Thread Rating:
  • 4 Vote(s) - 5 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.
(03-24-2017, 07:44 AM)Robert Vermaat Wrote: If so, she was in fact rebelling when she did not comply? I mean that's not what the sources stress, do they? ... So where lies reality?

Yes, it is hard to judge. And in fact the three main literary sources we have for the revolt give slightly different reasons for the outbreak.

Tacitus, in Agricola, suggests that the Britons were generally unhappy with oppressive Roman domination and were just waiting for an opportunity to rebel - an opportunity granted them by the absence of Paulinus on campaign.

"Relieved from apprehension by the legate's absence, the Britons dwelt much among themselves on the miseries of subjection, compared their wrongs, and exaggerated them in the discussion... Rousing each other by this and like language, under the leadership of Boudicea, a woman of kingly descent (for they admit no distinction of sex in their royal successions), they all rose in arms." (Agricola 15-16)

In his later account, in Annals, Tacitus puts a different spin on it, and gives us the full story of Roman brutality, which doesn't seem 'exaggerated' at all:

"Prasutagus, king of the Iceni... had made the emperor his heir along with his two daughters, under the impression that this token of submission would put his kingdom and his house out of the reach of wrong. But the reverse was the result, so much so that his kingdom was plundered by centurions, his house by slaves, as if they were the spoils of war. First, his wife Boudicea was scourged, and his daughters outraged. All the chief men of the Iceni, as if Rome had received the whole country as a gift, were stript of their ancestral possessions, and the king's relatives were made slaves. Roused by these insults and the dread of worse, reduced as they now were into the condition of a province, they flew to arms..." (Annals 14.31)

Here, Tacitus makes Boudica into the focal point of the revolt: "it is not as a woman descended from noble ancestry, but as one of the people that I am avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters. Roman lust has gone so far that not our very persons, nor even age or virginity, are left unpolluted."

This fits with his usual presentation of noble savage barbarians versus 'depraved' Romans (who have forgotten their ancestral virtues etc), but the added details are interesting: is this genuinely new information that T had discovered in the 20 years or so between his first work and his last, or did he invent the story of the atrocities to give added colour to his account? The new material does make the revolt seem entirely justified, whereas before it just seemed opportunistic.

Cassius Dio, meanwhile, has this version:

"An excuse for the war was found in the confiscation of the sums of money that Claudius had given to the foremost Britons... But the person who was chiefly instrumental in rousing the natives and persuading them to fight the Romans, the person who was thought worthy to be their leader and who directed the conduct of the entire war, was Buduica, a Briton woman of the royal family..." (Dio 62.2)

Dio gives Boudica a speech in which she appeals to the usual benefits of freedom over slavery, alludes to Roman crimes without being specific ("we are stripped and despoiled like a murderer's victims") and gives a somewhat unlikely account of Roman effeminacy and degeneracy.

So do we gather from all this that the Britons had just cause for revolt, or not? Was their uprising the result of long-held grievances, which would inevitably burst into war, or of a sudden and singular act of Roman violence, or was it merely opportunistic or instinctive?

I don't think we can tell, as we cannot disentangle literary rhetoric from historical fact. All we know is the revolt (probably!) happened, and that its scale was sufficiently great to imply a real and deeply-felt cause.

I know I've mentioned the Indian 'mutiny' of 1857 several times in this thread, but it might be significant that, even with the comparatively vast amount of evidence on that uprising, historians are still in disagreement on the direct and indirect causes, and whether it was a general reaction to imperial (mis)rule, a spontaneous 'patriotic' uprising or a response to particular stimuli. We could also point to the current ongoing violence in the middle east, I suppose - even with virtually no historical distance involved, it is often extremely difficult to correctly identify the exact causes for popular revolts and uprisings.
Nathan Ross
Reply


Messages In This Thread
Re: Calling all armchair generals! - by Ensifer - 03-11-2010, 03:13 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-18-2012, 06:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 12:02 AM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 02:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 05:40 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 11:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 05:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 09:42 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 10:10 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:25 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 08:36 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-26-2012, 02:57 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-27-2012, 01:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 08-05-2012, 02:24 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-07-2014, 02:18 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-08-2014, 01:50 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-11-2014, 02:03 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-18-2014, 07:54 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-20-2014, 02:37 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-25-2014, 08:29 AM
RE: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand. - by Nathan Ross - 03-24-2017, 09:32 AM

Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Armchair Wall walking mcbishop 3 3,480 01-11-2012, 03:22 AM
Last Post: Vindex

Forum Jump: