The Aftermath and Roman Control

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It rises above the timber roofs of Roman Britain, darkening the sky over Camiludinum, modern day Colchester The air is thick with fire, iron, and rage A woman, a leader, now a warrior with hair as flaming as the inferno ablaze around her, has been pushed beyond breaking point and the Romans must pay Bdiga was Queen of the Icinae, who had united Britons to lay waste to Roman settments But her story is not only one of revolt It is also one of family, of identity, and of the brutal cost of surviving within the iron grip of empire When Roman pressure turned to humiliation and her daughters became part of that story Boudhaka rose in fury. From Etern Britain, she gathered an army that would shatter Roman control Cities would burn, Lgions would stumble, and for a moment, the greatest imperial power in the Western world would meet its match. I'm Tristin Hughes, your host. Welcome to The Ancients. And today, I'm delighted to be joined by historical best selling novelist EieD Harper, who has been researching who Boudiaka was before leegend claimed her. We'll explore what Buddaka's revolt reveals about Roman Britain, the Icenae, and how Rome itself perceived this barbarian upstart Eldie, welcome back. It's been too long. Welcome back to the show. Oh it's an absolute delight to be with you again. Thanks so much for having me on. ' more than welcome and to talk about Boudhia Elldie, I feelld her story it will never lose popularity. Yes, the revolt is brutal, it's bloody But it's also Personal, it's poignant. She's a rebel with a cause. She is and there are so many different ways of approaching her story. and over kind of the centuries in Britain, people have done that in multiple ways. You know, the reason we think of her as redheired is because Elizabeth I first used her as propaganda, another warrior queen. and projected her own physical attributes onto this ancient warrior queen. in fact, the only Roman source which is, you know, hundreds of years after the fact says she was blonde. I mean, who knows? she could have been a brunette, but this is all part of the storytelling. And then the Victorians who erected that incredible statue designed it that faces the houses of Parliament, Buddaka and her daughters, she was a very strange figure for them because They identified as an imperial power, Britain then very much with the Romans, and yet Boudica was a rebel so Her legacy in that time period was quite complex. and then I would say now One of the reasons I was so drawn to her story is you with recent archaeological discoveries, we're finding out that powerful warrior women were much more common in this time period than perhaps was thought and rather than being a kind of mythical outlier Buddica represents a different cultural phenomenon to that of ancient Greece and Rome Yes, and her story is kind of a glimpse into that world yeah, where we know In some cases, women could become queens could become rulers of particular areas of Britain. At that time when the Romans are arriving and you know, even they note This is this is strange to us. this is different Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's, I think one of the most fascinating lines in Tacitus in his agriicula is when he says But the ancient Britons don't distinguish between the sexes when choosing commanders And he says that in reference to Buddaka and her rebellion. And you know it's a throwaway line, but the significance of that in this time period is really immense. I mean, it is impossible to imagine a Roman emperor or a Roman legate commanding legions and armies and being a woman just unthinkable. And yet in ancient Britain, this was really common We don't just have Tacitus's word for it. you know, we're aware that there was Cartimandua, the quQueen of the North of the Brigantes, the original Sansa Stock although she was a. She was a collaborator with Rome unlike Buddica, but you know we have other female rulers recorded and we also have the archaeology Last year, the Datregious tribe who were in the west of the UK were found to practice matriloocquy. so Their whole societies, it's not just that random rulers might be a woman, but their whole societies were based upon the idea that power was vested in the female line, which is such a different way of living to what was happening in ancient Rome at that point. that idea of maturro loocality, fascinating DNA evidence coming from the southwest. Eidie, you mentioned how Buddhaka story It comes to the fore again and again throughout the many centuries of British and English history. And you mentioned that statue from the eighteen hundreds by embankment today, which is Buddhaka and her daughters And I guess that is a key part of her story is the fact that she has these two daughters who play a prominent role and yet at the same time, I still Very mysterious to us today. Yes, absolutely. And you know, this was another thing that drew me to this story is it wasn't just a political rebellion. this is really a family drama, what happened and you know, deeply personal in the relationships between all the people involved. So The statue too is very interesting in the sense that it looks like Boudaka is about to attack the whole houses of Parliament. So she's a British heroine yet you know seems to be about to launch war on her own That's weirdly apt for what happened in the rebellion because they had aspects of it that were close to civil war in the sense that there weren't kind of neat lines between colonizer and colonized There would by this point have been a degree of intermarriage, a degree of cultural exchange between people The presence of the two daughters on that statue you know someomehow they've had a wardrobe malfunction, so their boobs have popped out, you know, nice and objectifying, but anyway, a different time period But they're crouching in their mother's shadow And this is really what they're doing in the historical record as well, because they played such a key role in the rebellion and yet we don't even know their names. We just have the barest bones of their story from Tacitus and so obviously as a novelist and massive ancient history nerd, this is just too tempting to pass up the idea of filling out the monumental gaps in this extraordinary story Now of course, in your most recent work, all about Butoutica and her daughters, you explore the world of her people the Iceni or the Yaneni. We talked about this just before going on air that Iceni is more well known. so we're going to say Ieni today, but different versions of how say it Can you give us a picture, Eie of what the Icini lands looks like. I mean, what do we know about this part of Britain beforefore Buddaka comes to the fore with her revolt, you know in the early first century AD So there was quite a lot of cultural exchange going on between Britain and Rome before Rome's. conquest of parts of the British Isles, you know in exchange of trade, The Romans were pretty snooty about the Celtic cultures of Gaul and ancient Britain. So one of the difficulties is that all the written records come from them. So you know, you can see their snoootiness even in the words that they use. they say oppida rather than cities or town, which is kind of like calling them settlements But we don't have to take the Romans, you know completely at their word as to what these people might have been like So you know, the idea of these Oida, I called them cities in the book and towns because Why should they have a different terminology It was a very different culture from ancient Rome. We don't have the same visual representation of it Roundhouses was kind of still the predominant building at this point, but the idea that they were kind of scampering around in mud huts and this being a very sort of primitive society is, I think completely unjustified given the archaeological remains and also the complexity of the social structure It was a society where women appear to have had much more power It was a society that produced some incredible pieces of artwork, Buddica specifically you know, of this time period, there's the Snetishham Hord in Norfolk this incredible collection of golden talks and jewelry that was found buried possibly for religious reasons, possibly as a means of hiding material from the Romans I mean, I think that The stress is probably it was a more religious moment perhaps left as an offering before the rebellion So we know that they were a complex society, but the detail is lacking. You can get a kind of atmospheric sense of it if you go somewhere like But's or ancient farm that has recreated roundhouses Even the round houses are Sprisingly hard to pin down in that one of the key buildings for Buddaka and her family, which was in Thetford was a potentially multi story roundhouse, which is not kind of how we think about it. And this was some sort of political or religious gathering centre probablyroably built by Budhaca or Prasatagas, her husband, who was the client king. to Rome and the father of the two daughters And I think if we just kind of look at the bare bones of this sort of family story. Buddaka and her daughters at this time that You know, Prasetarus was the Icene king. He was a client king to Rome, which meant that he was ruling on their behalf, Rome would be extracting taxes and financial gain from this society, but at the same time probably benefiting by collaborating with Rome The hope would be a slightly less repressive regime where he the Iceni would retain some autonomy And when he died, he left the kingdom to his two daughters, who I named Selena and Belenia. they're not named in the record in the hope that he would be able to continue this client relationship. with Rome after his death through his daughters. and it wasn't unusual for French and Britons at this time even to send their sons to Rome as a type of cultural exchange to sort of build alliances and have Have a cultural into play of some type So he wasn't wildly deluded in trying to do this, but the Romans reacted Very violently the procurator Dessianus, who is in London, responded to this will of Prasetagus by sending Roman soldiers To the family home, the two daughters were raped, Buddhaka the mother was flogged They stole a bunch of stuff rampaged around, insulting and stealing from other Members of the family, it was a very kind of oppressive, violent response And this was what led Boudaka to the revolt. It was what happened to her children, basically and she took the two daughters with her on her kind of famous mustering trip around the East of England to try and encourage people to join the rebellion. And this is all we know about the Daughters. After that, they disappear from the historical record. whether they fought in the rebellion, whether they survived it, how old they were, none of that, we know, as I say, not even their names We cover so much ground there, it's really interesting to get more of a sense of the relationship that the Icene had with the Romans before the revolt and just going to get a sense of ates So the Roman invasion of Britain is traditionally forty three AD, the revolt of Boudica six thousand sixty one AD, so less than twenty years after the Roman invasion and The Romans don't control the whole of Britain It's kind of the south into Norfolk East Anglia where the ICER as a client kingdom. towards the Midlands and the west So Roman Britain at this time, it's It's still not quite the great juggernaut that it will be in future decades. So I don't want to say it it's weaker I guess it's earlier in the story. Definitely. And you know, this is why the Bdaka's rebellion was so impactful because she had a real chance actually to drive the Romans from Britain. Their hold on the territory was quite tenuous compared to later centuries. they'd only been kind of dominant there for the past twenty years, as you say. and one of the reasons why her rebellion was initially successful is that The legate of Britannia Paulinus was off fighting rebels and Druids in the West. So you know the power was spread quite thinly. The military might was spread quite thinly over the British Isles at this point, and their control was far from certain And in fact, I realized that I rushed ahead to the family story with your last answer, but one of the key things that we know about the culture in Britain at that time was the power of the Druids So Paulinus was specifically fighting the Druids in Anglessey in Mona at this point where they had a stronghold And it's because of the hold that the Druids had religiously, but also politically and probably judicially as well. So Again, we know very little about the Druids, apart from what has come down to us through Rome who were very prejudiced about them um You know, Tacitus records both men and women in Mona fighting against Paulininess or or resisting him and Prasetagus, the father of Selena and Belenia his name means magic chief. So there's possibility that he was also a druid that far from being these purely mystical figures as they have kind of come down in popular imagination It might have been more of a kind of caste system. They were the repositories of knowledge, learning the law. power And so I made Pressaagas a Druid and I also made Selena a Druid Because this seemed like a possibility. We don't know entirely how their power structure worked, but we know that the Druids were very important and that this wasn't just a purely kind of religious thing. I guess, you know, with all ancient cultures at this time, the separation between religion and and politics and legal systems is not fully separated. And I think that's a very fair portrayal to make because the evidence is becoming more and more clear that yes, the old image that it would have just been an old men as Duids in Britain is very much being pushed aside because we know that it would probably have been powerful men and powerful women being these Duids. And as you say there with the archaeology and how difficult it is The Romans mentioned the Druids I think we can presume that there were these really important figures who are labed drruids But archaeologically it's so hard to find evidence for them surviving, so they still remain enigmatic, mysterious In those years before the revolt, when you have Pasutarus as the king of the ICNE as a client ruler with the Romans Can we imagine that they must surely have been quite a lot of interteraction between not just the Arcene royal family and the highest Romans in the land But also between everyday people in Icene territory and Romans that had settled nearby Definitely. and I think that's one of the things that makes the rebellion very complex, quite morally gy and you know, not just just a story of kind of ucky rebels and thuggish Romans is that There must have been a fair degree of intermarriage by this stage when you look at Colchester or Camodonam but Buddaka sacked and in the Buddhakan lair of destruction where everything was burned you know, some of the surviving treasures from that time, like the Fenneic horde suggest You know, the suggestion is that that might have been treasure belonging to a family in which the woman, the wife was British and the father a Roman veteran and that perhaps many of the women in the town might well have been local married to Roman settlers whose children were both Roman and British and where their allegiances might have lain some of the women or the children or even peoplee who had made a living or a business out of trading with the settlers collaborating with them. it all becomes very murky and messy, I think And you know, the Romans's first push into Britain was Nght military, it was more via trade of trying to sort of soften up the native you know, rulers and people by gifts and and interchange and trade So The idea that they were wholly separate, I think is not correct at this time period. There would have been quite a lot of muddled communities going on at this point. if muddled up was not quite the right that I was looking for, but Yeah, communities where the lines were perhaps less clear. Having said that, I would say that Colchester which was the most powerful colony or colonia in Roman Britain at this time. was symbolic of oppression and colonialism in the sense of this massive temple um that had been built. that was built by the local people, they were forced to pay for it and it was a massive, massive monument that would have dominated the landscape And yeah, bob It's not surprising that this is the target of Boudica's rage, it's what she destroyed. It's the current foundations of Colchester Castle today is the foundations of that Roman temple, but she raised it to the ground. because it was such a sort of powerful symbol of oppression. So Yeah, we don't know exactly where that line was between intermarriage, a mixed community versus a very imposed settler colonial rule on Britain at this time Yes, I of some local Britons buying into it and staying in this very clearly much more Roman settlement built on top of an old Iron Age British centre as well, but very much now the Roman image. And as you say, the building of that massive temple Claudius And one last question before we delve into the revolt itself LD, once again kind of setting the scene of The IC landscape You mentioned earlier that location of Fetford So people can go today Is he believe that was a key center of the Iicini at the time of the revolt. So it is thought And one of the things that's interesting, I mean, anybody who wants to sort of read more about the archeology of this periods are really recommend Duncan Macay's Echoands. but It's thought that the Romans didn't just destroy this center that was built at the time of Prasetagus and Budica. they essentially uprooted it. They dismantled the foundations. you know, the wooden stakes were taken from the ground rather than just burnt. The idea that it was completely erased In my version of the Rebellion and its aftermath, I have them before this point, before they dismantle it, using it as a Roman garrison, in a sense of kind of completely taking it over, repurposing it, Romanizing it polluting it in a sense, because it was likely a religious center because there was this artificial grove that was built there. and again, because it's so nebulous, exactly what went on with the Druidic religion. You know, Clinney writes about the importance of the oak tree, the importance of forest to the ancient Celtic peoples of Britain and the rest of continental Europe So, you know The idea that there was this artificial grove here, there was this massive multi story roundhouse political and religious center But the majority of the people of the ICNe Let's imagine that as a key center of the royal family of Prasutagas, Buddaka and her two daughters, their two daughters and then Elsewhere, as you mentioned, people in their roundhouses, smaller farming settlements dotted across around the landscape In smaller farmstead settlements, there's the majority are farmers in that. The majority of farmers and they also on the Norfolk coast, you know, quite a lot of industry around salts. so salt extraction, which was very valuable And it's thought you know one of the punishments for the ICini after the rebellion was haaving their ability to extract salt from the marshes was taken away So That's possibly one of the reasons the Icenae were quite a wealthy people within ancient Britain was their access to salt. I mean the Romans salary that the soldiers were paid in comes from the word for salt because it was such a valuable commodity. so Although it's an agricultural society at this time, you know, they did have means of having quite a lot of clout in trading terms with some of their materials Let's get to the revolt itself. So Edie, can you refresh us with How this revolt breaks out? How is it linked to oppressive targets to Boudica and her daughters and Yes The Romans deciding that enough is enough So there are two sort of main accounts of the rebellion. There's the one that I drew most heavily on because it's almost contemporary. So it's written by Tacitus, whose father in law A Gricola was actually You actually fought against Buddicca with the Roman forces of Paulinus So Although, you know, Tastis' speeches he gives to Budaka, No ag Grikla wasn't there with a notepad, writing it down in a presumably a language he didn't even speak But nonetheless, I think, you know, he was a contemporary witness to the fighting and to the general mayhem of this period. And then we have Cassius Dio, who is writing, you know significantly later and it's a much more lurid account One area where they agree is on the idea that there was a great deal of financial extortion going on So of course, I've chosen to focus on the family drama aspect for my novel Looking at the history of it, it's likely that widespread discontent at financial oppression was going on. You know peopleeople were forced to take out loans, those loans without being called, they were being forced to pay for building projects like the Temple of Claudius in Colchester local men were being rounded up and taken off to be kind of conscripted into Rome's armies. the natural resources that the land were being taken, people were being stolen from. So it was a There was a lot of unhappiness at how things were being done. And within this context, then Tacitus tells us there was this ruling family in the Ieni heartlands, which is kind of Norfolk Suffolk, some of Essex, possibly some of Cambrideshire as well. I think it's really interesting that It is thought that Prasetarus and Budica themselves, potentially even before the rebellion had different attitudes towards Rome So the idea is interesteresting. Yeah. so that which is very interesting. So the idea is that perhaps Buddhaka was always more warmongering, had a more negative feeling about Rome. Prasetagus did not join in The rebellion of Caraticus some years previously against Rome, that was an earlier rebellion against Roman rule in Britain. And so it's possible there was some tension within the family and I chose to portray that as the idea that Both of them kind of had a favourite out of the two daughters P Pracetarus's favourite in my version is Selena, who is the eldest daughter. She's a drruid She's very like her father and I made her the main character of the book because I also thought it was interesting. Boudica's daughter had a more strained relationship with her very famous mother. And then the second daughter, Belenia, the younger one I made more aligns to her mother. whatever the truth of this family, we know there were these two daughters. And the reason why some historians think There may have been tension within the family itself is the fact that Prressatogas left the kingdom the daughters and not to his wife because Potentially he thought that that might not go down well with Rome. Perhaps Buddica was already known as being quite hostile, or perhaps Prresetagus knew she was quite hostile Either way, he left the kingdom to his two daughters on the understanding they would be client rulers. for Rome because the kingdom was jointly left to them and the emmperor Nero it's hard to see how the Romans took such profound offense at this, or whether it was just an excuse for more stealing and financial extortion as to why it provoked this incredibly violent response from procurator, who was the kind of financial admin guy in Britain at this time. Paulinus was the military and judicial commander who was off fighting the Druids and whales And Dessianus sent these soldiers to have raped the two daughters of Buddacar and have her flogged and that this is what provoked Budacur into launching The rebellion But presumably the reason why she was able to muster so many enraged Icene and also Triinovantes people, so she didn't just muster troops in her own tribe is because it wasn't just about one family's woes, it was much more widespread discontent than that. So although You know, it's useful to pin the story on a specific family drama. There may have been many similar stories of outrages against you know, people who were aware of their neighbourors being stolen from or their their uncle was killed or you know, their sister was raped, or Violence and aggression by Rome was probably quite widespread But how does Boudhaka Use this to In her to encourage more and more Britons to join her You know, kind of that part of the story alongside the fact that it was probably more than just grievances to the Ryal family local peoples had also suffered at the hands of the Romans too How is it portrayed that she She uses the assaults and her daughters to gain more support for her revolt. So inacitus is telling of it, it is very much like this is such an outrage It's an outrage on every sense of, you know, coming into somebody's home and behaving this way. The fact that they're girls Tacitus portrays it as a kind of outrage of virgins, which would be a very culturally resonant thing from Rome like the rape of Lucretia. The Iceni were a different culture, so I saw it more as They came into the house and they stole the daughter's honor as warriors. So a key scene I have in the book is the daughters fighting to regain their honor as warriors that they didn't have the same notion of sexual honour as the Romans But they did have a notion of honor of having been defeated by Rome and needing to rectify that In terms of what Buddika actually said to people and how she used it reallyally know But I think it's, you know, it's a safe assumption that the account by tacitus of showing up with her daughter saying, this is what happened to us You know, this will also happen to you. It probably has already happened to you. Look at how monstrous Rome is. they even do this to women, you know, there's no getting away from their tyranny if you want to be free, you know, you have to fight for it. I think she said says in Tastus has her say something like, you know It's better to be dead than to be enslaved And you know the historic Buddhaka is believed, well Tusa says she took her own life after defeat. So which again fits very much into the ancient world mentality and again in terms of my own book was something I wanted to challenge that Selena does not make that choice to take her own life. It would be quite a short book otherwise. I wanted to explore what it might mean to survive. the rebellion and to deal with the aftermath and the compromise and yeah, all the issues that that would throw up It' always interesting when tackling the story of the Buddhakim reol because as you've made clear LD, our surviving literary sources from it are both Roman, one writing quite close to the time and as you said, a family relation who may well have been in them Combat against Spudica And then one writing much, much later. And yet both of them give her speeches And it also feels like both of them This procurator that you mentioned earlier, LlldD, the person who seems to be very much at the forefront at least in the sources, as the figure once pressed Taras dies Weave deciding How dare you your two daughters command of the control of this particular territory of the Iceni He's the one who oversees the kind of the infamy, all of these horrific acts Do you get a sense there at all Eity that The Romans are trying to portray this as This was one Stupid Gvernor Doing this whilst the Roman commander in charge of the troops is far away. And then this guy has just decided to do this. he's done it on his own back and then he has caused this massive outrage led by Buddhaka W does the doors and so on The Romans are trying to even at the same time in their sources as they're kind of building Buddakarav. They're actually kind of creating a scapegoat definitely of their own. Yeah in the procurator. And I have to say, I find it quite convenient to go down that path as well. But if we were to look at it as journalists and my other hat on, I used to be a journalist for many years. Wking for ITV, yeah, it's very convenient, isn't it? It was all this guy And you know, I think it's fair enough to imagine that perhaps Paulinus over in Wales Purely selfish reasons probably would not have wanted to be causing a lot of trouble on a second front, so perhaps he wasn't involved But it's entirely possible that you know back in Rome, If Nero was aware of the will, maybe he was like, well, this is an outrage. no I don't want it. I mean, we can't know. there was quite a fair amount of devolution in terms of provinces at this time and decisions that people took. But equally, as you say you know, having kind of one bad apple is a better story for Rome, isn't it than the idea that the whole structure of command in Britain was rotten and oppressive at this time. Dessianus did flee to Gaul afterwards, so Okay Its w does a little bit worse. A little bit guilty This is all part of the joy and the frustration of dealing with very ancient sources is not only have we got the passage of time and the patchiness of the records, there's also you know, that ice and Cassiuso or or any of the chroniclers, they have their own propaganda, their own access to grind their own constraints as to who they want to offend, who they want to make look bad. I would say, however, in the case of Tastus, I mean he doesn't hold back making Nero look like a fiend. I don't think he would have minded too much, but let me get on Hero. Sobe maybe the procurator was particularly horrendous It could be and does this then explain that those motives Budica's early actions because ED Once all of these Ironge Britons are gathering around Buddhica, as this figurehead, you mentioned Icene, but also the neighbouring tribe of the time, the Triinovantes and so on, all these people are coalescing around Buddhica Tens of thousands. Where do they direct their anger first and foremost So quite of isolated forts and farmsteads and settlers who had ventured further into the countryside before they overwhelmed Colchester I think there is some debate as to whether Bdaka might sacked even more towns like Chelmmsford. But yes, I mean, the traditional route that we believe she took was, you know, after mustering everyone rampaging down towards Colchester, destroying Colchester, heading to London, destroying London. orbans posossibly not completely destroying St. Albans'. Oh, and I've managed to miss out her very famous destruction of pretty much the entirety of the Ninth Lgion between destroying Colchester and London widespread destruction Then Paulinus defeated her after St. Albans in you know there's a lot of debate about where that final battle was Again, I went with Duncan's argument in Echoands that that's probably a lot closer to St. Albans than was traditionally thought, just also because why was Vutica runum paging as far north as Peterborough at this point, you know, the doesn't seem as likely. So Regardless, it's an very intense period of destruction in a fairly concentrated area. And I think of all the sackings It's London and Colchester that generate the most fascination, I would say. I mean, for me in particular, the destruction of London is really interesting given it's the current capital city and, you know one of our most famous kind of British folk heroes destroyed the Capital city. It's just Because of course at this point, it wasn't a native capital city, it was a colony that had been imposed on Britain Absolutely. and a colony that had only been founded less than twenty years earlier. Yes. rememember to to Dominate Pering about this. But at the same time, although Colchester is the symbolic capital where the Romans had received the surrenders of British chiefs already by this time, it feels like London has actually outgrown the importance of Colchester and so you know, as the key port coming in for goods coming in and so on Boudika sacking that. That's a statement in itself That is such a big moment because you feel as you read the story of Buddhaka, as you say also takes out part of the ninth Lgion, a big part on the way You know, it feels like when you're reading this and I don't know if you felt this when you were doing the novel as well, Eediting presumly her daughters are with her when she's leading this army and is growing at the same time after all these successes and sacking That Once you've got control of a place like London or will destroy that I mean, Roman reinforcements aren't going to get there in time. It feels like she's winning. It feels like she's so close to kicking the Romans out of Britain at that time Yeah, she was. and I think in sort of Roman imagination, only maybe Hannibal is a more sort of horrifying figure in terms of the what if of humiliation because Hanel obviously threatened Rome in Italy itself. but but still as a kind of powerful foreign leader that you know, almost exacts the utter humiliation of defeat, Buddhaka is pretty high on their list. And she didn't succeed for a number of reasons. I mean, some of the neighbouring tribes don't seem to have supported her. So you've got Toggy Dubas or Cogy Dubmus down in Chichester and Fishbourne Palace, which makes an appearance in the book. He probably got Fishbourne Palace as a reward for not joining Buddica. You know, She wasn't Cartimandua in the north with the Brigantes also stayed loyal to Rome The rebellion did not happen in all places all at once. So there's that aspect, there's also the sort of the battle techniques. A, we only have the Roman account of this I think it is worth bearing in mind that Agricola probably was present at that battle that Tacitus records. And so Buddaka was defeated in the end probablyro for a variety of factors, there was the fact that Whilst this rebellion was going on, probably they weren't able to look after the harvest, or it's possible that Rome was destroying. The crops as a means to use famine as a weapon Either way It was going to run out of steam at some point, possibly, in terms of people running out of food and supplies And then you've got just the battle tactics, whereas you know surprising the ninth Legion Well Sacking a city was quite different from the very calculated strategy of Paulinus who made the decision to desert London. you know, he arrived from Wales and London realized I cannot defend this place You know, destroyed the bridge So it would kind of minimize the damage peopleople potentially were bunched on ships. that they could hang out in the river and be out of reach of the rebels But essentially it was damage limitation and anyone who was capable of coming with him left and fled, other people were just abandoned which was pretty shameful, but also suggests a type of ruthless pragmatism for him as a strategist. and he chose the location of the lost and and he used the landscape against Boudaka and her forces. by having them hemmed in by trees they would have to have a very narrow head meeting as opposed to a situation where because he had far fewer troops than her. I mean, we don't have to believe the Romans insane numbers that they always loveved to fling out there like a million and ten Barbarian million enemy troops. Yeah and three moments or whatever. But nonetheless, I think it's fair to say they were probably quite heavily outnumbered and So he used the terrain against Buddacca, He used the tactics against Buddacca that in a very narrow path, that kind of Roman technique of sticking very close together and forming a wedge and breaking through the enemy line Also the Britons really didn't help themselves. they hemmed themselves in around the back. they had a kind of picnic going on. they'd got all the wagons because they had a very different concept of warfare and perhaps also because it was a rebellion. they've got wagons full of kids and families and grandmas and granddads all you know, having their picnic for the day, you know, looking forward to watching Rome be defeated But what it meant was they couldn't then retreat. they were penned in by their own wagons and unable and unable to withdraw And so it was a particularly horrific daughter of everyone that the Romans could kill at that point. And is it in that chaos, you know, that final battle which Weve mentioned Duncan Maci a couple of times. away Sh Mat, we've done an in depth, very, very nery discussion of the battle itself and the tactics. so we'll spare that the moment Eity, but is it It's in that chaos when Oh all of a sudden, the Romans are coming down the hill. The Romans have won Is it in that chaos Hudica and her daughters disappear that we kind of we don't know what happens next in her story Yes, I mean, Tasa says that she took her own life. Either she was killed or She, you know, it was incredibly common in the ancient world. That was something the Romans and the Iceni seemed to have had in common was this notion that it was better to take your own life than be then be defeated I just want to explore the aftermath Elegy and what happens because it's really interesting, a couple of things you mentioned earlier that I'd like to pick up on The first being the fact that not all Iron Age Britons, not all Iron age chiefs joined Bouica and her daughters in the revolt And you mentioned the figure of Tediess and Fishbourne Roman Palace, which is one of my favorite places in the world. So can you explain Fishbourne Roman Palace and how this aligns with a more pro Roman Iron age British chief ruler at that time So yes, I mean, the majority of my novel actually is not with the rebellion. that's really just the first third, the other two thirds of the aftermath in Britain and then the aftermath in Rome at the immperial Court of Nero. because often happened very realistic outcome for a daughter of a high profile warrior like Boudaka would be that Selina would be taken either in triumph or as a kind of war booty gift for the emperor Nero. so that's the route that I decided to go down. That's what happened to Caraticus, for instance, an earlier rebel who managed to avoid execution and when his when his his freedom to live as a kind of Well, I mentioned him almost without wanting to spoiler it. But yet, how would he then live haaving gained his freedom and being given a pension in Rome this rebel, what sort of life would he build himself? I mean, there's a whole other fascinating book that I could have written about Caraticus, but I wanted to think about Buddica's daughter in that terms and the dynamic of being a woman, but returning to the history, so we know that The aftermath for the Icini was absolutely horrific It was incredibly brutal repression by Paulinus and the Roman forces in the east of England, so brutal in fact that A change of policy and a change of command was needed to kind of then reconciliate people And thinking of Cocky Dubnas or Togy Dubas in Fishborne Roman Palace, You know, that was another form of Roman control to show, okay, these are the benefits if you comply It wasn't just a personal reward for Tocy Dougas, it's also by building this phenomenal Palace in Britain for a loyal British client king is a means of saying this is what you could have if you play nice. and you let us take all your stuff And basically, you know Let us get on with oppressing your lands, you can have a nice mansion. And Cartimandua as well, I mean her story is absolutely fascinating in that Rome actually came and rescued her some kind of Roman swWap team took her out after There was a rebellion against her by her own people much later, I mean you know significantly after the Buddhakan revolt. There was quite a close tie between The Romans and the British collaborators and one of the things I wanted to explore in the book is the choices that Selena as the daughter of the two historical figures of Prasetagus the Cient King and Bdaca the British rebel you know What might her personal attitude to Rome have been I imagined her you know, speaking Latin because her father has encouraged her to learn about Roman culture and Roman society and You know, when you see the impact of a rebellion fails and the appalling suffering that ensues Does that make you want to seek for more vengeance? Does it make you feel that vengeance is actually a lose lose game. you know, do you continue the cycle of violence, this endless trading and atrocities Do you seek a compromise And for me, that was actually part of the book and the source of my fascination with with the story of Budaka's daughters and in the particular daughter that I chose to focus on was what might that relationship with Rome have looked like afterwards? We know there were these highigh profile Roman figures like Togy Dougnas, like Cartim Mandua who collaborated with Rome. We know there was Caraticus batting around in the Roman capital doing his thing, you know, living living the whole life, not living the whole life Yeah, how did people adapt? How did they compromise? What might that have felt like emotionally to compromise? If you were the daughter of Buddaka Keeping on that, I just w want to ment one more thing about fishbom. It is not just a palace, it's like the largest Roman residential building north of the Alps and they just designed They just slap bang very close to the West Sussex coast. They just put a massive villa Designed for the Mediterranean climate as Southern England. Gets me, they must have been frozen Well, that's the thing, that's the thing. Aually, when you look at it and you learn more about the architecture of Fishbor Women Palace, It's really not designed for that part of the world And yet it's a state. it's it. it could be a reward for this local ruler as you say but it shows how the Romans it cozy up to certain rulers and others, you know, those who For whatever reason And whether it is, as we mentioned earlier in the case of Buddhaka It could be a bit more of a rogue procurator who decides to take Matter into his own hands and then causes this outbreak with the atrocities that follow It's a nice insight into how The experience of the Romans in those early decades for those at the top men or women, kings or queens of these very on age peoples It did very much differ Cast Mer and talkking dumbness almost kind of are on one end. And then Buddakus is on the other extreme. It's f. No, that's absolutely fair enough, I think. And then Caraticus' some extraordinary figure in the middle, you know, the rebel who's brought to Rome in chains but manages to convince Claudius to free him and then lives a retired life in Rome it's extraordinary. and I think The thing I also wanted to explore with Selena is that it was incredibly common at this time for conquered people to them you know women, in particular be obliged to marry you know, Roman settlers or Roman veterans. And so the The relationships become even more murky, morally gray and problematic And I do think that It's so tempting with the distance of history to tell stories of goodies and baddies and you know, heroic narrative arcs that we can feel good about as opposed to thinking about just how Psychologically messy this period must have been also potentially for some of the Romans as well. You know one of the key things I wanted to portray in this book is the initial section is very much just within the Iceni world and the points of view of Buddhaka and her daughter, Selena But then in the later sections I have points of view of Paulinus and Selina And really, you know, they see one another as barbarians, they see one another's cultures as savage and strange. And so That's how We see it when it's through their eyes, but then we see theirs as the norm and just Yeah, just trying to think about the ways in which different people might have found common ground and outside of the elite as well, as we were talking earlier, with the sack of Colchester, you know, Some people might have gone into business with the Romans had arrived you know, they might have worked for them as craftspeople, they might have done joint enterprises for all we know. you know, there could have been All sorts of stuff happening at all different stages of the social scale Although it must be said that the Romans were pretty xenophobic about the Britons at this period To read them th much you mentioned how The Roman revenge on the Icenae is pretty, brutal in those immediate years. So completely wrap this up, Eddie Do we have any idea of Roman Ien any relations past that point? Is it clear that the Romans really No more royal family, no more kind of line of Boudicer or Pressy taras after this point But is there more of a clear direct Roman control over what was Ieni lands in the decades following But they didn't rebel again. You know It's hard to say exactly. I mean, there was this period of famine and horrific repression after the revolt. it seems like you know, they may not have been able to use their their ability to sell salt But also we then have the much more conciliatory approach of pllassicianus the procurator who came after the one that soldiers off to attack Boudaka and he was actually of Gaallic descent, so potentially had better understanding of what it meant to be Roman and something else simultaneously. You took a much more concilatory approach. So you know one would hope that It wasn't just endless Lora. But it was still pretty hairy in Britain throughout this period, you know, and then in the year of the four Emperors, which is I show in Rome, so Selina's present for another civil warar, but this time in Italy is kind of where my book ends. and in Britain at this time, you know, there was a civil war rebellion going on against Cartimanda in the North and then You've got, you know, further campaigns against Scotland and the Caledonians, you know, so they were still pretty hairy time. it wasn't a settled province for quite some while Andde, there's been really interesting insight into your work How do you find it? You are primarily historical fiction author, you've written many very, very successful novels As a historical fiction water How do you find it approaching these stories you know, centered on The accounts of Roman writers withith so many holes still in them and creating an exciting narrative from them centered around characters like Buddhaka's daughter. one particular one you focus Otherwise we just don't have too much information about and yet are attached to one of the most Well known, well remembered events in ancient Romano British history. So Passion is really thinking about the lives of women in this period. and I do think that we're in a really exciting period of scholarship at this point. You know we were talking earlier about the archaeological discoveries that are suggesting Women held a great deal more power and that actually they've been buried not only by sexism that was contemporary to them, but like in subsequent centuries, just this assumption that women could not in a certain way. and I think that the archaeology and the scholarship now In the non fiction world iss absolutely challenging that assumption very significantly. And so as a novelist find that really fascinating to kind of take that and run with it. And for me, the huge pull and draw of writing about the ancient world is both the fact that this time is so alien and one cannot impose your own contontemporary value system or morality onto it You have to kind of try and approach the ancient world to a degree on its own terms So You know, it's a morally fascinating process in the sense that of course some of the things that you see are absolutely abhorrent, but you can't apply the same value judgments because the way people thought and behaved them was just so fundamentally different And yet at the same time pects of human nature do not change. in the same way. So you know, there are certain emotions that are timeless. and this is why the story of Buddhaka still resonates, the idea of revenge, of love, of grief. of rage, of justice, you know, these would still have been drivers and motivators for people personally and politically. And so of trying to balance those two things to have a conversation with the ancient past. That's what truly interests me, I guess, in writing fiction Well, Edie, last but certainly not least, your new book all abouts this period in Roman history, Ran British history It is cold Buddaka's daughter That's what it says on the tin. It's called Budica'saughter. It's out in paperback and it tells the story of Selena the unnamed but now named eldest daughter of Britain's legendary warrior quQeen and her life, her survival, her adventures, what might have happened to her during the rebellion and in particular what might have happened to her afterwards. Edity, great as always, fantastic to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the Ancients Absolute joy. Thankk you so much, Jristine, lovely chatting with you as always. Well there you go. there was LD Harper shining a light on that ever popular topic. is Buddaka. Thankk you so much for listening. If you would like more on Buddaka, well, we've got good news for you because we have recorded several episodes about her over the years. If you want a deep dive into the strategy, into the battles of Buddaka and the theories around where her final stand against the Romans might have taken place Then I would strongly recommend our episode with Duncan Makai on that very subject. We call it Boudaka's Battle of Britain. And we've also done an episode all about the ancient city of Camaludinan, which is modern day Colchester and Boudaka's pillaging, her destruction of that city at