Thread Rating:
  • 4 Vote(s) - 5 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.
How depressing!
So, taking the almost infinite odds for it being in any particular place, I have to announce it was at the bottom of my garden!
Davidus
Reply
Hardly depressing, it just points out the potential futility of hanging your hat on elegant translations of spurious histories.

The strategic location, defensive topography and site finds should always be a priority over antique narratives. Potentially the hunt for the site has been diverted and delayed over the decades by the insistence that the text and it's interpretations should take priority over other factors, thus limiting the enagagement to those with a strong grasp of latin, all 200 words of it. At this point I'd take the view of a soldier over that of a classicist as all that can be said about the text, in respect of battlefield location, has been said. Wink
Reply
I do at times wonder was her name really Boudica before the so called last stand. ?
Brian Stobbs
Reply
pg 281 here provides an interesting take on the name;
http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Resear...0Names.pdf

also keeping an eye out for this one by the same authors;
Durham, A & Goormachtigh, M (2013) ‘Boudicca does not mean Victoria’. submitted for publication
Reply
Now that makes sense! Much more persuasive than the normal, sometimes generic, listings of Buddig and translations of other Celtic derivations. Particularly if Tacitus is the only source and Cartimandua is has roots in a number of sources. (Confirmation required)). I was about to suggest that there is no other proof, however likely, that Prasitagus, if that was his name, was 'married' and had daughters. Or that B was a battle leader in other than the Roman mind. Could it not all have been a myth?
Davidus
Reply
Yes and in support of this, does Nathan, in his last post last post not suggest, from the texts, that an open plain and a 'defile' can both be secured 'without ant danger from ambushes'?
Davidus
Reply
Why I give mention about her name is that I do have Graham Webster's book Boudica and in his sources he refers to Queen Victoria when she travelled on her exciting tour of northern Scotland in 1872, she found many roads decked with triumphal arches bearing massages in Gaelic AR BUIDHEACHAS DO'N BHUADHAICH - "TO Victoria our gratitude" Here the Gaelic shows the connection with the distant Celtic tongue, in the word for victory - bouda.
Brian Stobbs
Reply
Quote:Potentially the hunt for the site has been diverted and delayed over the decades by the insistence that the text and it's interpretations should take priority over other factors

To an extent I agree with you - although I wouldn't call Tacitus 'spurious'! I do think, however, that it's more an insistence on the priority of certain aspects of the texts over others that has caused the diversion. We don't, after all, have all that much else to go on... (or do we?)

The very exactitude of T's battle site description has given generations of armchair historians (and generals) licence to start poring over their topographical maps and announcing that this or that place surely must be the site, as it most perfectly matches the description... Or, alternatively, laboriously listing every possible site meeting T's criteria, as if the correct one can be arrived at by a system of logical elimination...

As I suggested above, the details of the battle site might not have been at all important to T or his readers. They may have been generic, or simply imaginary. But they could just as easily, of course, have been completely accurate...

Bearing this in mind, I've always thought that the overall strategic shape of the campaign was far more important than the actual site of the battle itself - and far more available to analyses that don't rely almost entirely on eviscerating the potential meanings of faucibus, or whatever.

Although, the maps and diagrams approach is probably more fun... :-)
Nathan Ross
Reply
[quote="John1" post=357777]pg 281 here provides an interesting take on the name;
http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Resear...0Names.pdf

On a much earlier page of this forum, was it who Nathan referred to ''www.proto-english.org/Boudica.pdf''? I think this is the source of this article This gave several 'European' meanings to Boudica but I cannot access it today and wonder if it has been deleted for some reason.
Davidus
Reply
I recall the paper on http://www.proto-english.org/ was marked as a review copy not to be disseminated. Maybe they took the link down when the paper had been issued to the relevant parties. Martin and Steve, the papers authors, were at the Warwick conference and came on the CS site visit afterwards.
Reply
Quote:was it who Nathan referred to ''www.proto-english.org/Boudica.pdf''?

It was John actually - here. But, yes, seems to have vanished...
Nathan Ross
Reply
:o ooops that makes me a bad person doesn't it..... :whistle:
Reply
Hi All

Any thoughts on whether the forts bordering the Silures lands in the West at Carmarthen, Llandeilo, Llandovery could have been built by Veranius in AD58 using part of the 2nd Legion transported by the Classis Britannicus to open a second front leading to the successful Seutonius Paulinus Campaign the following year?

Kind Regards - Deryk
Deryk
Reply
AD 58 is a tad early for II AVG to be in Wales. More likely to have been the XXth at that date.
A simple search on Google would have told you this.
Kevin
Kevin
Reply
Hi Kevin

Thanks for your advice Smile

I appreciate the establishment view and I would agree that the Twentieth would have been on the East and North of the Silurian territory but they didn't have enough men (in my opinion) to cover the opening of another front on the West of the Silurian Territory in AD58.

Prior to Seutonius Paulinus, the Silures could only be bottled up by the Twentieth being at Usk, Abergavenny and Clifton

No previous Governor had been able to make inroads into their territory, yet Seutonius seems to have had no problem at all.

I was wondering therefore what changed this?

If Veranius had opened another front with part of the Second this would have given Seutonius Paulinus a good base to attack in AD59 with further landings on the South Eastern coast at Loughor, Neath and Cardiff.

I have not been able to find where the Second were fully deployed at this time although they had been in the South West for a number of years and the area seems to be have been quiet for some time and it seems unlikely that they would have been confined to pure garrison duty in this peaceful environment.

If a campaign force of the Second were occupied in the west of what is today Wales under its high command during AD58, AD59 and AD60 guarding the Southern flank of the Fourteenth this may explain why the Legate and the Second in Command were not in Exeter when Seutonius Paulinus requested the Second.

Unfortunately I could not find this information on Google and I would be grateful if you (or anyone else) could provide me with some more detailed information to support the established view or otherwise.

Kind Regards - Deryk
Deryk
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Armchair Wall walking mcbishop 3 3,483 01-11-2012, 03:22 AM
Last Post: Vindex

Forum Jump: