August 1, 2023 • 36 mins
When Roman Legions of Emperor Nero attacked her home, disrespected her people, and attacked her family, Celtic warrior queen Boudicca swore revenge -- and she left nothing but scorched earth in her wake as she rampaged across Briton, destroying all who stood in her way.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
A tall regal woman rides up in a chariot. She
wears a thick cloak over a tunic woven in a
multi colored plaid pattern. Her long, gleaming hair cascades down
to her hips. A huge gold necklace snakes around her
collar balones. She raises aloft a spear in one hand,
(00:31):
and with the other she gestures to the two young
women standing behind her in the chariot. Her voice, the rough,
strong voice of a commander, peels forth, Neighbors, allies, kid.
The Roman invaders have violated my daughter, They have disdained
(00:52):
my authority. They have forced all of us into servitude
to their own profit.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I am Budhica, Queen of the ic me join me
to take back our freedom and to take revenge.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
We're back and we are gonna have kind of a
first for the show. At least somebody has requested a
character for us to talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Buda.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yes, I get a ton of emails, you know, all
the time, about people that you know I should be
writing about, And I like it, and I like that
when some badass thing comes out in the news, I
can turn on my computer and I have five emails
of people sending me that same news story being like,
this is what you should talk about this week, and
that's great. I love it. But you said you were
(01:49):
talking to a colleague or a friend or somebody who
wanted us and gave us a suggestion.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, I was talking to a friend slash colleague. Yeah,
and the friends slash colleagues said, hey, Budica Like it
was just a spontaneous reaction, but these why should one
get excited about Budica.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Well, Budica is awesome for starter. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
One of my favorite details of Boudica is that where
you see the pictures that are taken of Big Ben
in the Houses of Parliament in London, there's that bridge
there's a big statue of Bodika on a chariot being
pulled by much of horses. It's gold. It's like giant
and very very grand. I'm trying to think if there's
anybody else who has a giant statue dedicated to them
(02:34):
in a city with which they are famous for burning
to the ground. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Maybe you're coming here already knowing who Budica is and
being psyched to like, yes, here about here about Budica,
and maybe you're one of today's ten thousand who get
to learn about Budica for the first time.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
It's gonna be fun. Yeah. Yeah, She's a first century
Barbarian queen who really was among the most badass women
in history. I wrote a whole chapter on her on
one of my in one of my badass books, and
it's it was one of my favorite ones to research
and write.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So the word barbarian, it's come from a Greek word barbaros,
which simply means someone who doesn't speak Greek, because it's
like speaking a foreign language just sounded like barbar bar
barbar shit.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So we're all barbarians except you because you do speak
ancient Greek.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right, Okay, yeah, you know, but you know, words change
over time, and it kind of became this, like, you know,
big Hulk in Brugling. But the thing is with Bhutka,
I feel like calling Boudica and her people barbarians, if
you use that in the pejorative sense, is a little
unfair because they had a well developed civilization and like,
you know, its just they happened to not be Romans
(03:44):
at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So yeah, so I should stipulate that I never used
the word barbarian in a pejorative sense. I always use
it in a sense in which I think it's awesome.
But that is, I had no idea that that was
based off barbar bar. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we'll get
into it right after this. All right, welcome back, and
(04:12):
so Pat, we are going to get into our first
ever requested badass. We're going to talk about Bodica.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So if you rewind about two thousand years to the
year forty three, that's when the Roman emperor Claudius had
conquered the island of Britain. And this was a thing
that the Romans have been trying to do for a while.
And you know, it was not easy for the Romans
to do, so big ups to the Britons for, you know,
(04:39):
holding their ground and standing up to the Roman invaders.
And you have different tribes of Britons. And when I
say Briton's, I mean indigenous people who live in Brittannia,
the British isles. Within that, you've got a whole bunch
of different tribes, nations, peoples, whatever. Anyway, each of these
(05:01):
groups of people had found different ways to relate to Rome.
And some of them were putting up resistance. Some of
them were like, okay, well we'll find a way of
getting along. And one of these nations, one of these
tribes was the Icni. This is the tribe that Buddhika
(05:22):
belongs to. Now. Budica's husband, King Prasudacus, was a quote
unquote ally of Rome, which meant that he had found
a way to get along with the Romans. What that
meant was, well, they would pretty much leave the Ici alone.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
We see it a lot in the Roman Empire, with
which like, yep, they just they can't manage there. It's
whatever we're looking at forty AD right, so like, yeah,
you can't manage an empire on the scale that they're
managing from Rome when it's not like you could email
the frontier and be like, hey, can you just like
do this for me, like you had to send a
guy on a horse in three months or whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, so this worked out for a while, but you know,
no one lives forever. And Prosutagus, you know, he's contemplating
his own mortality. And Prostatagus said, okay, I'm going to
leave my kingdom jointly to my two daughters and to
the Emperor of Rome, who happened to be Nero at
the time.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
It was famously like easy to get along with.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah. So the thing is, I should say that in
these days, making the emperor a co heir with the
people you would actually expect to be your heirs was
actually kind of standard operating procedure among you know, wealthy
elite Romans.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Okay, yeah, because with this story, I've come across it
a few times to where like it was weird and
nobody knew how to deal with it, Like it was
a really weird setup for him to say, like, oh,
the Emperor of Rome and also my daughters.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, and like I get where one is coming from,
because by the time you get to Nero, the emperor
has a particular personality in particular handups and agenda and whatever.
So so if you leave part of your estate to
the emperor, it's a way of pacifying the emperor and
kind of paying the emperor to like basically stay out
(07:10):
of the hair of your actual daughters, sons, whatever. So
you have these internal affairs where you know, they leave
people alone in the details. On the other hand, the
Romans had several garrisons stationed in various towns, including the
town of Kamludunam. This will become relevant later. And at
(07:32):
kamlou Dunam the Romans build stuff. You have the Romans
putting up a statue of victory. You have the Romans
putting up a temple to the deified Emperor Claudius with
a statue of the Emperor Claudius. And is this cool?
With the Britons, the Icni come to an agreement. You know,
(07:52):
they're not conquered per se, but they have this agreement.
Don't we have a deal with the Romans. Of course
we have a deal. They get out of the way
of the internal administer of our kingdom. We look the
other way on that statue of the day fighted Emperor Claudius.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Right, And this kind of predates Hadrian's Wall as well,
which ended up later on being a very clear line
of demarcation of like, yes, you know here and civilization
you know here ends Roman civilization, I should.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Say Roman civilization.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yes, yeah, yes, you kind of have like a little
bit of a grayer because it is, like we just said,
like it's hard to administer an empire on this island.
You know, full of people who if they all decided
simultaneously they didn't want to be Roman anymore. It wouldn't
be very easy to, uh, to keep them in line exactly. Yeah,
she's also foreshattering, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah. So the Icy, yes, they have a quote unquote
agreement with Rome, but on the other hand, they do
kind of have a history of rebelling against Rome. And
then Prosutagus dies. He leaves this situation which on paper
looks okay but is actually not right.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And you said it was kind of common for which
I didn't know before, but it was like more or
less like kind of a thing that wealthy Romans would do,
but it wasn't common for frontier tribal kings to do.
And so I kind of like the idea that this
guy was like trying to like be fancy about it
in the process accidentally like fucked his own people pretty severely.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
So there's Prostagus and okay, I'll I'll just be clear.
I mean, I'm a human being, I you know, like
I pretend to be objective, but the thing is, I'm
rooting for the Britons here.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
That was one thing that surprised me a lot when
we started doing this, because you were the Roman historian
and the Latin speaker and all of that, but you
always kind of side with the under You always side
with like the rebels.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I grew up with like
the first wave of Star Wars fans. So I'm on,
you know, team Luke Skywalker versus the Empire. You know,
just because you study something doesn't mean you dors.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I'm also so yes, where we can go all in
on that, I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah. So Prosatagus dies and the arrangement that they had
with Rome falls apart, and the Nia are like, we
had an agreement, and Rome's like eh, So at the
time Rome had two governors. There's this guy so Tonius Paulinus,
there's this other guy de Chiana's Contus, and Boudica, who
(10:20):
is the widow of the former king Prosutagus. She takes
the leadership of the Ici, and the Icene are like yeah, cool, yeah, whatever,
because gender is not an issue when you're talking about
leadership among the Celts living in the Bridge Isles at
this time. But the Romans don't really recognize her authority.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Right, that old like no girls allowed rule that we've
run into a lot in history.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, the part of me is wondering, like, is it
specifically because she was a woman, or were they using
her gender as like an excuse to not recognize her authority.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I think mostly it's that Rome wanted just to plunder
and pillage and exert their dominance over when they yeah,
hit them while they're week before their new ruler has
had a chance to consolidate. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, So whatever the stated reasons, whatever the actual reasons,
they flog Boudica and they rape her daughters.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And Boudica is not the queen that you should have
been wucking with because she does not just just say okay,
you guys do the charge now. Yeah, she lives for revenge.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
It's the beginning of a lot of good action movies, right,
you know, a lot of like Kill Bill kind of
starts like this too. It's like they show up, they
kind of they think they've got your beat, and then
you're just like, Okay, I'm going to get revenge if
it's the last thing I do.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah. Yeah, So Budica, she doesn't take a sword. She
picks up a spear, and she hops on a chariot
and she gathers together not just the Ceni, but also
warriors from other neighboring nations who were allies with the Iceni,
who maybe had been kind I d looking for an
(12:01):
excuse to kind of they've been kind of thinking about
revolting one way or another, and.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Like culturally, ethnically, demographically, religiously, in every way you can imagine,
all of the people in the neighboring tribes are much
more similar to Budica than they are to Nero. Oh right,
they are much more related to the Iceni. Ye, Like
maybe they hate him because they have these you know,
long lasting like blood feuds between families and tribal warfare
(12:28):
and all this stuff. When it comes down to it,
like I speak this guy's language and I don't speak Latin, right,
Like I have the same gods as Budico, but yeah,
I don't worship. I'm not loving this statue to the
deified Emperor Claudius exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah. Yeah, And like you know, we hate each other,
but we're neighbors.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, but nobody can mess with him except me.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, exactly. So Prosatagus is dead, Buduka takes charge. She's
haranguing the troops, and both Tacitus and Cassia's Dio both
are Latin speaking and Greek speaking Roman sources they described this,
you know, they describe her speech. So Cassiu's Dio describes
(13:11):
her appearance in stature. She was very tall in appearance,
most terrifying. She was wearing clothing of many colors, might
have been some sort of plaid like a tartan. Maybe
she was wearing a thick cloak over this, which was
fastened with a pin with approach, which might have been
one of those famous pieces of gold jewelry that the
(13:31):
Celts were so famous for. And her hair cascaded down
to her hips. Modica's eyes had this fierce look to them,
and her voice was harsh. So none of our written
sources have a verbatim eyewitness account of her speech. But
(13:52):
it was kind of standard operating procedure in those days
to kind of write the speech of the sort that
the person probably gave. So I'm going to give you
the too long didn't read.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Versiontica from her chariot with their long flowing tresses, grabbing
a spear to the Icini and the Trinivantes and all
the other nations who have sent soldiers, who have sent
warriors to fight Bodica, says my peeps.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Those whimp ass Romans NBD, no big deal. They think
they were on the place. But we are so much
batter ass than they, and that's why we should win. Also,
it's our land and we're defending it, and the Romans
are being jerks about it. She says stuff like the Romans, Okay,
they've been here long enough that maybe some of you
have forgotten what freedom is like, maybe have gotten used
(14:41):
to slavery. Are the Romans braver than us?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
No?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Are they stronger than us? Also? No, they hide behind
armor and helmets, they hide behind palisades, they hide in trenches.
When they have the upper hand, do they capture us?
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Now?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
We elude them, slip away into the landscape. We disappear
into the swamps, We disappear into the mountains. They can't
handle the heat, they can't handle the cold. They need
all the trappings of civilization. We will eat these dufices
for breakfast. That's Boudica's speech. I might have paraphrased a
(15:19):
little bit, but she rallies the troops and General Boudica
and I'm calling her General Budica because she is leading
an army. She leads her folks onto Colchester, which is
the modern name of Kamala Duna.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We have a Britain king who did great service to
the emperor and did everything that the Roman Empire required
of him. He dies of natural causes and bequeaths the
empire to his daughter's Nero decides he doesn't like that,
or at least the local Roman government decides they don't
(15:53):
like that. They decide they're going to come in there.
They're going to beat up this guy's wife. They're going
to do things to his daughters. They're gonna exert, like,
show their dominance over these people. And these people don't
like having Romans exert their dominance over them, and they
don't think they need these guys anymore. And Bodoka grabs
her spear and she jumps up on the on the
(16:14):
chariot and she gives this speech and all of these big, angry,
long haired barbarian in a good way. Britain's decide they
are going to fucking burn some shit now.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
On the other hand, one of the two governors of
the province of Britannia, dakianis Katis, based in Londinium, which
is modern day London. He catches wind of this impending
attack on Kamladnam and he doesn't take it seriously. He
just sends two hundred, guys, that's it. Two hundred. Now,
two hundred is like a lot if you're I don't know,
(16:48):
organizing a pickleball tournament, but if you're trying to defend
your town from a bunch of Britons who are angry
with very good reason and have you know, point to
the objects that they're going to throw at you and
injure you with, Yeah, this is not a serious response.
He either didn't get the memo, or he didn't take
(17:09):
the memo seriously, or he had.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
No idea that there was something on the order of
twenty thousand angry Britons coming to burn cultures. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
did not appreciate what he was up against.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Cassie Dio says one hundred and twenty thousand, which is
probably an exaggeration, but.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, one thing that comes up. That's the thing that
comes up a lot with the Roman sources where they
kind of it's interesting because it's like did he exaggerate
it or was like we have talked about before, like yeah,
they are migrating with everybody, so it's not just the
warriors that are marching south on Colchester. It is all
of the tribe, the women, the children, the horses, the
(17:48):
wagon train, everything, so like there might be like everybody's
met and they are all coming together. And there might
have been one hundred and twenty thousand people, probably significantly
less than that, but they weren't all combatants. Probably either, No,
they weren't all combatants.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
But on the other hand, maybe more people were combatants
than the Romans might have fought. Also, because I mean,
clearly Budica can be general. So Budica General Boudica and
her army lays siege to Camlodunum for about two days.
Some of the Romans who are in the city take
refuge in the temple. And I remember this is the temple.
This is not just the temple of like gods. This
(18:26):
is the temple of the deified Emperor Claudius. So it's
like extra Roman.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
They've hiden there because those two hundred dudes are long dead,
and they and their allies are just rampaging through town,
plundering and killing and murdering and destroying and setting everything
on fire. And it's just that it's and these guys
are hiding in the temple because they're just hoping for
a divine intervention from their fallen emperor to save them
(18:55):
from the wrath of Bodica. And it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Doesn't happen, doesn't happen. No, Bodica sets fire to the city,
and we have archaeological evidence that Kamalodunum there was a
there was a fire destruction level. We have evidence for that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
There's like, I think they call it like the Boudica
line when they're like they do when they're digging foundations today,
when they are digging foundations for a new building in
the city of Colchester, there is like a thin line
of like orange dirt in the ground that you can
dig down to, which is just like this was all
(19:34):
that was left of the Roman settlement here after Boko
was through with that. Yeah, she melted the entire thing
into an orange pace that is still visibly it's like
a geological strata now of rock.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah. Yeah, live your life so that archaeologists of the
future will name a stratum after you. Yes, so, yeah,
you think that will be the end of things. No,
it's not. She ravaged, which is Londinium. She ravages Virolamium,
which is the modern day town of Saint Albans in Hertfordshire.
(20:07):
If you're looking on a map. She ravages Londinium, which
is London.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
You've heard of it.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, Yeah, they were not like she Yeah, kind of
massacred something on the order of like tens of thousands
of people that lived there. Yeah, were in a place
to the ground, pulled all the rocks apart, like destroyed
the temples, yes, said everything on fire, killed anybody she
could get her hands on, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I had heard a story, and I don't know how
true it is, but like they had killed so many
people in the first couple of cities they had sacked
that by the time they got to Londinium and started
fighting like more cohesive Roman forces, they would throw severed
heads at them to demoralize them before they'd attack. It's cool.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I've come across some pretty grizzly stuff. Bodica and her
people were, according to the sources, were capable of some
pretty grizzly treatment of people they took as captives.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
A lot of human sacrifice stuff you hear about with.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Them, Yeah, human sacrifice stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yeah. The Romans do attribute human sacrifice to basically anybody
who wasn't Roman, which may or may not have been true.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So yeah, So Bodica, who is kind of one of
the og badasses of the British Isles, she just lays
waste to three different Roman towns. You know, the Romans
had the unmitigated temerity to come over to Britain and
establish settlements one way or the other, and one, two three,
(21:36):
she just bam trashes them.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And one thing we haven't really touched on too much
is that, like, yeah, like Bodica is rampaging through like
cities and destroying these settlements and things. But these settlements
are defended by Roman forces, right they Londinium wasn't. There
were two hundred guys that got sent to the to
the frontier that got killed, and yeah, but Lendinium was
(22:01):
defended by a legion, right, Legio nine Hispania was there,
and Bodica and her people overwhelmed like a battle hardened,
experienced Roman legion. They outnumbered them something on the order
of ten to one or twenty to one or something.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
If you something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, if you believe the one hundred and twenty thousand
people number, but like you know, they had the advantage
of in numbers. But this was a trained, disciplined Roman
legion operating on the frontier, and they got crushed and
were mostly annihilated. And so now Paulinis is here. The
other governor has run away, the guy who ordered that
(22:42):
Bodica be flogged and her people like pay their taxes
with interest. That guy was just like he was out
of there two seconds after he figured out after he
heard the news that they'd burned a couple of cities
to the ground. He's like, I'm out of here. I'm
not gonna stick around. I got hear my mom calling
from Rome. I gotta go. And so nah, you end
(23:03):
up with Paulinus, who's just kind of got I mean,
his army is just the remnants of these smashed legions.
He suddenly becomes the underdog in this story, where like
he was, he was the big bed imperial warrior like
some destroying Druidic temples. And now he's got like five
thousand or so Romans who are all that are left
(23:26):
of these like annihilated garrisons and legions, and he's facing
down this monster force of like Britain tribes people who
are maybe getting a little over zealous with their you know,
plundering and killing and burning and murdering and destroying and
human sacrificing. And he decides like, we're gonna have to
have a showdown here, and we're gonna have to have
(23:47):
a battle to settle this kind of once and for all.
And we'll get into that battle after we get back
from this message. But you should stick around for it
because it's it's exciting. Yes, the Romans have been losing
(24:09):
so often and so severely. Right, a legion was destroyed,
which is not like a common thing for the Romans. Right,
you can count on one hand in like a thousand
years how many Roman legions were lost in battle. Right,
and the Botic has destroyed one of those. She's ransacked
several major cities in the islands. So things are not
(24:30):
going well. And Paulinus decides like he's got to fight
these guys or you know, this is this is it, right?
If we want to continue having Roman dominance on the islands,
which which dates back to Julius Caesar's landing. Right. One
thing that he has working for him is that thee
at this point are a little overconfident, which they have
(24:52):
every right to be.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
They have They've trashed three cities.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You know, they've trashed three cities. They've destroyed a legion.
There's eighty thousand of them them and there's five thousand
of Polinias.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
This guy is, yeah, like, they're not getting their security
deposit back, but they don't want their security deposit back.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
They knew that when they when they signed up for this,
that this is what was going to happen, right, They
knew there was no coming back, and they so far
it's worked out great for them. So what Poulinus is
able to do is pick the field of battle, ah, yes,
which is kind of a clever way for him to overcome.
And he's he's a Roman general, he's well trained, he's
(25:30):
smart guy, he's clever, he's a career military guy. So
he picks a very narrow valley where he can get
his guys across, kind of the Spartan set Thermopoli kind
of thing, right exactly. Yeah, I'm massively outnumbered, so I'm
going to present the smallest possible front to you, So
you have to funnel your entire like disorganized, long haired.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Dudes, not that there's anything wrong with being long haired.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I was going to say barbarian, but then I felt
all like weird about it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
They were just a bunch of giant.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
A bunch of guys, a bunch of people's, bunch of.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Big muscle dudes who were mad, and they had had
the acts that they used to cut down trees in
their backyard and now they're hacking up Roman soldiers with it. Yeah,
so he funnels them into a valley. You know. It
ends up being kind of to keep the like hair
metal analogy going. It becomes one of these like just
anarchy on the attackers side. The defenders are very organized.
(26:31):
The Roman legions have been doing this for a long time.
They're organized.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
There can I just pause for a moment to say, like,
in this particular context, the Romans are the defenders.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yes, they're the last light of the defense. They're the underdogs.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It's a little counterintuitive, but that's actually in this specific context,
that's what's happening. You know, the Romans are the defenders,
even though we're in Britannia where they have.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Britain, And now the story kind of changes a little
bit to where like we have this one last sebastion
of like Roman, and they're outnumbered and there they've got
their backs against the wall and they've got to like
fight this rampaging horde of barbarians. And it's the thing
that we've talked about at the open of this episode,
which is that, like, it's all in how you want
(27:14):
to frame the story. Right, she's the hero until she
kills enough civilians that she's the villain. Right. If that
revenge starts taking you into scenarios where you're lining up
women and children and decapitating them, it's, yeah, a little
bit harder to be sympathetic towards you. She was really mad,
and I get it, totally.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Totally understand, but we get where she's coming from. But
still from Suetonia's Paulinus's point of view, this.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Is not good. Yeah, I gotta I gotta save the
last few Roman citizens remaining in this island. I gotta
not get executed for failure. I got to not be
captured and sacrificed by Bodica and her people.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
So okay. So, so Tonia's Paulinus, being Roman, kind of
figures out what he needs to do, which is to say, okay,
I've got an army and we're organized, and oh, hey,
there's this narrow valley.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Then what happens, Well, then attack or the now it's
it's the Briton's. Yeah, it's the whole conglomerate of all
of these tribes. And they attack, and the Roman line
holds and they drive back. Just the first wave of
Iceni attackers, right, they're not going to be able to
withstand one hundred and twenty thousand I think some of
(28:36):
the numbers were saying something like seventy thousand or sixty
thousand or whatever. It doesn't matter. A monstrously huge outnumbering
U force of ginormous right, and you're not going to
kill them, all right, you're not going to win this
if they still organized. But what happens is Suetonius has
picked this narrow valley where he can hold, and his
front line holds against their front line, and their front
(28:58):
line starts to fall back. But there's nowhere to fall
back too, because you've got this huge, rampaging horde of
people all crushed into this narrow valley, and they start
to run. And then the guys who are in the
second line are seeing the guys from the first line
all dying and wounded and bloodied, like running away. So
they start to run and then what we talked about before,
(29:19):
where they're traveling with like their families and their baggage
trains and their women and children, all sudden and that's
all in the back of this valley, and so they
can't even flee the valley because all the wagons and
horses and all this stuff, all the logistical things that
go into moving an army are in the back of
this valley. So the front wave can't even exit, and
all of a sudden, you have people being crush tripled
(29:43):
as they try to run out of like a rock
concert when there's a fire capting, you know, like it.
It becomes chaos very quickly and people start panicking and
that's contagious with an army and thea and the Britons
are defeated, like I want to say, heroically by this
(30:03):
very small Roman force that had no business defeating them
in battle.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, it's this kind of hodgepodge group of Romans that
were cobbled together at the last minute by the dude
who like wasn't this guy definitely did some bad stuff
in Britain, but he wasn't the guy responsible for making
Bodicet mad.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yes, that was the other guy.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, that guy's long gone, right, he's depending the last
bestiges of civilization on the.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Island, he understands.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, is defeated.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
She has defeated battle. Her forces are defeated. She is defeated. Yes,
So what do you do if you're a queen and
general and the Romans defeat you?
Speaker 1 (30:41):
She lives, She's not captured at this battle, right, she lives,
and she gets away and like a decent portion of
this army gets away, but it's they're routed enough that
it's it's kind of over for them. Yeah, it's pretty
clear that this is this is the end of it.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
So what do you do? Do you just kind of
go quietly into retirement and like keep bees or do
knitting or something.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Just kind of hope that this Suetonius Polinius guy is
going to be nice and be gracious in.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Victory, yeah, or that he just kind of like goes
off and like his attention is directed elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
We would probably be fine. I'll just surrender to Nero.
I'm sure that guy will be leading with me. But
in defeat, she rather than submit to the Romans or
anything like that. Her face whatever was gonnappen. She drank poison,
according to some sources. According to some other sources, she
just quote unquote got sick. Which shit, that happens.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
That happens, happens if you drink poison. Why might she
drink poison? Maybe she knows that if the Romans capture her,
she might be paraded and humiliated as one of their triumphs.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Very easily, right, that happens. They put you on the
first float in the parade going through the city of
Rome to celebrate their victory against u A like I'd
rather be dead, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah. So, even though our sources are not consistent on
how she perished personally, I like the version where she
takes control of things and says, okay, I'm exiting my way.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
It seems the most likely to me, you.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Know, I think, so yeah, she seems to me like
someone who doesn't do things by halves. No, So yeah, later,
like I mean, like many centuries later. Her story is
inspiring people. And when Queen Elizabeth the First was queen,
there was a little bit of a resurgence of Boudica.
(32:39):
And when Victoria was queen. In the nineteenth century, there
was also kind of a resurgence of Boudica as kind
of a symbol of British pride and also as a
symbol of hey, we've got a woman leader.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, powerful British women opposing like foreign rule, opposing imperial
domination over their island from outsiders. You know. It's a
very Yeah. There's probably been a dozen British warships called
the HMS Bodica, right, Yeah, and there's a statue built
(33:14):
of her exactly within like one hundred yards of Big
Ben Right. Yeah, it's very heroic. It's not a let's
remember this horrible person who did this terrible thing to
our city. It is like a let's look at this
kick ass woman who did some badass shit was from
around here. Yeah. So, I mean that's Bodica. She's a
(33:37):
very interesting and complicated character, but really a cool historical
figure and definitely badass.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Oh, very badass. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Where do you think she was a great defender of
her people or like a homicidal maniac? She's those are
I could argue both of those things being badass exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah, So I want to give a shout out to
Caitlin Gillespie at Brandeis has a book out from Oxford
University Press called Modica Warrior Woman of Roman Britain, which
helped me a.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Lot given talks about her and the decline involved the
Roman Empire. For primary sources, primary as they get. Like
you said, these were still written a couple of hundred
years after she died by people who never met her.
We have Cassie's Dio and Tacitus. Yeah all right, yeah, well,
I guess that's all we have for today.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Stay badass, yees, stay bad us, Stay bad us, Stay
bad us, but like, don't actually murder people.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
We don't really want to encourage him ay to like
make goblets out of the skulls of their enemies or
burn major human settlements to the ground.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, I mean, go to Target, spend a few bucks,
Get one of those like mugs that's sheep like a skull.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, put some whiskey in it, have a drink, chill out,
you know, sleep it off. You'll probably feel better in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Unless you're under age, because I okay, because heaven forfends
some of my students might listening to this. If you
are underage, do not drink actual literal whiskey. Put like,
I don't know Boba t in it or something.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
I do love Boba t as a substitute for whiskey.
I think it's I'm totally on board. I'm totally okay
with it. Yeah. I think that's all we got for today. Okay,
thanks so much for listening to you, guys. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs.
Mixing and music and sound design is by Jude Brewer.
(35:54):
Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the
Week is based on the website of Theweek dot com,
where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses.
If you want to reach out with questions ideas, you
can email us at Badass Podcast at badassoftheweek dot com.
(36:14):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
A tall regal woman rides up in a chariot. She
wears a thick cloak over a tunic woven in a
multi colored plaid pattern. Her long, gleaming hair cascades down
to her hips. A huge gold necklace snakes around her
collar balones. She raises aloft a spear in one hand,
(00:31):
and with the other she gestures to the two young
women standing behind her in the chariot. Her voice, the rough,
strong voice of a commander, peels forth, Neighbors, allies, kid.
The Roman invaders have violated my daughter, They have disdained
(00:52):
my authority. They have forced all of us into servitude
to their own profit.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I am Budhica, Queen of the ic me join me
to take back our freedom and to take revenge.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
We're back and we are gonna have kind of a
first for the show. At least somebody has requested a
character for us to talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Buda.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yes, I get a ton of emails, you know, all
the time, about people that you know I should be
writing about, And I like it, and I like that
when some badass thing comes out in the news, I
can turn on my computer and I have five emails
of people sending me that same news story being like,
this is what you should talk about this week, and
that's great. I love it. But you said you were
(01:49):
talking to a colleague or a friend or somebody who
wanted us and gave us a suggestion.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, I was talking to a friend slash colleague. Yeah,
and the friends slash colleagues said, hey, Budica Like it
was just a spontaneous reaction, but these why should one
get excited about Budica.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Well, Budica is awesome for starter. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
One of my favorite details of Boudica is that where
you see the pictures that are taken of Big Ben
in the Houses of Parliament in London, there's that bridge
there's a big statue of Bodika on a chariot being
pulled by much of horses. It's gold. It's like giant
and very very grand. I'm trying to think if there's
anybody else who has a giant statue dedicated to them
(02:34):
in a city with which they are famous for burning
to the ground. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Maybe you're coming here already knowing who Budica is and
being psyched to like, yes, here about here about Budica,
and maybe you're one of today's ten thousand who get
to learn about Budica for the first time.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
It's gonna be fun. Yeah. Yeah, She's a first century
Barbarian queen who really was among the most badass women
in history. I wrote a whole chapter on her on
one of my in one of my badass books, and
it's it was one of my favorite ones to research
and write.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So the word barbarian, it's come from a Greek word barbaros,
which simply means someone who doesn't speak Greek, because it's
like speaking a foreign language just sounded like barbar bar
barbar shit.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So we're all barbarians except you because you do speak
ancient Greek.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Right, Okay, yeah, you know, but you know, words change
over time, and it kind of became this, like, you know,
big Hulk in Brugling. But the thing is with Bhutka,
I feel like calling Boudica and her people barbarians, if
you use that in the pejorative sense, is a little
unfair because they had a well developed civilization and like,
you know, its just they happened to not be Romans
(03:44):
at the time.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So yeah, so I should stipulate that I never used
the word barbarian in a pejorative sense. I always use
it in a sense in which I think it's awesome.
But that is, I had no idea that that was
based off barbar bar. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we'll get
into it right after this. All right, welcome back, and
(04:12):
so Pat, we are going to get into our first
ever requested badass. We're going to talk about Bodica.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So if you rewind about two thousand years to the
year forty three, that's when the Roman emperor Claudius had
conquered the island of Britain. And this was a thing
that the Romans have been trying to do for a while.
And you know, it was not easy for the Romans
to do, so big ups to the Britons for, you know,
(04:39):
holding their ground and standing up to the Roman invaders.
And you have different tribes of Britons. And when I
say Briton's, I mean indigenous people who live in Brittannia,
the British isles. Within that, you've got a whole bunch
of different tribes, nations, peoples, whatever. Anyway, each of these
(05:01):
groups of people had found different ways to relate to Rome.
And some of them were putting up resistance. Some of
them were like, okay, well we'll find a way of
getting along. And one of these nations, one of these
tribes was the Icni. This is the tribe that Buddhika
(05:22):
belongs to. Now. Budica's husband, King Prasudacus, was a quote
unquote ally of Rome, which meant that he had found
a way to get along with the Romans. What that
meant was, well, they would pretty much leave the Ici alone.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
We see it a lot in the Roman Empire, with
which like, yep, they just they can't manage there. It's
whatever we're looking at forty AD right, so like, yeah,
you can't manage an empire on the scale that they're
managing from Rome when it's not like you could email
the frontier and be like, hey, can you just like
do this for me, like you had to send a
guy on a horse in three months or whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, so this worked out for a while, but you know,
no one lives forever. And Prosutagus, you know, he's contemplating
his own mortality. And Prostatagus said, okay, I'm going to
leave my kingdom jointly to my two daughters and to
the Emperor of Rome, who happened to be Nero at
the time.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
It was famously like easy to get along with.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah. So the thing is, I should say that in
these days, making the emperor a co heir with the
people you would actually expect to be your heirs was
actually kind of standard operating procedure among you know, wealthy
elite Romans.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Okay, yeah, because with this story, I've come across it
a few times to where like it was weird and
nobody knew how to deal with it, Like it was
a really weird setup for him to say, like, oh,
the Emperor of Rome and also my daughters.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, and like I get where one is coming from,
because by the time you get to Nero, the emperor
has a particular personality in particular handups and agenda and whatever.
So so if you leave part of your estate to
the emperor, it's a way of pacifying the emperor and
kind of paying the emperor to like basically stay out
(07:10):
of the hair of your actual daughters, sons, whatever. So
you have these internal affairs where you know, they leave
people alone in the details. On the other hand, the
Romans had several garrisons stationed in various towns, including the
town of Kamludunam. This will become relevant later. And at
(07:32):
kamlou Dunam the Romans build stuff. You have the Romans
putting up a statue of victory. You have the Romans
putting up a temple to the deified Emperor Claudius with
a statue of the Emperor Claudius. And is this cool?
With the Britons, the Icni come to an agreement. You know,
(07:52):
they're not conquered per se, but they have this agreement.
Don't we have a deal with the Romans. Of course
we have a deal. They get out of the way
of the internal administer of our kingdom. We look the
other way on that statue of the day fighted Emperor Claudius.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Right, And this kind of predates Hadrian's Wall as well,
which ended up later on being a very clear line
of demarcation of like, yes, you know here and civilization
you know here ends Roman civilization, I should.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Say Roman civilization.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yes, yeah, yes, you kind of have like a little
bit of a grayer because it is, like we just said,
like it's hard to administer an empire on this island.
You know, full of people who if they all decided
simultaneously they didn't want to be Roman anymore. It wouldn't
be very easy to, uh, to keep them in line exactly. Yeah,
she's also foreshattering, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah. So the Icy, yes, they have a quote unquote
agreement with Rome, but on the other hand, they do
kind of have a history of rebelling against Rome. And
then Prosutagus dies. He leaves this situation which on paper
looks okay but is actually not right.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And you said it was kind of common for which
I didn't know before, but it was like more or
less like kind of a thing that wealthy Romans would do,
but it wasn't common for frontier tribal kings to do.
And so I kind of like the idea that this
guy was like trying to like be fancy about it
in the process accidentally like fucked his own people pretty severely.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
So there's Prostagus and okay, I'll I'll just be clear.
I mean, I'm a human being, I you know, like
I pretend to be objective, but the thing is, I'm
rooting for the Britons here.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
That was one thing that surprised me a lot when
we started doing this, because you were the Roman historian
and the Latin speaker and all of that, but you
always kind of side with the under You always side
with like the rebels.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I grew up with like
the first wave of Star Wars fans. So I'm on,
you know, team Luke Skywalker versus the Empire. You know,
just because you study something doesn't mean you dors.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I'm also so yes, where we can go all in
on that, I'm fine with that.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah. So Prosatagus dies and the arrangement that they had
with Rome falls apart, and the Nia are like, we
had an agreement, and Rome's like eh, So at the
time Rome had two governors. There's this guy so Tonius Paulinus,
there's this other guy de Chiana's Contus, and Boudica, who
(10:20):
is the widow of the former king Prosutagus. She takes
the leadership of the Ici, and the Icene are like yeah, cool, yeah, whatever,
because gender is not an issue when you're talking about
leadership among the Celts living in the Bridge Isles at
this time. But the Romans don't really recognize her authority.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Right, that old like no girls allowed rule that we've
run into a lot in history.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, the part of me is wondering, like, is it
specifically because she was a woman, or were they using
her gender as like an excuse to not recognize her authority.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I think mostly it's that Rome wanted just to plunder
and pillage and exert their dominance over when they yeah,
hit them while they're week before their new ruler has
had a chance to consolidate. Right.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, So whatever the stated reasons, whatever the actual reasons,
they flog Boudica and they rape her daughters.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And Boudica is not the queen that you should have
been wucking with because she does not just just say okay,
you guys do the charge now. Yeah, she lives for revenge.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
It's the beginning of a lot of good action movies, right,
you know, a lot of like Kill Bill kind of
starts like this too. It's like they show up, they
kind of they think they've got your beat, and then
you're just like, Okay, I'm going to get revenge if
it's the last thing I do.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah. Yeah, So Budica, she doesn't take a sword. She
picks up a spear, and she hops on a chariot
and she gathers together not just the Ceni, but also
warriors from other neighboring nations who were allies with the Iceni,
who maybe had been kind I d looking for an
(12:01):
excuse to kind of they've been kind of thinking about
revolting one way or another, and.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Like culturally, ethnically, demographically, religiously, in every way you can imagine,
all of the people in the neighboring tribes are much
more similar to Budica than they are to Nero. Oh right,
they are much more related to the Iceni. Ye, Like
maybe they hate him because they have these you know,
long lasting like blood feuds between families and tribal warfare
(12:28):
and all this stuff. When it comes down to it,
like I speak this guy's language and I don't speak Latin, right,
Like I have the same gods as Budico, but yeah,
I don't worship. I'm not loving this statue to the
deified Emperor Claudius exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah. Yeah, And like you know, we hate each other,
but we're neighbors.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, but nobody can mess with him except me.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, exactly. So Prosatagus is dead, Buduka takes charge. She's
haranguing the troops, and both Tacitus and Cassia's Dio both
are Latin speaking and Greek speaking Roman sources they described this,
you know, they describe her speech. So Cassiu's Dio describes
(13:11):
her appearance in stature. She was very tall in appearance,
most terrifying. She was wearing clothing of many colors, might
have been some sort of plaid like a tartan. Maybe
she was wearing a thick cloak over this, which was
fastened with a pin with approach, which might have been
one of those famous pieces of gold jewelry that the
(13:31):
Celts were so famous for. And her hair cascaded down
to her hips. Modica's eyes had this fierce look to them,
and her voice was harsh. So none of our written
sources have a verbatim eyewitness account of her speech. But
(13:52):
it was kind of standard operating procedure in those days
to kind of write the speech of the sort that
the person probably gave. So I'm going to give you
the too long didn't read.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Versiontica from her chariot with their long flowing tresses, grabbing
a spear to the Icini and the Trinivantes and all
the other nations who have sent soldiers, who have sent
warriors to fight Bodica, says my peeps.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Those whimp ass Romans NBD, no big deal. They think
they were on the place. But we are so much
batter ass than they, and that's why we should win. Also,
it's our land and we're defending it, and the Romans
are being jerks about it. She says stuff like the Romans, Okay,
they've been here long enough that maybe some of you
have forgotten what freedom is like, maybe have gotten used
(14:41):
to slavery. Are the Romans braver than us?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
No?
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Are they stronger than us? Also? No, they hide behind
armor and helmets, they hide behind palisades, they hide in trenches.
When they have the upper hand, do they capture us?
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Now?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
We elude them, slip away into the landscape. We disappear
into the swamps, We disappear into the mountains. They can't
handle the heat, they can't handle the cold. They need
all the trappings of civilization. We will eat these dufices
for breakfast. That's Boudica's speech. I might have paraphrased a
(15:19):
little bit, but she rallies the troops and General Boudica
and I'm calling her General Budica because she is leading
an army. She leads her folks onto Colchester, which is
the modern name of Kamala Duna.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We have a Britain king who did great service to
the emperor and did everything that the Roman Empire required
of him. He dies of natural causes and bequeaths the
empire to his daughter's Nero decides he doesn't like that,
or at least the local Roman government decides they don't
(15:53):
like that. They decide they're going to come in there.
They're going to beat up this guy's wife. They're going
to do things to his daughters. They're gonna exert, like,
show their dominance over these people. And these people don't
like having Romans exert their dominance over them, and they
don't think they need these guys anymore. And Bodoka grabs
her spear and she jumps up on the on the
(16:14):
chariot and she gives this speech and all of these big, angry,
long haired barbarian in a good way. Britain's decide they
are going to fucking burn some shit now.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
On the other hand, one of the two governors of
the province of Britannia, dakianis Katis, based in Londinium, which
is modern day London. He catches wind of this impending
attack on Kamladnam and he doesn't take it seriously. He
just sends two hundred, guys, that's it. Two hundred. Now,
two hundred is like a lot if you're I don't know,
(16:48):
organizing a pickleball tournament, but if you're trying to defend
your town from a bunch of Britons who are angry
with very good reason and have you know, point to
the objects that they're going to throw at you and
injure you with, Yeah, this is not a serious response.
He either didn't get the memo, or he didn't take
(17:09):
the memo seriously, or he had.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
No idea that there was something on the order of
twenty thousand angry Britons coming to burn cultures. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
did not appreciate what he was up against.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Cassie Dio says one hundred and twenty thousand, which is
probably an exaggeration, but.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, one thing that comes up. That's the thing that
comes up a lot with the Roman sources where they
kind of it's interesting because it's like did he exaggerate
it or was like we have talked about before, like yeah,
they are migrating with everybody, so it's not just the
warriors that are marching south on Colchester. It is all
of the tribe, the women, the children, the horses, the
(17:48):
wagon train, everything, so like there might be like everybody's
met and they are all coming together. And there might
have been one hundred and twenty thousand people, probably significantly
less than that, but they weren't all combatants. Probably either, No,
they weren't all combatants.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
But on the other hand, maybe more people were combatants
than the Romans might have fought. Also, because I mean,
clearly Budica can be general. So Budica General Boudica and
her army lays siege to Camlodunum for about two days.
Some of the Romans who are in the city take
refuge in the temple. And I remember this is the temple.
This is not just the temple of like gods. This
(18:26):
is the temple of the deified Emperor Claudius. So it's
like extra Roman.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
They've hiden there because those two hundred dudes are long dead,
and they and their allies are just rampaging through town,
plundering and killing and murdering and destroying and setting everything
on fire. And it's just that it's and these guys
are hiding in the temple because they're just hoping for
a divine intervention from their fallen emperor to save them
(18:55):
from the wrath of Bodica. And it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Doesn't happen, doesn't happen. No, Bodica sets fire to the city,
and we have archaeological evidence that Kamalodunum there was a
there was a fire destruction level. We have evidence for that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
There's like, I think they call it like the Boudica
line when they're like they do when they're digging foundations today,
when they are digging foundations for a new building in
the city of Colchester, there is like a thin line
of like orange dirt in the ground that you can
dig down to, which is just like this was all
(19:34):
that was left of the Roman settlement here after Boko
was through with that. Yeah, she melted the entire thing
into an orange pace that is still visibly it's like
a geological strata now of rock.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah. Yeah, live your life so that archaeologists of the
future will name a stratum after you. Yes, so, yeah,
you think that will be the end of things. No,
it's not. She ravaged, which is Londinium. She ravages Virolamium,
which is the modern day town of Saint Albans in Hertfordshire.
(20:07):
If you're looking on a map. She ravages Londinium, which
is London.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I've heard of it.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
You've heard of it.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, Yeah, they were not like she Yeah, kind of
massacred something on the order of like tens of thousands
of people that lived there. Yeah, were in a place
to the ground, pulled all the rocks apart, like destroyed
the temples, yes, said everything on fire, killed anybody she
could get her hands on, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I had heard a story, and I don't know how
true it is, but like they had killed so many
people in the first couple of cities they had sacked
that by the time they got to Londinium and started
fighting like more cohesive Roman forces, they would throw severed
heads at them to demoralize them before they'd attack. It's cool.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I've come across some pretty grizzly stuff. Bodica and her
people were, according to the sources, were capable of some
pretty grizzly treatment of people they took as captives.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
A lot of human sacrifice stuff you hear about with.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Them, Yeah, human sacrifice stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yeah. The Romans do attribute human sacrifice to basically anybody
who wasn't Roman, which may or may not have been true.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So yeah, So Bodica, who is kind of one of
the og badasses of the British Isles, she just lays
waste to three different Roman towns. You know, the Romans
had the unmitigated temerity to come over to Britain and
establish settlements one way or the other, and one, two three,
(21:36):
she just bam trashes them.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And one thing we haven't really touched on too much
is that, like, yeah, like Bodica is rampaging through like
cities and destroying these settlements and things. But these settlements
are defended by Roman forces, right they Londinium wasn't. There
were two hundred guys that got sent to the to
the frontier that got killed, and yeah, but Lendinium was
(22:01):
defended by a legion, right, Legio nine Hispania was there,
and Bodica and her people overwhelmed like a battle hardened,
experienced Roman legion. They outnumbered them something on the order
of ten to one or twenty to one or something.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
If you something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, if you believe the one hundred and twenty thousand
people number, but like you know, they had the advantage
of in numbers. But this was a trained, disciplined Roman
legion operating on the frontier, and they got crushed and
were mostly annihilated. And so now Paulinis is here. The
other governor has run away, the guy who ordered that
(22:42):
Bodica be flogged and her people like pay their taxes
with interest. That guy was just like he was out
of there two seconds after he figured out after he
heard the news that they'd burned a couple of cities
to the ground. He's like, I'm out of here. I'm
not gonna stick around. I got hear my mom calling
from Rome. I gotta go. And so nah, you end
(23:03):
up with Paulinus, who's just kind of got I mean,
his army is just the remnants of these smashed legions.
He suddenly becomes the underdog in this story, where like
he was, he was the big bed imperial warrior like
some destroying Druidic temples. And now he's got like five
thousand or so Romans who are all that are left
(23:26):
of these like annihilated garrisons and legions, and he's facing
down this monster force of like Britain tribes people who
are maybe getting a little over zealous with their you know,
plundering and killing and burning and murdering and destroying and
human sacrificing. And he decides like, we're gonna have to
have a showdown here, and we're gonna have to have
(23:47):
a battle to settle this kind of once and for all.
And we'll get into that battle after we get back
from this message. But you should stick around for it
because it's it's exciting. Yes, the Romans have been losing
(24:09):
so often and so severely. Right, a legion was destroyed,
which is not like a common thing for the Romans. Right,
you can count on one hand in like a thousand
years how many Roman legions were lost in battle. Right,
and the Botic has destroyed one of those. She's ransacked
several major cities in the islands. So things are not
(24:30):
going well. And Paulinus decides like he's got to fight
these guys or you know, this is this is it, right?
If we want to continue having Roman dominance on the islands,
which which dates back to Julius Caesar's landing. Right. One
thing that he has working for him is that thee
at this point are a little overconfident, which they have
(24:52):
every right to be.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
They have They've trashed three cities.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You know, they've trashed three cities. They've destroyed a legion.
There's eighty thousand of them them and there's five thousand
of Polinias.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
This guy is, yeah, like, they're not getting their security
deposit back, but they don't want their security deposit back.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
They knew that when they when they signed up for this,
that this is what was going to happen, right, They
knew there was no coming back, and they so far
it's worked out great for them. So what Poulinus is
able to do is pick the field of battle, ah, yes,
which is kind of a clever way for him to overcome.
And he's he's a Roman general, he's well trained, he's
(25:30):
smart guy, he's clever, he's a career military guy. So
he picks a very narrow valley where he can get
his guys across, kind of the Spartan set Thermopoli kind
of thing, right exactly. Yeah, I'm massively outnumbered, so I'm
going to present the smallest possible front to you, So
you have to funnel your entire like disorganized, long haired.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Dudes, not that there's anything wrong with being long haired.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I was going to say barbarian, but then I felt
all like weird about it.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
They were just a bunch of giant.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
A bunch of guys, a bunch of people's, bunch of.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Big muscle dudes who were mad, and they had had
the acts that they used to cut down trees in
their backyard and now they're hacking up Roman soldiers with it. Yeah,
so he funnels them into a valley. You know. It
ends up being kind of to keep the like hair
metal analogy going. It becomes one of these like just
anarchy on the attackers side. The defenders are very organized.
(26:31):
The Roman legions have been doing this for a long time.
They're organized.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
There can I just pause for a moment to say, like,
in this particular context, the Romans are the defenders.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yes, they're the last light of the defense. They're the underdogs.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It's a little counterintuitive, but that's actually in this specific context,
that's what's happening. You know, the Romans are the defenders,
even though we're in Britannia where they have.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Britain, And now the story kind of changes a little
bit to where like we have this one last sebastion
of like Roman, and they're outnumbered and there they've got
their backs against the wall and they've got to like
fight this rampaging horde of barbarians. And it's the thing
that we've talked about at the open of this episode,
which is that, like, it's all in how you want
(27:14):
to frame the story. Right, she's the hero until she
kills enough civilians that she's the villain. Right. If that
revenge starts taking you into scenarios where you're lining up
women and children and decapitating them, it's, yeah, a little
bit harder to be sympathetic towards you. She was really mad,
and I get it, totally.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Totally understand, but we get where she's coming from. But
still from Suetonia's Paulinus's point of view, this.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Is not good. Yeah, I gotta I gotta save the
last few Roman citizens remaining in this island. I gotta
not get executed for failure. I got to not be
captured and sacrificed by Bodica and her people.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
So okay. So, so Tonia's Paulinus, being Roman, kind of
figures out what he needs to do, which is to say, okay,
I've got an army and we're organized, and oh, hey,
there's this narrow valley.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Then what happens, Well, then attack or the now it's
it's the Briton's. Yeah, it's the whole conglomerate of all
of these tribes. And they attack, and the Roman line
holds and they drive back. Just the first wave of
Iceni attackers, right, they're not going to be able to
withstand one hundred and twenty thousand I think some of
(28:36):
the numbers were saying something like seventy thousand or sixty
thousand or whatever. It doesn't matter. A monstrously huge outnumbering
U force of ginormous right, and you're not going to
kill them, all right, you're not going to win this
if they still organized. But what happens is Suetonius has
picked this narrow valley where he can hold, and his
front line holds against their front line, and their front
(28:58):
line starts to fall back. But there's nowhere to fall
back too, because you've got this huge, rampaging horde of
people all crushed into this narrow valley, and they start
to run. And then the guys who are in the
second line are seeing the guys from the first line
all dying and wounded and bloodied, like running away. So
they start to run and then what we talked about before,
(29:19):
where they're traveling with like their families and their baggage
trains and their women and children, all sudden and that's
all in the back of this valley, and so they
can't even flee the valley because all the wagons and
horses and all this stuff, all the logistical things that
go into moving an army are in the back of
this valley. So the front wave can't even exit, and
all of a sudden, you have people being crush tripled
(29:43):
as they try to run out of like a rock
concert when there's a fire capting, you know, like it.
It becomes chaos very quickly and people start panicking and
that's contagious with an army and thea and the Britons
are defeated, like I want to say, heroically by this
(30:03):
very small Roman force that had no business defeating them
in battle.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, it's this kind of hodgepodge group of Romans that
were cobbled together at the last minute by the dude
who like wasn't this guy definitely did some bad stuff
in Britain, but he wasn't the guy responsible for making
Bodicet mad.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yes, that was the other guy.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, that guy's long gone, right, he's depending the last
bestiges of civilization on the.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Island, he understands.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, is defeated.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
She has defeated battle. Her forces are defeated. She is defeated. Yes,
So what do you do if you're a queen and
general and the Romans defeat you?
Speaker 1 (30:41):
She lives, She's not captured at this battle, right, she lives,
and she gets away and like a decent portion of
this army gets away, but it's they're routed enough that
it's it's kind of over for them. Yeah, it's pretty
clear that this is this is the end of it.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
So what do you do? Do you just kind of
go quietly into retirement and like keep bees or do
knitting or something.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Just kind of hope that this Suetonius Polinius guy is
going to be nice and be gracious in.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Victory, yeah, or that he just kind of like goes
off and like his attention is directed elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
We would probably be fine. I'll just surrender to Nero.
I'm sure that guy will be leading with me. But
in defeat, she rather than submit to the Romans or
anything like that. Her face whatever was gonnappen. She drank poison,
according to some sources. According to some other sources, she
just quote unquote got sick. Which shit, that happens.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
That happens, happens if you drink poison. Why might she
drink poison? Maybe she knows that if the Romans capture her,
she might be paraded and humiliated as one of their triumphs.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Very easily, right, that happens. They put you on the
first float in the parade going through the city of
Rome to celebrate their victory against u A like I'd
rather be dead, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah. So, even though our sources are not consistent on
how she perished personally, I like the version where she
takes control of things and says, okay, I'm exiting my way.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
It seems the most likely to me, you.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Know, I think, so yeah, she seems to me like
someone who doesn't do things by halves. No, So yeah, later,
like I mean, like many centuries later. Her story is
inspiring people. And when Queen Elizabeth the First was queen,
there was a little bit of a resurgence of Boudica.
(32:39):
And when Victoria was queen. In the nineteenth century, there
was also kind of a resurgence of Boudica as kind
of a symbol of British pride and also as a
symbol of hey, we've got a woman leader.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, powerful British women opposing like foreign rule, opposing imperial
domination over their island from outsiders. You know. It's a
very Yeah. There's probably been a dozen British warships called
the HMS Bodica, right, Yeah, and there's a statue built
(33:14):
of her exactly within like one hundred yards of Big
Ben Right. Yeah, it's very heroic. It's not a let's
remember this horrible person who did this terrible thing to
our city. It is like a let's look at this
kick ass woman who did some badass shit was from
around here. Yeah. So, I mean that's Bodica. She's a
(33:37):
very interesting and complicated character, but really a cool historical
figure and definitely badass.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Oh, very badass. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Where do you think she was a great defender of
her people or like a homicidal maniac? She's those are
I could argue both of those things being badass exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah, So I want to give a shout out to
Caitlin Gillespie at Brandeis has a book out from Oxford
University Press called Modica Warrior Woman of Roman Britain, which
helped me a.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Lot given talks about her and the decline involved the
Roman Empire. For primary sources, primary as they get. Like
you said, these were still written a couple of hundred
years after she died by people who never met her.
We have Cassie's Dio and Tacitus. Yeah all right, yeah, well,
I guess that's all we have for today.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Stay badass, yees, stay bad us, Stay bad us, Stay
bad us, but like, don't actually murder people.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
We don't really want to encourage him ay to like
make goblets out of the skulls of their enemies or
burn major human settlements to the ground.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, I mean, go to Target, spend a few bucks,
Get one of those like mugs that's sheep like a skull.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
Yeah, put some whiskey in it, have a drink, chill out,
you know, sleep it off. You'll probably feel better in
the morning.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Unless you're under age, because I okay, because heaven forfends
some of my students might listening to this. If you
are underage, do not drink actual literal whiskey. Put like,
I don't know Boba t in it or something.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
I do love Boba t as a substitute for whiskey.
I think it's I'm totally on board. I'm totally okay
with it. Yeah. I think that's all we got for today. Okay,
thanks so much for listening to you, guys. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs.
Mixing and music and sound design is by Jude Brewer.
(35:54):
Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the
Week is based on the website of Theweek dot com,
where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses.
If you want to reach out with questions ideas, you
can email us at Badass Podcast at badassoftheweek dot com.
(36:14):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com