The Ancients - Boudica: Britain's Warrior Queen

Episode Date: March 7, 2021

Boudica has become a hero of British folklore. 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? Caitlin Gillespie is the author of ‘Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain.’ In this first of two episodes, she speaks to Tristan about the sources that have helped us to find out more about this legendary woman.

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they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, tomorrow, Monday, March the 8th, is International Women's Day. And this month is Women's History Month. So in today's podcast, we are talking about the most famous warrior woman of ancient Britain, Boudicca, also known as Boudicca. Now joining me to talk through what we know about Boudicca,

and in particular, how she is portrayed in our surviving Roman sources, I was delighted to be joined by Professor Catelyn Gillespie from Brandeis University. Catelyn is Boudicca's 21st century biographer. She's written a fantastic book about this warrior woman of ancient Britain and so it was great to get on the show to talk through this amazing topic. Part two will be out in the near future. Without further ado, here's Catelyn. Catelyn, 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. 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. 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, 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 flavor 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 continue 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 see on the level of archaeology, a very, very distinct layer in both what is now modern Colchester, so Camuludinum, and in modern London, so Londinium, which was the political center, as well as Verulamium, which is right next to what is now St. 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, Boudicca 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. 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 buddhica'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 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, Catelyn, 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. 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 torc and he's wearing a multicolored cloak and he's wearing all of these fancy weapons.

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, first, 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 armour. And so just before we dive down into this part of Cassius Dio, which is absolutely remarkable, Catelyn, 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. Absolutely. And that's the main focus of especially Tacitus' account, that Tacitus is in a state of some admiration and wonder that 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 Catevelorne 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 Boudicca haranguing the Britons, gathering together all these people. But Cassius Dio's speech at this 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 nother 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, 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, she prays to a goddess Andraste or Andarte or some goddess that it's not totally clear her name. Cassius Dio 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, Nytocris 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, near a 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. And where is the first place that Boudicca targets? So first, their main target is Camulodunum, so modern Colchester, because that

is the centre of Roman power. It is the centre that was created as a Roman colony, taken over from the local peoples. And so because that was the centre 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. 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 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. And so when's the next time in the story, Katlin, that we really get an insight via the ancient sources talking about Boudicca's character? The part of the story where the sources really try to describe Boudicca 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, 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. I hope you've enjoyed this first part of our podcast

with a brilliant Professor Katzlin Gillespie on Boudicca. Part two, where we will focus on the end of Boudicca's revolt and how her portrayal in the sources compares to other prominent women from Roman history, will be out very soon.