Boudica's Revolt (AD 60-61): The Iceni Queen Against Rome

Boudica’s revolt was the most serious uprising against Roman rule in Britain. In AD 60 or 61 Boudica, widow of the king of the Iceni in East Anglia, led a British army that destroyed the Roman towns of Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans), killing tens of thousands. The governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus crushed the rebellion in a pitched battle, but the shock changed how Rome governed its new province.

Background: Britain under Rome

Rome had invaded Britain in AD 43 under the emperor Claudius (see the Roman conquest of Britain). Within two decades it controlled much of the south and east, partly through direct rule and partly through client kings who kept their thrones as allies.

One of these was Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, a people of what is now Norfolk and parts of Suffolk. The Iceni had already rebelled once, in AD 47, when the governor Ostorius Scapula tried to disarm them. Prasutagus ruled as a wealthy ally of Rome, and his wife was Boudica.

Elsewhere resentment was growing. In AD 49 Rome founded a colony of retired legionaries at Camulodunum, the former capital of the Catuvellauni, on land taken from the local Trinovantes. Tacitus says the veterans drove people from their homes and treated them as captives. A great temple to the deified Claudius in the colony, paid for partly by British nobles, was seen as a symbol of foreign domination.

Causes of the revolt

When Prasutagus died, around AD 60, he left his kingdom jointly to his two daughters and to the emperor Nero, hoping to protect his family. Instead, according to Tacitus, Roman officials and slaves plundered the kingdom. Boudica was flogged and her daughters were raped. Leading Iceni were stripped of their ancestral estates, and the king’s relatives were treated as slaves.

The procurator, Catus Decianus, the official responsible for finances in the province, was blamed for much of this. Cassius Dio adds another cause: the sudden recall of loans. He says that money Claudius had granted to British leaders was now reclaimed as debt, and that the philosopher Seneca had lent the Britons a huge sum and demanded it back all at once.

Together these grievances united the Iceni with the Trinovantes and other neighbouring peoples. The moment was well chosen. The governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, was far away in north Wales, attacking the island of Mona (Anglesey), a refuge for opponents of Rome and a centre of the druids.

Three towns destroyed

The rebels first marched on Camulodunum. The colony had no walls, and the veterans had few soldiers to help them. Decianus sent only about 200 poorly armed men. The defenders took refuge in the temple of Claudius, which fell after a two-day siege.

Legio IX Hispana, under its commander Quintus Petillius Cerialis, marched south to relieve the colony. It was ambushed and its infantry cut to pieces; Cerialis escaped with his cavalry to his fortress. Catus Decianus, terrified by the disaster he had helped cause, fled to Gaul.

Archaeologists have found a thick layer of burnt debris across Colchester dating to this time. It includes charred foodstuffs, melted glass and the remains of burnt buildings, vivid evidence of the destruction.

Suetonius Paulinus hurried back along Watling Street, the Roman road from the north-west, reaching Londinium ahead of his army. London was still a young town, founded only around AD 47–50, but already a busy trading centre. Tacitus notes that it was not a colony but was crowded with merchants.

Judging that he could not defend it with the troops at hand, Paulinus decided to sacrifice the town to save the province. Those who could leave went with him; those who stayed were killed. The rebels then burned Londinium, and soon afterwards Verulamium, a town of the Catuvellauni that had sided with Rome.

The burnt red layer of AD 60–61 found beneath modern London, sometimes called the “Boudican destruction horizon”, shows that the town was almost completely destroyed. Tacitus says around 70,000 Roman citizens and allies died in the three towns; Cassius Dio gives 80,000. Dio also describes atrocities against captives. Historians think these figures are probably inflated but agree that the losses were very heavy.

The final battle

Paulinus gathered the Fourteenth Legion, part of the Twentieth and auxiliary troops, about 10,000 men in total. The Second Legion, based in the south-west, failed to come: its acting commander, the camp prefect Poenius Postumus, ignored the order and later killed himself in shame.

Paulinus chose his ground with care. Tacitus describes a position in a narrow valley, with a forest behind protecting the rear and open ground in front. The exact site has never been found. It probably lay somewhere along Watling Street in the Midlands, and places such as Mancetter in Warwickshire and High Cross in Leicestershire have been proposed.

The British army was far larger. Their families watched from wagons drawn up around the edge of the battlefield. Tacitus gives Boudica a speech before the battle, in which she rides among the tribes in a chariot with her daughters, declaring that she fights as an ordinary woman for her lost freedom, her bruised body and her daughters’ honour. Like most speeches in ancient histories, its wording is the historian’s own.

The Romans waited until the Britons advanced up the narrow slope, threw their javelins and then charged in a wedge formation. The British line broke, and the fleeing warriors were trapped by their own wagons. Tacitus claims about 80,000 Britons were killed, against some 400 Romans. These numbers are almost certainly exaggerated, but the defeat was total.

Boudica’s death and the aftermath

Boudica died soon afterwards. Tacitus says she took poison; Dio says she fell ill and died, and that the Britons gave her a costly burial. Where she is buried is unknown.

Paulinus brought reinforcements from Germany and punished the rebellious tribes harshly, laying waste to their lands. Famine followed, because many Britons had neglected planting in the expectation of seizing Roman supplies. Archaeology in East Anglia suggests a period of disruption and military occupation.

The new procurator, Gaius Julius Alpinus Classicianus, believed that Paulinus’s severity was prolonging the conflict and reported this to Rome. Nero sent his freedman Polyclitus to investigate, and Paulinus was soon replaced by the more conciliatory Publius Petronius Turpilianus. Classicianus died in office in Britain; his tombstone, found in London, is now in the British Museum.

Key people

• Boudica: queen of the Iceni and leader of the revolt. Cassius Dio describes her as tall, with a mass of tawny hair falling to her hips and a great gold torc at her neck, though he was writing more than a century later.
• Gaius Suetonius Paulinus: governor of Britain and an experienced general who had earlier campaigned in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa.
• Catus Decianus: the procurator whose seizure of Iceni property helped spark the revolt.
• Quintus Petillius Cerialis: commander of Legio IX, defeated in the revolt but later governor of Britain under Vespasian.
• Tacitus: the main historian of the revolt. His father-in-law, Agricola, served in Britain as a young officer at the time.

Myths and facts

• Her name. The Roman writers spelled it in several ways. “Boadicea”, used from the Renaissance until the 20th century, comes from a mis-copied manuscript. “Boudica” is now preferred and is usually linked to a Celtic word for victory.
• Scythed chariots. The famous statue gives her chariot blades on the wheels, but there is no evidence that the Britons used scythed chariots.
• Buried at King’s Cross. A popular legend places her grave beneath a platform at King’s Cross station in London. There is no evidence for this.
• The date. Tacitus places the revolt in the year AD 61, but his chronology for Britain is compressed, and many historians prefer AD 60. Both dates are commonly cited.

Legacy

Boudica was largely forgotten in the Middle Ages, but the rediscovery of Tacitus in the Renaissance made her famous again. In the 19th century she became a patriotic symbol of British independence, and her name was linked to that of Queen Victoria, since both are associated with the idea of victory.

Thomas Thornycroft’s bronze statue group, “Boadicea and Her Daughters”, was completed after his death and unveiled near Westminster Bridge in 1902. She has since been claimed by many causes, from imperial pride to women’s suffrage and Welsh and English national identity.

For Rome, the revolt was a warning. Later governors relied more on encouraging local elites to adopt Roman ways, an approach Tacitus describes in his account of Agricola, who went on to fight the Battle of Mons Graupius in Scotland.

Timeline

• AD 43: Roman invasion of Britain under Claudius.
• AD 47: First, smaller revolt of the Iceni.
• AD 49: Veteran colony founded at Camulodunum.
• c. AD 60: Death of Prasutagus; Roman officials seize the Iceni kingdom.
• AD 60 or 61: Paulinus attacks Anglesey; the revolt breaks out and Camulodunum falls.
• AD 60 or 61: Legio IX is defeated; Londinium and Verulamium are burned.
• AD 60 or 61: Paulinus defeats the Britons; Boudica dies soon after.
• c. AD 61–62: Paulinus is replaced by Petronius Turpilianus.

Why it matters

Boudica’s revolt came close to ending Roman rule in Britain less than twenty years after the conquest. Its destruction layers are among the clearest archaeological traces of a single historical event in Britain, and Boudica herself became one of the best-known figures of British history, a symbol of resistance whose story is told almost entirely by her enemies.