You're Dead to Me - Boudica

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Greg Jenner and his guests discuss the important questions surrounding Queen Boudica including: Is she a feminist icon? How do you pronounce her name? And was she really ginger? Get ready to forget everything you thought you knew about Boudica and learn what it was really like when the Romans invaded. Featuring comedian, author and actress Sara Pascoe, known for QI, Have I Got News For You, and W1A among many other shows, and historian Dr Emma Southon, specialist in Roman history and co-host of the History is Sexy podcast.Script and Research: Greg Jenner Producer: Dan MorelleA Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to a brand new history podcast for people who don't like history, or at least people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and I've spent the past decade making history fun for kids on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories, and now I'd like to do it for you. In every episode, my guests and I will offer up a bluffer's

guide to a key bit of global history, while making sure to keep it light and fun, like a space hopper filled with facts. And today we're winding back the clock nearly 2,000 years to get to grips with the angriest woman in ancient Britain, Queen Boudicca, who went toe-to-toe with the might of Rome and very nearly made them look stupid. Joining me in the studio to chat about her life and her rebellion are two badass women in their own right, though hopefully they'll refrain from burning down Colchester, at least for the duration of the show. In History Corner, I'm joined by Dr Emma Southern, who's a classical historian and the author of fun books about the Romans. Hi, Emma. Thanks for coming.

Hello. And in Comedy Corner, you'll have seen her act in shows like WNA, doing gags in all of the panel shows, all 7,000 of them. It's the wonderful Sarah Pascoe. Hello, Sarah. Hi. Thanks for having me. Thank you for coming. Sarah, you've written a book, Animal, about evolutionary biology and the female body.

You've got another book coming out soon, end of summer, about transactional sex. And you've written comedy shows about Nietzschean ideas. You like a big idea. Do you like history, though? Is this making you feel nervous? I love history. This topic is particularly of interest to me. I used to be a London tour guide. And obviously, we talked about Boudicca on the tour. I'm from Essex, and all of my family live in Colchester. So it's very close to my heart and um for a couple of months there was a tourist attraction still there called the london bridge experience and one of the characters i had to play every day was buddhica oh really yeah 10 minute slots at a time with groups of tourists and they went through the history of the london

bridge and obviously buddhica was one of the very important because she one of the things that was burnt down was one of the bridges. And how is your Boudicca impersonation? Did you go for an accent? Did you go... Yeah, well, they made us do it like Russell Brand. Essentially, we just had back-combed hair, and we did a very strong kind of estuary. He's from not quite East Anglia, but, yeah, North Essex.

It's fun to hear that you've played a very brief Boudicca every day for ten minutes. That's good to know. But actually, I think that gave me a lot of sympathy for her because obviously she's mythologized and there's lots of figures throughout history who become the story of what they did or representative of a movement because she was she wasn't just one person there were lots and lots of people but I've became more and more sympathetic with her position the more I found out about her yeah I mean let's see at the end of the show if you still feel that way or if you, you know... I've got some facts that might make you go off for a little bit. Okay.

Just a little bit, yeah. Fine. Is it about the babies? It's not, actually. I've got worse than that. Worse than the head in a baby? Oh my God. I mean, if she kicked dogs, I'm out of here. Yeah, animal lover, I mean, is that your red line? Oh my God. Alright.

So, what do you know so in pop culture buddhica is a feisty feminist icon she's flame haired she rides a pimped out chariot with spikes sticking out the wheels pretty cool we know of her as a wronged woman out for vengeance who unites all the british tribes against the Romans, then goes on a sort of rampage, burning cities, slaughtering anyone with a Latin GCSE. She loses the Battle of Watling Street and she's buried under Platform 9 at King's Cross Station, just next to where Harry Potter commuted to school. But then everyone's buried under there, aren't they?

It's a busy place. Everyone that I call secretly buried King's Cross Station. So many bodies under there archaeologist's dream. Okay, so how much of this stuff is true? We're going to find out in the podcast. So time to crack on and find out who is Boudicca, or rather, Houdicca Boudicca, as I prefer to title it. Sorry, terrible.

Dr. Emma, can we start with the very basics? We're going back 2,000 years, roughly, but can we be more specific? How far back are we going in history? When is Boudicca born? Where is her tribe based? And what's her sort of situation growing up? The point at which she enters history is about 61, 60 AD,

so during the reign of Nero. Absolutely no idea how old she was. No clue when she was born, no clue where she was born. She could have been anything between 17 and 82. She is from the tribe of the Iceni, who are in basically East Anglia, so round about Norfolk. And she is the wife of the king of the tribe of the Iceni.

So she lives as far as life in Iron Age Britain goes, early Roman Britain. She's living the best possible life that you can lead up until the Romans come, at which point it all goes very drastically downhill. And her name, Boudicca, is it her name? Maybe. Right.

I can tell you her name is definitely not Boudiccia or Boudiccia or Bouda. Were they Roman ways of saying her name? Maybe. So they would speak Celtic or a Celtic language, which is very similar to Latin. Yeah. So it might be a version of that. It also means victory speak Celtic or a Celtic language, which is very similar to Latin. Yeah. So it might be a version of that. It also means victory in Celtic. So it might be her stage name.

Yeah, so it might be a stage name or it might be one that they gave her. Yes. Because she was so victorious. So we don't call her Bodicea anymore. That's probably a typo or a mistranslation. That's a typo because Tacitus spells it B-O-U-D-I-C-C-A. Okay, double C. When people were trying to read the Latin script, they would misread it as B-O-U-C-E-A.

So that's where Boudica comes from. And that was really big around about the 16th century. In the Elizabethan time, they were really big in calling her Boudicea. But we've moved on now. We've realised that that was an accident. Okay. And we've got typography. So we're calling her Boudica.

Let's settle on that. Spelling-wise, are we doing one C or two Cs? Tacitus says two Cs. Dio says one K. Oh, hang on. He's a Greek, though, isn't he? He's a Greek, so we can't trust him. And in Celtic, it would probably be one C.

OK. Here's a question. So presumably people around Boudica's time wouldn't have been writing things down much anyway. So Shakespeare had many spellings of his name. So actually, you absolutely could have had this. If it's a hard C, that can be two Cs, one C or a K. Yeah, and she probably wasn't literate,

so she doesn't care how you spell it. Yeah, because otherwise she'd have written angry letters rather than writing it down, wouldn't she? Dear sir, not just aggrieved. In the Radio Times, my husband has recently died and I had an agreement with the Romans. Annoyed of Norfolk. And her husband is called Prasutagus.

Again, we don't know if that's his name. That's the bit I don't know. What's his name? Prasutagus. Prasutagus. P-R-A-S-U-T-A-G-U-S. Nice sounding name, but again, we don't know if that means chief. It might be his job title.

It might just mean leader. It might just be an official title. In which case, she could have been Prasutagus if she'd become queen of the tribe. We don't know. Do you enjoy this kind of mystery? Because some people, it really bothers them. I think it's quite nice to go,

could be this, could be that, we don't know. But other people are like, no, what is the truth? Tell me, is that his name or his job title? Very quickly, I think we learn to be very sceptical. I love, the less I know, the happier I am to a certain extent. The more I can be like, well, maybe it's one thing or maybe it's another thing or maybe it's a third unexpected thing. Where do you stand on the scepticism then, Emma, of the idea of her being sort of a queen?

Are the Ysini like a sort of big, powerful tribe or are they kind of basically seven people in a hut? They're somewhere in between. They're not like one of the really big tribes of the south. They are surrounded by two really big tribes. There are smaller ones who were actively anti-Roman the whole time. They really did not get involved. When you look at the archaeology, all around them, all down into Essex and down into Suffolk even and getting quite close to them, there's loads of Roman stuff from really early on. And they've got garum down there, which means they really like once you've got into eating fermented fish,

then you've really got into Roman things. You've adopted the new culture. That's the most Roman thing you can do. The crucial invasion, of course, is in 43. It's Claudius. It's Claudius. Who sends somebody else to do it for him because he's not a military man.

He is an academic who fell into being emperor. And he sends someone to do it for him. They march in, surprise everybody by turning up with a massive army. And elephants. And elephants. They do take elephants, which was probably very shocking.

They were just sitting like, they were primarily like doing metalworking and subsistence agriculture. And then all of a sudden bloody elephants turn up. So everybody immediately rolled over. Obviously, Claudius turned up for 16 days, marched around, declared himself Britannicus and then went home again. Like Donald Trump and one of those sort of tours where he sort of goes to the hurricane disaster zone. I like to imagine it very much as like, do you remember the George W. Bush mission accomplished sign?

Oh god, yeah. That's how I imagine him, like on a horse, mission accomplished guys, and then he goes home and leaves other people to deal with all the rebellions. But this happened during Boudicca's lifetime, so she would have seen a Roman invasion, a violent Roman invasion in her lifetime, perhaps if she was a teenager at the time, we don't know how old she is.

So the idea of her being radicalised against Rome later on is sort of interesting because she would have seen a roman invasion but then she seems to settle into roman occupation a bit well the iceni are not too keen on it they enter a client kingship where they agree that the king will be a supplicant to rome um and so as a result and kind of give them tribute but as a result they'll leave them alone so that's the agreement and the Iceni then go back to their ways of refusing to get involved with the Romans so they've kind of they think they've made this agreement that they their king will every so often nip off and go and say hello to the governor and give him some of their money

and horses and then the Romans in return will leave them alone, which is kind of all fine until the Romans start not leaving them alone anymore. Do you think that Boudicca's husband was a very kind of respected, forceful political figure and that's why they left him alone? Well, he's quite interesting because the king who entered the client kingship is not Prasaturgus. Prasaturgus is put there by the Romans because the Romans try to... There is a minor rebellion and the Roman response is to disarm every single tribe.

So they go into all the tribes and take away all of their swords, which obviously upsets everybody because now the Romans aren't leaving them alone anymore. So the Iceni king tries to rebel. The Romans then just take his throne away and put in proser tagus instead so he is their tame king that they have put in he's a puppet yeah he's a puppet king and so technically he's supposed to be working more with them and isn't as rebellious yeah and so she and that's

her husband and so she presumably is like on board with the whole puppet kingship situation. It's very difficult, isn't it? That situation is what you say actually with Donald Trump's wife when you think you just married this stupid rich businessman. He didn't need to be standing in your coat in all these photographs. And there's an element of Boudicca kind of wasn't expecting that of her life, to suddenly be in actually a political position and suddenly an ally for your enemies. Yeah. Can we hear the horrible story of what happens to Boudicca

and her daughters then, please? Yeah. So this is a story told by Tacitus, who is a senator whose father-in-law, who he loves maybe a bit too much, was potentially there in Britain because he was later the governor of Britain. So potentially first-hand source, but maybe not.

So his version of events is that Prasatagus dies, probably of natural causes, and he leaves half of his throne to Nero, the emperor Nero, and the other half to his daughters, with the hope that that means that Nero will leave. But the Romans in Britain have gone a bit power mad um the Romans in Britain have started treating the Britons not like allies but like slaves and so what the Romans do is enter the Iceni they rape Boudicca's daughters and they strip and thrash Boudicca herself. Yes, they humiliate her.

Yeah, and the thrashings particularly is what you do to slaves. It's only done to slaves. And especially being a public thing, it's about saying you have no power. Exactly, it is about... Undermining someone. And it's a specifically gendered violence. Well, the same with rape, which actually there's instances where it hasn't been gendered, like in the Congo.

But it is an absolute way of subjugating. It's nothing to do with any kind of arousal or passion. It's a denigration. Yeah, it's a power thing to say you are worthless and non-human in our eyes. And so that's what they do. They take away her kingdom. They take away her daughter's chastity and their honour. And they take away her standing as chastity and their honor and they take away her standing as

a human being and as a woman and then they effectively cast her out of her tribe and it's that which then pushes her into saying and she has this speech in tastas where she says the romans have become so imperious that not even the body of a princess is safe anymore and if a body of a child isn't safe then none of us are safe and we need to fight back. So that's what the triggering incident. But also there's a thing about having nothing else to lose. Yeah. I mean, you're not even in a situation,

which I'm sure a parent would have, of I just need to protect my kids. Yeah. It's like, oh, all of the worst things that could happen have happened. Yeah. And now it's just going to, all of the worst things that could happen have happened. Yeah. And now it's just going to be vengeance. Yeah, basically.

So can we turn towards that element of her becoming a political figure? Yeah. She's essentially queen of the Iceni, although we're not really sure that she was queen per se. And the Iceni aren't particularly big players. So at the beginning of this rebellion, she's not really that much of a threat to Rome. But what happens, Col Colchester that changes things? She burns it to the ground. Right, that'll change things.

How big was Colchester at that point? Colchester is the biggest Roman settlement in the area. It is the place where they are focusing all of their attention and it is the space where they have just built a brand new spanking temple to Claudius. Yes. The divine Claudius who they've decided as a god and they want all of the british people to come in and literally be priests and worship the man who has conquered them

why did they like colchester it's difficult to imagine now i mean they've just got a wagamama but um well i mean it's yeah i guess it's defensible it's near the coast it's uh but also presumably it's the power base of the local tribe isn't it yeah and the tribe is called the Trinovantes yeah yeah so she burns it the hell down basically she turns up the Romans how many people have been living there I mean a few thousand few thousand okay and there's 200 troops at least hiding in the temple because when the people in colchester hear that something is going on with the icini they send to the local pro-consul who's like a mayor i suppose um to to get asked for help and he goes british are no trouble i'm gonna send you 200 men without swords. Without swords? Yeah. The Romans took them as well.

So just... They sent him basically just in order to... Unarmed men? Yeah. Sort of community police officers, aren't they? To have a chat. Hive his jacket. So I can visualise it.

So at this point, Boudicca, how big of a group are with her at Colchester? Couldn't really tell you. Couldn't really tell you. No. But more than 200? Yes. So that's the point, is that they you. Couldn't really tell you. No. But more than 200? Yes. So that's the point,

is that they've not even sent enough of them. No. And presumably Boudicca is armed to shit. They're very armed, and they're very good at arming themselves. And he sends 200 men who then go and sit in the temple. And the temple is a space not just for worship, but also a place where people kind of live,

if you've got nowhere else to live. Okay. And there's lots of people there, and they don't even bother to clear out all of the people so there's 200 men hanging out in the temple yeah without any real arms and with a bunch of like old ladies and children okay hanging about doing their business as well which is not a great defensible position everything else is made of wattle and daub mostly poo and so they come and they just set fire to it immediately it takes them a matter of hours to destroy it and then there's a two-day siege where all of the men cower inside and eventually buddhica's men take it by storm and then they burn the temple down as

well so yeah it makes everybody else see that they're a genuine threat it makes the romans see they're a genuine threat and makes everybody else very excited that maybe they could actually take on the romans yeah so the local tribe are on board the trinivantes and colchester's on fire yeah this is a this is a huge victory so the story of buddhica is essentially this point that is a sort of vengeful tarantino sort of protagonist she's she's out for blood she's you know fired up but actually what's fascinating about the story is that she increasingly has to recruit more and more people to this rebellion. And of course, the slightly odd thing about this time is we talk about Roman Britain or even just the Britons as being one people.

But they're not one people, are they? They are lots of tribes who sort of hate each other. They hate each other quite a lot. They hate each other in the way that only people who have a lot in common can hate each other. Spurs fans and Arsenal fans. Exactly. So these tribes, are they very self-reliant?

Yes. So actually they're kind of directly, if they're not trading with each other, then I guess you're always going to have a competition because generation to generation you're going to be infringing on each other's resources. They're competing for resources. England is not very big.

No, it's rubbish. It's absolutely rubbish. These poor people live in the poor Tesco's. They are trading, they're competing for contacts with continental Europe, they're competing for trade routes into continental Europe they are competing for land and power

in England, Scotland, Wales and they mostly hate each other for all of those reasons but then Buddha comes along and basically it's very much like Game of Thrones whereby they all hate each other and are competing for the big

uncomfortable chair but then there's a big existential threat that comes from beyond the wall and they all have to get together briefly in order to try to fight off the big, and then they can go back to fighting for the chair. But that's really interesting because the whole thing with kind of tribal politics is it needs an other to exist and so

of course you become one big tribe when there's one big other yeah and who see them all as the same the rumours just say no difference between these this bunch of absolute plebs so with places that's rumours speaking i mean and you say you've got family in colchester yeah they're all so my mom and my sisters all live in colchester my nieces so is does the name buddhica still resonate are there sort of chip shops named after her is there a nightclub called icini inferno or there's definitely there's a window company called the icini okay so there is there's lots of little nods and it's definitely something if i'm gigging in colchester i'll usually try and say something about buddhica at the beginning right they know it's local folklore and are they proud of that history or is it you know because

she burned them down like it's it's a weird thing. Colchester and most of Essex, and Essex, like lots of places, they can really laugh at themselves and they like jokes about themselves. And so the idea that she kind of came along, saw the hippodrome and thought, no, let's start again. It's really funny. Well, I mean, she burns down Colchester. She's gathering an army.

It's going quite well. Next stop on the the tour is obviously London London the place everywhere wants to headline and at this point she's on the way to London at this point

we get a new character into the story we do the governor what's his proper name Emma Suetonius okay but his full name

can't remember off the top of my head Gaius Suetonius Paulinus isn't it thank you yeah so he's the governor the governor and he's where?

He is hanging out in Anglesey. Hanging out slash murdering druids. Having a lovely holiday murdering druids and destroying their religious places. So who are the druids? Just very quickly. The druids are a religious and political class in Celtic culture. They are basically in charge of all religious observance

anything anytime you've got a problem with your family if you have nicked my horse Sarah and I want my horse back then we go to a Druid and this looks like it looks like your horse is actually mine but I mean you say that I think you'll find that my horse has a different one. This one's bigger, mine's bigger. That kind of thing, they sort it and they decide what's the law and they are an enormous... So they're very respected. Enormously respected. And are they respected universally through all the tribes?

Is that one of the things that keeps the tribes sort of on the same page? Yes. So this is one of those things that everybody agrees on, that the Druids are kind of the universal political elite. Are people born into... Is it something that's hereditary? No, you train. Yeah. Yeah, it's a long training process.

And presumably they're peaceful as well no no and they do sacrifices as well they do animal sacrifices and that's yeah a lot of animal sacrifice and also the reason that the romans hated them quite so much or possibly one of the reasons that they gave for hating them as far as so much is that they did human sacrifices we think so the celts have this religious class and the Romans are murdering them. They were all based in Anglesey, which was called Mona at the time, or that's where they had kind of retreated to. And that's where these sacred groves are

that were a kind of real centre of religious observance. And the Romans decided that they'd had enough of them. So that Suetonius is off taking them down. And there's a really good bit of tacitus where he describes the romans appearing at the shores of anglesea and all of the druids lined up along the shore with women with loose hair roaring and them sacrificing animals the romans were really freaked out by druids like They genuinely found them extremely uncomfortable. They do sound so hipster and weird, though.

So Suetonius, the governor, hears about Boudicca burning down Colchester and thinks, oh, that's probably my job. So he's got two Roman legions, which is 10,000 men, 8,000 men, give or take. Maybe slightly more with cavalry. But he's a long way away. He's in Wales and people don't march for 30 miles in a day, if you're lucky. So he starts heading back. He's going to take a long while away. He's in Wales and people don't march for 30 miles in a day, if you're lucky.

Yeah. So he starts heading back. He's going to take a long while to get back to intercept. So she now burns down London, which is also very badly defended. For her to get to London 30 miles a day probably takes her three days to get there. She can probably get to London in three, four days. And all the while she's gathering reinforcements and troops. People are joining.

And also if they're ferocious it's probably safer to join them than to try and get in their way exactly that yeah so you either join them or or get you know trampled yourself as a rome lover the governor is on the way but he rides ahead finds london on fire and goes oh bum yeah um he can't do much about it he sort of evacuates a few people doesn't really work out as many as they wanted no can we evacuate and he says no no um and then at the last minute he's like okay some of you can get out yeah so more women and children are killed you know this is this is the thing with buddhika as well which is both tacitus and doyo are pretty clear that she just kills everybody yeah she loved to kill she loved killing she won and also that's how angry she was. It wasn't like a, we're going to prove

this point or we're going to reinstate organised and fairer systems. It was I'm going to make the Thames run full of blood. Yeah. Is she a problematic feminist icon, do you think? It's interesting you keep saying feminist. Well, she keeps turning up in these history books. She does turn up in like that What Would Boudicca Do? What Would Boudicca Do?

It's a sort of news. But sometimes I feel like that just happens because people are women. And it happened with Theresa May and they go, it's feminist. You go, no, it's a woman. That's different.

Feminism is a movement about equality. Nothing you've said about Boudicca so far has creamed to me. She wants the world to be fairer. She wants there

to be a safety net Well, there's the gendered violence against her which is, I think, often has been interpreted as an attack on her femininity, on her womanhood and so this is her sort of kill bill revenge. Yeah, I think often has been interpreted as an attack on her femininity, on her womanhood, and so this is her sort of Kill Bill revenge.

Yeah, I think that's the thing actually about sometimes using a word. I understand, I mean, absolutely, and I've read the What Would Boudicca Do book and understand mythologising of certain figures in terms of being strong and you can be one person and still kind of create change, which obviously is any kind of activism but i don't think she's an activist i think she's the same as any tyrannical despot yeah she's a rampaging yeah yeah i mean certainly with everything and that's not saying that everything is fact but the story that we're telling now yeah yeah i wouldn't necessarily

want to be her friend and i wouldn't necessarily want her to lead my feminist movement. Dio says, I mean, again, I trust Dio maybe as far as I could throw him, but he says that she was beheading babies and took Roman women, strung them up, cut off their breasts and sewed them to their mouths. Which is not mad feminist. But again, it's what people do when they are trying, in the most despicable way possible to make everyone else terrified. Yeah.

You do disgusting, you torture, you maim, and you make it public. Yeah. And that's what she is. She's absolutely inhumane. It's what Vlad the Impaler did as well. Yes. He erected a human fence by kebabbing 40,000 people as a warning to invaders. Don't come in. This is what I do to my own people. It's everything. It's visual and it's the

stink. Yeah. And it's that everyone else is absolutely terrified and will behave themselves yeah and back away but it wasn't just her this is a movement yeah

and that's the other thing about it not being a feminist thing is that it wasn't a female army well actually is it? I mean

what do you think? well no Tacitus says that she's the only girl there and he has her bringing all of the women to watch the battles, which causes a problem for them later when they get to Walling Street. But he mentions that again in another book of his called The Germania.

He's really obsessed with the idea that non-Romans bring women to watch battles, which he finds weirdly horrifying. Yeah, we think that some Celts may have... There's certainly evidence for some women being involved in warfare in this time, in the Iron Age. There's certainly evidence increasingly in the Viking era of women in warfare. But Tacitus is our source, unfortunately, as a bloke writing 50 years later back in Rome. He hates women. He really hates women.

Absolutely hates women. Although he gives Boudicca a brilliant speech. He does give her a brilliant speech, although the very fact of her speaking, as far as Tacitus is concerned, is repulsive. Like, actively, you can imagine him singing... But she's got a Norfolk accent. She even were. She has a Norfolk accent.

She's got... Her hair is down, which makes him sick in his mouth a bit. The idea of women having an active public voice is unnatural. There's a lot of people like him at Jonglers on a Saturday night, actually. Unfortunately.

Pass them on to us. There's obviously a gene for that. So the cavalry's on the way to a certain extent, but we should also add there's a second cavalry on the way, which is the 9th Legion. Now, the 9th Legion are the crack elite squad of Roman troops in Britain. They're up in Lincolnshire. They've heard the burning of Goldchester and thought,

uh-oh, they have marched south. But Boudicca has intercepted them and annihilated them. Absolutely destroys them. She did. She just literally wipes them out. She wipes out the infantry and then the cavalry and the leader go, oh no, and run away. So that's really fascinating to me because what I would love to know,

and again it's something that you learn at school when you go on a school trip, and I think it's because it's so visual. We learned a lot about how Romans fought. We learned about shields and these hedgehogs. Yes. Was the way they were fighting so ferocious that Romans couldn't with their kind of battle?

I suspect that the Legion just really underestimated what was happening in the same way that when they sent 200 men without swords, they just think that the Britons are unbelievably rubbish. They're just not even worth their time. Or it's an ambush. I mean, there's the possibility that they're travelling in formation and that the Celts sort of come out the bushes and grab them from behind.

But also, by this point, she may have gathered a really large army. And this is one legion, which is only 4,000 men, infantry, 1,000 sort of cavalry. But she wipes them out. So the Celt army must have ambushed or just massively overwhelmed. Like a tsunami, just of people, that thing. OK, wow. Yeah, and this, more than anything,

that means that it gets in the history books because wiping out a town is a medium deal, but wiping out a legion never happens. The Romans never lose and they never forget

when they do lose. This is a blow to the Roman ego in a way that they've never really had to deal with before. It does make you feel a bit, even though it's so awful, it does make you feel a bit proud.

I mean, it's really impressive. Team GB. That's it, just going, do you know what, though? When we put our minds to it, we can get things done. We're capable of a genocide. And there is something, actually, you know, because obviously there's so many things that are so unattractive about any kind of nationalism, obviously,

and it has a terrible ramifications, but sometimes just being like, we're a really small island, but when we passionately believe something. I'll tell you, there's a really good bit in Dio, because Dio gives her a speech as well. And Dio obviously barely knows where England is, doesn't know anything about it at all.

And so in the middle of her speech, she has her go, we're a huge country, practically a continent. We can do this like oh bless your heart so I think we probably need to close down the main story

before we talk more about some themes so we've had the destruction of the 9th legion huge blow massive 4,000 guys

never happened just gone dead some of the cavalry ran away but they're not there to fight London on fire

they now march to St Albans school trip school trip they're off to to fight london on fire they now march to st albans school trip school trip they're off to go see it which is called in latin it's called verillanium yeah that's not right at this point the governor paulinus saturnius has now got his army together he's managed to cobble together about 10 000 people which is not a huge amount for the romans but especially if they've

just beaten four that's not like 40 000 all of a sudden that's it so he's managed to take his he's taken his troops out of anglesey yeah he's cobbled together a few survivors from the ninth legion the legion in exeter refused to join they're terrified uh so he's got 10 000 men 10 000 is not a lot no. St Albans is on fire. But at this point, St Albans is on what's known as Watling Street, which is a diagonal road that runs all the way from Dover, I suppose, up through the Midlands, up to Wales, isn't it, really? It sort of goes, I guess, diagonally from southeast up to northwest.

He decides he's going to pick his battlefield. He's going to draw Boudicca into a battle. Sarah, I'm going to now ask you to be Paulinus, Suetonius, the governor. Yes. You've got 10,000 men. Yeah. Boudicca has, let's say, 100,000 warriors.

Yeah. How are you going to win this battle? What are you doing to maximise your advantage or minimise your disadvantage? So what I know of military battles, especially if you're that outnumbered, is you need to get them in a valley, don't you? Oh, great. Everyone give me a thumbs up. Yes, essentially what you want is them to lead into a valley and you can come over the hills, you look bigger, you come from above,

they're trapped down in between you and you can obviously at all sides. It's pretty fun. Do you want to give us the more detail emma basically yeah that's what he does he gets them into a narrow valley so there's a really narrow entrance into the battlefield and then behind them he picks a space which has forests oh yeah so there is um no way they can get behind them at any point um and they're so they're for the british are forced to come down a narrow space into it effectively and then he lines them up this is one of the very few times that has to size to get detailed about military things because he finds it very boring it's more interesting than a woman talking

basically it basically has his infantry is heavily armed infantry in the middle so as you come down that's what you're gonna see then light armed infantry on either side and then on the far side the cavalry so they're forced to come down, that's what you're going to see, then light-armed infantry on either side, and then on the far side is the cavalry. So they're forced to come down basically in a column, and then they can be swamped on all sides. And then I guess the people behind don't know what's happening, they just have to keep coming in, there's people behind them. And you get a trample, you get a kind of bottleneck effect.

And if you try to move back, there's even more chaos. That's it. So it's a bit like a crush in a stadium. And then to make the situation worse, the British had brought along a load of women and children on carts to watch, which they then had all behind them. So when they were trying to get back, they were squished up against their own people. It's a sort of hubris moment, isn't it? It's a great hubris moment. And Tasta says that they killed 80,000 British people and only lost 400 men, which is a lie, but shows how much they thought it was a victory.

Some of Tacitus does sound like someone recounting their favourite football match, where he suddenly gets really detailed about his team's goal and then we scored five more goals. Actually, he's really on the side of the British. He is. Boudicca is... If Boudicca wasn't a girl,

which is her fundamental flaw as far as... Rookie mistake, isn't it? It's a rookie error. If she wanted Tassitus to like her, she'd have tried harder to be a boy. Or just said, I've got this idea. Tell it to a man, let him get the credit. And then Tassitus would have been much happier

because he's very uncomfortable with the fact that she's a woman but he's actually super on her side because he really hates Roman violent Roman imperialism and he really really really hates Nero okay

and so so Tacitus is Roman though yes but he thinks that so the Annals basically is the story of the roman empire from the death of augustus to so and through through the reign of tiberius caligula nero and claudius and his this whole story the narrative of it is is this was the worst time

in roman history everything was terrible everything that they did was the worst every person who lived during this time was the worst and so he likes buddhica and he likes the british because he sees them as like noble savages basically who are being run over by the terrible romans okay but they were not as good as the romans are now in his period okay i think that kind of brings us up to something that we like to do in this show called the nuance window the nuance window The Nuance Window. The Nuance Window! And The Nuance Window is my favourite bit. It's where we allow our history nerd to just go to town on whatever they want to talk about

for three minutes. We put a bed of music underneath to make it sound sort of dramatic and exciting, although, of course, history is already dramatic and exciting. And, Emma, you are a specialist on Roman women. You've written a book about Agrippina, the mother of Nero. What are you going to talk to us about for three minutes?

For three minutes, I'm going to undermine everything we've said. Great. Cool. Leading off of that. All right, so let me start the clock. Here we go. Three, two, one, the nuance window. So the thing with Tacitus is that he's not telling a story that is historical

as we would understand it he is telling a story that is literary. History is an art form and a literature form it is not the telling of an objective truth of any kind and his version of Boudicca is him retelling the rape of Lucretia which is a classic story in Roman history where Nero is the evil king who's gone too far, who is monarchical and tyrannical, and Boudicca manages to be simultaneously Lucretia and Brutus, the great tyrant killer. She is undermined by the fact that she's a woman and therefore is unable to successfully kill the tyrant, but her body is the space on which the tyrant plays out his evil ways in the same way that Lucretia's body when she was raped by Tarquin's son was the space where the tyrant played out his evil freedom taking ways. She then does the great speech where she talks about how she's taught needs freedom from the tyrant.

freedom from the tyrant she needs. The Rome has become so imperious that even our children's bodies are not safe, which is pretty much a straight up quote from the story that Brutus tells when he takes Lucretia's body. Lucretia kills herself in order to take away the shame of her rape and Brutus then takes her body and shows it to the Roman people so that they can rise up against it in the exact same way that Boudicca takes her children and shows them so that the Iceni and the British people can rise up against it. At which point she is unfortunately undermined by being both a woman and a barbarian and she is unable to contain her evil barbarian ways and her unfortunate female ways because all women in Tacitus are power mad, are cruel when they get power

and are driven by a desire to hurt people around them. Basically, when you look at all other women except Boudicca, so Livia, Messalina, Agrippina, even Cartamandua, who's like another British woman who's even better than Boudicca, as soon as they get power, they become insanely cruel and they just start doing cruel things, which is exactly what Boudicca. As soon as they get power, they become insanely cruel and they just start doing cruel things, which is exactly what Boudicca does. So she is less a real woman in Tacitus

and less a real person telling a real story and more a very symbolic story about how Rome has become so degraded that it is as bad as when they had to kick out the kings. That's two and a half minutes. Bang on. Thank you so much. That's all right.

Sarah, what are your thoughts on that nuance window? I think it's such an important thing to remember about history is that it's such a subjective, as you say, art form and it's a form of literature and that's the thing. And actually the same thing happens everywhere. The stickiest things are often not the truest things the statistics are the easiest to remember like 30 years later going that study was replicated and history the same there's certain things we remember it a certain way because it's better yeah we edit and um and obviously i think what's so fascinating

about humans is we tell stories in order to remember things and that's why everything's mythologized yeah and to the Romans as well the other thing is that this is a great loss for them to lose a legion and they have to tell a story about this terrifying person who was so terrifying and scary in every way in order to kind of make themselves feel better about the fact that they lost like she has to be something more than human yeah of course and also it can't just be their errors. We underestimated. We didn't have anything in place for this to occur.

There were no swords. And we learned our lesson. Sticking with the mythology element to it, she's gone down in history as a redhead. Dio Cassius... Does not use the word redhead. No, he does not. He uses the word xanthotartos.

Yeah, which means really yellow. Really blonde, Sarah Pascoe. If it was summertime yeah then maybe i mean she was outdoors on a horse so you might have been a strawberry blonde also women can change their hair color maybe she was in auburn's shall i have a rinse maybe maybe i'm actually interested in that so because cosmetics for british women in those times especially they would have had kind of natural dyes. It's very easy to put a rinse on light hair that makes it orange.

You could. Onions, you could make a lovely easy brown dye with that. As in, she could have put like a rinse on that then wore off or anything. It's true. Interestingly, the word that is used by Dio, who's writing a solid 150 years afterwards in Greek, he is the same word that they use to describe lions and gold. So it's a kind of...

It is a strawberry blondie. Yeah, so it is a specific... The way he describes her is like the most barbarous thing and it's from him that the description comes as her standing, she's wearing a multicoloured robe, she's got a big torc, is those like huge, thick neck, not even necklaces. You can't call them...

Sort of gold, like a neck bangle almost. Yeah, like a big neck bangle. Like a huge, chunky neck bangle. But it's armour, isn't it? Not jewelry. But it's both. It's a symbol.

It's a symbol of power. So it's what leaders wore. And so she's wearing one. She's got her hair down, which is a big deal for the Romans. And it's the same colour as a lion. Yeah.

And then he also says she's massive, terrifying, and her voice is ugly. Yeah. Just in case you thought she was sexy. But that's obviously the point of the description. That's what's interesting, actually, about the sexualisation of that. Yes. Because the reason they're saying her hair is down and straggly, they're saying she's animal-like.

Yeah. And she's bestial. Yeah. And then that's been interpreted as flowing locks. Probably a bit of cleavage. What are they? Well, in the Horrible Histories movie we've just made about this exact story, Kate Nash,

who is a gorgeous redhead and absolutely has a brilliant time and it's a lot of fun. But we have played up to some of the myths because they're fun, they're funny to do. But making her a blonde, a savage lioness, it sort of gives her a kind of regal power, but also, as you say, a bestial sort of violence, predatory. And that's a perfect example as well.

It's like even just in the physical description of someone, the exact words you choose, the language, it connotates so much. It's not just trying to go she had a short bob yeah very functional hair and yeah

she wore sensible shoes yeah out of her face yeah and I guess a couple more myths to bust the chariot with the spikes no

no war chariots were a really big thing for the Celts they are like the war chariot is a big Celtic piece of

of weaponry that they used and it did scare the piece of weaponry that they use. And it did scare the hell out of everyone that they ever found. But they didn't have spikes on it. No, and it's more sort of a mobile platform for chucking spears or delivering troops. It's like a kind of, yeah, like a skateboard. No, yeah, like a scary skateboard. But they were very nippy.

Two-wheeled? Yeah. Yeah, OK, so it's not four-wheeled. It's not a sort of wagony type. No, they're nippy. They had people pulling on, you Yeah, OK, so it's not four-wheeled. It's not a sort of wagony type. No. They're nippy. They had people pulling on... You had two people giving you spears on either side. Terrifying.

And is she buried underneath King's Cross Station? No. Ah! That's made up by somebody, I'm afraid, who got very confused about where things happen. Well, we don't know where Watling Street is, do we? We do not know where Watling Street is. I could spend an hour and a half here

listing places that people think Watling Street, where they think the battle happened. And the word street is interesting because everyone thinks of Roman roads. Yeah. And that wasn't the word. Well, street is an Anglo-Saxon word. Yeah. So it's and Watling, also Anglo-Saxon word. So weirdly enough, the most famous thing associated with her is a post

you know, it comes 500 years later on 600 years later on when you've got a different culture come in from Germanic speaking so again so much of what we know about buddhica we do not know about buddhica in fact you know just we don't know her name we don't know her age we don't know her tribe she's born into we don't know if she's a queen we don't know where she died or how she died because she's apparently she poisons herself but this isn't there's another really nice thing that tasters does is that he gives her she poisons herself which is a weak, girly way to die. It's a coward's way to die.

It's also how Cleopatra dies as well. There's a sort of romantic myth, isn't there? But it's weak and girly. But wouldn't she, I guess it is, rather than just dying in battle, fighting for what you believe in. The correct way to die is to fall on your sword. And the sentence in Tacitus is he juxtaposes it by she poisons herself. And then the guy who refused to join in falls on your sword. And the sentence in Tacitus is he juxtaposes it by she poisons herself and then the guy

who refused to join in falls on his sword like a good Roman should. If she dies in battle, it's noble, it's, you know, a strong way to go. Yes.

And she's not in the end. Okay. Although in Dio, she just dies of a mysterious illness. Yes. Let's just wrap up very quickly then.

We've heard a fantastic amount of stuff about Boudicca, all of which we've now learned we have to completely ignore because we don't know anything for certain and that's part of the excitement. Do you think, Sarah, that there's merit in studying people who are problematic and mythologised and tricky or should we be just sort of going, you know what? I think Vendessa justice is very interesting. I think pre-judicial system system which i find really fascinating in the majority if not every single studied culture what you have is situations which was eye for an eye or when someone does something so bad there are certain situations where things

are legitimized the repetition of that story we still as human beings have that instinct like and i think it's very interesting that we live in a society where if i were you hit me i punch you back emma yeah you can call the police or you accidentally do all of those kind of things i think it's really interesting that's why i think it's fascinating to study and i think that's why we like the stories because we absolutely understand why you wronged my family i'm getting a chariot say. OK, well, I think on that note, I think we probably have to leave it there. I just want to say a big thank you to both of you for your time and your enthusiasm.

It's been fantastically fun. And to you at home, if you've enjoyed this, I hope you'll come back and listen to another episode because every episode we do a different bit of history and hopefully sometimes we emerge knowing things and maybe we emerge knowing nothing. I don't know. So, yeah, if you want to know more about the show,

follow me on Twitter. I'm Greg underscore Jenna and come say hi. But for now, I think we have to say goodbye. So thanks so much and farewell. Bye. The programme was a Muddy Knees Media Production. The producer was Dan Morrell. Beyond Today is the daily podcast from Radio 4. It asks one big question about one big story in the news and beyond. Just how big is Netflix? Why are young people getting lost in the system? I'm Tina Dehealy. I'm Matthew Price.

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