Terrifying Things about Roman Currency

Here are some of the most upsetting things about Roman currency:

1. The Romans didn't bother with currency until the 300 BC.

Yup. They somehow functioned as a city with a trading economy with no actual coinage until c. 300BC. They had encountered others with currencies: the Greeks had coinage from at least the 7th century BC, 300 years earlier. The Etrurians also had a form of currency: bronze bars of full weight that were used for trade from about the 5th century BC. This isn't a little thing: by 300BC Rome was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean. No one knows why they didn't adopt coinage until the time, or how they managed before it. The Roman sources simply didn't know about this (all our sources are pretty much 200BC or later). They thought maybe King Numma had invented coinage as his name and the word for coins (Nummus) sounded pretty similar.

2. When they did bother with currency, they actually used two systems

Yessisr! They couldn't work out which of the above models was most convenient, so for the best part of a century they had both.

 

Head of Janus, left, and a ship's prow, right

A trident with snakes (?)

These were both cast, rather than struck. "Striking" a currency isn't just an attractive turn of phrase. Coins were usually sheets of precious metals (which are soft), with thousands of small circles cut out of them (called flans). The flan was placed on an (obverse) die set in an anvil and then "struck" with the other (reverse) die in a punch. The image was thus stamped on both sides of the coin. However, striking a piece of bronze the size of one's fist (as the top image is- it weighs a whole Roman pound, 329g) would wear out your shoulder pretty quickly!

These were the full weight of their worth- the top one pound and the bottom five pounds. Silver and gold coinage continued to be worth (supposedly) their whole weight, but bronze later became a token coinage.

3. Once they'd settled on an economy, they spewed out thousands of images.

We're used to seeing Roman coins with loads of images: Emperors, gods, victory wreaths, animals, stuff. Your average trip to a museum would emcompass a reasonable number of different pictures. However, most modern currency sticks with the same images for a really long time. That helps us know what the coins are and how much they were worth- even more important when most people weren't literate and there wasn't a great numerical system for putting the dates or denominations on things. The same went for most place in the ancient world, such as Athens. They had an Owl and an Athena on their coins basically forever. The same Owl is on one of the Greek Euro denominations even now:

You can tell it's Athena by the helmet on top of her curls

And yet the Romans had thousands of different types- new ones almost every coin issue- and they rarely bothered to put the denomination, or even "Roma" on their coins. They just didn't need to. By the 1st century BC Roman coins were well known and recognisable to almost all in their empire. 


4. They used their coins as a method of control.

Like so many other things, the Romans used their coinage as a method of control. Once they'd taken over a place, they might eventually let it strike its own coinage again, but the imagery usually became recognisably Roman. A particular example is that of Locri. The city of Locri decided to throw its lot in with the Romans after the Pyrrhus Wars, (c. 270BC). They minted the following coinage:

 The head is that of Zeus, and the scene depicts Roma, seated. She is being crowned by the goddess Pistis, who symbolised good faith and loyalty.

 This was the last issue they ever minted.

5. They had a fixed ratio of silver and gold coin exchange, while also having free-floating bullion prices.

For about four hundred years. Economists claim this fiscal arrangement is impossible. Go figure.

Are the Lannisters the Literary Julio-Claudians?

Hey everyone. It's been a while, but then I had a dissertation to finish and some exams to study for. And the first one of those is tomorrow, so I'm profitably using my time by blogging about something completely unrelated.


 This week, I'm looking at the links between a real Roman domus or family (lit. "household") and a fictional one. Maybe you've seen the picture of Joffrey Baratheon and Caligula that circulated a couple of weeks back? By the way, if you're worried about spoilers, I'll say this: I have read all the books, and I'm not up to date with the TV series. However, to my knowledge all the stuff I'm gonna mention has already happened in the show. I won't reveal any big plot twists, but there might be small fragments of spoiler here and there. If you're a purist, maybe give this one a miss?

 Don't worry, I was horrified too.

 Anyway, here are some of the Lannisters' more famous attributes:

Money, and Lots of It.

Don't you know a Lannister always pays their debts? You do now.

 The Julio-Claudians were Augustus' descendants, and they were incredibly wealthy for the most part. After the civil wars, Augustus had so much money he was able to bail out the state and still he was the richest man in Rome. Of course, he was also the Princeps and you probably wouldn't want to be richer than him. If you were, he'd probably just have you executed for treason and confiscate your stuff. This was a money-making technique used mostly by "bad" emperors, but it did come around every so often.


An Iconic Patriarch

Let's face it, Tywin Lannister is pretty badass. He's also smart, ruthless, and a pretty poor parent.

 Yup, Augustus had many of these traits. However, Augustus did not have any male children, and so was not succeeded by his direct descendants. Instead, his family tree was made up of those descended from his daughters and those adopted into his family. Even where adoption was concerned, Augustus was not fortunate, having all of his chosen successors die before him. In the end, succession fell to Tiberius, an older senator who really, really did not want to rule. Augustus was also used as a role model by emperors long after his own domus ceased to exist, a fate which will, I fear, escape Tywin.


Incest

Those Lannister twins, eh? Twins! And incest! It's like this is some kind of prime time cable TV show run mad! Don't worry:

This one has also shown up in The Borgias recently, and is actually fairly common as invective. Don't like that dynasty who seem to be doing better than yours? It's cool, just accuse them of incest. It's the kind of statement that's easy to make, hard to prove but even harder to disprove. Julio-Claudian example: Agrippina the Younger supposedly tried to seduce her son, Nero (according to Tacitus), in an attempt to regain power over him. Suetonius doesn't really bother with providing a political motive: he just says, after travelling anywhere in a litter together, their activities were "betrayed by the stains on his clothing." (Suetonius, Nero 28). Right then.

Caligula was also accused of incest with his sister, but we'll return to that in the next section.


Killing an Otherwise Defenceless Small Child Because He Might Be a Harm to You Later On?

C'mon, at least the Bran incident has to be original to the Lannisters, right? Sorry, but: 

 

Well, okay, to our knowledge none of the Julio-Claudians ever threw a small child out of a window. However, remember I said Caligula and his sister might have been making the beast with two backs?  Well, there's  story about that which was told to us by our ancient history teacher. I am pretty much 99% certain that it never happened, and at least a bit concerned that it originates with the I, Claudius TV series. However, since we're talking about tropes, and frankly almost everything we know about any of the Julio-Claudians is subject to heavy construction and reification anyway, I'll pass it on. Take with a pinch of salt!

Supposedly, Caligula had a bit of a breakdown while Julia Drusilla (the sister) was pregnant. Unfortunately, Caligula's particular madness made him think he was Kronos the titan. You might remember that he ate his children except Zeus, who survived to overthrow him. I think you get where this is going. Caligula performed an amateur cesarean section, and proceeded to eat the baby. Needless to say, Drusilla didn't survive. 

Since this blog is committed to historical accuracy, as well as blatant sensationalism, I'll give you the far, far more probable version of events. Drusilla was Nero's favourite sister, and they were very good friends. During his first illness (it's possible that this illness caused brain damage, or otherwise precipitated his madness), he made her his heir, the first woman ever to be named so in an Imperial will. However, Caligula survived and Drusilla was stricken by a fever that was rampant in the city. While she was ill Caligula stayed with her- despite a risk of contagion. When she died, he was certainly affected, but that doesn't have to point to incest. However, his mother was no longer alive (and something of a Princess Diana-like figure in her own time) so it is very possible the usual charge levelled against tyrants (incest with one's mother) was replaced here with incest with the favoured sister.

Interestingly, Caligula's extreme grief over the sister is treated as a little bit embarrassing or unmanly. Suetonius describes how "when she died, he appointed a season of public mourning, during which it was a capital offence to laugh, bathe, or dine in company with one's parents, wife, or children. He was so beside himself with grief that suddenly fleeing the city by night and traversing Campania, he went to Syracuse and hurriedly returned from there without cutting his hair or shaving his beard."- Suetonius Caligula 24. Wikipedia also says he refused to let them take the body, but doesn't have a reference, and I can't find it in the usual sources. 

However, those two combined are strikingly similar to Arian's description of the death of Hephaestion: "Some say that for the greater part of that day he flung himself down beside the body of his friend groaning and did not wish to be separated from him, until he was forcibly removed by his companions; in other accounts, he lay beside the body all day and all night; other writers say he strung up the doctor Glaucias, either because of the wrong drug being given or because he saw Hephaestion drinking heavily and allowed him to continue. I think it is likely that Alexander cut his hair over the body, especially because he had been eager to emulate Achilles ever since boyhood"- Arian Life of Alexander 7.14. 

Is it a trope? Quite possibly. I wouldn't be the least surprised if something like this happens in the later Game of Thrones books.

The Cuckoo in the Nest

That Joffrey Baratheon though, he isn't even Robert's son! At least the Julio-Claudians were all really related to each other! Nope:

When emperor Claudius married for a fourth time (to his niece, Agrippina), his new wife brought her son with her, Nero. Claudius already had a son, named Britannicus so no-one would forget Claudius' one military campaign, but Agrippina persuaded him to adopt Nero, who was very slightly older. When Claudius died (supposedly poisoned by Agrippina, but science tells us that couldn't have been it, as they had no poison which acted as fast as the story requires) Agrippina acted fast and had Nero crowned emperor. 

Finally, what of everybody's favourite Lannister:

The Embarrassing Problem Child Who Turns Out to be Surprisingly Badass

Guess what?

 

Yup, emperor Claudius was disabled. He was supposed to have twitched, stuttered and limped and occasionally dribbled, and was a figure of fun throughout the court before his ascension. He has since been diagnosed by scholars as possibly suffering from cerebral palsy, though tourettes has also been suggested. However, Claudius was far from stupid. He was not in the direct line to the throne and never expected to have to conduct himself in public life (he was made emperor after Caligula was murdered by the Praetorian Guard, who also killed Caligula's immediate family, just in case) so Claudius made himself a scholar. He wrote a large number of historical works, detailing both Imperial and Republican Rome. He also proposed several changes to the Latin alphabet, adding letters which functioned like modern X and Y,  and also tried to reinstate placing dots to mark spaces between words (at this time, Classical Latin did not have spaces to indicate words), but none of these survived his reign. While emperor, Claudius also wrote an autobiography.

Unfortunately, none of these works survive, but we know he was the source for several passages of Pliny's Natural History and Suetonius read his autobiography as research for his own works (describing it as "lacking taste"). 

So there you have it folks, nothing is new under the sun! Of course, just because his work utilises tropes doesn't make George R.R. Martin a bad author: the fact that he's a bad author makes him a bad author! Tropes are just a part of human existence.

EDIT: I'm sorry about the way the text gets suddenly smaller in the middle of this post. I can't seem to fix it in the edit mode, since that displays all the text as the same size and format. Sorry!

Laser, Ancient Rome Style

Everybody loves lasers, right? You can point them at the moon, use them to annoy cats, or blind people. I probably wouldn't advocate that last one though.

"Fire the laser!"

Even the ancient Greeks and Romans loved lasers, or as they called it, just laser.


What was it?

As I'm sure you clever people twigged, "laser" to the ancients did not mean a highly focused beam of light. Laser was some kind of plant based seasoning for food. That's about as much as we can say, since we don't actually know what it was.

It was clearly an important, expensive commodity: the Egyptians had a specific glyph for it, and the Romans described it as "worth it's weight in denarii [silver coins]". On the other hand, a plant doesn't weigh that much... Here's a picture of it on a coin:

These coins are from Cyrene, where the export of laser was an important part of their economy.

We now think that laser might be an extinct form of fennel, but since we can't even say for certain what it was, we can't really say if it's really extinct.  


Uses in Food

Laser was most commonly used as a cooking additive. Apicius (the Roman Gourmet. A kind of cross between Heston Blumethal and Constance Spry, if you can imagine such a thing) offers lots of recipes involving laser. How about a spice mix of:  "moderately acid broth; or pepper, parsley, dry mint, laser root, honey, vinegar and broth... ground, compounded and dissolved together"? Or "pepper, caraway, anise, parsley, dry mint, the leaves of silphium [laser], malobathrum, Indian spikenard, a little costmary, honey, vinegar and broth."?

It seems to have been used to flavour both sweet and savoury dishes.


Uses in Medicine

Laser was also, apparently, a medical herb. Pliny the Elder (a credulous man who complied a huge encyclopedia of natural phenomena) claimed laser could be used to treat coughs, sore throats, indigestion, fever, aches and pains and even warts. If it could do all that, it would be a godsend to modern Britons, since we're perennially suffering from colds.


Uses in Birth Control

It is possible that laser was used to induce miscarriage or prevent conception. You know what that means? It means the Romans had laser based birth control. Imagine, for a second, the awesome power of that image.


What happened to it?

There are a few theories about what happened to laser. It only grew in an isolated region of modern Libya, so it has been suggested that over-harvesting or over-grazing may have been the cause. There was apparently a craze for the meat of animals grazed on laser. Apparently it altered the taste.

The last known stalk of laser was given to Emperor Nero.

Make Like Nero!

Make like Nero! Everything you need to become a whimsical Roman emperor.

Get into power when young

You need to get into power while you're still young enough to know everything, preferably in your late teens. The optimal age is 15-23 or so: your aim is to be old enough to be independent but young enough not to have learned silly grown-up habits like moderation and consideration. Who needs those? Nero was 17, which was just about the perfect age to become a crazy dictator.

Nero, as a boy. From the relief at the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias. He looks quite cute here

Don't listen to your tutors

In fact, kill them if you can get away with it. Nero's original two tutors were a barber and a dancer, prescribed by his paternal aunt, Domitia Lepida. However, these were soon considered unsuitable, and he was recalled to Rome, instated as Claudius' adopted son, and given Seneca as a tutor. Seneca went on to write plays and philosophy, notably On Mercy which may have been a plea to Nero to reign it in a bit. However, Nero often ignored the advice of Seneca, or went out of his way to defy him. He wanted to race chariots and play games, rather than do any serious study. When it came to giving speeches, he made Seneca write them for him: the first Emperor not to write his own speeches.

Seneca was something of a hypocrite. We remember his works as Stoic (which as the name implies, was a philosophical tradition that was against excess, and glorified simple, hard work like farming) but in actuality he was one of the richest men in Rome, and was something of a loan shark in the provinces. He did make an effort towards the Stoic life-style during his self exile of 62. He soon returned, possibly involved himself in the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 to dethrone Nero and was subsequently forced to commit suicide. In the ancient sources, this took him an implausibly long time: poison didn't work, cutting his wrists seemed to be taking ages. Eventually he had his slaves carry him to the baths where the steam suffocated him.


Kill your mother, and other family members

Particularly if you think they are, or might be, or could steal your power. Nero, of course, was a famous matricide. There are several theories for his actions: that she was too powerful, and he wanted her out of the way, that he wanted to marry Poppaea, the wife of his friend Otho, and she wouldn't let him, or possibly she was plotting to put another person on the throne.  He also killed his step-brother Britannicus, Claudius' actual son. Britannicus was slightly younger than Nero, so did not take the throne on Claudius' death, but was beginning to look more and more like an attractive prospect. Suetonius claims that Nero killed him as  much as for his better singing voice as for his claim to the throne.

Britannicus went first- this is the moment when Agrippina lost control- as Nero had him poisoned. The first time this failed, and he was merely ill. Nero flogged the poisoner, and then administered another dose. As he fell to the floor, frothing and fitting, Nero calmly told fellow diners that he was "merely suffering an epilepsy". Nero's wife, Octavia, was Britannicus' sister: she was forced to agree, though she knew he had never had a fit in his life. The following day he was buried in secret. Not even Octavia was allowed to attend.

Agrippina's death was more theatrical. First she was sent home in a boat that was rigged to collapse, but she proved a strong swimmer. Her maid began screaming: "I'm Agrippina! I'm the Queen Mother! Save me, save me!". Unsurprisingly, one of the rowers killed her. Some days later, assassins arrived at her house. She told them to stab her in the womb, as she knew they came from Nero.


Wear outlandish or extravagant clothes

This one is particularly good if you're lording it over other people. Nero used to have whole outfits made of purple, when only Senators could wear even a purple stripe. He used to wear carved gemstones on his slippers (the extravagance!)

This is not Nero. This is Peter Ustinov playing Nero in the film Quo Vadis

Burn things for no real reason

 Nero burned grain during a famine, an entire year's worth of incense at the funeral of his second wife, Poppaea (who he himself had killed) and possibly quite a large chunk of Rome so that he could build "Neropolis" on top. However, he spent his time trying to help putting the fire out, rather than singing the Fall of Troy.

Have the craziest sex you can

Nero is very famous for his crazy sex life. He had several famous comcubines, most notably Acte. He first married Octavia, who was a "virtuous Roman matron", and decided she was far too boring. He divorced her and married Poppaea, his friend Otho's wife. This was fine, until she annoyed him while pregnant so he kicked her in the stomach and thus induced a miscarriage. This killed her, and he was devastated. Or at least, until he noticed one of his freedmen, Sporus, looked quite a lot like her. He had Sporus castrated, and married him. A bit later on, Nero married himself to Doryphorus (a man) in a large public ceremony. Nero dressed in the bridal veil, and then spent the (public) wedding night "immitating the cries of a virgin". Yup, you read that right.

Apparently even all this got boring, and Nero devised a new game. He had men and women tied, naked, to stakes. He and Doryphorus would then rush out dressed in animal skins and attack their genitals.

Yeah, I don't really get it either.


Go on stage

Do this at any and all opportunity. Nero began by hosting his own pricate "Youth Games" for himself and his friends, but he soon graduated to proper stage performances. His first appearence on a public stage was in Naples where there was an earthquake. He somehow took this as a good omen and refused to stop, declaring the gods were pleased with his performance. From there he went on to "win" all of the acting competitions in Greece (including the Olympics, after he insisted they add a poetry competition). 



All of this is reported in the ancient sources, but I feel there is need for some moderation. Josephus says he has no intention of writing about Nero because enough people had left accounts, both good and bad, of his reign. However, the only accounts we have  are those of Tacitus and Suetonius. Suetonius wrote under Hadrian (c. 120, so almost sixty years later) and Tacitus under the reign of another "tyrant": Domitian. I can easily believe that much of what they wrote was grossly exaggerated. On the other hand, "Well, it probably wasn't as crazy as all that" wouldn't have made as good a blog.

Herculaneum: The Harrogate of the Amalfi Coast

Herculaneum is Pompeii's lesser but better preserved sister-city. Sort of like the Joseph Fiennes. Or, Harrogate, in fact. For those of you who don't know it, Harrogate is like a small island of Surry in the otherwise grimdark North Yorkshire. Here's a nice picture of it.
 

Herculaneum was just down the road from Pompeii, but was destroyed by pyroclastic flows, rather than ash and lava. This means that much of the organic material was carbonised, rather than simply burned, so it survives. Therefore, we have doors, screens and sometimes food preserved! (There will probably be a forthcoming blog about some of the awesome evidence from Herculaneum). Herculaneum was smaller than Pompeii, and its population was wealthier: like Harrogate and its neighbour, Leeds!

Here are two comparisons in greater detail:

Houses

Both Harrogate and Herculaneum were, for most people, lovely places to live. The houses in Herculaneum were often laid out to a recognisable plan: large, grand doors and entrance halls faced onto the street, like this one:

Behind would be a large atrium, decorated in one of four styles. The style depended on the family: were they wealthy enough to keep up to date, and did they want to emphasise their antiquity with a conspicous "old fashioned" style? A bit like deciding if you want to Tudor the front of your house, really.  Alongside the atrium would be functional rooms like bedrooms, and behind it, a large and imposing study.  Through the study was usually a large and delightful garden. They had slaves to look after them, so the hot weather or indifference of the owners was no excuse. Cicero said "If you have a library and a garden, you have everything you need". And Cicero never did a day's work in his life (Unfair; he actually worked really hard, but I just had to read all of On The Laws and now I hate him. For at least another week.)

The gardens were usually decorated with wall paintings and statues, like these.

Admittedly, this guy (The Faun) is actually from Pompeii.

Harrogate shows similar trends: many houses are large and imposing, with grand gardens. Here are some comparason pictures.

Look Familiar?

Baths

Baths! The Romans were famous for their baths. We named a whole town after one: Bath!
Harrogate is also a famous spa town, still boasting its own Turkish Baths and Spa. In Harrogate, you pay a large amount of money to be treated to the finest in beauty treatments, or something. I've never actually been there. In Herculaneum, the public baths were just that: public. And even better, they were free, though you probably had to tip the slave in the changing rooms to stop people stealing your stuff, and pay someone else to have a slave scrape all your dead skin off. The ancient sources suggest this was a more pleasent experience than that implies. Here are some lovely pictures of Herculaneum's baths.

Bathing followed a structure; you didn't just get into the pool and splash about. There were three main rooms: the caldarium, the tepidarium and the frigidarium. As these names might suggest, they were hot, medium and cold. The idea was to enjoy a pleasent sweat in the caldarium, struggle back through to the pleasent tepidarium, and then plunge into the cold water of the frigidarium, usually painted blue to emphasise the feeling of cold.  

The lines on the ceiling are grooves to make channels for the condensation

 

The caldarium was heated by that most famous Roman invention: underfloor heating, or hypocaust. The floor was suspended on stacks of tiles called pylae. Beneath would be a space for air to circulate, and in the next room a group of unlucky slaves would tend a furnace. The smoke and heat would be drawn under the floor, and then allowed to escape via a chimney.  Harrogate spa, as I understand it, is powered by more conventional means.

This is from a villa in France, but it clearly shows the stacks and the inlet for the smoke

So there you have it: next time you feel like jetting off somewhere ancient and exotic, think not of the bay of Naples, but of sunny Harrogate. Like all the best places, it's Grim Up North.

Boudicca

With Alex Salmond and Scottish independence hitting the headlines, I thought we could take some time to look at another British hero, resisting a somewhat more hostile takeover.


Why was Boudicca so angry with the Romans?

Aside from the bit where they invaded her land. The Roman invasion was in 43, and her revolt wasn't until 62. That's a pretty long time to wait for revenge. Then again, if the film Leon taught us anything, it's never to underestimate girls with a grudge and a lot of time on their hands. While there were some other catalysts, this probably made up some of her motivation.

Mind you, her husband, Prasutagus, was a collaborator with the Romans, so she can't have been too anti-Roman.  He was leader of the Iceni, (a tribe of Britain located in the Norfolk area) and a client king of Rome. This meant that he and his family would be able to continue as rulers of the Iceni, until his death, when their land and tribe would become the property of Rome. However, when he died, Prasutagus left half of his land to Rome, and half to Boudica. Since the Iceni almost certainly didn't have any real property law, this probably means that his troops simply refused to let the Roman troops take control. There had been another Icenian revolt previously, which had been defeated, and they had had their weapons confiscated, but Prasutagus had been allowed to keep control. It seems possible, then, that after his death, a more anti-Roman faction took the opportunity to sever their ties with Rome.

Catus Decianus was the procurator of the province at this time. The procurator was of equestrian rank (one below senator), and was basically the chancellor of the exchequer. He was not of the same class as the governor (a senator) to prevent them from forming an alliance and using their money and soldiers to try to take over the empire. Even with this restriction, some managed this fairly well anyway. He decided the only logical thing was to recall all 'loans' (here read: gifts of money that Catus arbitrarily decided he would like back,) at the same time as Seneca, loan shark and author, recalled all his loans. Since both these measures were likely to be in place to allow some leading British citizens to become senators (in an attempt to integrate them into the empire), the resulting revolt was something of an own goal.

When the Iceni either wouldn't, or couldn't pay, Catus decided enough was enough, and launched a putative raid.  His troops burned and pillaged their way through the Icenian territory, raped Boudica's daughters, and had her 'scourged', that is to say, whipped with a barbed whip. This was one of the punishments supposedly meted out to Jesus and the other condemned criminals in Judea. It wasn't pretty.

So Then What?

Your collaborating husband is dead, the Romans just burned all your stuff, raped your daughters and beat you within an inch of your life: what would you have done? You guessed it: Boudicca called her banners. Presumably after getting some medical attention.

She and the Iceni rampaged south, towards Camulodunum (modern day Colchester), where they were joined by the Trinovantes, and 'other tribes'. Tacitus wasn't too picky about their names when they were trying to kill Romans. They proceeded to systematically destroy Camulodunum, the current centre of Roman administration. Men and women were supposedly stripped naked, slaughtered and had bits of  body parts lopped off and sewn on in other places, mostly breasts sewn to mouths. This is almost certainly the kind of horror story that spreads after the fact, rather than an accurate representation of what actually happened. None the less, in the archaeological record, there is a clear black line of burned material from this event.

While all this was going on, Suetonius Paullinus, the governor, was on campaign in north Wales. He received word, and rode south with a detachment of cavalry. He decided that Londinium was indefensible, and so abandoned it to the rebels. It was also mostly destroyed, though some of the citizens had managed to flee. He rode north again to meet up with his legions. He also sent a messenger, commanding the II legion, stationed in Cornwall, to go and fight the rebels, but the commander ignored him. Later, he 'fell on his own sword'. A young military prefect (and I really like to think of him as the officious public school type), called Cerialis led his cavalry detachment against them. They were utterly destroyed, but Cerialis survived, and later returned to Britain as its governor.

After destroying Londinium, Boudicca and co. turned north, buoyed up by their success and planning to destroy Paullinus' legions. By now they had been joined by many more tribes, and may have numbered into the hundreds of thousands (though ancient sources are always prone to exaggeration). On their way, they stopped at the cultural capital of Verulamiun (St Albans) and destroyed that too.

Unfortunately, this allowed Paullinus the chance to pick his own ground, and if there's one thing you don't want to let a Roman do, it's pick his own ground. Pompey could tell you that for nothing.


THE BIG BATTLE AT THE END!

All historical stories have this, right? The Romans holed up in an as-yet-undiscovered battleground, with trees to their back and flanks. You might have heard that this was at Mancetter: for a while people thought the battle had been around there, but more study has suggested it might not have been. Boudicca hadn't just brought her troops, she'd brought he tribes. Hundreds of women, children, and the elderly made up her baggage train, and they arranged their wagons

Unfortunately, the Romans had rather better tactics and arms for fighting in a small, enclosed battle, and they won, pretty decisively. The wagons prevented the Celts from fleeing, and their 'civilians' as well as their soldiers were massacred.

Soon afterwards Boudicca died, or committed suicide, and the revolt was the last major resistance to Rome in southern Britain.

And then?

That's sort of it for her, until, many years later, some people know as the Victorians decided they needed a role model. They picked Boudicca, as the plucky English hero, but for one thing: 'Boudicca' sounded silly. They would call her 'Bodeceia'