Boudicca: Celtic Warrior Queen

When Roman Legions of Emperor Nero attacked her home, disrespected her people, and attacked her family, Celtic warrior queen Boudicca swore revenge -- and she left nothing but scorched earth in her wake as she rampaged across Briton, destroying all who stood in her way.

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Episode Transcript:

A tall, regal woman rides up in a chariot. She wears a thick cloak over a tunic woven in a multicolored plaid pattern. Her long, gleaming hair cascades down to her hips. A huge gold necklace snakes around her collarbones. She raises aloft a spear in one hand and with the other she gestures to the two young women standing behind her in the chariot. Her voice, the rough, strong voice of a commander, peals forth: “Neighbors, allies, kin. The Roman invaders have violated my daughters; they have disdained my authority; they have forced all of us into servitude to their own profit. I am Boudica, Queen of the Iceni. Join me to take back our freedom, and to take revenge.”

Ben [00:01:17] We're back and we are going to have kind of a first for the show. At least. Somebody has requested a character for us to talk about.

Pat [00:01:28] Boudica.

Ben [00:01:29] Yes, I get a ton of emails all the time about people that, you know, I should be writing about and I like it. And I like that when some badass thing comes out in the news, I can turn on my computer and I have five emails of people sending me that same news story being like, This is what you should talk about this week. And then that's great. I love it. But you said you were talking to a colleague or a friend or somebody who wanted us to give us a suggestion.

Pat [00:01:54] Yeah, I was talking to a friend slash colleague. Yeah. And and. And the friend Slash colleague said, Hey, Boudica like, it was just a spontaneous reaction, but. But says, why should one get excited about Boudica?

Ben [00:02:08] Well, Boudica is awesome, for starters. Yeah, it's yeah. One of my favorite details of Boudica is that where you see the pictures that are taken of Big Ben in the Houses of Parliament in London? There's that bridge. There's a big statue of Boudica on a chair being pulled by which a horse is. It's gold. It's like giant and very, very grand. I'm trying to think if there's anybody else who has a giant statue dedicated to them in a city with which they are famous for burning to the ground.

Pat [00:02:38] Yeah, maybe you're coming here already knowing who Boudica is being spoke to. Like. Yes, here about hear about Boudica. And maybe you're one of today's 10,000 who get to learn about Boudica for the first time.

Ben [00:02:51] It's just going to be fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's a first century barbarian queen who really was among the most badass women in history. I wrote a whole chapter on her on one of my in one of my badass books, and it's it was one of my favorite ones to research and write.

Pat [00:03:07] So the word barbarian, it's comes from a Greek word barbarous, which simply means someone who doesn't speak Greek because it's like speaking a foreign language. You sound like bah bah bah bah.

Ben [00:03:19] Bah bah shit. So we're all barbarians except to you because you do speak Greek really well.

Pat [00:03:24] Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, words change over time and it kind of became this like, you know, big joke and brutal like, ooh. But the thing is, with Boudica, I feel like calling Boudica and her people barbarians, if you use that in the pejorative sense, is a little unfair because they had a well-developed civilization and like, you know, it just happened to not be Romans at the time.

Ben [00:03:44] So yeah. So I should stipulate that I never use the word barbarian in a pejorative sense. I always say.

Pat [00:03:51] That.

Ben [00:03:51] Sense in which I think it's awesome. But that is I did had no idea that that was based off bah bah bah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we'll get into it right after this. All right. Welcome back. And so, Pat, we are going to get into our first ever requested badass and we're going to talk about Boudica.

Pat [00:04:18] So if you rewind about 2000 years to the year 43, that's when the Roman Emperor Claudius had conquered the island of Britain. And this was a thing that the Romans had been trying to do for a while. And, you know, it was not easy for the Romans to do so big ups to the Britons for, you know, holding their ground and standing up to the Roman invaders. And you have different tribes of Britons. And when I say Britons, I mean indigenous people who live in Britannia, the British Isles. Within that, you've got a whole bunch of different tribes, nations, peoples, whatever. Anyway, each of these groups of people had found different ways to relate to Rome, and some of them were putting up resistance. Some of them were like, okay, we'll find a we'll find a way of getting along. And one of these nations, one of these tribes was the Iceni. This is the tribe that Boudica belongs to. Now, Boudica's husband, King, who was a quote unquote, ally of Rome, which meant that he had found a way to get along with the Romans. What that meant was, well, they were pretty much leave the iceni alone.

Ben [00:05:38] We see it a lot in the Roman Empire with which, like, you know, they just they can't manage their it's whatever we're looking at 40 ad rates. So, yeah, you can't manage an empire on the scale that they're managing from Rome. It's not like you could email the frontier and be like, Hey, can you just, like, do this for me? Like, you had to send a guy on a horse and visit from three months or whatever. Yeah.

Pat [00:05:59] So this worked out for a while. But you know, no one lives forever and cross the tagus he, you know, he's contemplating his own mortality. And Professor Tagus said, okay, I'm going to leave my kingdom jointly to my two daughters and to the emperor of Rome, who happened to be Nero at the time.

Ben [00:06:17] Who's famously like, easy to get along with. Yeah.

Pat [00:06:21] So the thing is, I should say that in these days, making the emperor a co heir with the people you would actually expect to be your heirs was actually kind of standard operating procedure among know, wealthy elite Romans. Okay.

Ben [00:06:35] Yeah. Because with this story I've come across it a few times to where like it was weird and nobody knew how to deal with it. Like, it was a really weird set up for him to say, like, Oh, the Emperor of Rome and also my daughters.

Pat [00:06:47] Yeah. And like, I get where one is coming from because by the time you get to Nero, the Emperor has a particular personality and particular hangups and agenda and whatever. So if you leave part of your estate to the emperor, it's a way of pacifying the emperor and kind of paying the emperor to, like, basically stay out of the hair of your actual daughters, sons, whatever. So you have these internal affairs where, you know, they leave people alone in the details. On the other hand, the Romans had several garrisons stationed in various towns, including the town of Camp Lugdunum. This would become relevant later. And at Camp Laudanum there, you know, the Romans build stuff. You have the Romans putting up a statue of victory. You have the Romans putting up a temple to the deified Emperor Claudius with a statue of the Emperor Claudius. And is this cool.

Ben [00:07:49] With.

Pat [00:07:50] The Britons? I see me come to an agreement. You know, they're they're not conquered, per se, but they have this agreement. Don't we have a deal with the Romans? Of course we have a deal. They get out of the way of the internal administration of our kingdom. We look the other way on that statue of the deified Emperor Claudius.

Ben [00:08:03] Right. And this kind of predates Hadrian's Wall as well, which ended up later on being a very clear line of demarcation of like, you know, here and civilization, you know, here ends Roman civilization, I should say.

Pat [00:08:15] Roman civilization.

Ben [00:08:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kind of have like a little bit of a gray area because it is it's like we just said, like it's hard to administer an empire on this island and, you know, full of people who, if they all decided simultaneously they didn't want to be Roman anymore, it wouldn't be very easy to to keep them in line.

Pat [00:08:33] Exactly. Yeah.

Ben [00:08:34] She's also foreshadowing, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Pat [00:08:39] So the I see the yes, they have a quote unquote agreement with Rome, but on the other hand, they do kind of have a history of rebelling against Rome, and then Professor Tagus dies. He leaves the situation, which on paper looks okay, but is actually not right.

Ben [00:08:56] And you said it was kind of common, for which I didn't know before, but it was like, more or less like kind of a thing that wealthy Romans would do. But it wasn't common for Frontier Tribal Kings to do. And so I kind of like. The idea that this guy was like trying to, like, be fancy about it, but in the process accidentally, like, fucked his own people pretty severely.

Pat [00:09:20] So there's prototypes and. Okay, I'll just I'll just be clear. I mean, I'm a human being. I, you know, like I pretend to be objective, but the thing is, I'm rooting for the Britton's here.

Ben [00:09:29] That was one thing that surprised me a lot when we started doing this, because you were the Roman historian and the Latin speaker and all of that, but you always kind of side with the underdog. You always side with like the the rebels. Yeah.

Pat [00:09:40] I mean, you know, I grew up with like the first wave of Star Wars fans. So I'm on, you know, team Luke Skywalker versus the Empire. You know, just because you study something doesn't mean you endorse it.

Ben [00:09:52] I'm Timbo, the Class Boudica. So. So yeah. So where we can go all in on that, I'm fine with it.

Pat [00:09:58] Yeah. So price tag us dies. And the arrangement that they had with Rome falls Apart and VII Senior are like, we had an agreement and Rome's like, so at the time, ah, Rome had two governors. There is this guy Suetonius Paolina, there's this other guy, Dickie Arms, Cactus and Boudica, who is the widow of the former King Price Ortagus. She takes the leadership of the ICC and I seen her like, Yeah, cool. Yeah, whatever. Because gender is not an issue when you're talking about leadership among the Celts living in the British Isles at this time. But the Romans don't really recognize her authority, right?

Ben [00:10:41] That old like no girls allowed rule that we went into a lot in history.

Pat [00:10:46] Yeah. Part of me is wondering like is it specifically because she was a woman or were they using her gender as like an excuse to not recognize her authority?

Ben [00:10:54] I think mostly it's that Rome wanted just to plunder and pillage and and exert their dominance over when they.

Pat [00:11:01] Yeah.

Ben [00:11:01] Hit them while they're weak before their new ruler has had a chance to consolidate. Right.

Pat [00:11:06] Yeah. So whatever the stated reasons, whatever the actual reasons, they flog Boudica and they rape her daughters.

Ben [00:11:14] And Boudica is not the queen that you should have been fucking with. Because she does not just just say, okay, you guys do charge now. Oh, yeah. She lives for revenge. Yeah. It's the beginning of a lot of good action movies, right? You know, a lot of the Kill bill had to starts like this. She was like, they show up, they get it, they think they've got your beat. And then you're just like, okay, I'm going to get revenge if it's the last thing I do. Yeah, Yeah.

Pat [00:11:40] So Boudica, she doesn't take a sword, She picks up a spear and she hops on a chariot and she gathers together not just the ICC, but also warriors from other neighboring nations who were allies with the ICC, who maybe had been kind of looking for an excuse to kind of they they'd been kind of thinking about revolting one way or another.

Ben [00:12:05] And like culturally, ethnically, demographically, in a religiously in every way you can imagine, all of the people in the neighboring tribes are much more similar to Boudica than they are to Nero. Oh, so they are much more related to the ICC? Yeah, maybe they hate them because they have these, you know, long lasting, like blood feuds between families and tribal warfare and all this stuff. Yeah. When it comes down to it, like I speak this guy's language and I don't speak Latin, right? Like, I have the same gods as Boudica. But yeah, I don't worship. I'm not loving this statue to the defeated Emperor Claudius.

Pat [00:12:43] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, we hate each other, but we're neighbors.

Ben [00:12:46] Yeah, but nobody can mess with him except me.

Pat [00:12:49] Yeah, exactly. So press attacks is dead. Boudica takes charge. She's haranguing the troops and both Tacitus and cashes die. Oh, both are, you know, Latin speaking and Greek speaking. Roman sources, they describe this. You know, they describe her speech. So Cassius Dio describes her appearance in stature. She was very tall in appearance, most terrifying. She was wearing clothing of many colors. Might have been some sort of clad like a tartan. Maybe she was wearing a thick cloak over this, which was fastened with a pin, with a brooch, which might have been one of those famous pieces of gold jewelry that the Celts were so famous for. And her hair cascaded down to her hips. Boudica's eyes had this fierce look to them and her voice was harsh. So none of our written sources have a verbatim eyewitness account of her speech, but it was kind of standard operating procedure in those days to kind of write the speech of the sort that the person probably gave. So I'm going to give you the too Long didn't read version, but from her chariot with her long flowing tresses grabbing a spear. To the ICD and the trend of Vontaze and all the other nations who have sent soldiers who have sent warriors to fight, Modica says, My peeps. Those wimp ass Romans ended. No big deal. They think they run the place. But we are so much better asked than they are. And that's why we should win. Also, it's our land and we're defending it. And the Romans are being jerks about it. She says stuff like the Romans. Okay, They've been here long enough that maybe some of you have forgotten what freedom is like. Maybe you've gotten used to slavery. Are the Romans braver than us? Are they stronger than us? Also, no. They hide behind armor and helmets. They hide behind palaces. They hide in trenches when they have the upper hand. Do they capture us now? We elude them. We slip away into the landscape. We disappear into the swamps. We disappear into the mountains. They can't handle the heat. They can't handle the cold. They need all the trappings of civilization. We will eat these differences for breakfast. That's Boudica's speech. I might have paraphrased a little bit, but she rallies the troops and General Boudica, and I'm calling her General Boudica because she is leading an army. She leads her folks on to Colchester, which is the modern name of Camilla.

Ben [00:15:32] Do we have a Briton king who did great service to the emperor and did everything that the Roman Empire required of him. He dies of natural causes and bequeaths the empire to his his daughters. Nero decides he doesn't like that, or at least the local Roman government decides they don't like that. They decide they're going to come in there. They're going to beat up this guy, his wife. They're going to do bad things to his daughters. They're going to show their dominance over these people. And these people don't like having Romans exert their dominance over them and they don't think they need these guys anymore. And then Boudicca grabs her spear and she jumps up on the on the chariot and she gives this speech and all of these big, angry, long haired barbarian in a good way. Britons decide they are going to fucking burn some shit.

Pat [00:16:27] Now, on the other hand, if one of the two governors of the province of Britannia, Dickie on his card, is based in Londinium, which is modern day London. He catches wind of this impending attack on Coward in him and he doesn't take it seriously. He just sends 200 guys. That's it. 200 now. 200 is like a lot if you're, I don't know, organizing a pickleball tournament. But if you're trying to defend your town from a bunch of Britons who are angry with very good reason and have, you know, pointy objects that they're going to throw at you and injure you with you, this is not a serious response. He either didn't get the memo or he didn't take the memo seriously.

Ben [00:17:10] Or he had no idea that there was something on the order of 20,000 angry Britons coming to burn Kosciuszko. Yeah.

Pat [00:17:17] Yeah, exactly.

Ben [00:17:18] Did not appreciate what he was up against.

Pat [00:17:21] Cassius Dio says 120,000, which is probably an exaggeration, but.

Ben [00:17:25] Well, one thing that comes, that's the thing that comes up a lot with the Roman sources where they kind of it's interesting because it's like, did he exaggerated or was like we have talked about before, like, yeah, they are migrating with everybody. So it's not just the warriors that are marching south on Colchester. It is all of the tribe, the women, the children, the the horses, the wagon, train, everything. So like, yeah, might be like everybody's mad and they're all coming together and, and there might have been 120,000 people, probably significantly less than that. But they weren't all combatants probably either.

Pat [00:18:02] No, they weren't all combatants. But on the other hand, maybe more people were combatants than the Romans might have fought also, because, I mean, clearly boudica can be general. So Boudica General Boudica and her army lay siege to Caledonia for about two days. Some of the Romans who were in the city take refuge in the temple. Now, remember, this is the temple. This is not just the Temple of Gods. This is the temple of the deified Emperor Claudius. So it's like extra Roman.

Ben [00:18:31] They fit in there because those 200 dudes are long dead and the Iceni and their allies are just rampaging through town, plundering and killing and murdering and destroying and setting everything on fire. And it's just it's and these guys are hiding in the temple because they're just hoping for a divine intervention from their fallen emperor to save them from the wrath of Boudica.

Pat [00:18:57] And it.

Ben [00:18:58] Doesn't happen.

Pat [00:18:59] It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen now. Boudica sets fire to the city, and we have archeological evidence that Kamilla Dunham There was there was a. Higher destruction level.

Ben [00:19:11] We have evidence for that. There's like I think they call it like the vertical line when they're like they do when they're digging foundations. Today, when they're digging foundations for a new building in the city of Colchester, there is like a thin line of like orange dirt in the ground that you can dig down to, which is just like this was all that was left of the Roman settlement here after Bush was through with it. Yeah, she melted the entire thing into an orange paste that is still visibly it's like a geological strata now of rock. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Pat [00:19:47] Yeah. Live your life so that archeologists of the future will name a stratum after you.

Ben [00:19:52] Yes.

Pat [00:19:54] So, yeah, you'd think that would be the end of things. No, it's not. She ravages Londinium. She ravages Verulamium, which is the modern day town of St Albans in Hertfordshire. If you're looking on a map, she ravages Londinium, which is London.

Ben [00:20:13] I've heard of it.

Pat [00:20:14] You've heard of it? Yep. Yeah.

Ben [00:20:16] They were not like she kind of massacred something on the order of, like, tens of thousands of people.

Pat [00:20:23] Yeah. Yeah.

Ben [00:20:24] In a place to the ground. Pulled all the rocks apart, like, destroyed the temples, set everything on fire, killed anybody she can get her hands on.

Pat [00:20:32] Exactly. Yeah.

Ben [00:20:34] I had heard a story, and I don't know how true it is, but, like, they had killed so many people in the first couple of cities. They'd sacked that by the time they got to Londinium and started fighting like more cohesive Roman forces, they would throw severed heads at them to demoralize them before they'd attack.

Pat [00:20:52] It's cool. I've come across some pretty grisly stuff. Boudica and her people were, according to the sources, were capable of some pretty grisly treatment of people that took us captives through human sacrifice.

Ben [00:21:03] Stuff you hear about with.

Pat [00:21:05] Yeah, human sacrifice. Yeah.

Ben [00:21:07] The Romans do attribute human sacrifice to basically anybody who was at Roman, which may or may not have been true. I don't.

Pat [00:21:13] Know. So, yeah. So Boudica, who is kind of one of the OG badasses of the British Isles, she just lays waste to three different Roman towns. You know, the Romans had the unmitigated temerity to come over to Britain and establish settlements one way or the other. And one, two, three, she just bam trashes.

Ben [00:21:38] And one thing we haven't really touched on too much is that like, yeah, like Boudica is rampaging through lake cities and destroying these settlements and things, but these settlements are defended by Roman forces, right? Londinium was it There were two of her guys that got sent to the to the frontier that got killed.

Pat [00:21:58] Yeah. Camilla Dunham Yeah.

Ben [00:22:00] But Londinium was defended by a legion, right? Yeah. Nine Hispania was there, and Boudica and her people overwhelmed like a battle hardened, experienced two Roman Legion. Yeah, they outnumbered them. Something on the order of 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 or something, if you.

Pat [00:22:19] Something like that. Yeah.

Ben [00:22:21] You believe 120,000 people number, but like, you know, they had the advantage showed in numbers, but this was a trained, disciplined Roman legion operating on the frontier and they got crushed. Yeah. And were mostly annihilated. Yeah. And so now Paulinus is here. The other governor has run away. The guy who ordered that Boudica before gets in her people, like, pay their taxes with interest. That guy was just like he was out of there 2 seconds after he figured out, after after he heard the news that they burned a couple of cities to the ground, he's like, I'm out of here. I'm not going, Yeah, I got here. My mom calling from Rome. I got to go.

Pat [00:23:01] Do, do, do.

Ben [00:23:01] And so now you end up with Polina, who's just kind of got I mean, his army is just the remnants of these smashed legions. He suddenly becomes the underdog in this story. We're like, he was the he was the big, bad imperial warrior, like destroying Druidic Temples. And now he's got like 5000 or so Romans who are all that are left of of easily annihilated garrisons and legions. And he's facing down this monster force of, like Britain tribes, people who are maybe getting a little overzealous with their plundering and killing and burning and murdering and destroying and humans sacrificing. And he decides, like, we're going to have to have a showdown here and we're going to have to have a battle to settle this kind of once and for all. And we'll get into that battle after we get back from this message. But you should stick around for it because it's it's exciting. Yes. The Romans have been losing so often and so severely. Right. A region was destroyed, which is not like a common thing for the Romans, Right. You can count on one hand in like a thousand years, how many Roman legions were lost in battle. Right? And the Boudica's destroyed one of those. She's ransacked several major cities in the islands. So things are not going well. And Holiness decides like he's got to fight these guys or, you know, this is. This is it. Yeah. If we want to continue having Roman dominance on the islands, which which dates back to Julius Caesar's landing, one thing that he has working for him is that the Iceni at this point, they're a little overconfident, which they have every right to be. They've they've.

Pat [00:24:54] Trashed three cities, you know.

Ben [00:24:56] They've trashed three cities. They destroyed a legion. There's 80,000 of them, and there's 5000 of these guys. Yeah.

Pat [00:25:03] Yeah. Like they're not getting their security deposit back, but they don't want their security deposit back.

Ben [00:25:08] They knew that when they when they signed up for this, this is what was going to happen right there. They knew there was no coming back. And they so far it's worked out great for them now. So what Paulinus is able to do is pick the field of battle.

Pat [00:25:21] Ah, yes.

Ben [00:25:22] Which is a kind of a clever way for him to overcome. And he's he's a Roman general. He's well trained, He's a smart guy, he's clever, he's a career military guy. So he picks a very narrow valley where he can get his guys across kind of the the Spartans at Thermopylae kind of thing, Right?

Pat [00:25:43] Exactly. Yeah.

Ben [00:25:44] I'm massively outnumbered, so I'm going to present the smallest possible front to you. So you have to funnel your entire, like, disorganized, longhaired dudes.

Pat [00:25:55] Not that there's anything wrong with being long haired.

Ben [00:25:57] But I was going to say barbarian, but then I felt all like, weird about it.

Pat [00:26:00] So I mean, appropriate for the point of view, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben [00:26:05] You know, they were just a bunch of giant a.

Pat [00:26:08] Bunch of guys, a bunch of people.

Ben [00:26:10] Big muscled dudes who were mad and they had a, had the ax that they used to cut down trees in their backyard. Another hacking up Roman soldiers with it. Yeah. So he funnels them into a valley. You know, it ends up being kind of to keep the like, hair metal analogy going. It becomes one of these like just anarchy. On the attackers side, the defenders are very organized. The Roman legions have been doing this for a long time. They're organized there.

Pat [00:26:34] Can I just pause for a moment to say, like in this particular context, the Romans are the defenders?

Ben [00:26:40] Yes. They're the last line of defense, the underdogs.

Pat [00:26:43] It's a little counterintuitive, but that's actually in this specific context. That's what's happening. You know, the Romans are the defenders, even though we're in Britannia, we're in the in Britain.

Ben [00:26:53] And now the story kind of changes a little bit. We're like, we have this one last bastion of like a Roman, and they're outnumbered and they're they've got their backs against the wall and they've got to, like, fight this rampaging horde of barbarians. And it's the thing that we talked about at the opening of this episode, which is that like it's all in how you want to frame the story, right? She's the hero until she kills enough civilians that she's the villain. And if that revenge starts taking you into scenarios where you're lining up women and children and decapitating them, suddenly it's.

Pat [00:27:29] Yeah.

Ben [00:27:29] It's a bit harder to be sympathetic towards. Yeah. Yeah. Well, she was really mad. And I get it. I totally get I totally understand.

Pat [00:27:36] What you doing, but we get where she's coming from. But still, from Suetonius Paulinus point of view.

Ben [00:27:42] This is not good. Yeah. So I got. I got to. I got to save the last few Roman citizens remaining in this island. Yeah, I got to not get executed for failure. I got to not be captured and sacrificed by Boudica and her people. Yeah.

Pat [00:27:59] So. Okay, so, Suetonius, us being Roman, kind of figures out what he needs to do, which is to say, okay, I've got an army and we're organized, and oh, hey, there's this narrow valley. Then what happens?

Ben [00:28:14] Well, the sun attack or the. Now it's. It's the Britons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole conglomerate of all of these tribes. And they attack and the Roman line holds and they drive back just the first wave of Sunni attackers. Right. They're not going to be able to withstand 120,000. I think some of the numbers were saying something like 70,000 or 60,000 or whatever. It doesn't matter what monstrously huge outnumbering you force of ginormous. Right. And you're not going to kill them. All right. You're not going to win this if they stay organized. But what happens is we tell you it's this pick, this this narrow valley where he can hold and his front line holds against their front line and their front line starts to fall back. But there's nowhere to fall back to because you've got this huge rampaging horde of people all crushed into this. Arrow Valley. Oh, and they start to run. And then the guys who are in the second line are seeing the guys from the first line all dying and wounded and bloody, like running away. So they start to run. And then what we talked about before, where they're traveling with like their families and their baggage trains and the women and children and stuff. And that's all in the back valley. And so they can't even flee the valley because all the wagons and horses and all this stuff, all the logistical things that go into moving an army are in the back of this valley. So the front wave can't even exit. And all of a sudden you have people being.

Pat [00:29:41] Crushed.

Ben [00:29:42] Trampled as they try to run out of like a rock concert when there's a fire. Oh, yeah, It becomes chaos very quickly and people start panicking. And that's contagious with an army and the Iceni and the Britons are defeated, like I want to say, heroically by this very small Roman force that had no business defeating them in battle.

Pat [00:30:07] Yeah, yeah.

Ben [00:30:08] It's this kind of hodgepodge group of Romans that were cobbled together at the last minute by that dude who, like, wasn't this guy definitely did some bad stuff in Britain, but he wasn't the guy responsible for making Boudica mad.

Pat [00:30:21] You know, that was the other guy. Yeah.

Ben [00:30:23] Yeah. Like, that guy is long gone, right? He's defending the last vestiges of civilization on the island.

Pat [00:30:28] Does he understand? It's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben [00:30:30] Subotic has defeated.

Pat [00:30:31] She has defeated in battle. Her forces are defeated. She is defeated? Yes. So what do you do if you're a queen and General and the Romans defeat you?

Ben [00:30:40] She lives. She's not captured at this battle, right? She lives in. She. She gets away. And like, a decent portion of this army gets away. But it's. Yeah, they're routed enough that it's it's kind of over for them.

Pat [00:30:51] Yeah.

Ben [00:30:51] It's pretty clear that this is this is the end of it.

Pat [00:30:53] So what do you do? Do you just kind of go quietly into retirement and, like, keep bees or do knitting or something.

Ben [00:31:01] And just kind of hope that this Suetonius, Pliny is the guy is going to be nice and be gracious in victory.

Pat [00:31:06] Yeah. Or that he just kind of like goes off and like his attention is directed elsewhere.

Ben [00:31:12] Will probably be fine. I'll just surrender to Nero. I'm sure that guy will be leaving with me. Yeah. Yeah. But in defeat, she rather than submit to the Romans or anything like that or face whatever was Gavin, she drank poison.

Pat [00:31:26] According to some sources. According to some other sources, she just, quote unquote, got sick, which say.

Ben [00:31:35] What happens that happen.

Pat [00:31:36] Happens if you drink poison. Why might she drink poison? Maybe she knows that if the Romans capture her, she might be paraded and humiliated as one of their triumphs very easily.

Ben [00:31:53] Right. That happens. They put you on the first float in the parade going through the city of Rome to celebrate their victory against your leg. I'd rather be dead, you know.

Pat [00:32:03] Yeah. So even though our sources are not consistent on how she perished, personally, I like the version where she takes control of things and says, okay, I'm exiting my way.

Ben [00:32:17] Seems the most likely to me. You know?

Pat [00:32:19] I think so, yeah. She seems to me like someone who doesn't do things by halves. No. So yeah, later. Like, I mean, like many centuries later, her story is inspiring people. And when Queen Elizabeth the first was queen, there was a little bit of a resurgence of boudicca. And when Victoria was Queen in the 19th century, there was also kind of a resurgence of boudica as kind of a symbol of British pride and also is a symbol of, Hey, we've got a woman leader.

Ben [00:32:54] Yeah, powerful British women opposing like foreign rule, opposing like imperial domination over their island from outsiders. You know, it's a very. Yeah, yeah. There's probably been a dozen British warships called the HMS Boudica, right? Yeah. And there's a statue built of her.

Pat [00:33:15] Exactly.

Ben [00:33:15] Within, like, a hundred yards of Big Ben. Yeah, Yeah. It's very heroic. It's not a let's remember this horrible person who did this terrible thing to our city. It is like, let's look at this kick ass woman who did some bad shit and was from around here. Yeah, Yeah. So, I mean, that's poetic is she's a very interesting and complicated character, but. But a really cool historical figure and definitely badass.

Pat [00:33:43] Oh, very badass. Yeah.

Ben [00:33:45] But the thing, she was a great defender of her people or, like, a homicidal maniac. She is. Those are, I could argue both of those things being better.

Pat [00:33:54] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to give a shout out to Katelyn Gillespie at Brandeis has a book out from Oxford University Press called Boudica. Warrior woman of Roman Britain, which helped me a lot.

Ben [00:34:09] Given talks about her in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. For primary sources, a primary as they get you, like you said. These were still written a couple of hundred years after she died by people who never met her. We have Cassius Dio and Tacitus. Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, I guess that's all we have for today.

Pat [00:34:30] Stay badass.

Ben [00:34:31] Yes, they.

Pat [00:34:31] Better stay badass. Stay badass. But, like, don't actually murder people.

Ben [00:34:35] We don't really want to encourage anybody to make goblets out of the skulls of their enemies or burn major human settlements to the ground.

Pat [00:34:43] Yeah, I mean, go to go to Target, spend a few bucks, get one of those, like, mugs that's shaped like a skull.

Ben [00:34:49] Hmm. Yeah. Put some whiskey in it. Have a drink. Yeah. Chill out, you know, sleep it off. You'll probably feel better in the morning.

Pat [00:34:56] Unless you're underage. Because oc because Heaven, for fans of my students, might be listening to this. If you are underage, do not drink actual literal whiskey put like, I don't know, boba tea in it or something.

Ben [00:35:11] I do love boba tea as a substitute for whiskey. I think it's I'm totally on board. I'm totally okay with it. Yeah, I think that's all we got for today. Okay. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening, you guys.

Pat [00:35:27] Badass of the Week is an iHeart radio podcast produced by High Five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Pat Larash, and Ben Thompson. Writing is by Pat and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs, Brandon Fibbs and Ali Lemer. Mixing and music and Sound Design is by Jude Brewer. Consulting by Michael May. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart. Badass of the Week is based on the website BadassoftheWeek.com, where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses. If you want to reach out with questions or ideas, you can email us at badasspodcast@badassoftheweek.com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen and tell your friends and your enemies if you want, as we'll be back next week with another one. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.