00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. I'm your1.00
00:00:15.280host, Anne Foster, and this is season two, episode three. This season's topic is women
00:00:21.840leaders in history and the men who whined about it. And for the third week in a row,
00:00:25.940we're looking at Roman men whining about a woman, because isn't it interesting how in ancient Roman
00:00:33.980society, there was sort of this expectation that women should be sort of seen and not heard and0.65
00:00:39.120just sort of hang around and give birth to babies and maybe like gracefully die by suicide if they
00:00:46.660became too inconvenient to the men around them. This was sort of the society and what Rome,0.71
00:00:51.460the roman empire was trying to make things be like and then one after another these super1.00
00:00:56.660powerful badass women got in their way almost like their whole concept was incorrect and like1.00
00:01:02.540women had their own minds and brains and didn't want to behave that way all the time so we saw1.00
00:01:09.780in episode one of this season cleopatra episode two was about agrippina and today sort of the third
00:01:16.100i always think of these women sort of in a cluster of people together where it's just like
00:01:20.360one woman who really annoyed the men of Rome and then they you know she dies and another one pops
00:01:26.220up then she dies and then another one pops up and that's who Boudicca is she is the third one
00:01:31.640I'm going to pronounce the name Boudicca because that is what I how I think it said although some
00:01:39.540people pronounce it Boudicca for a long time people thought it was called Boudicca but that
00:01:44.660was based on just misreading somebody's writing where they thought a c was an e at the end but
00:01:50.820as we will learn she's a woman who a lot of what was written about her was sort of guesses by
00:01:58.420people who were were around back then because she was well let's get into it so uh the women who
00:02:05.500we're talking about today lived about 2 000 years ago and the word buddha b-o-u-d-a is an ancient
00:02:12.480Britain word meaning victory. So it's entirely possible that she was called Boudicca by the
00:02:19.540Romans because they didn't know her name. She just won a lot. So they were just kind of like,
00:02:23.620we don't, we don't know her name. We're just going to call her like the one who wins all the time.
00:02:29.040Although that could have also been her name. Like maybe she won all the time and people called her0.99
00:02:32.800that, or maybe in sort of a fortuitous naming thing, they called her that as a baby and she
00:02:37.340grew up to fulfill the destiny of that name. We're calling her Boudica because we don't know
00:02:42.980anything else to call her. That is what we are going to call her. So even more so than when we
00:02:48.840were looking at Cleopatra and Agrippina, everything written about Boudica was written
00:02:54.080well after she was around by people who didn't actually deal with her personally. So rather than
00:03:00.640me saying like allegedly in front of literally every sentence, just sort of imagine it. I'm just
00:03:07.140going to say allegedly right now and that will sort of encompass everything I'm going to tell
00:03:12.480you. So the things that we have as sources are two men who wrote about her well after she was dead
00:03:19.440and also some archaeological evidence which when you put it together it sort of backs up what
00:03:24.380some of these men were talking about but also the men writing had their own reasons for spinning
00:03:29.640things in a certain way and we're going to get we'll get into it I'll explain everything but
00:03:34.140basically, again, with a big allegedly HTML code around all of this. So Boudicca was probably
00:03:42.440born around the year 30 AD. So she was born to an aristocratic family in the Roman occupied city of
00:03:51.520Camuludunmin, which was in the southeast part of modern day England. So it's where modern day
00:03:59.500Colchester is, if you're familiar with the UK. I'm here in Canada, and that doesn't mean a lot
00:04:05.520to me personally, but basically Southeast England, Cameludinaman. So she was born in this Roman0.82
00:04:12.280occupied place. And it was a sort of situation where the rulers of this place would have been
00:04:17.540behaving kind of like Romans because they were dealing with the Romans. So that's sort of what
00:04:22.760the first part of her life perhaps was like. When she was probably about 18, she was married to King
00:04:29.520Prasetagus of the Iceni. Iceni? And so she became the queen of the Iceni by virtue of this marriage.
00:04:37.800The Iceni were a Celtic tribe who lived in, so again, southeastern England. And do you remember
00:04:45.080how, if you heard last week's episode when we were talking about Agrippina and stuff, her husband
00:04:50.140Claudius is the one who was emperor at the time that the Romans invaded Britain. So this is kind
00:04:57.000of where the stories overlap with each other a bit. So Prasetagus, who is the husband, the king,
00:05:02.980like in order to stay being king while the Romans are occupying, he had to make some deals,
00:05:08.140make some compromises to just to make his life as good as possible. So for instance,
00:05:15.780The Iceni were permitted to remain independent of Rome, as long as Prasetagus paid annual fees0.87
00:05:22.300to the Romans and also supported them politically, like against the local tribes, basically.
00:05:27.920So as part of this deal, Prasetagus agreed that when he died, the kingdom would be jointly
00:05:32.860inherited by his two daughters, as well as by the Roman emperor Nero.0.96
00:05:37.060So Nero, who you might remember from last week, was Agrippina's shitty son, who killed0.99
00:05:42.560his own mother, had a gross neckbeard, and we hate him. So he was the emperor at this time.0.99
00:05:48.620But the thing, so Prasetagas had two daughters, no sons. And this is the sort of situation where,
00:05:54.120I mean, we look at so many different times and place on this podcast, and I do just in my various
00:05:58.900historical researching and stuff. And it's often, in what I'm reading about, which tends to be
00:06:05.980Renaissance England, tends to be what I've read a lot of before, but just other cultures too,
00:06:11.700like some medieval scenarios and stuff where it's just kind of like ancient rome as well where women
00:06:16.600just didn't have the rights to inherit stuff like usually a father would just be like i need to have0.53
00:06:23.020a son because he'd have like a boy who's going to inherit everything these daughters like what we do
00:06:28.300with our daughters is we just marry them off that's it but seemingly in this situation among1.00
00:06:33.880the iceni it was cool that his daughters would inherit from him so good for them i guess a little0.99
00:06:39.960more forward-thinking than the Grosso Romans. Anyway, so Prasetagas's will basically said when0.98
00:06:46.340he died, the kingdom would be jointly shared by his daughters and Nero. So it would be part of
00:06:52.480the empire, but Boudicca would be the regent until the girls came of age, which is like a very0.58
00:06:57.940specific thing to put in a will. Like he's really writing this out as though he expects to die
00:07:03.440before his wife and just really wants to make sure everything is figured out in a very specific way,
00:07:09.000which i mean like on the one hand good for him but on the other it's like i don't know after
00:07:13.040after the agrippina episode last week i'm just like really suspicious of people writing wills
00:07:18.200and did they mean to say what they wanted to say the important part of this is effectively that
00:07:23.320the kingdom upon the death of prasitagus would be sort of inherited by nero shared with the
00:07:28.740daughters that's what he wanted but he wasn't in control of very much anyway so for this first
00:07:34.740part of their married life, Boudicca was probably hanging out, being sort of like a Roman-style
00:07:39.380woman, perhaps speaking Latin, sitting around, you know, drinking wine, wearing a toga, just sort
00:07:45.360of being like an I Claudius sort of situation with just, you know, people making funny jokes
00:07:52.620and maybe doing plays for each other. I don't know, just like aristocracy, which I find really
00:07:56.940interesting because what we're going to get to and how Boudicca is known as this kind of like
00:08:01.700feral warrior person. But she started off her life not like that. There's going to be a ship0.99
00:08:08.140that's going to come in a really awful way in probably a few minutes. I'm going to talk about
00:08:12.680it. So what did she look like? So there was a Roman writer named Cassius Dio who never met her,
00:08:19.740but he seems to have read accounts by people who did meet her, described her as, and this is a
00:08:25.240translation. He wrote, and this was like a hundred years after she was ever around. Anyway, so he
00:08:31.900wrote, quote, in stature, she was very tall, an appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her0.98
00:08:38.120eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh. A great mass of the tiniest hair fell to her hips. Around0.99
00:08:44.520her neck was a large golden necklace, and she wore a tunic of diverse colors over which a thick
00:08:50.080mantle is fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire. So a few things there. First
00:08:57.520of all, hashtag goals. One day I hope someone describes me as in the glance of my eye most
00:09:04.620fierce. So he was grossed out by her because she was a woman and he thought women were gross,1.00
00:09:10.320especially when they weren't just staying quietly in a house raising children. So he says she was0.86
00:09:16.080tall. She looked terrifying. She had these intense eyes. He goes on about how her voice was unpleasant,
00:09:22.560which I think to him was more just like she was a woman who talked and had a voice and that was
00:09:29.520enough to bother him. A hundred years later, he's like, oh, there's this woman. Sounds like she like
00:09:34.560raised her voice sometimes. Gross. He also mentioned her hair was this translation I just0.96
00:09:40.460read called it tawny. Some people call it red. The word that he used is a similar word that he
00:09:45.720use this in another part of his writing to describe a lion. So it could be her hair was
00:09:49.560like golden colored, like a strawberry blonde type of thing. She's famous. Well, she's sort0.99
00:09:54.140of famously known as being this like long red haired goddess. So we'll never know what color1.00
00:10:00.560hair it is. I have red hair. So I like to think her hair was red, but my hair is also kind of
00:10:04.560strawberry blonde. So I'm like, okay with that as well. But basically she was a imposing,
00:10:10.720intense looking person who sounds amazing so just getting back to sort of what the ancient
00:10:17.960culture was like that she was living in so the whole thing about the daughters co-inheriting1.00
00:10:23.360the kingdom from the from their father so this wasn't like literally a matriarchy but women0.94
00:10:29.860in the iceni kingdom were allowed to own property they could inherit land and titles and you know0.95
00:10:36.420were allowed to go outside and like be seen as people unlike women in rome so basically what
00:10:43.140happened is that prostatagas died which seems sort of like i guess that's why he's writing his will
00:10:49.560maybe he was sick i don't know so he had this will evan was like this is what's going to happen
00:10:54.860but then the romans came in just like psych like we don't care what this will said we're horrible
00:11:00.560imperial colonizers and they seize control entirely themselves. So at this point in time,
00:11:06.320the Roman governor of Britain was a man named Suetonius Paulinus. He was not literally there
00:11:14.060in person when they took over after the death of Prositagus. But so it was likely some Roman
00:11:20.320veterans and others who weren't off with Suetonius at this time who did the actual
00:11:25.360pillaging. And what they did is they plundered the palace, Boudicca's home palace. They plundered
00:11:33.740the homes of all the Icenian nobility. They turned Prasitagus's relatives into slaves.0.99
00:11:39.620They stripped all the Icenian nobles of their property. So they just like fully, not just like,
00:11:45.640oh, we're going to be king now or whatever. They're like, oh no, we're going to like
00:11:49.500destroy you. So claiming that Prasitagus had died still owing debt to the Roman empires, they
00:11:57.160publicly stripped and flogged Boudica and allegedly raped her young daughters. So this is,0.97
00:12:04.660the purpose of doing something like this would be just to sort of make the people, the Iceni,0.93
00:12:11.920not revolt against them. To make them see like, this is what we're doing to your queen,0.99
00:12:16.740this really respected woman like the to rape the young daughters would be a way of saying like you1.00
00:12:23.780know we have ruined quote-unquote these these young girls to to strip and flog boudica like1.00
00:12:30.500that's a treatment that maybe um enslaved people would have been treated to so to do this to the0.99
00:12:37.140queen was them saying like we don't respect you or your people at all so this was it was basically
00:12:43.300an act of war. And so these acts were specifically malevolent to the Iceni. I mean, for obvious0.62
00:12:50.100reasons, it's, she was their queen and this was awful, but also just culturally to them,
00:12:56.900Boudicca and her role is sort of like a priestess as well as sort of a representation of a goddess
00:13:03.380on earth. So it's not just, just like, so they had assaulted these two girls and their mother,
00:13:10.980But in so doing, they'd also sort of desecrated the Iceni's entire culture and religion.
00:13:16.340There's another one of the sources here is a Roman writer named Tacitus,
00:13:20.660who was writing a few decades after the fact.
00:13:24.320But again, he might have talked to people who knew what was up.
00:13:27.400And so as per him, after this happened,0.99
00:13:30.760Boudicca swore then and there that she was going to get revenge against the Romans for
00:13:34.360all of this, for the way that she was treated, for what they did to her daughters,
00:13:38.620for the way they just pillaged the town for how they didn't honor her late husband's will so0.93
00:13:44.080tacitus says bodica said so quote nothing is safe from roman pride and arrogance they will deface0.94
00:13:51.200the sacred and will deflower our virgins win the battle or perish that is what i a woman will do0.88
00:13:57.720and so it was on basically she's just going on her revenge battle streak like it's happening0.68
00:14:06.420so one of the ways that the romans had been able to so completely take over britain the island
00:14:13.000which was comprised of all these different groups and tribes of people was that they took advantage
00:14:17.980of the inter-tribal rivalries between the different kingdoms they were able to because
00:14:21.760everybody was fighting against each other they weren't they didn't even think of teaming up
00:14:26.580together against the romans but in so doing the thing is that they meant that all these groups
00:14:31.740now had a single shared enemy, i.e. the Romans. All they needed was a leader strong enough to
00:14:38.580unite them, and they found this in Boudicca. So again, Suetonius Paulinus, the governor,
00:14:47.320was yet again out of town, and Boudicca got to work building up an army of sort of all tribes
00:14:53.400put together. So first up, she and the Iceni people joined with their neighboring tribe,
00:14:58.960who were called the Trinovantes, which were possibly the tribe that she herself was from
00:15:03.660originally, so it makes sense that they would team up with her in this situation.
00:15:08.100So the Trinovantes had been allied with the Romans for almost 100 years, during which time
00:15:13.680they had come to despise them, because the Romans were awful to them, awful in many ways,
00:15:20.840frankly, in this period of time. So the Romans had taken over the Trinovantes' capital city,
00:15:25.340which was called Camuludunum, Camuludunum, which is just like a really delightful word to look at.0.99
00:15:31.860Anyway, so Camuludunumun was sort of a retirement community for military veterans.
00:15:36.760The Romans had forced the Trinavantes to build a temple there in honor of Claudius,
00:15:41.680because remember, Claudius was the emperor when they first took over.
00:15:44.920And so he was dead at this point, Claudius, but this was to honor his memory.
00:15:49.500So the Romans basically took over the city, bust in all of their military veterans,
00:15:54.880and then made them build this temple in honor of an emperor who none of them really liked,
00:16:00.920who was responsible for them being there in the first place. So the city and its temple
00:16:05.220symbolized everything that all the non-Romans hated about the Roman occupation. So Boudicca1.00
00:16:10.460was like, hey, Trinavanti's people, like, what if we invade Camuludonamon? And so the Trinavanti's0.99
00:16:17.580were like, where and when and sign us up? Like, let's do it. So rebellion commenced.0.99
00:16:24.060So Boudicca delivered a scathing speech, like a super like psyching everybody up sort of moment.
00:16:29.900And everyone got really excited about it.
00:16:32.220And then she did something that I will quote from Cassius Dio to explain.
00:16:38.220She gave a speech to these sort of like allied forces.
00:16:42.500And as per Cassius Dio, what happened next is when Boudicca had finished speaking, she employed a species of divination, letting a rabbit escape from the fold of her dress.
00:16:51.580and since it ran on what they considered the auspicious side the whole multitude shouted out
00:16:56.060with pleasure so this was sort of like a groundhog day scenario so in burka's culture the rabbit or
00:17:02.980the hare was likely some sort of a holy symbol and so which direction ran in just sort of one
00:17:08.880way it was auspicious and one way it was not so they with the the hare sort of went the way they
00:17:15.860wanted to. And so things were great. So off they went. So when they arrived at Camuludanum,
00:17:21.680the Roman army was mostly not even there because they're off fighting somewhere else.
00:17:25.660And this was unexpected to them. This was a surprise ambush attack. They weren't expecting
00:17:29.780to be invaded by tens of thousands of irate Britons. And the people who were living there,0.72
00:17:35.180remember, it was like a little retirement community. So they were sort of older people,
00:17:39.720maybe not in as amazing shape as some other soldiers. So they were entirely unprepared.
00:17:45.700They sent a messenger to try and get help from the governor, from Suetonius, but Suetonius was like,
00:17:50.100not a big deal. Like, you're fine. You're like, oh, military veterans, deal with it.
00:17:54.980So what happened is that Boudicca and her forces decimated the city to the point that archaeologists0.96
00:18:00.100who've examined the site 2,000 years later were like, oh shit, like, look what happened here.
00:18:06.080So the city was entirely destroyed via burning. Like there was a layer of burnt ash underneath0.92
00:18:10.940were roman items from like literally this year like the year 60 there were also like dead skeleton0.99
00:18:16.540bodies all over the place and the skeletons themselves had been butchered like the people
00:18:20.420had been just like killed in the most brutal ways and then maybe like ripped apart afterwards or
00:18:25.200something so it wasn't just human bodies that were decimated so in the course of the battle or maybe
00:18:30.840like post battle victory party uh the team decapitated the head from a bronze statue of
00:18:37.500Nero. So there was the statue. The temple was built to honor Claudius. There's a giant statue
00:18:43.320of Nero. And Boudicca's forces decapitated the head off of a Nero bronze statue, which is just
00:18:49.740like so satisfying. I mean, must have been so satisfying to them. And they kept it with them
00:18:55.620as a trophy. Like they just carried a head around like badass. So then this military guy named
00:19:01.700Quintus Petillius Surrealis tried to be a hero and tried to take the city back with his own
00:19:07.920forces, but did not work. Boudicca and her team, they were just like running on adrenaline and
00:19:14.020just like being amazing warriors. And so she killed almost all of his forces. And that was
00:19:20.200like step one of her multi-step plan to just like destroy all the Romans in Britain. So word of her0.99
00:19:27.260military amazingness spread and her army grew as she marched with people from all different
00:19:31.540former warring tribes like she was just kind of going around like conscripting people she's just
00:19:34.960like hey do you hate the romans we do too join bodica's army and so it was a sort of like group
00:19:40.720of all people from different tribes and tribes who used to hate each other but they all just
00:19:44.940hated the romans so much more because they all just wanted revenge because the romans had been
00:19:49.280shitty to all of them and now for a quick advertising break welcome to the realms of0.80
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00:22:04.300But what people don't understand is that they're not monsters.
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00:22:34.700further she marched the bigger her army became until it was up to something like 100 000 people
00:22:39.000oppressed Britons just sent on destroying their oppressors just like the revolution is here and
00:22:45.540she was still just getting started so the next place they went on to was oldie times London0.74
00:22:50.980back then London was called London Dinium and it was a pretty recent ish city it was about a 20
00:22:58.240year old city and it was a commercial slash trade center and home to about 30,000 people0.81
00:23:04.260And when the 30,000 people in London, Dinium, her, the Boudicca and her like 100,000 people were on their way,0.79
00:23:11.100her population just like peaced out and fled without even attempting to defend the city.0.95
00:23:16.280Like they were just like, we're just going to let Boudicca's army have the city so we don't die.
00:23:22.760And again, archaeological evidence that's been found more recently revealed that Boudicca's team literally burned down the entire city.
00:23:30.000They tortured and murdered any Romans unlucky enough to have been left behind.
00:23:34.260the whole torturing murdering thing again if you put everything in the context of like0.51
00:23:39.780what was up like they were at war they were this this ragtag group of people who were using sort of
00:23:49.420shock and terror in the same way the romans had um assaulted bodica and her daughters where it's
00:23:55.360just like if you kill a bunch of people really gruesomely and then just like leave their bodies
00:24:00.620up on sticks or whatever like vlad the impaler style like the bodies would rot which is gross
00:24:06.700smells bad might keep people away but also just shows people it's a warning of like hey do you0.69
00:24:10.620want to cross me like here's what i'm going to do to you so having now destroyed the two largest
00:24:17.060roman settlements that they could find bodica's army turned to the third largest because i guess0.74
00:24:21.780they're like working their way down solid planning and so the next place was called veru
00:24:27.700Verulamium. Verulamium. So the thing with the city is that it was run by a tribe called the
00:24:33.820Catu Valauni, who hadn't been enslaved by the Romans, but more like they had just sort of like
00:24:39.760rolled over and let the Romans take over without really fighting them about it. So they were sort
00:24:46.120of not as respected and also not as likely to rebel against the Romans because they just kind
00:24:52.180of like were okay with it. So Boudicca's army just kept marching, kept getting bigger, like just the
00:24:57.160image of just like literally like a snowball rolling down a hill and just becoming bigger
00:25:01.500and bigger and more people in a word would spread this was happening it's like this is our time
00:25:05.940all the oppressed like join with us so this huge army heads towards verulimium taking a cue from
00:25:14.160the people of londondinium who were smart enough to run away the people of verulimium dropped what0.89
00:25:20.740they were doing and ran away rather than face the forces and again bodica and company burned the0.58
00:25:25.240entire empty city down and then they went off to hunt down torture and kill anyone they could find
00:25:30.120to just like continue being like we're serious about this or scary like beware the romans like
00:25:35.680hopefully like they could just be terrifying enough that the romans themselves would just like
00:25:39.680peace out on their own but au contraire the romans having now lost basically their three
00:25:47.460biggest settlements in britain were a little bit upset by all of this adding to their annoyance
00:25:52.420was the fact that these really successful and gruesome military campaigns were being run by1.00
00:25:57.480a woman and they hated women. So the Romans thought that all the people in Britain were sort
00:26:03.960of like uncivilized monsters, like savages sort of thing. And they also thought that women were
00:26:12.320sort of like trophies for men and not people in their own right. So to be outsmarted three times
00:26:18.600by a woman from Britain was just like brain exploding to them. They're just like, what is1.00
00:26:23.680even happening? So this was 30 years after Cleopatra had thoroughly challenged the Romans0.77
00:26:31.100and just a year or two after Agrippina the Younger had sort of made her own power move. So they're0.74
00:26:35.960just like, the Romans are like, what is happening vis-a-vis women keeping bothering us? So they're1.00
00:26:43.460they were a little frustrated and annoyed by having yet another warrior women to face off
00:26:47.940against and this is sort of like on top of their like general baseline cultural hatred of women
00:26:53.860they were at a point of just like really being tired of of women getting in their way so cassius
00:27:00.600dio decades later wrote all this ruin was brought upon the romans by a woman the fact that in itself
00:27:06.540caused them the greatest of shame so the romans were like let's deal with this and so what they
00:27:12.660did is they amassed 10,000 men to face off against Boudicca's band of rebels. And she had
00:27:18.080hundreds of thousands of people. The Romans had 10,000 people, which is like a lot of people.
00:27:24.760Boudicca had something like 300,000 former enslaved Britons fighting on her side. And rather than
00:27:29.840sitting around waiting to be attacked, Boudicca's growing, ever-growing army marched right over to
00:27:34.140meet the Romans to do battle with them. But little did she know, leading the Roman forces that day
00:27:39.900was the same guy who had been out of town when she started this campaign, the one who had ordered
00:27:44.120to have her hometown destroyed, to have her assaulted, etc. Basically, her archenemy,
00:27:51.200the British governor, Suetonius Paulinus. Now, the site of this battle is unknown. But we do know
00:27:58.040that beforehand, famously, Boudicca rode around in a chariot with her two daughters. Her two
00:28:04.120daughters are often with her as a sort of like to show I don't know maybe a reminder of like you
00:28:10.080know they tried to defeat me and my daughters by attacking us but look at us we're stronger than
00:28:14.720ever etc so she just kind of like if you picture like Coachella or something just like a huge field
00:28:22.180full of like so many people and she was just riding around a chair with her daughters hyping
00:28:27.000everybody up these like 300,000 people and she gave an amazing speech in her quote-unquote harsh
00:28:32.900voice the dio thought was so annoying i mean just an amazing moment i love this for her
00:28:39.440so as recorded by tacitus her speech included the following line and this is a quote quote
00:28:46.440of a thing bodica allegedly said we british are used to women commanders in war but i am not
00:28:52.160fighting for my kingdom and wealth now i'm fighting as an ordinary person for my lost freedom0.80
00:28:56.960my bruised body and my outraged daughters you will win this battle or perish that is what I1.00
00:29:03.480a woman plan to do let the men live in slavery if they will and then everybody's like ready to
00:29:10.900rumble and the battle began so allegedly Boudicca's team was so certain of victory that they had
00:29:18.040brought along their families and children to watch the battle take place which wasn't like
00:29:22.640apparently this is a thing that maybe people in britain just did in general i this is just not a
00:29:29.400out of the ordinary sort of thing to have the wives and children but also if you're all just
00:29:32.880like marching around 300 000 people going place to place burning it's like sure bring your families
00:29:37.500with you like sort of like star trek the next generation like sometimes you just want to have
00:29:42.060your family with you when you're going off doing work so this is a situation where we have the like0.69
00:29:46.86010,000 Romans versus the 300 something thousand ragtag group of Boudicca's forces. And the thing0.85
00:29:55.860is that numbers aren't always everything. So the Roman army was a highly skilled, highly trained
00:30:00.840war machine. Like they were people who would like, they'd run drills, like they had tactics,
00:30:06.280they had armor, they had plans and were all organized versus Boudicca's team who had a
00:30:13.900numbers advantage and rage lots of passion a drive for revenge but they all had sort of like their
00:30:19.380own fighting style most of which didn't include armor they were all different from all different
00:30:24.580places there wasn't bodica was the leader but i mean one person can't lead 300 000 people there's
00:30:30.880probably like all different local leaders and maybe they how do you communicate your plans and
00:30:34.820stuff so basically despite being massively outnumbered the romans pulled it out to the
00:30:38.880point that many of Boudicca's allies began to flee. They were trying to escape. But tragically,
00:30:45.360all the tents they'd set up for their families to watch got in the way. And so they got kind
00:30:49.300of smooshed up against them. They weren't able to escape. And the Romans slaughtered everyone.
00:30:54.940The precise body count is not known because we don't even know where this happened.
00:30:59.400But it might have been something like 80,000 dead Britons and 400 dead Romans.
00:31:04.260that was a number that was reported by one of the people 100 years later the rebellion was over
00:31:10.760the romans had won this battle in the aftermath of this loss the lands of the iseni and trino
00:31:18.060vantes were destroyed by the romans so this is where again in a sort of standard war playbook
00:31:25.880like you just the romans wouldn't have wanted any chance of further rebellion coming from any of
00:31:30.760people ever. And then on top of that, many of the tribes had been busy fighting these battles and
00:31:35.660marching around the whole island. They hadn't had time to plant seeds for the growing season,
00:31:40.660so meaning that many of those who hadn't died in battle died in a famine that followed right after.
00:31:46.280Boudicca's daughters, we don't know what happened to them after this. And I mean, we don't know what
00:31:50.420happened to them before this, really, other than the attack, because there wasn't a lot being
00:31:54.200written about them because they were not a literate society who wrote stuff down. We only know about
00:31:58.860Boudicca because of her interactions with the Romans. So the daughters, we don't know what
00:32:02.980happened to them. Boudicca herself seems to have died shortly after losing this battle to the
00:32:10.100Romans. She may have fallen ill. She probably didn't die in battle because if she had, that'd
00:32:15.740be so dramatic. They would have written about it probably. One of the records suggests she poisoned
00:32:20.120herself to deny her enemies the pleasure of killing her, which is very Cleopatra of her.
00:32:25.860The Roman occupation of Britain lasted until the year 410. So that's, I mean, just under 400 more years. Many of their structures became crucial elements in later battles for the Anglo-Saxon people who sort of were the next ones to take over most of Britain. And there's still evidence of the Roman occupation there today.
00:32:45.400So this whole thing was kind of a great rebellion, didn't work, but Boudicca became this great sort of folk hero type person.
00:32:55.200So most of what we know about her comes from the writings of Tacitus, who Dio also wrote about it, but he was later on.
00:33:03.460So Tacitus's father-in-law, Agricola, had been governor of Britain a decade after Boudicca's revolt.
00:33:10.100So he might have heard from him some stories about what happened.
00:33:13.260His writings, they weren't well known until they were unearthed during the 16th century.
00:33:21.180So that's when Queen Elizabeth I became Queen of England.
00:33:26.600The first, well not, the first really, really, really successful woman monarch in England.
00:33:37.580So you could see where she might have wanted to connect herself with Boudicca to show.0.98
00:33:42.520because when she was queen as well people were just kind of like a woman leader like i don't0.58
00:33:46.920know she has like a funny voice and she like has a period every month so just to look at bodica as0.98
00:33:53.480sort of uh someone who'd done this before was maybe a way that she could reassure the patriarchal1.00
00:33:58.960society she lived in that actually yeah guess what women can do this especially cool red-haired1.00
00:34:03.760women in armor bodica's rise to prominence as a sort of british folk hero came during the next
00:34:10.420most successful woman ruler in English history, which was Queen Victoria, which is interesting
00:34:17.240because Victoria is a name that also means victory. So it's the parallels are even stronger
00:34:22.300there as well. So Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, commissioned a sculptor named Thomas
00:34:27.520Thorneycroft, great name, to create a bronze statue of Boudicca in her chariot with her two
00:34:33.320daughters. So Albert was all about horses. He was all about statues. And again, just connecting the
00:34:39.600current queen to this legendary queen of the past to sort of connect um to connect the current1.00
00:34:48.180woman leader with a past woman leader to be like look women leaders can be cool sometimes0.91
00:34:52.900so the statue is called bodica and her daughter so actually it's called bodicea because that was
00:34:58.840back when there was the spelling mistake in her name so this statue was put up in i think the
00:35:05.040early 1900s after Prince Albert had died. Anyway, the statue is very famous. I'll put a picture of
00:35:10.200it on Instagram in case you haven't seen it. It was erected in London on Westminster Bridge near
00:35:15.380the Houses of Parliament, which is like really interesting. So like pause to think about it.
00:35:20.440So Boudicca, who she was, like what she stood for, was anti-imperialist, anti-colonial rebel
00:35:29.620who didn't write and she became identified with victoria and with elizabeth who were both heads
00:35:36.960of imperial colonial empires of their own so bodica was just weird that she became identified
00:35:44.440with them when actually if she had lived in those days she would have been against them basically
00:35:49.000but what i find really interesting slash ironic in sort of a alanis morissette way is the statue
00:35:55.820of Boudicca with her daughters and the horses. It stands guard over London, which is the new
00:36:00.720version of the old city of Londondinium, which is a city that Boudicca famously like thoroughly
00:36:06.040destroyed and burned down in her quest to for liberation. So now the statue is sort of like
00:36:12.580Prince Albert directed it to be like, look at this cool, great leader. Like Britain has this
00:36:16.800cool history of women leaders when actually it's just like a statue commemorating a woman who
00:36:22.200burn down the city that they all live in because she hated imperialism, colonialism.
00:36:28.140So just in terms of bibliography here, Boudica, I learned a lot about her. So
00:36:37.620the Rex Factor podcast is a special episode dedicated to her. And I also listened to the
00:36:43.860You're Dead to Me podcast about Boudica, both of which I super recommend. I think it's a story
00:36:51.380that one it cannot be told too many times there's all different angles that you can look at it from
00:36:56.680those two podcasts get more into like the military details of it and kind of more of like the where
00:37:02.020in england did this all take place so you can fill in those bits there as well there's a couple of
00:37:07.960films um there's a 2003 film called warrior queen which stars alex kingston from river song from
00:37:14.200doctor who is bodica and emily blunt a little baby emily blunt plays one of her daughters and
00:37:20.420And most of the research I did was from a variety of different historical websites, which I will link to in the show notes.
00:37:27.920But I want to mention as well, there is a very recent biography of Boudicca called Boudicca, Warrior Woman of Roman Britain by Caitlin C. Gillespie.
00:37:37.000And you can get that. I'll put a link to it in the show notes if you buy it.
00:37:40.860if you decide to purchase that the ebook or the book book or whatever if you click through the
00:37:46.380link in the show notes then some of that then i get a little monetary bonus so you can support
00:37:51.920this podcast while also getting a cool book speaking of this book uh bodica warrior women
00:37:58.080of roman britain by caitlin c gillespie is also available on audible and i've got my little this
00:38:05.360my commercial corner time. If you go to audibletrial.com slash vulgar history, you can get a 30 day free
00:38:13.020trial of Audible, including getting one free audio book. And so you could get this Boudica
00:38:17.880book and just learn more about her deal and what she was up to. And it's time to score her. And
00:38:24.680this is an interesting one because, well, so little is known about her. And the whole story
00:38:30.760took place over such a sort of condensed period of time. So the first category is scandalousness.
00:38:37.060Now, I didn't mention this in the podcast, because this was sort of like an overview of
00:38:42.880her whole situation. But the whole killing people brutally and then leaving their dead bodies up as
00:38:50.020a warning for other people included some stuff like allegedly, she beheaded babies, she cut off0.99
00:38:57.100women's breasts and stuck them in their mouths and then like threw the dead bodies down so like0.98
00:39:02.020is that like usually the scandalousness we're looking at in these stories is more like sexy0.99
00:39:08.920love affair related but like acts of war and terror but other people are doing that too so
00:39:15.700it's not like bodico is doing stuff that other people weren't doing at the same time and place
00:39:19.640it's not the fact it was a woman though made it more scandalous so it's a different sort of scandal
00:39:25.400than what we're usually looking at i'm going to give her just a four for scandalousness i think1.00
00:39:29.940maybe there was cool other scandalousness stuff happening behind the scenes especially when she0.99
00:39:34.680was living like a roman lady before everything went to shit but we don't know about it so i can't0.97
00:39:40.280score her on that scheminess i feel like it's pretty high so for some people when we're grading0.97
00:39:47.420them on the podcast the scheminess is like you know gossiping around the court or like making
00:39:52.960secret plans to like run off with your lover or whatever and those are the schemes they do
00:39:56.920bodica's scheming is more on par with more like a cleopatra level where it's like making like
00:40:03.020literal plans for little like war actions like scheminess and is more sort of like planning
00:40:09.780ingness but i mean the fact that she got together this band of previously warring factions to like
00:40:16.740team up and go with her and like burn down three cities like it's more than scheminess it's like
00:40:23.500cleverness determination ambitiousness but we call it scheminess so i'm gonna call i mean
00:40:31.100she incited an entire rebellion like i'm gonna give her an eight for scheminess i think and again1.00
00:40:38.300if we knew more about her maybe i could give her more if we knew more about like the details of1.00
00:40:42.060like how she snuck into places and how she burned down the places and stuff like that.1.00
00:40:46.320Significance is a tricky one for her because ultimately what she did didn't win. The Romans
00:40:53.120stayed in power for whatever I said before, 400 more years or something. But then she reemerged0.99
00:41:00.760as this kind of folk hero. A lot of people know who she is. And just, she's become sort of almost
00:41:07.840like a feminist hero just as like a woman who emerged in a world where not a lot of women were
00:41:14.560known for doing this sort of stuff but her personal significance i don't know like i feel
00:41:19.600like because i score people like cleopatra not super high in significance like how high can i
00:41:24.980score bodica for the same thing at the same time everybody it's relative isn't it i'm gonna give
00:41:31.000her five for significance, I think. And then the final category is the sexism bonus, which is where
00:41:38.360we give points to make up for how much did the fact that she was a woman affect her life in a0.61
00:41:44.760negative way. And this is where I think if she had been a man, things might have turned out. I don't
00:41:52.220know if they would have turned out differently, honestly. I think obviously the writing about her
00:41:56.400would have been different um Tacitus especially apparently when he was writing he was writing
00:42:01.560about how he thought that Rome was kind of shitty at this time how um if Bordica had been like he
00:42:08.440was almost cheering for her side because he thought that the like the Rome period around
00:42:14.160when Nero was there was really shitty but because she was a woman he was just like oh but she had
00:42:19.460like a voice that she talked with so I can't super respect her like I think her her historical
00:42:25.920record would have been different if she was a man and i don't know but then like part of what
00:42:31.100happened was like she was driven to this point by the the sexualized gender-based attack on her and
00:42:41.040her daughters i'm gonna give her a six six for sexism i think so let's just add this all up so0.86