Boudica: the Iceni queen who led a revolt against Rome

Her war can be followed in four steps: the storming of the veteran colony at Camulodunum and the rout of a relief force from the Ninth Legion, the burning of Londinium, the sack of Verulamium, and a final pitched battle against Suetonius Paulinus, which our ranking of Rome's greatest battles lists as Watling Street, AD 60 or 61.²

Almost everything written about her comes from two Roman historians who never met her: Tacitus, who wrote in Latin, and Cassius Dio, who wrote in Greek more than a century after the revolt. Their accounts differ on the cause of the revolt, on what happened to Boudica and her daughters and on how she died. The burned towns, by contrast, have been excavated.³

Who were the Iceni?

The Iceni were a British people of East Anglia, living in what is now Norfolk, northeast Cambridgeshire and northern Suffolk. After the Roman conquest of AD 43 their king Prasutagus ruled as a client king, an ally who kept his throne in return for loyalty to Rome. Boudica was his wife.⁴

We know of Boudica only because of her revolt. No grave, coin or inscription names her or Prasutagus, so their existence and their names rest on what Tacitus and Cassius Dio wrote.⁵

Why did Boudica revolt against Rome?

The sources disagree. Tacitus says Rome seized the Iceni kingdom after Prasutagus died, flogged Boudica and raped her daughters. Cassius Dio says nothing of this and blames money: the procurator reclaimed gifts made by the emperor Claudius, and Seneca called in his loans. The Trinovantes joined her over land taken for a colony of Roman veterans.⁶

In Tacitus's account Prasutagus named the emperor Nero as an heir together with his two daughters, hoping to protect his kingdom and household. Instead centurions plundered the kingdom and slaves the royal household, Boudica was flogged, her daughters were raped, the leading Iceni lost their family estates and the king's relatives were treated as slaves.⁷

Dio tells a different story. The procurator Decianus Catus claimed back the sums Claudius had given to leading Britons, and Seneca, Nero's adviser, who had lent the islanders 40 million sesterces they did not want, called in the whole loan at once and collected it harshly.⁸

The Trinovantes, neighbors of the Iceni, had seen veterans of the colony at Camulodunum (Colchester) drive them from their homes and land, and the temple of the deified Claudius stood in the town as a symbol of Roman rule. The governor, Suetonius Paulinus, was far away in the west, attacking the island of Mona, today Anglesey.⁹

Which towns did Boudica burn?

Her army destroyed three Roman towns: the veteran colony of Camulodunum (Colchester), the trading town of Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans). Tacitus names all three; Cassius Dio speaks of two cities sacked. Archaeologists have found burned debris from the revolt under Colchester and London, so this part of the story is confirmed.¹⁰

Camulodunum had no walls. Tacitus says the procurator Catus sent no more than 200 men without proper weapons, the town was overrun, and the troops who gathered in the temple held out for two days before it was stormed. Petillius Cerialis, marching to the rescue with the Ninth Legion, lost his infantry and escaped with his cavalry. Catus fled to Gaul.¹¹

Under modern Colchester lies a red and black layer of burned debris, from a few centimeters to half a meter thick, made of the stumps of burned clay walls, a burned bed and carbonized dates, figs, wheat and peas. In one house someone buried gold and silver jewelry, now called the Fenwick treasure, in a small pit in the floor and never came back for it. Human remains, though, are rare in the debris.¹²

Paulinus reached Londinium but judged his troops too few to hold it. He marched out with everyone who could keep up; those who stayed behind fell to the rebels. Archaeologists have found thick layers of burned debris in central London. Verulamium suffered the same fate. Tacitus puts the Roman and allied dead in the three towns at about 70,000; an estimate by Mattingly, cited by Warwick, is about half that, and the London Museum says tens of thousands.¹³

Where was Boudica's final battle?

No one knows. Tacitus describes the place but never names it: a position reached through a narrow defile, with a wood behind the Romans and an open plain in front. Historians look along the Roman road now called Watling Street, at Mancetter, High Cross and other sites, but no battlefield archaeology has been found at any of them.¹⁴

Other proposed sites include Hints, Catthorpe and Towcester, as well as Arbury Banks and Church Stowe. The London Museum places the battle probably somewhere in the Midlands.¹⁵

Paulinus had the Fourteenth Legion, a detachment of the Twentieth and auxiliaries from the nearest posts, about 10,000 armed men by Tacitus's count. The Second Legion never joined him, and its camp prefect, Poenius Postumus, later ran himself through with his sword.¹⁶

Dio says Boudica assembled about 120,000 men and led about 230,000 into the battle. Tacitus says only that the Britons came in unprecedented numbers, so confident that they brought their wives to watch from wagons at the edge of the plain. Webster, cited by Warwick, estimated up to 100,000 Britons against 11,000 to 13,000 Romans.¹⁷

In Tacitus the legionaries held the defile, threw their javelins and then charged in a wedge, with the cavalry on the wings, the drill that made the Roman legion so hard to break. The fleeing Britons were trapped by their own wagons. Dio describes a long fight in three divisions that the Romans won late in the day. Tacitus reports, by some accounts, almost 80,000 British dead against about 400 Romans, a gap Warwick calls typical of ancient battle writing.¹⁸

How did Boudica die?

The two sources disagree. Tacitus says Boudica ended her life with poison after the defeat. Cassius Dio says she fell ill and died, and that the Britons mourned her deeply and gave her a costly burial before scattering to their homes. Her grave has never been found, and no physical trace of her is known.¹⁹

Rome sent 2,000 legionaries, eight auxiliary cohorts and 1,000 cavalry from Germany, harried the tribes that had wavered or rebelled, and famine followed because the Britons had not sown their crops. Paulinus treated those who surrendered harshly until Nero replaced him with Petronius Turpilianus, who avoided provoking the Britons.²⁰

Can we trust Tacitus and Cassius Dio?

Only in part. Tacitus is usually preferred because his father-in-law Agricola served in Britain under Suetonius Paulinus at the time of the revolt. But neither historian saw the events, and Warwick's classicists note that both inflate British numbers and shrink Roman losses, which makes the Roman victory look greater than any count could show.²¹

Tacitus tells the story twice. In the Annals she is the wife of Prasutagus; in the Agricola she is a woman of royal descent, and he notes that the Britons made no distinction of sex in succession to the throne.²²

Even the year is uncertain. Tacitus dates the revolt by the consuls Caesennius Paetus and Petronius Turpilianus. Some historians compress everything into the summer of AD 60; others think she gathered her forces in 60 and struck in 61. The Colchester Archaeological Trust dates the burning of the town to AD 61, the London Museum to around AD 60.²³

What did Boudica look like?

Only Cassius Dio describes her: very tall, terrifying in appearance, with a fierce glance, a harsh voice, a great mass of tawny hair falling to her hips and a large golden necklace. He wrote long after her death, and the London Museum notes that Roman historians drew on common stereotypes about northern European women.²⁴

The flaming red hair of later paintings is a modern invention, and so are the crowns and costumes of Victorian prints.²⁵

How is Boudica remembered?

As a national heroine and a symbol of defiance. Writers and poets retold her story for centuries, and films have followed. Its best-known image is Thomas Thornycroft's bronze of Boudica and her daughters in a chariot by Westminster Bridge in London, begun in the 1850s and unveiled there in 1902.²⁶

Her name is Boudicca in Tacitus and Buduica or Boudouika in transliterations of Dio's Greek; Boudica is the usual modern spelling, used by the London Museum. Boadicea, the older English form, appears in the Church and Brodribb translation of the Agricola and in the listed name of Thornycroft's statue.²⁷

Today Boudica leads almost every list of women warriors in history. The record is thinner than the legend: a widow who was wronged, a revolt that destroyed three Roman towns, and a defeat at a place no one has found. What survives in the ground is the ash.