Boudicca. British queen of the Iceni tribe. Boudicca made her mark on history by leading the British rebellion against the Romans in ad 60/1, which came close to driving them out of Britain. Her husband Prasutagus had become a client king of the Romans at the time of the invasion, and the arrangement had survived the succession of Nero in ad 54. However, when Prasutagus died in ad 60 the Romans decided to incorporate his kingdom into the province of Britain. The take-over seems to have been badly handled and, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, ended up with Boudicca being flogged and her two young daughters raped. The rebellion which she instigated was joined by the Iceni's neighbours, the Trinovantes, and by other disaffected British tribesmen. They captured and destroyed the new Roman colony at Colchester, repeated their success at the flourishing port of London, and then settled old scores by destroying Verulamium, the capital of their traditional foes the Catuvellauni. The Roman governor Suetonius Paullinus eventually managed to assemble a large enough force somewhere in the midlands on the line of Watling Street to take on the rebels in a pitched battle. The British were defeated and the rebellion collapsed. Boudicca died shortly afterwards, by her own hand according to Tacitus. Of Boudicca herself we know little, although Dio Cassius describes her as tall and severe, with long fair hair, a penetrating gaze and a rasping voice. She seems to have been no figurehead but a formidable leader.

Keith Branigan