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- [00:02]
Charlotte Higgins
In stature, she was very tall. In appearance, most terrifying, in the glance of her eyes, most fierce. And her voice was harsh. A great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips. Around her neck was a large golden necklace, and she wore a tunic of divers colors over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire. She now grasped a spear to aid in terrifying all beholders.
- [00:41]
Mary Beard
That is part of Cassius Dio's description of Boudicca, who we left at the end of the last episode on the brink of victory, marching with her army on London. This is Instant Classics, the podcast that uncovers the ancient stories still shaping the world today. I'm Mary Beard.
- [01:03]
Charlotte Higgins
And I'm Charlotte Higgins. Each week we dive into the myths, dramas and characters of the classical world to discover what they still mean to us.
- [01:12]
Mary Beard
Now this episode. Boudicca, the Woman who Defied an Empire, Part 2.
- [01:30]
Anita Anand
To some, he is the revolutionary hero who restored China to its rightful place on the global stage.
- [01:36]
William Duranpool
To others, he's a brutal despot accused of presiding over more civilian deaths than either Stalin or Hitler.
- [01:42]
Anita Anand
Mao Zedong has one of the most recognizable faces in the world, yet he started life in a massive provincial village.
- [01:49]
William Duranpool
A rebel son who hated his father survived a 6,000 mile walk across China and rose to become a figure of titanic proportions from Empire.
- [01:59]
Anita Anand
The Goal Hangar World History Show. I'm Anita Anand.
- [02:02]
William Duranpool
And I'm William Duranpool.
- [02:04]
Anita Anand
In this six part series, we're joined by world renowned expert Rana Mitter to explore the life of the father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.
- [02:14]
William Duranpool
We'll track his rise from a bookstore owner to a guerrilla comm. And we'll witness his ruthless elimination to secure total power. And we'll descend into the dark experiment of the Cultural Revolution, a time when ancient temples were burnt, children denounced their parents, and a nation worshipped a mango as a sacred relic.
- [02:35]
Anita Anand
Subscribe to Empire wherever you get your podcasts to listen now.
- [02:40]
Mary Beard
Okay, Charlotte, we got Boudicca marching on London. The administration there is terrified. One of the senior officials of the Roman province, the procurator decides he's going to scalp her and he flees to Gaul to save his own skin. And the Governor, meanwhile, is not very close because as you'll remember, he's been off tackling druids in Anglesey. His name is Suetonius Paulinus. Nothing to do with the historian Suetonius Guy of the same name. So what does he do?
- [03:21]
Charlotte Higgins
Well, he's finished with the druids and he's making his way back towards the southeast. But it turns out, to the absolute horror of the people living in London, it becomes clear that he is not going to defend London, he's going to abandon London. And Boudicca arrives in London with her army. She's on it. She finds an almost deserted city. Anyone who can flee has fled. But as is always the case in war situations, there are people left and those people are the vulnerable, they are the old, they are children. What does Boudicca do? Boudicca burns London just as she had burned Camilla Dunham and slaughters anyone who's left there. And you know what? We know that she burnt London because just as we have described, there is this thick layer in the archaeology in Camilla Dunham, as we mentioned in the previous episode, a thick layer of burnt matter. There is also a thick layer of burnt matter in the archaeological record in London. And I myself, Mary, have held in my hand from the stores in the Museum of London, a bit of burn burnt stuff, which I was told by a very senior archaeologist was burnt matter. From this moment in Britain's early Roman history, where London, you know, the 20 year old city of London, was burnt
- [04:53]
Mary Beard
to the ground, you can see why Suetonius Paulinus abandons it, because Camillo Genum had been an official Roman town, London's a commercial centre, but it doesn't have that Roman status that Camilla Genum had. And so a strategic awful in some ways, but understandable decision. I have to say that the stories of the brutality of Boudicca in what she does to the civilian population and to the women of these places is truly awful. I mean, her torturings, you know, are probably too nasty to put on the podcast. And they may not be true, but you have a vision from reading Tacitus along with Dayo of a truly ghastly set of campaigns with what we would call war crimes perpetrated by, by both sides. Whether that's true or not, there is then a sense that what Boudicca does is move onto the city of Verulamium, which was a formally established Roman town at the time. It's near modern St Albans. The evidence for this kind of great big burning layer that you see in Colchester and in London isn't so clear in St Albans. So it looks as if it was a rather. There was rather less impact on Veru Layman than on the other cities. But still we've got, as far as Suetonius Pauline, as the governor is concerned, we have got a rebel queen on
- [06:44]
Charlotte Higgins
the rampage absolutely running rings around the Romans and flattening and destroying and killing all around these Roman settlements. These burgeoning Roman settlements in the southeast of England have essentially been destroyed, flattened. They are burning wreckage, burning wreckage. But Suetonius Paulinus, with this battle seasoned army that has just defeated the Druids in Anglesey, is on his way. And also, I think you get. I mean, maybe I'm just reading too much into, you know, I'm projecting, but I do get the sense that Suetonius Pauline is part of the reason for abandoning London, is that the Romans need a nice big battleground in order to achieve great defeats on their enemies. I imagine that with his military brain, he would have wanted to meet Boudicca on a battlefield of his own choosing, because that is where pitched battle, where the Romans can, you know, get their troops in line and do their stuff with their shields and their tortoises. Their tortoises, meaning their kind of arrangement of shields rather than the small attractive animals that that's when they can really defeat people. They're not very good with guerrilla warfare, but they're really good if they're meeting someone in battle.
- [08:07]
Mary Beard
They're very bad actually at dealing with what we would call guerrilla warfare, but they're pretty invincible against troops like Boudicca's. If you can get everybody out onto a big field, they will win, which is indeed what happens. It's at the beginning of the run up to this, the final battle. You have no idea where this took place. Archaeologists and antiquarians for centuries have tried to work out where Suetonius Paullinus eventually defeated Boudicca. No success really. But it's in the run up to that battle that we have in Cassius Dio. We have perhaps the most extraordinary and explicit speech put into the mouth of Boudicca denouncing the effects of Roman tyranny. Boudicca, 99.9% certainly didn't say anything like this. It's a highly rhetorical Roman device. The opening of the battle is seen in terms of the rival commanders kind of pitching to their troops.
- [09:25]
Charlotte Higgins
It's an amazingly beautiful and exciting moment. This, you know, passionate appeal and the sense that she's fighting for freedom, she's fighting because her daughters have been raped. And, you know, she's a woman, but she's born of great men. But she's not fighting for her kingdom, she's fighting for these people who've been abused and for the freedom of her people. You know, it's an invention, of course it's an invention, but it's a great invention.
- [09:53]
Mary Beard
And the upshot is carnage. The Britons get trapped, they can't escape. Everybody is slaughtered. Tacitus says 80,000 Britons were slaughtered. Now, you should always be very, very careful with any casualty figures. I mean, they're difficult enough in the modern world, they're impossible in the ancient world. And 80,000 casualties is not plausible. But in Tacitus's account, basically what he's saying is lots and lots of people were slaughtered. The Britons didn't get away. Boudicca takes poison and she kills herself. Now, I think what's interesting, and this runs through all these different accounts that we have, they have the same basic narrative, but the details are always a bit different. Tacitus is the only one who says that Boudica killed herself. Dio doesn't really comment on how Boudicca died. Tacitus also is the only one who said that the children of Boudicca were raped. So you can clearly see in the different accounts, different, slightly different spins being put on this, but nevertheless, they all agree that Boudicca had been brutally put down. Interestingly, just to kind of flash forward, what we're then told happened by Tacitus is that Suetonius Paulinus, once he had secured victory, starts an appalling campaign of reprisals against the native Brits. He doesn't say, okay, we've won. Let's try and put this province back together. He goes at it really brutally. So brutally that one of the other officials in the province becomes a whistleblower, and the whistleblower sneaks on Suetonius Paullinus to the Emperor Nero, who pretty soon replaces Suetonius Paulinus to try to bring some order back to the province. So in the end, Suetonius Paulinus has his victory, but he is eased out at a convenient moment because he's been so brutal.
- [12:23]
Charlotte Higgins
Yeah, it's a pretty sad story. In fact, it's a grim story. And that scene, it really stays with you, I think, if you read it in Tacitus, of this army, Boudicca's army, which is trapped, it cannot escape because they have effectively trapped themselves in place because all their baggage train, all their wagons, according to Tacitus, have sort of trapped them so that they can't. And, yeah, they're just slaughtered to a man, woman and child. And it's absolutely horrific. But, Mary, I think let's. Let's have a little break now. But I think after the break, we're going to discuss the significance of the Boudicca story, which is almost more exciting to me than the Story itself. Look, Mary, I think one of the things that's so gripping to me and so interesting about Boudicca, and actually not just Boudicca, but other enemies of Rome who are characterized by Roman historians is, you know, how few cultures in their history writing, and they're writing about themselves, create heroes out of their enemies. People who are, you know, are terrifying and wrong in many ways and commit atrocities like Boudicca. But at the same time, you know, Boudicca is presented as this articulate, in some ways, heroic figure. And that's just such an unusual thing for any culture to do in relation to its enemies. I mean, it's a bit like making a kind of articulate figure out of Osama bin Laden and figuring him as like the troubled, ambivalent hero of some kind of Hollywood movie. I mean, that's not happened yet, and I'm not sure it's ever going to happen.
- [14:12]
Mary Beard
Well, if you did it, you probably get a knock, knock on the door from the police about if you were going to come out with a Boudicca like vision in public of some of our great enemies. We don't. We, for whatever reason, have lost the ability to. To both detest the enemy and Tacitus and Cassius Dio certainly in some ways detest Boudicca, but also simultaneously to see why she might have done and thought what she did, they make the imaginative leap of saying, what did it feel like to be Boudicca? And we really almost never do that. I mean, I think that's in some ways helped by the conventions of ancient history writing in the ancient world itself. And we sometimes find it very odd that in ancient historical accounts, characters in the account get given speeches which they couldn't possibly ever have said, but the ancient history writer is sort of expected to give his characters a voice. Now, once you say, I've got to give Boudicca the speech, I need to give Boudicca a speech before that final battle. What is she going to say to her troops? Well, that in a sense pushes you to imagine what it is like to be Boudicca. And this rather strange habit that we do sometimes think is very odd that people start speaking throughout ancient Greek and Roman history writers, they start saying things that basically been made up by the history writer. It's a wonderfully productive way of getting empathy, of seeing things from different viewpoints. And that's just what you find with Boudicca. You get the complaints about Roman imperialism, things that these Roman writers had to make themselves think about, whether it's violence Exploitation, or particularly in the case of Cassius Dio, whether it's the idea that they're being getting economically done over by the Romans, whether they're getting. Being made to cough up cash for the Temple of Claudius, or whether they'd been loaned money at ridiculous rates of interest, et cetera, et cetera, it opens up a world of where we can see the Romans thinking what it was like not to be them.
- [16:57]
Charlotte Higgins
And I think that's really interesting, really interesting. And I think then what happens when the Boudicca story, historians like Tacitus start to get ready in Britain in, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years later, so we're talking really from the early modern period onwards and right through the Victorian age right up to the present day, then it becomes even more fascinating to me because, you know, you have a British audience. Quite a lot of the period that I've just described in modern British history, with its own empire, which is quite often figured as being, you know, the precursors in having this kind of great empire, are the Romans. And in some way we are Roman. And then on the other hand, this kind of heroic, but kind of terrifying, barbaric female figure who lurks in your history and might provide you at some points a model for female rule, but if it's a model for female rule, it's a really troubling one, a really terrifying one. So if you say Margaret Thatcher is like Boudicca, that's difficult for Margaret Thatcher in some ways. In some ways, it's great for Margaret Thatcher. There's a sort of doubleness in the way that later British people get to look at Boudicca, you know, whose side? You know, if you boil that down in modern British history, Boudicca presents you with this question, whose side are we on? Are we on the side of the. The ancient inhabitants of these islands of Britain, who were very palpably not us in any meaningful sense, but anyway, the Celts who lived in Britain in the first century ce, are we on their side? Are they us in some way, or are we the sort of apparently civilized, militaristic empire holding Romans? And that's a really complicated set of questions, especially when you put this female
- [18:56]
Mary Beard
figure in it, and people feel very strongly about it. When, whenever I have said in the past that, quite frankly, awful as this is to say, I wouldn't have fancied very much living under the rule of Queen Boudicca, I get, you know, I get attacked on social media, I get emails. You know, Boudicca was our national. Is our national Hero. What are you saying? Are you siding with the Romans, then? Well, actually, I'm saying it's quite hard to know whose side you're on between Boudicca and the Romans. The stories of the atrocities of Boudicca do match the stories of the atrocities of the Romans. And so they leave us in this wonderful historical, exciting, actually historical dilemma. And that comes up, actually, even in the name. I mean, because you're talking about female rulers. Well, if we understand what in early British language, the name Boudicca meant, it meant something to do with victory. So she's got the same name as Queen Victoria.
- [20:05]
Charlotte Higgins
Yeah, and that's so, so thrilling and fascinating. At the beginning of part one of this little series, I mentioned this extraordinary statue of Boudicca and her daughters, which is in London on the embankment of the Thames. It's a vast and kind of impressive and terrifying creation. It's sort of Boudicca and her daughters in a chariot. The chariot is galloping towards the palace of Westminster rather threateningly. And Mary. That was erected in honor of Queen Victoria, wasn't it?
- [20:40]
Mary Beard
Well, sort of. I mean, it was certainly sponsored very much by Prince Albert, Victoria's husband. It was started by the famous sculptor Thorneycroft in Britain. It had a very long history. Thornycroft himself died before it was ever cast into bronze. He started it in the 1850s. It isn't put up until the early 20th century in bronze, but it is an attempt to encapsulate what Boudicca might mean. And as I said, Prince Albert takes a very close interest in it. I mean, nobody could agree to start with where to put it. That was a problem. Albert wanted it high up on the. The entrance way to Hyde park in London. Other people wanted it on one of the many sites of Boudicca's graves, which is supposedly on Parliament Hill in North London. Eventually, it ends up on the Embankment on a great pedestal. Now it's really, really worth a visit, though it's now very cluttered, kind of sadly cluttered, by souvenir sellers who cluster around its base. But if you can get through them, you can see on it the absolute encapsulation of the question you've just been raising, whose side are we on? It's a couple of lines from the earlier English poet William Cowper, which says, and I'm summarizing it here, not quoting it exactly, but it says words to the effect of, don't worry, Boudicca, about your defeat, because your descendants will conquer more lands than Rome ever did. That poem and the statue is kind of having it also both ways, you know, are we on Boudicca's side with her? Her chariot is a very unhistorical chariot because it's got. It's got those famous scythes coming out of the wheels, which I don't know when they entered the kind of the history of Rome, but they never existed, I think. So you've got this slightly manic figure, but hugely romantic. And she is being kind of invented and reinvented both as a victim of Rome and as an imperial figure who will outdo Rome
- [23:14]
Charlotte Higgins
as the precursor to the British Empire, which in itself is kind of weird because this idea that Boudicca, don't worry Boudicca, because your descendants are going to have this even better empire than the Romans had. I mean, she's the exact figure who. Who, according to the Romans, enunciates and articulates this critique of empire itself. And also in the who are we question, the Romans were in Britain for 400 years, you know, and there are all sorts of debates about how deep that occupation went, you know, how. But there is a real question. They were here for 400 years. And I think probably all of us might be a bit Roman in some sense or other, but it's a really long time. They didn't just come and go, you know, we are all of these identities. I don't think we can winnow ourselves out into being. Well, we're kind of Buddhicans or we're Romans. We are this kind of elaborate mix of fantasy identities and real identities.
- [24:20]
Mary Beard
You see that in. You see that problem exemplified in a lot of museum displays where it's not quite clear which case deals with whom and how mixed up you can make the Brits and the Romans. And is it a single cultural amalgam or is it. Are they opponents? And of course, you know, even in places like Colchester, where you see the conflict between Boudicca and the Roman, that is clearest. You then look a bit earlier in the history of just slightly pre Roman Colchester, pre Roman Britain, and you discover that they are. And you mentioned this in the first episode, Charlotte, they're importing things from Rome, they're using Roman stuff, They've got olive oil. What? Olive oil, you know, and it's an absolutely fantastic object lesson of how impossible it is to separate.
- [25:24]
Charlotte Higgins
I love the fact that Boudicca is a bit of a footnote in Roman history, but she looms super large in some ways. She looms super large in Britain. And one of the ways is the sheer energy that 19th and 18th century antiquarians put into figuring out where this battle took place with Suetonius Paulinus and where she's buried. And there's one very persistent myth that she's buried, that the battle took place in King's Cross. And the reason really for that is that the old name for King's Cross was Battle Bridge. Now nobody knows what battle or bridge in fact, but anyway, it was called. It must be Boudicca. It must be Boudicca. It's one of those hilarious sort of call my bluff rationalizations with very, very little to go on. So I've got this wonderful. Because I live near King's Cross. So I have this amazing 19th century antiquarian account of Islington, which is the sort of borough where King's Cross is. I've got it here. It talks about Battle Bridge and it says it's supposed to have been so called, from its contiguity to the spot where the celebrated battle was fought between the Roman general Suetanes Paulinus and Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni in AD 61. And then it goes on to explain why. And it's all totally spurious. It's like, well, there was a river here and there's a hill there. And if I was a Roman general, I definitely would have put my bottle here. It's brilliant. But there is this sort of wonderful myth that, you know, Boudiccus buried sort of under the platforms at King's Cross that was very much, you know, proximate to, you know, it's about as real as. As there is a train platform that takes you to Hogwarts. Nine and three quarters, you know, that exists in the same realm of fantasy as there is a platform 9 1/3, you know, by that 9 1/3 is buried Boudicca. Honestly, she is. But I love it. It's just a lot of fun. The same historian thought that the square that's very. That's sort of outside my house was the Roman encampment of Suetonius Paullinus as well. So you get this wonderful imagined geography.
- [27:42]
Mary Beard
I have a little ambition that we could have a plaque at King's Cross on the Station by Platform 9, if you like saying Boudicca may have been buried here. It would be great.
- [27:53]
Charlotte Higgins
It would be good.
- [27:54]
Mary Beard
What I thought was interesting in the bit that you read actually was, of course we've not been using this name, but the traditional name for her in most of pre late 20th century writing about Boudicca was a kind of very spuriously Latinized Boadicea, right? It is what I was brought up calling her, you know, the statue of Boadicea, not the statue of Boudicca. And for me, it's one of the. She certainly was never called that. But there's a huge amount of academic writing, really get in a.
- [28:30]
Charlotte Higgins
In a.
- [28:30]
Mary Beard
Right. Tears about what. What. How you'd spell her name, right? Is it Boduica like Cassius Dio has? Or is it Boudicca with two Cs, or is it Boudicca with one C? And I always think this is a kind of indication of sometimes the fatuity of scholarship, because one thing we know for absolute certain is that. Well, yes, absolute certain, Boudicca couldn't write. You know, she didn't know whether she had two Cs or one C in her name at all. But modern scholars do get in a real. A real faff about it.
- [29:07]
Charlotte Higgins
They do get in a faff about it. They do. And the other thing that I love about Boudicca in the modern world is she has become a symbol for Colchester. And I just find this. I love it. It's completely wonderful. She burnt that city down, including this horrific war crime. Of all the people locked inside the temple, there is a Queen Boudicca Primary school in Colchester. And there is actually. My favorite thing is there's a Queen Boudicca Roundabout. Now, it's not officially called the Boudicca Roundabout, but there is a massive statue of Boudicca in the middle of this roundabout in Colchester. I kind of think it's what she would have wanted, Mary. It's what she would have wanted, yes.
- [29:55]
Mary Beard
And I think it's a wonderful piece of how we can, you know, whatever we make of the rights and wrongs of Boudicca, the idea that she can be domesticated so that it's a perfectly good name for a primary school, you know. So what did Queen Boudicca do? Say the kids right, at the school, well, they burnt the place down. That's what. That's what she did. She burnt the place down.
- [30:25]
Charlotte Higgins
She's absolutely wonderful. But, you know, there's so much more we could say about Boudicca, but I think, Mary, let's leave it there for today. And I don't know about you, but I'm just off to drive my chariot to some unsuspecting town in southeast Britain and I'm going to burn it down.
- [30:44]
Mary Beard
I'm hoping we don't get letters from the children at Queen Boudicca Primary School.
- [30:48]
Charlotte Higgins
I hope we do. As ever, we want to know your thoughts and comments, ideas, questions. And so if you have them, please do send them to us@instantclassicspodmail.com or on our social media at stantclassicspod. Bye.