her death and so her body is

actually brought out and displayed in front of the Romans and as Brutus makes this powerful speech and says this is what happens when we allow ourselves to be ruled by tyrants in the name of Lucretia, I call upon you all to be men and cast the Tarquins out of Rome. And so this is, again, a catalyzing image. The body of a vulnerable young woman becomes the symbol for freedom or death and so Brutus leads his army and they cast out the Tarquins and the war goes on the Tarquins don't take it lightly that they've been thrown out of the city but it is that moment where the female body becomes a symbol and becomes a catalyst for action and I think we have a dual moment with Boudicca in that Boudicca is enraged at what has happened to her daughter's bodies. And then she rides around in

the chariot with those two young women. And it sounds bad, but kind of using them as her call to action. It's really interesting, these comparisons. We talked about Lucretia just there. It was interesting, you mentioned a fight for freedom or death with Lucretia. And it seems to compare similarly with the speech Tacitus gives Boudicca before the battle where she's like to the soldiers, it's freedom or servitude. These similarities are quite astonishing over hundreds of years difference. This very dichotomy, and it's obviously not going to be unique to women and speeches given by females. It's not going to be unique to non-Romans. It's actually a very, very Roman idea, at least in the Roman historians, that you have to fight to the freedom or die. And it creates a similarity between non-Romans and Romans. So you get it in the speeches of, say, Arminius, the German, and you get it with Calgacus and that freedom can be very literal freedom or it can be say in the senate the freedom of speech it can be for Tacitus the freedom to write what he wants

to write in his history so another freedom of speech idea there are all of these nuances to that idea of libertas but it is a very common theme that runs throughout and ties so many of these stories together. Forgive me, I'm going to ask about one other figure quickly before we wrap up. And I noticed this figure when doing a little bit of research with this. And forgive me if I say it completely wrong. Around the same kind of time on the continent, Velaida? Yeah, so we have other references to not only Britons, but also other kind of Celtic peoples. So how does Boudicca relate to other female leaders and maybe not necessarily generals,

but religious leaders? So Valetta was known as a prophetess and her prophecy concerning the fate of a local conflict around the same time becomes taken as another positive omen and her people are again able to win in their initial conflict even if it doesn't go their way for the whole time but as a result of her positive prophecy she receives numerous honors among them maybe a young man to be in a state of servitude or a prisoner of war who comes in a state of servitude. But you have this idea that the Gallic peoples honor female prophetesses just as much as, say, the Romans respect the idea of other types of omens or the augurs, right? So people who interpret birds, Phileida does other types of prophecy and other types of interpretation of

omens. And her word is regarded as just as powerful as, say, military advice. And as a result, she is shown different honors. And we have this recognition that she's not unique, actually, that we have other references to female prophetesses that were treated in much the same way. Going on from that then, because you've also mentioned a couple of other figures, you mentioned other native resistance leaders such as Calgacus, you've mentioned Caraticus. How does Boudicca and her character compare to these other native leaders of resistance against Rome? That's a really good question. And so I call them the two C's, right? So Caraticus and Calgacus and Boudicca, all of whom are primarily Tacitian figures or characters, and Tacitus draws all three of them together, I think primarily in relationship to the value

they place on family. So if we have these three leaders of revolt at various times in the first century, we have, for example, Caraticus leads a revolt. He is unsuccessful again in his final battle. His brothers are taken hostage. His family is taken hostage by the Romans. He seeks shelter amongst that other queen I mentioned before, Cartamandua. She hands him directly over to the Romans. So thanks. He gets

paraded through Rome in the manner that Boudicca avoids. He and his whole family and all the prisoners of war get paraded through Rome, and he's allowed to make a plea for his life in front of the Emperor Claudius and Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Nero. He says that Romans are always known for this ideal of clemency, and wouldn't it be great if Claudius could draw on this moment as proof of his own clemency as emperor? And he makes this lovely oration on behalf of not really himself, but really his family. And as a result, they're allowed to live. They aren't allowed to go back to Britain, but they are allowed to live and they're not placed in a state of servitude. They're kind of guests of the state in Rome.

And we don't hear about him anymore. So we're not quite sure what happens to him at the end. But there is this value of family there. And I think the similar thing happens with Calgacus, who gives very lengthy speeches, who is the main adversary in Tacitus's biography of his father-in-law, Agricola. in Tacitus's biography of his father-in-law, Agricola. So when Agricola was in his governorship in Britain, Calgacus led his own revolt. And one of the primary foci of his speeches is, again,

freedom over servitude. Secondly, we've done this before. We're Britons. We did it against Caesar, et cetera. We can do it again now. And thirdly, that the homes and the families of his people are no longer safe. And he gives this wonderful speech that espouses very Roman values. He is defeated by Agricola, and in that defeat is a heartbreaking moment where the army of Calgacus regards themselves as so defeated that they actually burn their homes

and a lot of them actually slaughter their own wives and children such that they won't be slaves of the Roman state. So there is this moment when we've talked about brutality and fear in a lot of ways that it is worse to become a Roman prisoner than it is to destroy your own family. We get a similar sense in Tacitus's ethnography of the Germanic peoples that the Germanic women also serve as cheerleaders on the sides of their battlefields and cheer on their men and display the threat of servitude by their very bodies. So there is a kind of idea of a roman menace behind some of these stories yeah it's very interesting once again these similarities over years and years and years and also these tacitian similarities in particular just to finish it all off buddhica one of the most

famous names of ancient history on the island of britain because her legacy lives on after her revolt her legacy very quickly over the hundreds of years since then shall we say it's been in many different shapes and forms absolutely so buddhica's legacy lives on she continues to inspire various artistic productions if you go to the colchester museum you'll see everything from girl bands named after Boudicca to beer that is an Esseni IPA to these statues and sculptures and artistic productions that show the many sides of Boudicca. And this is what I kind of love is that you'll have something like Thornycroft's statue on the Bank of the Thames that really looks like she's facing off against Parliament. And she's in this enormous horse-drawn carriage that was modeled

after, I think, Victoria and Albert's actual horses. And she's riding with her daughters in defiance. And you get this real image of what it means to be a dux femina. But on the other side, you also get a Havard statue that's in Wales and the images of really a marble woman who is in mourning. So she's with her two daughters, but it looks like she is a refugee almost more than a leader and so you get really a broad spectrum in these just two sculptures and what that leads me to believe is there's a lot more that we can learn from her and there are a lot of new interpretations that are just waiting to be made. Absolutely and the future of archaeology on this subject must be very exciting indeed in that remark. Kathleen that was absolutely brilliant just to finish it all off your book on Boudicca is called? Boudicca, Warrior Woman of Roman Britain. It is in hardback, paperback and is an audiobook.

Oh, wow. Fantastic. Well, Katlin, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. This is very fun. Well, there you go. There was Professor Katlin Gillespie explaining all about buddhica i hope you enjoyed now if you'd like more ancients content in the meantime you know what i'm going to say you can of course subscribe to our weekly newsletter via a link in the description below

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