the celtic connection • october 1993
Page 7
MYTHOLOGY
A Warrior Woman Fights for Freedom
Iceni King Prasutagus hoped to shelter his people by joining the Roman world but his aspirations were met with extremely oppressive measures. The estates of the kinsmen of the Royal House were seized and the Royals sold into slavery.
Prasutagus' wife Boudicca was flogged and the two princesses raped. To add to all these injustices, was the Roman attack on Mona, the headquarters of the Pruidic religion and the rallying point for Celtic nationalists.
She washuge in frame, terrifying of The Romans "kept driving the
aspect, and with a harsh voice..... Britons off their lands/' wrote
Now she grasped a spear, to strike Roman scholar Tacitus, "calling
fear into all who watched her .... them prisoners and slaves," as
— Tacitus indeed, according to Roman law,
if THERE IS ONE constant tney were.   Harsh provincial
in the ever-evolving Celtic taxes were also levied to pay for
world, it is that the women Roman defences. J have proven themselves
bold, fiercely independent and After tne death of Prasutagus,
able to lead their people in gov- Boudicca, fresh with the memo-
ernment and into the heat of ries of Roman injustice, proposed battle.
By
WARREN B FERGUSON
Great female leaders have risen from deep in the mythological roots of the Celts to the present time. The war goddess Morrigan and Queen Meadbh of Connacht are good examples from mythology of these warrior women. Yet, there are many more such figures in history. One such character is Boudicca of the Britons.
Boudicca is the name adopted for the historical figure who led the AD 60/61 rebellion against
to her people the alternatives of victory or death, "This is what I, as a woman, plan to do — let the men live in slavery if they will."
So as the new head of the Iceni, Boudicca and her army swept down upon Camulodunum (Colchester). She had assembled an initial host of 120,000 according to Dio Cassius.
In Camulodunum, the Romans never carried out an evacuation of their women and children, nor until the very last moment, im-
the Romans. She was queen of provised any form of defence the Iceni tribe (in what became He.re' the slow-moving Roman
East Anglia) and her name means 'Victorious', stemming from the Celtic words for victory, (in Old Welsh 'bouda' and in Irish 'buadachm').
Some Roman accounts painted Boudicca as a barbarian attempting to destroy the eternal civilization of the Empire. To British scholars, she was a patriotic leader who rose up against an alien and brutal occupying power.
One thing for sure is that Boudicca laid waste on several 'civitates' and thoroughly embarrassed the occupying Romans whose society was essentially a man's world.
The reasons for the rebellion were manifold and included a pattern of injustice and brutality inflicted by the Romans onto the Britons. In AD 43, the Emperor Claudius renewed the effort of Julius Caesar to secure Britain following a brief barbarian success.
Four years later, he dispatched the incoming Governor of Britain, Ostorius Scapula, to take
radical steps to disarm the Brit- rebels came under the gladius . ons. Among the disarmed Boudicca ended her own life with peoples were the Iceni. poison and her body was subse-
r   r quently hidden by her followers.
The Iceni incited the neigh-
bourine tribes to rise up against For many, Boudicca has become the Romans but the efforts failed;-a symbol for Celtic nationalism Roman reaction was as always, and female pride, but she should quick and severe. not be remembered as a remote
and mystical figure, but as The tribes became increasingly Tacitus put it yan ordinary resentful that their voluntary woman, fighting for her lost free-submission was disregarded and dom, her bruised body, and the soon learned what their 'inde- outraged virginity of her daugh-pendence' really amounted to. ters."
units were at a disadvantage, particularly in the wooded terrain.
It was in small-scale guerilla warfare that the Britons excelled, since this was the kind of fighting to which they had been accustomed. After two days, Camulodunum was stormed and razed. In the frenzy of victory, the Britons committed no form of atrocity, until later.
Verulamium (St. Albans) and Londinium (London) followed as Boudicca hoped to trap the Roman leadership and destroy them. According to Tacitus, "Boudicca drove arround in a chariot, her daughters with her. As they reached each tribal contingent, she proclaimed that the Britons were well used to the leadership of women in battle."
The massacre that followed he described as "slaughter, the gibbet, fire, and the cross." Dio wrote that the Britons mutilated and impaled men and women alike.
Despite these efforts, the Roman army was reinforced and the
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