Boadicea was a ferocious warrior queen who led a bloody uprising that came close to reclaiming Britain from the Roman invaders.
Boadicea– or Boudicca as she is often called – was a ferocious warrior queen who led a bloody uprising that came close to reclaiming Britain from the Roman invaders.
She was queen of a Celtic tribe, the Iceni, who lived in settlements in East Anglia.
Her husband Prasutagus had enjoyed a long reign, maintaining good relations with the Roman civil servants who ran Britain.
But when he died the unscrupulous Romans seized his territory.
Boadicea was tortured and beaten and her two daughters were raped. Other members of Iceni nobility were enslaved.
The queen and her subjects rebelled, first targeting the Roman colony of Camulodunum (now Colchester), where many inhabitants were former Roman legionaries and their families.
The Britons hated these ex-soldiers, who treated them as little more than slaves, and were eager to settle old scores.
Their revenge was terrible. An estimated 80,000 people were slaughtered as the Britons stormed the town, burning anything they could not loot.
The Romans immediately sent one of their vaunted legions, the Ninth, to stamp out the revolt. But as it neared Colchester it was overwhelmed by Boadicea’s forces and wiped out.
Her army, now said to have swelled to 100,000, then attacked and torched the towns of Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St Albans). More than 70,000 people are said to have been massacred.
The Britons seemed on the point of winning their independence. Many Roman officials had already fled across the Channel to Gaul.
But Roman governor Paulinus Suetonius held his nerve.
When the revolt broke out he was on the island of Mona (Anglesey) suppressing the Druids.
He gathered an army of 10,000 men and marched to meet Boadicea.
Suetonius chose his battleground carefully – lining his men up between two woods so they could not be surrounded.
The Roman historian Tacitus later claimed that before the Britons attacked, Boadicea made a stirring speech from her chariot.
She told them: “On this spot we conquer or die with glory. There is no alternative.”
The Britons charged towards the Roman line in a huge mob, screaming their war cries.
But the discipline of the legionaries held and they forced Boadicea’s troops back. The Romans counter-attacked and the Britons broke and fled.
Thousands were cut down as they stumbled over each other in blind panic. Boadicea escaped – but committed suicide by swallowing poison rather than be taken prisoner.
Ancient coins
THE Celts had developed their own coins before the Romans came to Britain. The earliest types were simple bronze discs – but by the end of the First Century BC they were clearly copying Classical coins, stamping on them crude portraits of tribal leaders.
Once the conquest of Claudius had been completed, the Celts adopted Roman coins like the rest of the Empire. The Roman system of coinage, originally based on Greek models, was diverse and sophisticated. The emperors minted a variety of coins using gold, silver, bronze and copper. In the early empire the main large denomination coins were the gold Aureus and the silver Denarius. There was also a range of small coins, usually bronze, like the Sestertius and the As.
Successive emperors used their coins for propaganda. Coin pictures would be used to represent Roman victories over their enemies. And slogans like “Restorer of Liberty” would be used in an attempt to portray the empire as a champion of justice.
Archaeologists have found hoards of Roman and Celtic coins buried all over Britain, probably hidden during periods of conflict.