Boudicca

Boudicca or Boadicea (died ad 60), queen of the Iceni, whose kingdom covered the present-day counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, and who led a revolt against the Romans in the last days of their struggle to bring Ancient Britain into the Roman Empire. In his Roman History, Dio Cassius, writing in the 2nd century ad, described her thus: “She was very tall, the glance of her eye most fierce; her voice harsh. A great mass of the reddest hair fell down to her hips. Around her neck was a large golden necklace, and she always wore a tunic of many colours over which she fastened a thick cloak with a broach. Her appearance was terrifying.”

Boudicca was the wife of Prasutagus, whom the Romans had established as a client-king of the Iceni: by this means, the Romans held control of the Iceni and their territory. On the death of Prasutagus in ad 60, however, Roman forces, seeing an opportunity to overcome the Iceni, moved into Icenian territory, plundered the royal palace, flogged Boudicca, and raped her daughters.

This provoked Boudicca to lead a revolt. With the support of the Trinovantes and other peoples who had been plotting to win their freedom from Roman rule, she destroyed the Roman colony of Camulodunum (now Colchester), sacked the Roman port of Londinium (London), and Verulamium (St Albans), the capital of the Catuvellauni, one of many groups who had sided with the Romans, and slaughtered the 9th Roman legion, which had been sent to control the rebellion. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, some 70,000 Romans were killed by the Celtic rebels.

The rebellion gathered momentum but, hastening from Wales, the Roman governor Suetonius Paullinus and the main Roman army advanced against Boudicca, destroying her force on a battlefield thought to lie near Mancetter or Towcester, on Watling Street. Boudicca escaped but died soon after, by poison (according to Tacitus) or from illness (according to Dio Cassius).

The Boudiccan revolt was the last challenge to Roman rule in Britain. The Roman emperor Nero was displeased when he heard of the Romans’ harsh treatment of the Celts after the revolt; as a result, Paullinus was recalled and conditions improved for the Celts in Roman Britain.

The enduring image of Boudicca as a heroic warrior-queen has been the subject of various literary works including the tragedy Bonduca by John Fletcher (see Beaumont and Fletcher), the ode Boadicea by William Cowper, and the poem Boadicea by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. A bronze statue of Boudicca and her daughters, executed by Thomas Thornycroft, was erected at Victoria Embankment, London, in 1902.