The Rest Is History - 501. The Roman Conquest of Britain: Boudicca’s Reign of Blood (Part 3)

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

“Two cities were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and of their allies perished, and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover, all this ruin was brought upon by a woman...” Few figures have statues dedicated to them in the towns they incinerated. But Boudicca was no ordinary figure. With a name that means “she who brings victory”, Boudicca was Rome’s supervillain. She was a freedom fighter who stood up to the greatest imperial power in the world. In 60 AD, Boudicca led her Iceni army to attack Colchester and London, cities left bare and vulnerable without fortifications. But the Romans would not accept such defeats without taking revenge… Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the life of the first vivid personality in British history, a fierce tale of a warrior queen. _______ LIVE SHOWS *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York. *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. The person chiefly responsible for inciting the natives to rebel against the Romans, the person thought most qualified to serve as their leader and to direct the entire course of their campaign, was Boudicca. She was a Briton, a woman of royal rank, and possessed of much greater intelligence than is usually the case with women. First she mustered her forces, about 120,000 in all, and then she climbed onto a tribunal, which had been fashioned out of earth in the Roman manner. She was a woman of towering height and terrifying appearance, with fiercely flashing eyes and a rasping voice.

A great mass of auburn hair fell tumbling to her hips. Around her neck she wore a large golden torc, and she wore a heavy cloak fastened by a brooch over a brightly patterned tunic. This was how she always dressed. Reaching for a spear to add force to her words, she spoke to her army as follows. You now understand from personal experience how different are freedom and slavery. Some of you, because you did not previously appreciate this, may have been seduced by the hunted promises of the Romans. But now, because you have tried both, you have come to appreciate how

terrible a mistake you made in preferring foreign occupation to your traditional way of life, and to realize that poverty without a master is always preferable to a slavery that makes you rich. For what shame have we not endured? And with what sufferings since these Romans first landed in Britain? So that, Tom, was Cassius Dio with the first detailed description of a Britain in history. And that's so much to unpick there in that reading, Dominic. It's just how, apparently, just according to Cassius Dio, it's just how Boudicca spoke, isn't it? Plotting a Brexit. So, just how Boudicca spoke, isn't it? Plotting a Brexit.

So, well, she is plotting a Brexit, isn't she? She is. According to her passage. The foreign occupation. Apologies to all female listeners for Cassius Dio's sexism. Yeah, that was poor, Tom. That was sad, wasn't it, from Cassius Dio? Yeah, so Boudicca is, I mean, she's probably the first vivid personality in the whole of British history. And Cassius Dio is describing this great rebellion that she leads in AD 60, a rebellion against Roman

rule that almost succeeds. And, you know, we've been talking about the ambivalent attitudes that people, certainly in Britain, feel towards the Romans, but there's also kind of ambivalence towards Boudicca, isn't there? Because you could represent her as what I think she was, a kind of a freedom fighter, but she leaves this trail of destruction in her wake. Her forces commit appalling atrocities, as we'll hear. I think that she's one of the very few people to have two statues in towns that she incinerated. So there's a famous statue of her in London, which her forces burnt down, but there's also one in Colchester, which she also incinerated. Right. So a fascinating figure, Dominic.

Yeah. An inspiration to arsonists everywhere, that if you burn down a city, you might get a statue. So I remember having done Boudicca at school, I think you were always expected to kind of empathize with her a bit, weren't you? She was a kind of heroic figure. And in the popular imagination, hasn't she become conflated a little bit with the figure of Britannia? Do you think on the kind of chariot, the wild hair, the flashing eyes, the spear, all of that kind of stuff? Do you not think there's an element of that? I think because we have two detailed accounts of her rebellion, Cassius Dio, who we referred to, but also Tacitus, the greatest Roman historians, and whose texts become readily available in the Renaissance and then through into the modern

period. For British scholars, but also for the British generally, to have this incredibly dramatic figure at the kind of wellsprings of our history is great. And you're right that, of course, there is a kind of parallel between the figure of Boudicca and the figure of Britannia, who we referenced yesterday, first appears as someone who is being assaulted by a kind of buff Claudius. And as we will see, what prompts Boudicca to her revolt is precisely sexual violence. So yeah, I think there's lots to unpick here. I'm glad you didn't unpick that opening impression. I mean, that's surely something for a bonus episode. I've just left that.

Yeah, that's between me and my therapist, Tom. To float. So let's have a bit of context. To float in the pan. Let's have a bit of context. Last time we heard about how the Romans invaded in AD 43 under Claudius, and you described how they pacified the kind of south and midlands of the island of Britain. They beat the Catavoloni, so that was the most powerful kingdom.

And they turned their capital, Camulodunum, into a Roman colony, a colonia. And they settled their veterans there. And they built a big temple to Claudius, to the conqueror. Give us a bit more context. What else has been happening? Just to put this into some perspective. So Camulodunum, present-day Colchester, which has become this colony, this kind of showcase for Roman civilization. It's confusing because although it was a Catavelonian capital,

the Catavelonians had been an imperial power themselves and had conquered it from the Trinovantes, who were their neighbours. And so it's the poor Trinovantes who really suffer from the exactions of the settlers in Camulodonum. So they're very miserable. Whereas the Catephaloni, who are the people who the Romans defeated, they're absolutely fine. They're having a great time. They've got their main kind of settlement, Verulanium. It's been pronounced Municipium, which means that all the elected magistrates in there become Roman citizens. They've started to build baths, all this kind of stuff. So they're very happy. And also to the south, there is the kingdom of the Atrabates, very stable, ruled by the very solidly pro-Roman Togedubnus, who may well be the guy who lives in

the palace of Fishbourne, the kind of great villa. So the Castellani, the Atrabates or whoever they are now, they're pro-Roman. So that's a big, solid Roman block. And basically the Romans are confident that the southeast is secure, which is why there was a legionary base in Camulodonum that's now been withdrawn and it's been given over to kind of veterans. Meanwhile, beyond the kind of lowland southern Britain, in the north, so kind of Yorkshire, Lancashire, all that, that is the territory of a tribe called the Brigantes, who are ruled by a queen called Cartamandua, who's a kind of great survivor. We'll be coming back to her later. And in Wales, an absolutely brutal, one might almost say genocidal, war of pacification is happening there, led by the governor of Britain, Suetonius Paulinus, who is probably the most effective

general in the whole Roman Empire, which is why he's been sent to Britain. And he's given the Druids on Anglesey a hell of a kicking. Yes, exactly. Suetonius Paulinus has gone to, well, he ends up in Anglesey. I mean, it's a long way from southeastern Britain. And he can do that basically because he feels that the southeast has been successfully pacified and the romans as they usually do when they conquer a territory you know they apply the carrot and the stick so the carrot is the villas that they give to leading collaborators the uh the civic adornments that they give to give a tartase they're called so that these are roman style urban foundations

based on meeting places. So Verulianum would be an example. Camulodonium would be another. You'd have your bath and your forum or whatever. Yeah, all that stuff. The stick, of course, is the risk that you will be slaughtered, enslaved, raped if you oppose Roman rule. And so essentially it creates for the Britons a choice. You can collaborate and have a nice bath, or you can fight and end up

either dead or in shackles. That's a no-brainer, but clearly I don't love freedom as some people do. Well, yes. Well, people can draw their own lessons on that, Dominic. Yeah, they can indeed. So let's talk about Boudicca. When I did this at school, I was always told she was the queen of a people called the Iceni. I noticed that you pronounced it I-kenny in the last episode episode. I looked it up and you're quite right. I am. Thanks, Dominic. But everybody in England will call it the Iceni. So, you know, just to put that on the record to explain to people that you're not talking about some random other. You're a stickler for the little details, aren't you, Tom? Well, it's also because there's an important road, a kind of trackway, very, very ancient, much older than the Icenane, called the Ickneald Way.

The Ickneald Way. Yeah, I know that road. So it goes from the Icanean territory, which is in the north of East Anglia, all the way down to Wiltshire, so my neck of the woods. And it's possible that that name comes from the Icane. That'd be brilliant, wouldn't it? And the Ickneald Way will have an important part to play in this story. So not only has everyone in England been pronouncing the name of her tribe wrong, she's also not even a queen. Is that right?

No. So not in her own right, like Cartamundur is. So she's the consort of, well, the Romans call him a king, a rex, whatever. I mean, he's the kind of the head honcho of the Icani, a man called Prasutagas. So it's possible that Boudicca is, you know, she's come from another tribe. And the Icani are a very distinctive people. So it's telling that we haven't really talked about them to this point because they haven't really intruded on the narrative. They're not really a unitary kingdom. They're a kind of a confederation, a kind of tribal league, pretty

cohesive, but with separate subdivisions, kind of separate cantons, if you want to call them that. They have had contacts with Rome pretty early on. It's probable that they are one of the tribes that sent ambassadors to submit to Julius Caesar when he invaded back in 54. But it is striking, based on the archaeology, that the Icani are much, much less in hock to Roman culture than the other major tribal groupings. And so, you know, you find there are very few Roman coins there, very little evidence of kind of luxury foreign goods, no amphorae of wine, so on, things like that. And so the question is, why should this be? And one answer might be their geographical circumstances. You know, they're further north,

they're surrounded for much of their territory by the North Sea. And also the fens, which at this time are very, very impassable for large stretches. You know, they haven't been drained. So there's huge kind of swamps bordering the southern reaches of their territory. And you can kind of tell the way in which they're distinctive by looking at their coins, which we talked about in the previous episode. These are markers of a kind of cultural distinctiveness for the first time. You can work out maybe what the ideology is of a particular tribal grouping by looking at them. And the thing that's striking about the Ikenayan coins, well, there's lots of stuff that's striking about them, but one of the really striking things is that unlike the coins of other British tribes, they feature very heavily the wolf, which by this point, it's quite rare in lowland

Britain by this point. The wolf is very, very sinister. I've got one of their coins with a wolf on. There's a brilliant description of it by Duncan McKay in his wonderful book, Echolands, which is a superb book about Boudicca, came out last year. And he writes about this wolf. It's an emaciated, beak-jawed, spike-eared and spindle-limbed creature that must have moved more like a spider than anything mammalian. So very sinister. And it's shown with birds that are

clearly associated with the fens, so lapwings, bitterns, so on. And this gives the sense that the wolf is a fen dweller which in germanic would be fenrir oh i love that and fenrir in norse mythology of course is the great wolf that at the end of the world devours the sun and there's another kind of echo or perhaps foreshadowing of norse mythology that another series of early Icanaean coins features this strange mask-like male head with a single eye. There's an Oxford numismatist called Daphne Nash Briggs who's written a lot about the Icanaean coins in a very, very stimulating way. She writes about this eye, that its lids are either closed or firmly sewn shut, which of course may remind listeners of Odin, the one-eyed god who rips his eye out. Gave up his eye for wisdom.

I mean, what's even more fascinating is that Nash Briggs argues that Icanaean coins, in addition to having Latin and Brittonic language, also has Germanic language. When you say argues that, is that because it's up for debate? You can't really tell what it says. So it's massively up for debate. And I think that other scholars would say these seeming foreshadowings of Norse mythology, the details of Norse mythology come millennia later.

It's most improbable that these stories were current at that time. The linguistic evidence is also furiously debated. But I mean, My gut feeling is that it's perfectly plausible that the Icani, because they are open to the North Sea in the way that, say, Wales or Cornwall had been open to Celtic influences coming up from the Atlantic, seems to me perfectly plausible that there might be a kind of Germanic substratum in their culture, and that perhaps these coins reflect traditions that are percolating around long, long before the Viking period. It's plausible that there are traders and things crossing the North Sea,

isn't it, in this period? Maybe not at the same volume as centuries later, but there must have been sea contacts between East Anglia and Holland or Denmark or Norway or whatever? I mean, it seems improbable that there wouldn't be. And it perhaps offers a clue as to where Icanian culture is coming from, that perhaps this is why they are less influenced by what's happening in Gaul, but more influenced perhaps by Germanic traditions that are crossing from Saxony or from Scandinavia or whatever. And is it not the case that they are consciously more isolationist and more exceptionalist, so that they are deliberately restricting

Roman imports and resisting the advance of Roman culture, do you think? Again, this is an argument that Daphne Nash Briggs pushes. She points out that there must be Roman coins coming in because there's gold and silver that's being reminted. But it seems that they all seem to have been deliberately melted down and that there must almost certainly be conscious restrictions on the import of wine. And she suggests that it was an attempt, quote, to mitigate destructive competition amongst armed aristocrats. And if that's the case, then it must be Prosutagas who is responsible for that. It suggests that he's walking a very delicate tightrope because the

probability, and again, we're talking in terms of probability or possibility here, is that he was a hostage in Rome. The royal children of British tribes seem to have been sent to Rome as a matter of course. So he would be conscious of Roman power and Roman culture. But at the same time, he clearly seems to have had a role in Icanaean life that was more than that of just a king. He seems to have held a kind of priestly status. And it's likely that Prosutagas is not a proper name, but a title. Because based on the evidence of his coins, it seems to have meant something like Pontifex Maximus, a high priest, the man who mediates between his people and the gods. I think it's

telling in that context that Boudica too, or more properly Boudega, I gather, means she who brings victory. This too may have been a title rather than a name. And it suggests that you have the victory giver marrying the man who is the mediator between the gods. There is, Dominic, dare I say, a sacral dimension to this marriage. We love a sacral dimension on the rest of history. We so do. And we can actually identify a place where this holy couple, because I think we should think of them as a kind of a holy couple, a sacral couple, where they may have presided. Today it's on an industrial estate called Fisson Way. Duncan McKay in his book has a brilliantly funny account of him trying to track down this place of eerie portent, and there's crisp wrappers

everywhere. When the industrial estate was being developed, archaeologists went in and they found that in the 50s AD, this massive artificial oak grove had been built there. So great serried ranks of posts and fences sticking up, deliberately trying to look like a grove of oaks. So Nash Briggs says it's a symbolic grove. You have, I mean, almost intangible a sense of the Icani as a people for whom the dimension of the supernatural is everywhere and is part of their political dynamics. And I think that all of this helps to explain why the Icani, unlike the Catephaloni or the Trinovantes, are able to maintain their independence from Rome. Prosutagas is clearly a brilliantly competent politician. He's able to reassure the Romans that his independence offers them no threat. And at the same time, he's able to dampen down all the kind of ambitions among his fellow Icaneans,

even to the extent that in 47, there's a kind of Icanean rebellion. But the Romans still don't, they suppress it, possibly with the help of Pros, but the Romans still don't. They suppress it, possibly with the help of Prosutagus. We don't know whether his collaboration went that far, but it is amazing that Prosutagus is able to maintain the independence of his people, even after an uprising like that. But of course, the risk that faced the Icanean is that when Prosutagus dies, what will happen then? Tom, I have to tell you, I've just been looking at Fison Way. It doesn't look very mystical. No, not sacral.

It looks like a brilliant place. If you're in Thetford and you need a new windscreen, I heartily recommend it. That's the place. But anyway, here he is in Fison Way near the windscreen place. And so the issue is that when he dies, late 59, early 60, what is going to happen to his kingdom that he has been able to preserve in this incredibly turbulent and conflicted political environment?

Is he going to get the Romans on board? Is that part of his plan? That is his plan. So Tacitus tells us what his plan is. He writes, Prosuticus, king of the Icani, famed for his long prosperity, had made the emperor, so that's Nero by this point, his heir, along with his two daughters, under the impression that this token of submission would put his kingdom and his house out of the reach of wrong.

But the reverse was the result. And the reason for this is that Suetonius Paulinus, the governor, whose job it is essentially to kind of manage the politics of Britain, is away when Prasuticus dies. He's up in Wales, kind of attacking the Druids and so on. And the man on the spot is the procurator, who's basically the guy in charge of the finances. So he's kind of the chancellor of the Exchequer, a man called Catus Decianus. And it's his job to screw money out of the provincials. The province has to be made to pay for itself. And the problem with Britain is that it doesn't have the kind of urban infrastructure that lends itself to taxation in a way that, say, Greece or Egypt might do. And so he's constantly looking for ways to fill his treasure chests. And this is turbocharged by events actually in Rome, in the imperial capital,

because there Nero is thinking, do we really want Britain? It's a bit of a dump. There isn't really very much there. Should we withdraw? And one of Nero's leading advisors is the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who'd been his tutor. Seneca is obscenely rich and he's lent enormous amounts of money to all the various British chieftains and kings and aristocrats. That seems like a very strange, because how can he possibly be sure of getting it back? I think it's a bit like China kind of lending money to the Sri Lankan government to build a naval base. And then the Sri Lankan government defaults and they can just move in and grab it. I think it's a way of getting hold of territory from the natives. So Seneca alerted perhaps to the fact Nero is thinking of pulling out of Britain. He says, okay, I want my debts. And he sends in the

debt collectors. And presumably Presutagus is one of the people he's lent money to. And so it's a perfect storm. He dies, his will is ignored. And when Decianus, the procurator, sends in his heavies, they behave in a completely shameful manner. And again, to quote Tacitus, the kingdom of Prasuticus was plundered by centurions, his house by slaves, as if they were the spoils of war. First, his wife Boudica was scourged and his daughters outraged. All the chief men of the Icani, as if Rome had received the whole country as a gift, were stripped of their ancestral possessions and the king's relatives were made slaves. This, even by Roman standards, is absolute

sacrilege. When you say sacrilege, it is sacrilege, right? If Boudicca is this, there she is on Fison Way and she has her sacral status, the oak gro Grove and stuff. And her daughters too. And her daughters too. And if you've basically sexually assaulted her daughters, that is a crime, not just against them as women, but against the gods, I'm guessing. Absolutely. And the thing that is really stupid about this is that it's happened while the massive Roman troops are in Wales and the nearest legionary bases are in Lincoln and in Exeter. So a long way away.

You know, it's basically, it's a mad, mad thing to have done. And although the speech that Dyer gives us and indeed his description of Boudicca is, I mean, it's a fabrication. Yeah. You know, he's writing century and more after the events happen. And the Romans love these stories about female supervillains, don't they? Cleopatra, the most obvious one, and Boudicca with massive hair and her flashing eyes. You say a villain. I mean, there is an understanding in that speech as to why she has rebelled that I think is probably accurate. That's the beauty, the nuance of Roman writing there, isn't it? That even

when they're writing about their opponents, they're able to get into their heads. Do you not think? Yes, I think so. And it's also clear that buddhica she who brings victory is absolutely taking the lead and the probability is dominate that this great massing of the ikani that cassius dia was describing in his passage that you read so beautifully may well have taken place um amid the car show rooms the car show rooms the concrete mixers of feis and way you and Way in this place that is kind of symbolic of the sacral dimension of Boudicca's rule. But the thing that makes it so threatening to the Romans is it's not just the Icani who are basically planning a war of liberation. There are the Trinovantes as well, because they effectively have been made slaves in their own country.

They were slaves to the Catecholonia, now they're slaves to the Romans. The focus for their loathing of Rome is Camulodunum, this colony of Roman veterans with its great monumental temple to a foreign autocrat. And so an alliance with the Trinovantes provides Boudicca with an enormous swelling of the armed forces at her beck and call. This is the peril that the Romans are now facing, that the Icanaean rebellion will incite other tribes to rise up against their rule, to proclaim their freedom all across Britain. The gods seem to be foretelling exactly such an eventuality. So in Camulodunum, it is said, even before news of the massing of the Icani, a statue of victory topples over.

Women are roused to a strange frenzy, foretelling the doom of the city. And on the Thames estuary, a ghostly town shimmers and appears in flames. The ocean turns to blood. And when the tide goes out, what seem to be human bodies are left on the beach. And none of these are promising omens. No, they're very disturbing portents, Tom. They are. And the Icani are on the march. And what these portents suggest is that it's not going to end well for Camulidunum. Crikey, what a cliffhanger. Can the Romans wrest back control of the situation? Or are there days in Britain numbered and is Boudicca set fair for victory?

Come back after the break and find out. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets,

head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Those final moments in the fetid, suffocating darkness, as the crammed hundreds waited for the bolts of the door to give way with the next reverberating blow, shaking the very foundations beneath, are beyond imagining. All hope was gone now. The pleas for assistance had gone out long days before,

and for long days they had waited, and held the precinct, then the podium, and now the innermost sanctum of the temple. But no help had come, and they could hold no longer, for there was no one left to man the doorway. The able-bodied were dead, almost to the last. So that, Tom, is Echolands by Duncan Mackay, and he's describing the last moments of Camulodunum. Its defenders are besieged in the great temple of Claudius, outside the hordes of Icenae and Trinovantes, no doubt weapons in hand. Moustaches bristling. Yeah, moustaches bristling with bloodlust. What a terrible scene for anybody who's on the team Rome.

Roman civilization embattled and about to fall. Yes. And just to emphasize that Camulodonum, it's the place where 17 years before Caesar himself, the Emperor Claudius had come, maybe with his war elephants, to receive a kind of symbolic surrender of Britain. And ever since then, it's been consciously shaped as the great showcase capital of this new province. And the Temple of Claudius, it's by far the largest structure ever built in Britain. It's on an enormous scale. It has this huge kind of podium, this base, which is still there today in Colchester. And it's 80 by 105 feet. It has this huge kind of podium, this base, which is still there today in Colchester.

And it's 80 by 105 feet. It rises to a height of equivalent of a six-story building. Tacitus himself describes it as an arrogant stronghold of foreign rule. So you can imagine the impact that it has and that it's designed to have. The temple is also surrounded by all the kind of appurtenances that you would expect of a Roman colonia, a transplantation of Roman culture to foreign lands. So it's got baths, it's got an enormous theatre, it's got the great victory arch, all proclaiming the power and the might and the victory of Rome. And it's been settled there by veterans, people in the legions who've retired, who were given grants of land, given property, given a pension, and who in retirement almost certainly continue to display the kind of arrogance towards the defeated natives that is notoriously

characteristic of legionaries. It's pretty awful, I think, if you are a native to be close to a legionary base. And it's pretty bad if you're in the neighborhood of a colony of veterans. So probably about maybe 15,000 people. And so surrounded by all this overwhelming architecture and all these veterans who are elderly now, but they can still handle a sword and shield, it must have seemed inconceivable to them that they could possibly face any threat from the defeated Britons, the Britunculi, the little Britons, kind of the contemptuous word that is used for them.

But then, of course, the news comes in. First of all, you've got the ocean turning to blood, so that's bad. Cities of ghosts, ghostly cities. Yeah, terrifying. All of that, people kind of howling and screaming in the streets. And as the news comes in that the Icani are kind of sweeping towards them, the kind of horrific realisation that there's no military resources to hand. The procurator has about 200 men, but that's not much use. And there's no walls, right?

Camelodunum Colchester has no fortifications. There's no wall because again, it's a reflection of their self-confidence that they don't really need it. But having said that, I don't think the inhabitants despair. The veterans, as we've said, you know, they're perfectly able to stand and fight. And even though the city doesn't have walls, the Temple of Claudius does. So they can essentially retreat in there. They can encourage all the townspeople to bring their belongings, bring their valuables and cluster inside the temple wall. We know that some people hid their valuables because there was a famous find made in 2014 while they were digging up a shop in Colchester. And they found a box that contained silver bracelets and a kind of military armlet

and gold jewellery, so earrings and so on, which was clearly a veteran and his wife. And they'd hidden it away for safekeeping, never came back to claim it. And the expectation is that they will be able to hold out in the temple until armed relief comes, presumably from Lincoln or from one of the peripheral forts that surround the main legionary base, because that's the nearest supply of troops. But two things go wrong with this plan. And the first is that the legionary relief force doesn't arrive. And this isn't because of prevarication. The commander of the Ninth Legion, which is based in Lincoln, is a very bold and dashing commander, a man called Petilius Kerialis. And he sets out the

moment that he's told of the desperate straits that the inhabitants of Colchester have found themselves in. But the problem is that he's marching at absolutely full speed, but he is still too late because back in Camulodunum, the Britons have proven unexpectedly determined in their attempts to force the temple. This is not what the Romans had been expected. The Britons have proven unexpectedly determined in their attempts to force the temple. This is not what the Romans had been expected. The Britons aren't proficient in the arts of kind of sieges. But this time they're so determined to storm it that they lay siege to the temple complex for two days. And then they clearly force their way up, probably up the steps of the temple podium.

And eventually the veterans defending the temple are overwhelmed and all the non-competents, the women, the children, the injured, the old, who've been sheltering inside the temple are all massacred. So this is where your sympathies start to swing, right? Because the Britons have always been the underdogs up to this point. But now I think it's fair to say, Tom. They're not gentlemen. Yeah, they don't behave like gentlemen. That's very true. Yeah. So Tacitus specifies, and he finds're not gentlemen. Yeah, they don't behave like gentlemen. That's very true. Yeah. So Tacitus specifies, and he finds this surprising, that the Britons don't seem to be interested in taking prisoners, either for ransom or slavery, which is what the Romans would certainly do in that situation.

Instead, he writes, their concern was only to slit throats, to set up gibbets, to burn, to crucify. And Dio gives really horrible details of what is supposed to have happened, particularly to high-ranking women who are taken. Whether the details are accurate, we don't know. Whether Dio is drawing on traditions that were authentically passed down to him. But it clearly bears witness to a perspective that the Romans did have that appalling atrocities had been committed. They're very unpleasant, but I'll read them because I think that this explains the violence of Roman retribution. So Dio writes, they hung up naked the noblest and most distinguished women and then cut off their

breasts and sewed them to their mouths in order to make the women appear to be eating them. Afterwards, they impaled the women on sharp skewers, run lengthwise through the entire body. And having done that, they then put every kind of fragment of the Roman presence to the torch. And this is quite a challenge because most of the buildings, most of the houses in Camlodonum are built of a kind of sandy clay. So to actually burn it is quite an achievement, but it bears witness to the determination of the Britons, of the rebels, of the freedom fighters, however you want to call them, to absolutely eradicate all evidence of Rome's grandeur and to leave it a monument to the humiliation of the occupier. So it's smouldering, it's covered in corpses, and presumably, if Dio's account is true,

there are spectacles of humiliation in death of the kind that the Romans themselves, with their love of crucifixion, would entirely have understood and seen as something monstrous and appalling. So this is a pretty ghastly spectacle. Now what's happened to Petilius Kerialis? He is marching south. You said he was very bold and swashbuckling. He's marching south from Lincoln. Headstrong, one might almost say, because he marches straight into an ambush. So the Icani and the Trinifantes have destroyed Camledon and they then swing round to set an ambush for Kerialis, who walks straight into it. His legionaries are wiped out. He, in command of the cavalry, is able to withdraw just and to retreat. But even that is a very close-run thing. So they've lost the Colonia, a legion has been

badly mauled. And so it's unsurprising at this point that the procurator, Cattius Decianus, assumes that the province is lost and flees Britain for Gaul. Meanwhile, as we described in yesterday's episode, Suetonius Paulinus has been putting the groves of the Druids in Anglesey to the torch. And that is where he is when news comes to him of what is happening down in the southeast. So he has no time to enjoy his victory. He immediately orders his men to prepare to march from Anglesey down Watling Street to the southeast. He has troops from two legions, the 14th and the 20th. He also sends orders to a man called Poinius Posthumus, who's the commander of the Second

Legion in Exeter, to set out. So essentially, it's a mass muster of all the legionary forces in the province. And the likelihood is, although neither Tacitus nor Dio actually specify this, that Suetonius Paulinus, with his cavalry, advances ahead of his infantry down Watling Street, essentially because he doesn't know what's going on. He needs intelligence. He needs to find out what is Boudicca up to? Is she threatening to attack other cities? And so gallops down Watling Street. Just a quick question, Tom. Galloping down Watling Street, the Romans have been there

17 years. So in that time, they have built roads. Again, these are kind of old trackways that the Romans are starting to upgrade. So, you know, 50 mile speed limits on the motorway, that kind of thing. They're in the process of upgrading it. I mean, definitely it's more traversable now than it would have been 20 years before. And so he's able to get to London before Boudicca. And London, unlike Camaldonum, unlike Beryllium, is distinctive because there hadn't, as far as we know, been any site there before. It hadn't been a kind of major tribal meeting centre. And the reason why it's grown is very obvious. It's because it's the lowest bridging point on the Thames and the Romans have built a bridge over it, but it's also navigable. So ships coming from the continent can come. And it probably began

as a military base, but it's so suited for trade. So Tacitus specifies what had been fueling its growth. He said London was teeming with merchants and merchant shipping. And we have amazing evidence for this from these, they're called the Bloomberg tablets. Bloomberg have this great kind of centre off the Walbrook, which was the river that flowed down into the Thames that London was originally built around. And so the watery character of the soil preserved organic material and enabled these writing tablets to be preserved. And we have the earliest one comes from the very first decade of Roman rule, and it points to it already becoming this great commercial hub.

In fact, it points to it being a place where if you're going to do business, you need to wear the proper business attire. So it's a kind of foreshadowing of the suit. So it says they're boasting throughout the whole market that you have lent them money. Therefore, I ask you in your own interest not to appear shabby. So dress up and look smart. And then there's another one. It's the first dated document in the whole of British history, dates from the 8th of January,

AD 58, and it's an IOU. So 12 documents in all from before AD 60. And it shows that London is already, it's literate and it's mercantile, probably about 10,000 people. It's kind of got a Wild West quality. It's a boom town. It's cosmopolitan. It's got's kind of got a wild west quality it's a boom town it's cosmopolitan it's got this kind of mix of roman and native architectural styles you've got docks full of ships but dominic as with camelidonum no walls so sitting duck absolutely sitting down particularly if saturnus polinus has come without his legions only with cavalry there's no prospect of holding the town and so he orders a mass evacuation. The Londoners have three options, I guess. They can withdraw with Paulinus

himself, or they can cross the Thames. And again, presumably London Bridge will be pulled down to stop the Icani and the Trinovantes from crossing the river. Or of course, if they have access to ships, they can get into the ships and go out into the waters because the Iacani will not have ships. Of course, there are some, I guess those who are infirm or those who don't have the packaged animals to take their goods with them, who think, oh, well, she may not come. Maybe all right, but it isn't all right. Boudicca does come. And there is all kinds of archaeological evidence for what then happens, perhaps most strikingly in the foundations of what is now number one poultry, which is perhaps most strikingly in the foundations of

what is now number one poultry, which is by Bank Tube Station in the heart of the city of London now. And it was an office block that was designed by James Sterling and built in the 90s. And before it was built, archaeologists went down into the depths and they found this layer of fire. And there was evidence of kind of blackened timbers and burned pottery and petrified mud brick and this is evidence for the first great fire of london the city is again as camlodonum had been burned by buddhica yeah yeah obliterated so you can imagine that in verillanium which is kind of 20 miles 25 miles st auburn'sans. Right. St. Albans, as it's called now. The inhabitants there would have seen smoke rising from London as it burnt and would have known what was coming. And of course, unlike London,

Berlinium has been built as a Kivitas, as a kind of a Roman foundation on a tribal center. And it's the capital of the Catephaloni, who are the enemies of the Trinovantes. And so it's a reminder, I think, that Boudicca is not just fighting a war for freedom from the Romans, but she is also engaged in an intra-tribal war of the kind that had been convulsing southeastern Britain for decades and decades and decades. So this is the parallel we were talking about last time with the war in what's now Mexico. There are existing rivalries that are actually being ramped up, amplified by the arrival of a colonizing outsider. Yes, exactly. And so in Verulamium, everyone knows that she'll be coming for them, particularly the Trinovantes will be coming for them. And Suetonius Paulinus still at this point,

presumably hasn't joined his legions. And so again, he has no choice but to evacuate the city. And again, Verulamium is put to the torch. So that's the third city that's been incinerated by Boudicca and her forces. And this is obviously a moment of incredible peril for the governor, but also for the entire future of Roman rule in Britain. Because by withdrawing from Verulanium in particular, this is a city that is emblematic of the perks that you get for collaborating with Rome. And the fact that the Romans have been unable to defend the Catephalonian capital is potentially fatal to the entire system of alliances that the Romans have built up. Because the Catephaloni, and also Togedubnus to the south in his kingdom,

they must by this point be kind of weighing up the odds and trying to decide which horse to back. Yeah. Why would you stick with a colonizer who can't even defend its own cities? Yeah. That means that Sotonius Paulinus, essentially, he needs to force a battle very, very soon. Because if he doesn't, the whole infrastructure of Roman Britain is going to fall to pieces. And the other reason why he wants to force a battle, I think very soon, is because there is always a risk that Boudicca's forces may split up and start separating. And then it becomes obviously much harder to wipe out the entire force in a single go, which again, may remind listeners of the episodes that we did on Custer, where it was constantly the ambition

of the 7th Cavalry to find their enemy in a single place and then go in. And this kind of leads to the Battle of Bighorn. Anyway, in the context of Britain, there are two theories about what happens next. The first is that Suetonius Paulinus has to retreat back up Watling Street to rendezvous with his men who still haven't arrived and joined him. And he retreats and retreats and retreats until he meets with his infantry coming down. There's still no sign of the second legion coming from Exeter. They haven't arrived, but he decides, whatever, you know, I

can't afford to wait for them. He's massively outnumbered, but he decides to make a stand against Boudicca's army, which has been on this theory, pursuing him up Watling Street. And Tacitus gives a description. He says he chose a position in a defile with a wood at his rear. I mean, that's very vague, but there may be an element of precision to it because Tacitus, as we said in the previous episode, is the son-in-law of Agricola, who is a man who is serving on Suetonius Paulinus' staff. Yeah. So it must be a pretty well-informed witness. Yeah. It's in a defile.

There's a wood at the back. It means that they can't be outflanked. So slight kind of Agincourt quality to it. And his army proves way too professional for the Britons. Because, you know, to pursue your Custer parallel, Boudicca's army is obviously not a professional, well-organized army like the Roman army. I mean, it's much more of a horde, but it's actually not just even just men, is it? It's probably women and children. Yes. So it's more like the big villages of the Lakota. Yes. I think that's a really good analogy. It's an entire people on the march. So they have wagons and oxen and all kinds of things. It's kind of on a biblical scale. And so that's why this battle is so important to the Romans, because it gives them a chance

to exact a kind of genocidal revenge. And essentially, Roman military training, we talked earlier about how do the Britons fight. The Britons fight by charging. And if that first charge can be blocked, then essentially they're doomed. And all of Roman military training is about ensuring that the line of the legions can hold, psychologically, but also in terms of kit, equipment, armour, whatever. So the legions start moving forwards. They have the gladius,

the stabbing sword, which is designed to eviscerate, to slit open the stomach. And most of the Britons, they don't have body armour. So very, very rapidly, the battleground becomes a great sea of kind of viscera and blood, and they're wading through it. The Britons are wiped out. The men, the women, the children, the wagons are burnt. Effectively, as I say, this is pointedly genocidal. It's slaughtered on an enormous scale. And the question then is, well, where is it fought?

So the favourite candidate is a place called Mansetta in the Midlands, about 75 miles up Watling Street from Verilanium. But there is an alternative theory which Duncan McKay in his book Echolands has proposed, and which, because it's the most recent book on Boudicca I've read, I'm completely convinced by. Dominic, our listeners will know that our ability to work out military positionings isn't always all it could be. It's been for yourself, Tom. Shocking. I think Mackay's arguments are, I find them very convincing. And he argues that actually, it's Verilanium that is where the rendezvous between Suetonius Paulinus and his cavalry

and the infantry happen. He can't afford to keep retreating for the reasons that we've given. And more than that, he asked the obvious question, which I've never, you know, in the various accounts of Boudicca, I've never heard asked before, which is why would Boudicca pursue him? She's got the harvest coming. She doesn't want to go off herring around Britain. You know, she's done what she set out to do. She wanted to inflict humiliation on her two great enemies, on the Romans and on the Cativalurnae. She's done that. She's got enormous amounts of loot. And I will read what Mackay said. The lure of Camulodonum, Landinium, Verulanium, and the scent of Paulinus had kept the vast tribal confederation together, and it had proved itself the equal of the Ninth Legion under Kerialis.

It was still willing and able to fight, but that resolve must have been fast dissolving as the ancient road home along the Icknield Way, the Icaney Way, came within the orbit of the hungry scouts and desperate foraging parties. They were farmers, and this was the blessed trackway back to their farms. So Verulanium is the point where the Icknield Way and Watling Street meet. And the likelihood is, McKay argues, seotonius paulinus occupies that meeting point because he doesn't want the icani to disperse he needs this victory and he pinpoints a place called windridge farm which is north of what is now saint alban's apparently there's a road and things i haven't been to it but i'm certainly going to go and look at it after recording this episode of course topographically. Topographically, it matches Tacitus' description.

It's strategically placed on these two great roads. And intriguingly, over 60 lead slingshots, apparently, of a kind used by the Romans have been found there. So it's definitely the site of a battle. Okay. I mean, why not? Yeah, why not? Are you convinced? I think the evidence of the 60 slingshots, you'd need to show me an alternative battle

that could have taken place there for me not to believe that this is a plausible contender. Certainty is impossible, as we have had to say repeatedly over the course of these episodes. But you know what? In a way, I know this is a controversial thing to say. I mean, does it matter? Who cares where it actually, because we know what the result was. The result is what matters. The result matters. And, you know, it's often said that Towton in the Wars of the Roses is the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil.

But I think this must be bloodier. So McKay convincingly argues that maybe 40,000 Britons lost their lives there. That many? She would have had that many people, you know, had Custer won the Battle of the Little Bighorn and slaughtered all the Native Americans who were there, the women and the children as well, it would have been enormous slaughter. And this is exactly what the Romans are setting out to do. They have basically the mass of two peoples, the Icania and the Trinovantes, and they can do what they want with them. And that battle, that slaughter, that massacre, is then followed up by further slaughter and devastation because the Romans are shaken, they feel humiliated, but clearly they are also out for revenge because they've been to Camulodonum

and they see what has been wrought there. And it seems that not only are people slaughtered, but almost everything that made the Icane distinctive is targeted. So that great artificial oak and glade is systematically destroyed, which is obviously good news for car manufacturers, but not good news for the sacral dimension of Icaneean kingship. And of course, there is no kingship because from this point on, all of East Anglia is formally absorbed under Roman rule. And actually, there are so many reprisals, they're so bloody that eventually they become too much even for the Romans. And in 61, Paulinus is replaced as governor, but he does go back. He saved Britain. He has a very distinguished career,

ends up embroiled in the civil wars in 69 when there were four emperors. And he has essentially a better retirement than poor Poinius Posthumus in Exeter, who never came. And whether he didn't receive his orders or whether he ignored them or whether he was unable to answer them, didn't matter. He'd brought disgrace on his legion and so he commits suicide. So we've just done a series on Evita, and of course her afterlife is almost as fascinating as her life. And people may be wondering what happens to Boudicca. I think it's Dio who says that she is buried sumptuously by her people. I don't quite know how they'd have been able to do that if they'd all been slaughtered. Tacitus says that she poisoned herself. But obviously she's such a totemic, charismatic

figure that people have always wondered where was she buried? So as early as 1624, there was an antiquarian called Edmund Bolton who suggested that she'd been buried at Stonehenge, which had been raised as her tomb. That was his theory. I like that theory. Yeah. 1879, workmen were found three tombs outside a village in gloucestershire called bird lip great name and this has been dated to the middle of the first century a.d and the central grave was the skeleton of a woman with sumptuous grave goods but again you have to wonder you know what was she doing gloucestershire it's a long way yeah it's the wrong side of the country but the best theory which was proposed in 1937 by a former editor of the Scotsman called Lewis

Spence, is that she was buried in the vicinity of King's Cross railway station in London. And he based this theory on earlier and erroneous speculation that the remains of an elephant that had been found in the site had been a Roman elephant. In fact, it was Paleolithic. And Barnsbury, which is, you know, it's the area of London by King's Cross, that this had been a Roman camp again. It hadn't been, but it didn't stop this theory from taking wings. And in the Second World War, people start saying she'd actually been buried under a platform in King's Cross. And by the 1970s, this had been narrowed down to platform 10 which of course is the platform that trains to Cambridge go to so literally she buried just a quarter of a platform away from the train to Hogwarts yes so JK Rowling was actually asked had she been influenced in that by the stories of Boudicca being buried at platform 10 and she said no but I like to think that you know

I mean maybe it was at the back of her mind and i think that that does bear witness to the fact that buddhica remains a kind of culture hero you know she's still capable of generating these kind of urban myths i mean she's a fascinating figure even though we know so little and she's pretty scary but she's the first great character in british history isn't she i mean we had keraticus before but, with the hair and the golden talk and that great address. I mean, I know Cassius Dio is making it up, but she is the first person about whom it's possible to really weave a story with sort of a slight trace elements of personality, do you think?

You know, you impersonated her as Mrs. Thatcher. And I remember loads of cartoons showing Mrs. Thatcher as Boudicca, kind of rushing around in a chariot and all that kind of thing. Yeah, that's why I did it. It's one of those stories from British history that pretty much everyone does know. Yeah, they know the name, even if they don't know the details of the story, don't they? Fascinating, Tom. A wonderful story and wonderfully told.

But not the end of our Roman Britain series, because, of course, there was still much of Britain left to conquer. And in the next episode, we will be turning to somebody who really caught my imagination when I was a boy, reading the Lady Bird books about Roman Britain, and that was Agricola and the story of his great adventures as he headed north. So if you remember the Restless History Club,

you can hear that right away. If you are, however, a member of the freedom-loving iKenny, or whatever you call it, I-C-N-I as I called them when I was a boy, then you just have to wait till Thursday. More for you. And that bombshell. Thank you very much, Tom. Goodbye.

Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.