Boudica Iron Age Warrior Queen
Boudica Iron Age Warrior Queen by Richard Hingley with graphics from Christina Unwin.
This is a very informative and understandable history of Boudica. It sets the scene by giving some background about life in Iron Age and Roman Britain. It knocks on the head the idea that Iron Age Britain was some kind of barbarian backwater that the Romans brought civilisation to. There were communities living in settlements. They contained round or oval houses. Reconstructions show that these would have been warm and comfortable. They had a well developed agricultral economy. They would have lived in small political groups called tribes. From the coinage of the Roman time it can be seen that the term ‘Rex’ (Latin for king) was being used, indicating a tribal leader with a special relationship with Rome. The coins aslo suggest that there were areas of common identity and possibly a form of centralised leadership. As the hill forts fell out of use, sites called oppida started to crop up. Oppidum is the Latin word for town. These are not fully towns as we would understand them today.
Hingley then takes us through the classical sources. Much of our knowledge of Boudica comes from the two Roman writers Tacitus and Dio. Tacitus records her name as ‘Boudicca’, whilst Dio, who wrote in Greek, called her ‘Boudouica’. From the study of Celtic languages it is now thought that Tacitus’ spelling was incorrect. Her name should only have one ‘c’. During medieval times the name Boadacia came about because Tacitus’ misspelling was copied with the ‘u’ replace by an ‘a’ and the second ‘c’ was replaced by an ‘e’. The name Boudica itself means ‘Victoria’. There are two texts from Tacitus and one from Dio. This is problematic as scholars in the past (and some modern writers) have picked the parts they find from each author that they perceive as useful and combine them into a single, seemingly consistent account.
Both of Tacitus’ accounts, De vita Agricolae and the Annals, were written some time after the rebellion had been crushed, but was within living memory of the events. He had a close relationship with his father-in-law, Agricola. Agricola had served as a military officer in Britain at the time of the revolt and it is possible that he had witnessed some of the events himself.
Hingley actually gives us a number of translated quotes from both Tacitus and Dio.This is great as it gives us a taste of the source text and their intended audience. We can see that Tacitus is appealing to an aristocratic audience. He is happy to describe Roman barbarity.
“Kingdom and household alike were plundered like prizes of war, the one by Roman officers, the other by Roman slaves. As a beginning, his widow Boudicca was flogged and their daughters raped. The Icenian cheifs were deprived of their hereditary estates as if the Romans had been given the whole country. The King’s own relatives were treated like slaves.”
Even if the audience was Roman, they would’ve been shocked at the idea of slaves and soldiers carrying out such actions. Only so much credence can be put into the words Tacitus uses for Boudica’s speeches. Hingley says that it is unlikely that Tacitus would have a reliable account of what Boudica actually said.
Even more doubtful are the words that Dio uses for Boudica. In the version of her speech which he describes her ‘letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress‘ he puts together the following speech;
“I thank the, Andraste, and call upon thee as a woman speaking to a woman; for I rule over no burden-bearing Egyptians as did Nitocris, nor over trafficking Assyrians as did Semiramis (for we have by now gained thus much learning from the Romans!), much less over the Romans themselves as did Messalina once and afterwards Agrippina and now Nero (who, though in name a man, is in fact a woman, as is proved by his singing…”
Again, this is clearly meant for a Roman audience. It is unlikely that Boudica would have known/quoted from such societies in the Mediterranean. He also shows that Boudica was stepping outside the proscribed limits of her gender.
Hingley then goes on to asses the archaeological evidence. For generations people have been searching for the evidence for the events mentioned by Tacitus and Dio. Archaeologists working in London, Colchester and Verulamium have indeed found layers of burning overlying destroyed buildings. This has been put down to the destruction of the town by the rebels in AD 60 to 61. Hingley suggest that sometimes people have been too quick to attribute destruction to these events. It sites the example of human skulls from Walbrook stream in London. It was suggest that these were victims of the rebellion. However they form part of a long tradition of the deposition of human skulls in the Thames and Walbrook throughout the Iron Age. Another example is given of the tombstone of a soldier called Longinus Sdapeze found in Colchester. It was found faced down and damaged. It was previously suggested that it was the rebels that damaged this symbol of the power of Rome. It is now thought that the damage was done by the workmen who found it. There is evidence of destruction layers at the different sites though.
The rest of the book gives an intriguing look at how Boudica has been portrayed in later years, up till the modern times. As the main evidence comes from classical sources, who as we have seen, have their own agenda. This means that Boudica is like an empty vessel that we can insert our own views from whatever time and bias the authors have come from. There will be no surprise that there was interest in Boudica during the reign of Elizabeth I. She became valuable to the English during the 1570s to 1590s, at the time of the war with Spain. She could be interpreted as a patriot who faught bravely against the invaders of her country. For example in Raphael Holinshed’s ‘The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland’, 1577 (much plundered by Shakespeare), she appears in his account effectively as a spokeswoman of national self-consciousness and political freedom. Voadicea (as he calls her) gives a long speech on the subject of ‘ancient liberty’. Although it has been argued that Holinshed also emphasised female martial activity as excessive through the involvement of Voadicea and other women in battle. During the Jacobian period it was politic to play down the significance of Boadicea as a military leader. Boadicea strayed outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour.
Britain’s imperial period is an interesting one for the development of Boadicea. Again we have a queen on the throne. The connection with Rome becomes more troublesome though. Hingley refers to Gibbon’s ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’. It emphasised that the collapse of the Roman Empire was the result of its moral corruption and degradation. The connection with despotic Rome was an uncomfortable one. British writers, however, felt that the British had managed to improve upon the examples of classical civilisation. William Cowper’s poem of 1782 ‘Boadicea: An Ode’ became popular during a time of British territorial expansion and political ambition. During the poem a druid speaks to Boadicea after she has been flogged by the Romans and before the uprising. He talks of when ‘Rome shall perish‘. Then;
Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,
Arm’d with thunder, clad with wings
Shall a wider world command.
The poem finishes with the statement:
Ruffians, pitiless as proud,
Heav’n award the vengeance due,
Empire is on us bestow’d
Shame and ruin wait for you.
Boadicea is now an imperial icon. The druids words point to the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the British successor. Her ambition and aggression is given to the druid. Her problematic unfeminine attributes have been removed.
As the book moves into more modern times it has a warning that some of the older misguided ways of looking at Boudica are still in us. Hingley mentions a monologue on radio 4 written by Fay Weldon. She mentions that she loves ‘that statue down on the Embankment of Boadicea and the chariot.’ She suggest that, as a result of the Roman atrocities in AD 60-61, it stands to reason that ‘You’d want to murder them in their baths, change the water and have a bath yourself…then you could have the pleasure of it without being indebted to them. After that you could work out how to make the bath.’ The comments may be tongue-in-cheek but they go back to a common attitude towards our Iron Age history.
Hingley has created a great review of the evidence for Boudica and her significance over the ages. We would do well to read this book and ask the question, ‘Do we really know who Boudica was?’
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