Transcript of 501. The Roman Conquest of Britain: Boudicca’s Reign of Blood (Part 3)

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add 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 Boudica. 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 aubun hair fell tumbling to her hips. Around her neck, she wore a large golden torque, 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 experience how different are freedom and slavery.

Some of you, because you did not previously appreciate this, may have been seduced by the hunnid 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? That Tom was Cassius Dio with the first detailed description of a Britain in history. That's interesting.

So much to unpick there in that reading, Dominic.

It's just how, apparently, according to Cassius Dio, it's just how Boudica spoke, isn't it?

Plotting a Brexit.

Well, she is plotting a Brexit, isn't she? She 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. Boudica is… She's probably the first vivid personality in the whole of British history. Cassius Dio is describing this great rebellion that she leads in AD 60, a rebellion against Roman rule that almost succeeds. We've been talking about the ambivalent attitudes that people, certainly in Britain, feel towards the Romans. But there's also ambivalence towards Boudica, isn't there? Because you could represent her as what I think she was, 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. There's a famous statue of her in London, which her force is burnt down. There's also one in Colchester, which she also incinerated. A fascinating That's a good figure, Dominic.

Yeah, an inspiration to arsonists everywhere that if you burn down a city, you might get a statue. I remember having done Boudica at school, I think you were always expected to empathize with her a bit, weren't you? She was a heroic figure. In the popular imagination, hasn't she become conflated a little bit with the figure of Britannia? Do you think on the chariot, the wild hair, the flashing eyes, the spear, all of that 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 refer 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 well springs of our history is great. You're right that, of course, there is a parallel between the figure of Boudica and the figure of Britannia, who we referenced yesterday, first appears as someone who is being assaulted by a buff Claudius. And as we will see, what prompts Boudica to her revolt is precisely-Sexual violence. 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 in this episode.

I've just left that.

Yeah, that's between me and my therapist, I think it's best. To float. So let's have a bit of context.

To float in the path.

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 south and Midlands of the island of Britain. They beat the Catevuloni, 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 Camelodunum, present day Colchester, which has become this colony, this showcase for Roman civilization. It's confusing because although it was the Catawbaunian capital, the Catawbaunians had been an imperial power themselves and had conquered it from the Trinovantes, who were their neighbors. 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 Catevallani, who are the people who the Romans defeated, they're absolutely fine. They're having a great time. They've got their main settlement, Verlainium. It's been pronounced Munachipium, which means that all the elected magistrates in there become Roman citizens. They've started to build baths, all this 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 togidubness, who may well be the guy who lives in the palace of Fishborne, the great villa. The Casa de Lorne, where 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 Camelodonum that's now been withdrawn and it's been given over to veterans.

Meanwhile, beyond the lowland Southern Britain in the north, so Yorkshire, Lancashire, all that, that is the territory of a tribe called the Brigantes, who are ruled by a queen called Khata Mandua, who's a great survivor. We'll be coming back to her later. 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, 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, they apply the carrot and the stick. So the carrot is the villas that they give to leading collaborators, the civic adornments that they give to kivitates, they're called. So these are Roman style urban foundations based on meeting places So Verlainian would be an example. Camelodonium 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. Let's talk about Boudica. 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 Iceni in the last episode. I looked it up and you're quite right. I am.

Thanks, Dominic.

But everybody in England will call it the Iceni. So 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 trackway, very, very ancient, much older than the than the Icahny, called the Icahnyled Way.

The Icneild way? Yeah, I know that road.

So it goes from the Icneild 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 Icneild. That'd be brilliant, wouldn't it? And the Icahnyled 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 Khata Mandur is. So she's the consort of, well, the Romans call him a king, a rex, whatever. I mean, he's the head honcho of the Icani, a man called Prasutagas. So it's possible that Boudica is, 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 confederation, a tribal league, pretty cohesive, but with separate subdivisions, 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 archeology, that the Icaini are much, much less in hock to Roman culture than the other major tribal groupings. You find there are very few Roman coins there, very little evidence of luxury foreign goods, no Amphore wine, so on, things like that. The question is, why should this be? One answer might be their geographical circumstances.

They're further north. They're surrounded for much of their territory by the North Sea. Also the Fens, which at this time are very, very impassable for large stretches. They haven't been drained. So there's huge swamps bordering the Southern breaches of their territory. And you can 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 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 Icanan 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 lolen 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 Boudica, came out last year. And he writes about this wolf. It's an emaciated, beaked, jawed, spike-eared, and spindle-limbed creature that must have moved more like a spider than anything mamalian.

So very sinister. It's shown with birds that are clearly associated with the fens, so lap wings, bitons, so on. This gives the sense that the wolf is a fend dweller, which in Germanic would be fenrea. Oh, I love that. And fenrea in Norse mythology, of course, is the great wolf that at the end of the world devours the sun. And there's another echo or perhaps foreshadowing of Norse mythology, that another series of early Icané coins features this strange mask-like male head with a single eye. And there's an Oxford numismatist called Daphne Nash-Briggs, who's written a lot about the Icahnaian coins in a very, very stimulating way. She writes about this eye, that it's lids are either closed or firmly sewn shut, which, of course, may remind listeners of Odin, the one-eye God who rips his eye out.

Gave up his eye for wisdom.

What's even more fascinating is that Nashbriggs argues that Icanée and coins, in addition to having Latin and Britonic language, also has Germanic language.

When you say it argues that, is that because it's up for debate. You can't really tell what it says.

It's massively up for debate. 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 at that time. The linguistic evidence is also furiously debated. But my gut feeling is that it's perfectly plausible that the Icaini, because they are open to the North Sea in the way that, say, Wales or Cornwall had been open to Keltic influences coming up from the Atlantic, seems to me perfectly plausible that there might be a Germanic substratum in their culture, and that perhaps these coins reflect traditions that are percolating riding around long, long before the Viking period.

It's plausible that there are traders and things crossing in 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. It perhaps offers a clue as to where Icanane 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 or 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 Daphné 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. She suggests that it was an attempt, quote, to mitigate destructive competition amongst armed aristocrats. If that's the case, then it must be Prasutagas who is responsible for that. It suggests that he's walking a very delicate tight rope 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 He had 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 Icanéean life that was more than that of just a king. He seems to have held a Priestley status. It's likely that prosely to gas 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, 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, Boudica, I gather, this means she who brings victory, that this, too, may have been a title rather than a name. 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 a holy couple, a sacral couple, where they may have presided. Today, it's on an industrial estate. So glamorous. Called Fissen Way. And Duncan McKay in his book has a brilliantly funny account of him trying to track down this place of eerie portent and this crisp rappers everywhere. So when the industrial state was being developed, archeologists 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 Nashbrick says it's a symbolic grove. You have, I mean, almost intangible a sense of the Icainy 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 Icaini, unlike the Catevuloni or the Trinovantes, are able to maintain their independence from Rome. Prasutagas 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 ambitions among his fellow Icahneans, even to the extent that in '47, there's a Icahnean rebellion.

But the Romans still don't, if they suppress it, possibly with the help of Prosutagas, we don't know whether his collaboration went that far. But it is amazing that Presuticus is able to maintain the independence of his people, even after an uprising like that. But of course, the risks that face the Icahne is that when Presuticus dies, what will happen then?

Tom, I have to tell you, I've just been looking at Frizen 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. That's the place. Anyway, here he is in Fuyson Way, near the windscreen place. And 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 Tessitius tells us what his plan is. He writes, Presuticus, king of the Icaini, 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. The reason for this is that Suetonius Paulinus, the governor, whose job it is essentially to manage the politics of Britain, is away when proselytus dies, he's up in Wales attacking the Druids and so on. The man on the spot is the procurator, who's basically the guy in charge of the finances. He's the Chancellor of the Excheca, a man called Kata Desianus. It's his job to screw money out of the provincials. The province has to be made to pay for itself. The problem with Britain is that it doesn't have the urban infrastructure that lends itself to taxation in a way that's, say, Greece or Egypt might do. And so he's constantly looking for ways to fill his treasure chest. And this is turbo-charged by events actually in Rome, in the Imperial capital, because there Nero is thinking, Do we really We 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 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, Presuticus is one of the people he's lent money to. And so it's a perfect storm. He dies, his will is ignored. When Decianus, the procurator, sends in his heavies, they behave in a completely shameful manner. And again, to quote Tacitus, The Kingdom of Presuticus 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 Icaini, 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 Boudica is this, there She is on Ficin way, and she has her sacral status, the oak Grove and stuff. And her daughters, too. And her daughters, too. 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. 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. Basically, it's a mad, mad thing to have done. And although the speech that Dio gives us, and indeed, his description of Boudica is, I mean, it's a fabrication. 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 Boudica 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, that they're able to get into their heads.

Do you know what I think? Yes, I think so. It's also clear that Boudica, she who brings victory, is absolutely taking the lead. The probability is, Dominate, that this great massing of the Icahny that Cassius Dio was describing in his passage that you read so beautifully, may well have taken place amid the- The car showrooms.

The car showrooms, the concrete mixers of vice and way in this place that is symbolic of the sacral dimension of Boudica's rule.

But the thing that makes it so threatening to the Romans is it's not just the Icaini 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 Catevologna, and now they're slaves to the Romans. The focus for their loathing of Rome is Camelodunum, this colony of Roman veterans with its great monumental temple to a foreign autocrat. And so an alliance with the Trinovantes provides Boudica 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 Icanean 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. In Camelodunum, it is said, even before news of the massing of the Icahne, A statue of victory topples over. Women are roused to a strange frenzy for telling the doom of the city. On the Thames estuary, a ghostly town shimmers and appears in flames. The ocean turns to blood. And when the tide goes out, what seemed 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 Icaini are on the march. And what these portents suggest is that it's not going to end well for Camulodunum.

Crikey. What a cliffhanger. Can the Romans rest back control of this situation, or are there days in Britain numbered and is Boudica set fair for victory. Come back after the break and find out. Those final moments in the fetid, suffocating darkness, as the crammed hundreds words 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 please 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 McKay, and he's describing the last moments of Camulodunum. Its defenders are besieged in the great temple of Claudius, outside the hordes of Ikenai and Trinovantes. No doubt, weapons in hand.

Mustache is bristling.

Yeah, mustache is bristling with blood lust. 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 Camelodonum, it's the place where 17 years before, Caesar himself, the Emperor Claudius, had come, maybe with his war Elephants, to receive a 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 podium, this base, which is still there today in Colchester. 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. You can imagine the impact that it has and that it's designed to have. The temple is also surrounded by all the appertainances that you would expect of a Roman colonia, a transplantation of Roman culture to foreign lands. So it's got baths, it's It's got an enormous theater, it's got the great victory arch, all claiming 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 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. 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, the contentious word that is used for them. But then, of course, the news comes in. First of all, you got the ocean turning to blood, so that's bad.

Cities of ghosts, ghostly cities. Yeah, terrifying.

All of that, people howling and screaming in the streets. As the news comes in that the Icaini are sweeping towards them. The horrific realization 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 I said, 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 military armlet and gold jewelry, 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. 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. The first is that the legionary relief force doesn't arrive.

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 Patilius Kérialis. 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 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 aren't proficient in the arts of seages, 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. Eventually, the veterans defend attending the temple are overwhelmed, and all the non-competence, the women, the children, the injured, the old who've been sheltering inside the temple are all massacred.

This is where your sympathies start to swing, right? Because the Britons have always been the underdog was 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 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 slip throats, to set up gibbets, to burn, to crucify. 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. Dio writes, They hung up naked, the noblest and most distinguished women, and then cut off their breasts and sew them to their mouths in order to make the women's appear to be eating them. Afterwards, they impaled the women on sharp skewers, run lengthwise through the entire body. Having done that, they then put every fragment of the Roman presence to the torch. This is quite a challenge because most of the buildings, most of the houses in Camulodonum are built of a sandy clay.

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 we want to call them, to absolutely eradicate all evidence of Rome's grandeour and to leave it a monument to the humiliation of the occupier. It's smoldering, 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 for crucifixion, would entirely have understood and seen as something monstrous and appalling.

This is a pretty gastly spectacle. Now, what's happened to Pertilius Kériales? 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. The Icahne and the Trinovantes have destroyed Camlodone, and they then swing round to set an ambush for Kériales, who walked 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. They've lost the Colonia. A legion has been badly mauled. It's unsurprising at this point that the procurator, Kateus 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. That is where he is when news comes to him of what is happening down in the south-east. So he has no time to enjoy his victory. He immediately orders his men to prepare to march from Anglesey down the Watling Street to the south-east. He has troops from two legions, the 14th and the 20th. He also sends orders to a man called Poineus Postumus, 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.

The The likelihood is, although neither Tassitus 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 Boudica 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 old trackways that the Romans are starting to upgrade. So 50-mile speed limits on the motorway, that 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 Boudica. And London, unlike Camelodonum, unlike Beryllaneumium, is distinctive because there hadn't, as far as we know, been any site there before. It hadn't been a major tribal meeting center. 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. 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. We have amazing evidence for this from these, they're the Bloomberg tablets. Bloomberg have this great center off the Walbrook, which was the river that flowed down into the Thames that London was originally built around. And so the 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 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 eighth 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 its literate and its mercantile, probably about 10,000 people. It's got a Wild West It's a boom town. It's cosmopolitan. It's got this mix of Roman and native architectural styles. It got docks full of ships. But Dominic, as with Camelodonum, no walls.

So sitting duck.

Absolutely sitting duck, particularly if Saturnus Paulinus 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, Then presumably, London Bridge will be pulled down to stop the Icaini 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 Icaini will not have ships. Of course, there are some, I guess those who are infirm or those who don't have the package animals to take their goods with them who think, Oh, well, she may not come. Maybe all right, but it isn't all right. Boudica does come. There is all kinds of archeological evidence for what then happens, perhaps most striking Interestingly 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. It was an office block that was designed by James Sterling and built in the '90s. Before it was built, archeologists went down into the depths and they found this layer of fire.

And there was evidence 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 Boudica.

Yeah, obliterated. So you can imagine that in Verilaneum, which is 20 miles, 25 miles. St. Albans. 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. Of course, unlike London, Verilaneum has been built as a kivitas, as a Roman foundation on tribal center, and it's the capital of the Catevallorny, who are the enemies of the Trinovantes. It's a reminder, I think, that Boudica is not just fighting a war for freedom from the Romans, but she is also engaged in an intratribal war of the kind that had been convulsing Southerners in Britain for decades and decades and decades.

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. In Veralimium, everyone knows that she'll be coming for them, particularly the Trinovantes will be coming for them. Suoternus Paulinus still, at this point, presumably, hasn't joined his legions. Again, he has no choice but to evacuate the city. Again, Verilaneum is put to the torch. That's the third city that's been incinerated by Boudica and her forces. 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 Verlanieum in particular, this is a city that is emblemised dramatic of the perks that you get for collaborating with Rome. The fact that the Romans have been unable to defend the Catevologian capital is potentially fatal to the entire system of alliances that the Romans have built up. Because the Catevologi, and also Togedubness to the south in his kingdom, they must, by this point, be 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 Sotones 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. The other reason why he to force a battle, I think, very soon, is because there is always a risk that Boudica's forces may split up and start separating. Then it becomes obviously much harder to wipe out the entire force in a single go, which, again, may remind listeners of the episode that we did on Custer, where it was constantly the ambition of the seventh Cavalry to find their enemy in a single place and then go in. This leads to the Battle of the Big Horn. Anyway, in the context of Britain, there are two theories theories about what happens next. The first is that Siotonus 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, I can't afford to wait for them.

He's massively outnumbered, but he decides to make a stand against Boudica'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 a Grichola, who is a man who is serving on Suetonius Paulinus's staff.

Yeah, so it must be a pretty well-informed winness.

Yeah, it's in a defile. There's a wood at the back. It means that they can't be outflanked, so slight Agencourt quality to it. And His army proves way too professional for the Britons.

Because to pursue your Custer parallel, Boudica's army is obviously not a professional, well-organised 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 women. It's Probably women and children. 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 on a biblical scale. And That's why this battle is so important to the Romans, because it gives them a chance to exact a genocidal revenge. Essentially, Roman military training, we talked earlier about how do the Britons fight. The Britons fight by charging. If that first charge can be blocked, then essentially they're doomed. All of Roman military training is about ensuring that the line of the legions can hold, psychologically, but also in terms of kit, equipment, armor, whatever. When the legions start moving forward, 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 armor. So very, very rapidly, the battleground becomes a great sea of viscerer 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 slaughter on an enormous scale. And the question then is, well, where is it fought? The favorite candidate is a place called mansetter in the Midlands, about 75 miles up Watling Street from Verilaneum.

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 Boudica, 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 McKay's arguments are, I I find them very convincing. And he argues that actually it's Verilaneum that is where the rendezvous between Zuotoneus 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 religion, which I've never, in the various accounts of Boudica, I've never heard asked before, which is why would Boudica pursue him? She's got the harvest coming. She doesn't want to go off harrying around Britain. 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 Kati of Lorneye. She's done that. She's got enormous amounts of loot. I will read what McKay said, The lure of Camelodonum, Lundinium, Verilineum, and the Scent of Paulinus had kept the vast tribal Confederation together, and it had proved itself the equal of the Ninth Legion under Kéreales. It was still willing and able to fight, but that resolve must have been fast dissolving as the ancient rote home along the Icknild way, the Icainy 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 Verilaneum is the point where the Icknild Way and Watling Street meet. And the likelihood is, McKay argues, that Siotonius Paulinus occupies that meeting point because he doesn't want the Icaini to disperse. He needs this victory. And he pinpoints a place called Wind Ridge Farm, which is north of what is now St. Albans. 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 episodeOf course, sure. Topographically, it matches Testa's 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.

Certainy is impossible, as we have had to say repeatedly over the course of these episodes. But you know what?

In a way, and 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 it's often said that Tauton 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.

Had Custer won the Battle of the Little Big Horn and slaughter all the Native Americans who were there, the women and the children as well, would have been enormous slaughter. And this is exactly what the Romans are setting out to do. They have basically the mass of two people the Icahna and the Trinovantes, and they can do what they want with them. 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. It seems that not only are people slaughtered, but Almost everything that made the Icaini distinctive is targeted. 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 Icahnaian kinship. Of course, there is no kinship because from this point on, all of East Anglia is formerly absorbed under Roman rule. 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 imbroiled in the Civil War in '69 when there were four emperors. He has essentially a better retirement than poor that poignant postumus 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, it didn't matter. He'd brought disgrace on his legion, and so he'd commit 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 Boudica. 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. They'd all been slaughtered. Tastas 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 AD. And the central grave was the skeleton of a woman with sumptuous grave goods. But again, you have to wonder, what was she doing in 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 Louise Spence, is that she was buried in the vicinity of Kings Cross railway station in London. And he based this theory on earlier an erroneous speculation that the remains of an elephant that had been found in the site had been Roman elephant. In fact, it was Paleolithic. And Barnsbury, which is the area of London by Kings 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 had actually been buried under a platform in Kings Cross. And by the 1970s, this has been narrowed down to platform 10, which, of course, is the platform that trains to Cambridge go to.

So literally, she had buried just a quarter of a platform away from the train to Hogwarts. Yes.

So Although J. K. Rowling was actually asked, had she been influenced in that by the stories of Boudica being buried at platform 10? And she said, no. But I like to think that maybe it was at the back of her mind. I think that that does bear witness to the fact that Boudica remains a culture hero. She's still capable of generating these urban myths. 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? We had Kératekus before, but she, with the hair and the golden talk and that great address. I mean, I know Cassia Stier was making it up, but she is the first person about whom it's possible to really weave a story with a slight trace elements of personality, do you think?

You impersonated her as Mrs. Thatcher. I remember loads of cartoons showing Mrs. Thatcher as Boudica, rushing around in a chariot and all that 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? A fascinating, Tom. A wonderful story and wonderfully told. But not the end of our Roman Britain series, because, of course, there is 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 Bur books about Roman Britain, and that was Agrichola and the story of his great adventures as he headed north. So if you remember the Restus History Club, you can hear that right away. If you are, however, remember the freedom-loving iKennie, or whatever, iCenai, 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.