Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (9 page)

TACITUS ON THE ICENI, AD
47

B
oudica, like most Warrior Queens, was royal by birth and ruled over an aristocracy. The later Iron Age society in which she lived might be ‘barbarian’ by the standards of Rome – the Latin word means literally strange or foreign, not savage as it has come to mean in modern usage – but it was certainly not anarchic. Furthermore, she lived in a period of transition when Roman influences had already been brought to bear upon parts of England as a result of military invasion, commercial dealings and finally military occupation for a generation before her uprising.

This is not to say that the Iceni, the tribe of which she became the leader on her husband’s death, were in the forefront of Romanization. There were more sophisticated groups to be found in the middle of the first century
AD
, using the word sophisticated to denote such matters as literacy and style of living, whose geographical position had brought them into closer contact with the Romans.

Geography indeed plays an important part in the story of the Iceni as it does in that of Boudica herself. The Iceni territories, broadly speaking, encompassed modern Norfolk and north Suffolk, an area which even today can give an impression of rural seclusion, vast tracts of land whose inhabitants are not in immediate daily touch with any metropolis. That natural disposition of the terrain which leaves East Anglia in a sense out on its own large limb was obviously an even more potent factor in preserving Iceni independence in the Iron Age.

Despite this caveat, it would be quite wrong to regard Boudica herself as some kind of violent savage: a woad-stained and shrieking animal. Furthermore, since her behaviour at times can fairly be considered violent, it would be wrong to regard that behaviour also as being merely the mindless outbreak of a female ruffian. Boudica did exist; she did spring from a particular society; her conduct, whether heroic or reprehensible, was the product of that society and its standards.

The first recorded mention of the Iceni tribe occurs, almost certainly, in Caesar’s report on his second invasion of Britain, roughly a hundred years before Boudica’s rebellion. Julius Caesar’s first invasion, in 55
BC,
had not taken him across the Thames. The following year however he made the crossing, and following the defeat of a British overlord named Cassivellaunus, received the submission of a number of tribes. Foremost among these were the Trinovantes – Camulodunum (Colchester) was a centre associated with their name – and it was in fact the appeal of the Trinovantes to Caesar for protection against Cassivellaunus’ dominion which had provoked the latter’s final defeat. The Trinovantes’ submission was the obvious corollary to their appeal; the five other tribes who also submitted presumably judged it prudent to do so. Among their names are listed the Cenimagni – ‘the great Iceni’. (This is to assume, as is generally done, that the Cenimagni are to be equated with the Iceni: the mention of ‘the great Iceni’ may of course postulate the existence of another tribe, the lesser Iceni, who did not submit.)
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Then Caesar departed for the second time, and this time he did not come again. As the years passed, the British tribes must have hoped or even believed that he had taken away his doughty Roman legionaries for ever. The Iceni at least sank back into that kind of historical obscurity to which lack of literary evidence can consign a whole people for a whole century: ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot.’
^f1
3

Even when in
AD
43 the Emperor Claudius instigated a fresh invasion – which as it proved developed into four hundred years of occupation – the name of the Iceni did not immediately recur. It is true that there are those eleven mysterious ‘kingdoms’ – mysterious because unnamed – associated with the Arch erected to Claudius to celebrate his triumph. According to the inscription, the Emperor ‘received the surrender of eleven kings of Britain, defeated without any loss’, as well as being ‘the first to bring barbarian peoples across the Ocean under the sway of the Roman people’. Quite possibly, among these ‘kingdoms’ (or tribes) whose rulers surrendered are to be found the Iceni.
⁴

Nevertheless, the next specific reference to the Iceni occurs in Tacitus’ account of their first rebellion. Four years after the Claudian invasion, the Romans, under their governor Aulus Plautius, were pushing north and west. There is some dispute concerning their intentions, fuelled by an obscure text in Tacitus. Did they intend, by reducing ‘the whole territory as far as the Trent and Severn’, to establish that line of defence now known as the Fosse Way as a kind of frontier? Or did they intend to pursue the possibility of further conquest?
⁵
Whatever their future plans, the Romans proceeded to deal with those tribes left behind by this advance in a manner which was summary if not sagacious.

For the incoming Governor of Britain, Ostorius Scapula, who arrived in 47, took the radical step of disarming his own allies. He did so in the interests of protecting his rear. Ostorius found himself dealing with escalating guerrilla warfare on the modern Welsh borders, the raiders from beyond the Roman lines being encouraged in their depredations by the charismatic British leader Caratacus. Meanwhile to the north, the attitude of that sprawling federation of tribes, the Brigantes, remained uncertain. Nevertheless the indignation of the British ‘allies’ to the east thus disarmed was potent: they were after all being deprived of their weapons, in an essentially bellicose world, in anticipation of a rebellion which had yet to take place.

Among the disarmed peoples, there was one whose reaction was especially bitter: the Iceni. ‘We had not defeated this
powerful tribe in battle,’ wrote Tacitus, ‘since they had voluntarily become our allies.’
⁶
It was under the leadership of the Iceni that the neighbouring tribes now rose up against the Romans. The rebellion, generally placed in about
AD
49/50, was not successful. The Romans put it down with ease, although Tacitus noted that the British comported themselves bravely to the last, performing ‘prodigies of valour’ even when there was ‘no way out’. The Iceni did however survive as a quasi-independent body: that is to say, they remained as a client-kingdom of Rome, their leader as client-king having specific obligations as well as rights.

It is at about this point that Prasutagus emerges as client-king of the Iceni. No date is known for certain beyond the fact that when he died in 59 or 60 he had been ruling for a long time. Maybe he was already ruling over one branch of the Iceni in 43, and was placed at the head of the other branch – assuming there were two – in 49. Maybe he simply emerged in 49 in the wake of the rebellion as one capable of leading his people in peace. All of this is speculation. What is important from the point of view of this study is the fact of Prasutagus’ marriage. At some point equally unclear, but almost certainly before the
AD
49 rebellion, Prasutagus had married a woman of royal birth called Boudica.
⁷

Already this, the first incontrovertible mention of the Iceni, has painted a picture of a tribe both vigorous and resentful, their voluntary submission humiliatingly disregarded in the wider interests of Roman policy; one, furthermore, capable of showing courage even in despair. In the light of subsequent events, it is a significant image. And another image may perhaps be added to it: that of a young woman – a queen – with her own memories of Roman injustice, revolt and suppression.

What sort of people were they, the Iceni? First of all, it is important to understand their Celtic heritage. That is to say, a thousand years before, their ancestors had formed part of the great Celtic world spread across Northern Europe.
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It is a heritage which marks the Iceni, despite the fact that by
AD
49 their client-kingdoms existed on the very frontiers of the
Romanized and apparently settled world. But then it was a powerful heritage, the Classical writers displaying a remarkable unanimity in commenting upon the characteristics of the Celts from the German forests to the sandy stretches of Spain. (They wrote about them either as Galli – ‘the Gauls’ – or as Keltoi, presumably how such people described themselves.)

We are of course dependent on the views of these outsiders since the Celts themselves, as Caesar noted of the Gauls, considered it ‘improper to entrust their studies to writing’. It is true that there is ‘presumptive evidence’ for the import of writing materials into Britain before the Claudian invasion. In Britain in the years before the Boudican revolt, the unwritten Celtic language was gradually being replaced by the Romans’ Latin for purposes of administration and commerce. In the same way, during this period of transition, the native spoken language was being permeated by Latin.
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Nevertheless the basic culture of the Celts, being an unwritten one, remains destined to be observed from outside, rather than delineated from within.

Above all the Celts were brave: those prodigies of valour noted by Tacitus in 49 were customary, not unique. Like many (but not all) brave people, the Celts also loved the fight itself, dashing joyously and frequently into the fray, laughing and shouting their way either to bloody death or to an equally bloody victory. The traveller and Stoic Strabo, who died in about
AD
21, described the Celts in his
Geographica
: the whole race, he wrote, was war-mad, both high-spirited and quick for battle, although otherwise simple and not ill-mannered.
¹⁰

With courage went recklessness. It was, Strabo continued, easy to outwit them, since they were always ready to face danger ‘even if they have nothing on their side but their own strength and courage’. The Romans noted their use of single combat upon occasion, the contestants flinging themselves down from their chariots (which would actually be light affairs of bentwood, no knives on the wheels, very different from the chariot supporting Boadicea on the Thames-side sculpture).
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They also observed that the Celts fought naked, something they were well equipped
to do; for this was a robust, well-muscled race who placed much emphasis on physical fitness. Furthermore, the Celts, as perceived by the Classical writers and depicted in Classical sculpture, were not only strong but tall and big-boned, with thick, flowing fair or reddish hair (in contrast to the modern idea of the ‘Celtic type’ as being small, neat and dark-haired).

Loud noises – trumpets and clappers in the form of animal heads – also attended the conflicts of the Celts. Noise, whether the braying of trumpets, the sounding of clappers or music itself at their frequent feastings, was indeed a universal taste among them. Such hospitable feasts would also be marked by lavish imbibing, either leading to singing or concurrent with it: drink being another universal taste. Wine for the aristocrats and wheaten beer for the rest was the custom, the whole spiced with cumin. Vast loving cups would be handed round, and although the sips taken might be small, Strabo added, ‘they do it rather frequently’.

Another passion was for rich personal ornament, something which would now be termed conspicuous consumption perhaps, but was then, in Strabo’s opinion at least, part of their general naïve boastfulness. Heavy gleaming gold, twisted and chased, was the best material of all: gold round the neck, gold bracelets on the arms were common to high-born men and women alike. Brooches were enamelled, cloaks were fastened with imposing buckles. Even in war, this passion for ornamentation was not subdued but extended to the helmets of the charioteers and to weapons such as shields. Colour was not ignored: clothing (like Boudica’s cloak) was generally stained and dyed in a variety of hues and stripes, making a kind of early tartan.

Starting about five hundred years before the time of Boudica, some of these fighting, singing, drinking, gold-bedecked Celts migrated across the English Channel from what are now the Low Countries to East Anglia. These were the ancestors of the Iceni. The first Celtic settlers who brought the practice of iron smelting were comparatively humble folk. Then in about 150
BC
the warlords of the Marne Valley followed, bringing with them their
chariots and their ponies (Iron Age horses were only about ten or eleven hands high).
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Further migrations of so-called Belgic people – the Belgae from North Gaul – are still the subject of dispute, just as the distinction between Celts and Belgic people is itself blurred; but if the southern neighbours of the Iceni – the Trinovantes – were in some manner Belgic, it is the consensus of opinion that the Iceni in their geographic isolation remained ‘Celtic’, even if some ‘Belgic’ influences can be discerned as the century wore on.
¹³

Whatever these distinctions, certain it is there followed in the first century
BC
and the years up to the Claudian invasion of
AD
43, that flowering of Iron Age civilization and British Celtic art to which recent archaeological finds bear such eloquent witness. Many of the most significant finds have been made in Iceni territory: the Brecklands, for example, an area of forestry and heather and marsh lying between Bury St Edmunds and Norwich, and in northern coastal areas near the Wash. (It is the pattern of archaeological finds, following the cleavage in the terrain, and in its turn providing the pattern of Iceni settlement, which gives some substance to the idea that there may have been two Iceni tribes, the greater and the lesser.)
¹⁴

Many of these finds testify to the fact that this was a society dominated by the horse and, by extension, the chariot: the rich bridle-bits and bronze nave-bands, a charioteer’s cap found at Snettisham. The coins of the Iceni are stamped with galloping horses, legs prancing, manes flowing wildly (like the luxuriant locks of their masters enshrined in Classical sculpture). As a result this society, ruled over by the horse-mad, as well as war-mad, chieftains, has been compared to that of other ancient chivalric orders, such as the Samurai of Japan or even the warriors of Homer.
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