November 12, 2025 • 60 mins
Margaret continues talking with Io about the Iceni revolt of 61 AD that almost drove Rome out of Britain.
Sources:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4434717
https://ul.qucosa.de/api/qucosa%3A31804/attachment/ATT-0/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120612044230/http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba83/feat3.shtml
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/62*.html#2
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0078%3Abook%3D14%3Achapter%3D32
https://historyandarchaeologyonline.com/the-evidence-for-the-historical-boudica%ef%bf%bc%ef%bf%bc/
https://vridar.org/2018/05/07/doing-history-how-do-we-know-queen-boadicea-boudicca-existed/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25471937
http://simoneparrish.com/2016/07/how-i-woad-using-woad-for-body-painting/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Cool People who burn Down London.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me this week
is a person who probably hasn't burned down London, but
I haven't either, So who am I to talk shit?
It's Io, I Io, it's.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Me, and I refuse to say anything on this public forum,
but it's me, Io, and Hi, I'm io.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
See this only works when there's crimes that have actually
happened that you can be like, I don't know anything about.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
That crimes that have happened quote unquote, No I don't.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I haven't the foggist.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
The other person I don't have the foggiest idea of
how to introduce is Sophie.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The person who burned down Brighton.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, Sophie, did you burn down Brighton? Wait, don't answer that.
I'm not answering that question. How dare you accuse me
of such a thing? The promise that it's like a
lot of people live in these places are very nice anyway,
whatever crass as a whole whole lot of songs about
exactly this idea.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, I would never burn down the Santa Cruz of
England Brighton.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You can't blow up a social relation.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
But anyway, it's too late to do the crass episode again.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, let's just do the crass episode again. Let me
just pull up that script. We'll just do the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I'm really invested in this one. This fucking rocks.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Oh you want to hear part two about Boudica and
the ic and I revolt of sixty one a d.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Please Margaret, please tell me about Buddhika and the revolt
and et cetera.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well you can, but first we all have to say
hi to Eva, who's our audio engineer, hi Eva, hi Eva,
And our theme isic Go was written for us by
own woman. And in part one we took a big
picture look at the revolt of the ICNI. And now
I want to get into what's been written about it,
because I'm doing a different format than usual. Usually on
the show, the whole first half is basically context and
(01:58):
the whole second half is, you know, the actual event.
But this one, we did the whole event and a
lot of the context in part one, because there's just
honestly not that much written about this thing, right besides
like endless papers talking about how Tacitus may or may
not have meant this one thing when he said this
(02:18):
one thing or whatever.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I was a little thrown off when our hero died
at the end of the first episodes, like you're doing
a memento.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I know. But it turns out the shit that got
written about this shit is really interesting and really revealing.
So I think there's enough year, so I want to
get into what's been written about the Icni revolt. Tacitus
wrote about it kind of at the time, like forty
years later, but like his dad was around for a
lot of it and he was alive during it. And
(02:46):
then Cassius Dio wrote a lot more about it one
hundred and forty years later. Both were writing soiliciously. The
genre of barbarian queen is so old. It is a
two thousand year old basically fiction genre, and that rules.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It still captures the imagination to this day.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I know I want to write the barbarian queen novels now.
I whatever, It'll be fine. I just have to live
long enough to do the shit. When I was younger,
my bucket list was like, go to Antarctica, and now
my bucket list is like, but I haven't written a
Barbarian Queen novel yet. I'm still working on my Witch trilogy.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
But with the Witch's Friends, with the Barbarian.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Queen, it's got to be a separate book because it's
a totally different vibe. You know, it's got to be
like like chain mail bikini shit, which is basically the
way that people are writing about. Okay, well, I'll get
to it.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Okay, Yeah, let's get into the selasity of it all.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And it's more solasitaeusists than it is propagandistic in the end,
which is kind of interesting because like a lot of
modern historians, I did read all those papers about what
it testin to mean abot blah blah blah blah blah,
and you know, people are like, all, this is pro
imperial propaganda, and it is, but also it has a
lot of anti imperial shit in it. I honestly think
(04:03):
this is meant to be enticing and say certain things
about civilization that I disagree with but are interesting.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Every admission is a confession whatever they're saying.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Hey, yeah, whatever the Yeah, we're smart, we all know
what we're saying.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
We quote stuff all the time. I read books.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, got I. Actually it's so funny because for years
I read as a kid, and then I read like
some as an adult, and now I'm like, oh, I
actually just genuinely do read books because I read them
for work, and then now I read them for fun.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
This bitch reads. Let me tell you. Yeah, I'm like,
come jump our motorcycles over some cars. It's like, no,
I'm reading the universe and I'm nutshell, I'm briefing his
story of time.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, exactly, And I feel like my time jumping over cars,
burning cars and motorcycles will come back. It's going to
come back around your best user ahead of you. The
Roman people couldn't get enough of these barbarian queens, and
so by focusing on how women joined and ruling in warfare,
it was a way of pointing out just how barbarous
the Celts were. Tacitus wrote Prasitagus, king of the Icine,
(05:05):
after a life of long and renowned prosperity, had made
the emperor co heir with his own two daughters. Prasitagus
hoped by this submissiveness to preserve his kingdom and household
from attack, but it turned out otherwise. Kingdom and household
alike were plundered. Like prizes of war, the one by
(05:26):
Roman officers, the other by Roman slaves. As a beginning,
his widow Budokai, was flogged and their daughters raped. The
Icinian chiefs were deprived of their hereditary estates, as if
the Romans had been given the whole country. The king's
own relatives were treated like slaves, and Tacitus wrote that
Bhudico said, quote, if you weigh well the strength of
(05:49):
the armies and the causes of this war, the revolt
that she's doing, you will see that in this battle
you must conquer or die. This is a woman's resolve.
As for the men, they may live and be slaves.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
This is the first direct quote we're getting from her
in this episode.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, totally made up, but like this is her battle
speech before everyone. It's part of her battle speech. She's like, yeah,
you men, you can like survive and be slaves. I
guess if you want. For us women, we're gonna fucking
die unless we fucking win this war.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
It's almost certainly made up whole cloth, but it's like
getting into like the history I'm interested in is more
of the barbarian good thing, which you don't get history
from which like you can sort of self insert a
lot of like, oh, the queer dynamics were probably cool.
It's it's total like headcan and stuff, because the real
(06:43):
history comes from just like when people had to record
economic you know, receipts where.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Some of the first Yeah that's what we wrote.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, stupid, boring bullshit.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah you owe me fifty cows.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, this guy didn't make good copper.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, totally bad yelp reviews.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, and we get to when people are talking about
barbarians and I'm sure that that you know, hit Roman
society and like, can you believe the women are just
like men, go ahead and be slaves. I'm on some
scum manifesto shit, like we're girls doing it for ourselves
out there, and people were supposed to be horrified, but
(07:23):
it also reads like it's a palpable horniness in the voice.
Oh yeah about these strong women. It's like sometimes you
hear like inshrud of men talking about like AOC and
they'll like be like complaining about like oh this, But
at the end it's just like but if it wasn't
for those of lack you know, wyes, it's like Jesus Man, Yeah,
(07:46):
you're gonna cut that one to yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But like, no, you're right that that is the thing.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, it's like paging doctor Freud.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, And now Tacitus wrote about the battle, the big battle.
At the end of the story, he wrote, quote, our
soldiers spared not to slay even the women, while the
very beasts of burden, transfixed by the missiles, swelled the
piles of bodies. Great glory, equal to that of our
(08:15):
old victories was one that day. Some indeed say there
fell little less than eighty thousand of the Britons, with
a loss to our soldiers of about four hundred, and
only as many wounded. Boudica put an end to her
life by poison, and so that's his account of the
battle is like, yeah, we like fucking killed like eighty
thousand of women, like only four hundred of us died.
(08:37):
It was like fucking cool. And then we like killed
like all the women and all the animals, and we
got glory. And this is like such a good example
of like this is propaganda for your side.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Like they loved killing back then, Yeah, they love killing
people outside their borders.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
But Cassius Dio wrote a whole lot more about what happened,
and I don't usually do this long of quotes. But
I found myself trying to paraphrase and then like rewrite
the things and then the interweave it into the story
like I normally do, but it didn't do it justice.
And when like pretty much the whole story is one source,
I'm just going to read like this man knew how
to write a Barbarian queen adventure story. There are so
(09:16):
many battle speeches in this, and I love a battle speech,
So I'm going to I'm giving you the primary source here. Well,
it's not really a primary source because it's the person speaking,
but it's the main source people have.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I'm locked in, let's go.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Dio wrote, A terrible disaster occurred in Britain. Two cities
were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and their allies perished,
and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover all, this
ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a
fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame. Indeed,
(09:56):
Heaven gave them indications of the catastrophe beforehand, for at
night there was heard issue from the Senate House, foreign
jargon mingled with laughter, and from the theater outcries and lamentations,
though no mortal man had uttered the words or the groans.
So it's like haunted, right, They like know that bad
shit's going to happen because they're haunted by like weird barbarians.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, they're in the theaters.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Houses were seen under the water in the River Thames,
and the ocean between the island and Gaul once grew
blood red at flood tide. An excuse for the war
was found in the confiscation of sums of money that
Claudius had given to the foremost Britons. For these sums,
as Decaneus Catus, the procurator of the island, maintained, were
(10:44):
to be paid back. This was one reason for the uprising.
Another was found in the fact that Seneca, in the
hope of receiving a good rate of interest, had lent
to the islander forty million sestercees that they did not want,
and had afterwards called in this loan all at once
and resorted to severe measures and exacting it like I
(11:06):
love that. He's just like straight up like ah. And
then we loaned them forty million rome bucks. But they
didn't actually want the money, but we made them do
it anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
But we gave them money and they still wanted to
fight us and unreasonable.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, when we demanded all the money back.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, it's just like okay, yeah, have it. Your money's ugly,
it's got a nero on it.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Oh, we're gonna get into some nero shit talk.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
This is like I do love. You know, stand is
too hard, but love to hear about nero.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, some new transphobia is gonna drop. That's what I
told you.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Let go.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
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 Budhica and
spelled different between every fucking account. A Briton woman of
the royal family, and possessed of greater intelligence than often
belongs to women.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Jeez.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
This woman assembled her army to the number of some
one hundred and twenty thousand, and then ascended a tribunal
which had been constructed of earth in the Roman fashion.
In stature, she was very tall in appearance, most terrifying
in the glance of her eye, most fierce, and her
(12:21):
voice was harsh. A great mass of the tawniest hair
fell to her hips. Around her neck was a large
golden necklace, and she wore a tunic of diverse colors,
over which a thick mantle was fashioned with a brooch.
This was her invariable attire. I love that she warn't tied.
I just I'm so into it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
She sounds so cool.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah. She now grasped a spear to aid her in
her terrifying all beholders, and spoke as follows. You have
learned by actual experience how different freedom is from slavery. Hence,
although some among you may, previously, through ignorance of which
was better, have been deceived by the alluring promises of
(13:07):
the Romans, yet now you have tried both, and you
have learned how great a mistake you made in preferring
an imported despotism to your ancestral mode of life. And
you have come to realize how much better is poverty
with no master than wealth with slavery.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
What a fucking lunatic. He's just honoring the rigors of
his putrid, fucking nature by being as patriarchal, as misogynistic
as possible, and still dropping like the coole it like, Uh,
there's no way she actually said this, but like it's like, fuck, yeah,
she probably said something.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Cool like this, right yeah, and like genuinely like this
is also on some level, I think later shit is
absolutely him just trying to say his own shit about
Roman politics. But I think on some level he's trying
to kind of get into the character and be like,
all right, what would her problem be? You know?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Mm hmmm. I mean that's just good fiction writing. I'll
land it to them. Yeah, what a piece of work
is man?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeh? For what treatment there is of the most shameful
or grievous sort that we have not suffered ever since
these men made their appearance in Britain? Have we not
been robbed entirely of most of our possessions, and those
the greatest, While for those that remain we pay taxes,
besides pasturing and tilling for them all our other possessions.
(14:30):
Do we not pay a yearly tribute for our very bodies?
How much better it would have been sold to masters
once and for all, then, possessing empty titles of freedom,
to have to ransom ourselves every year? How much better
to have been slain and to have perished, than to
go about with a tax on our heads. Yet why
(14:52):
do I mention death, for even dying is not free
of cost with them? Nay, you know what fees we
deposit even for a dead among the rest of mankind,
death frees even those who are in slavery to others.
Only in the case of the Romans do the very
dead remain alive for their profit. Why is it that,
(15:14):
though none of us has any money, and how indeed
could we or where would we get it, we are
stripped and despoiled like a murderer's victims. And why should
the Romans be expected to display moderation as time goes
on when they have behaved towards us in this fashion
at the very outset, when all men show consideration, even
for the beasts they have newly captured. We're not even
(15:36):
done yet.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
She fucking Jesus. Wow. That's like every so often, like
a police chief will give this statement. It's just like
every attack on an officer is an attack on America
democracy and law and order. And I'm like, fuck, yeah
it is. I'm making patch.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I wonder if there were people in like the lowlands
of the Roman Empire are making little making notes. Clay
tablet zines. Yeah, it's just like i'd poorly chiseled, Yeah,
covers with like quotes from this on it.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
God, that would be interesting to eventually learn. I mean,
I'm sure some people know more about it. Maybe I
will by the time I finish this. How much all
of the different revolts like tie into each other, and
how much they did and didn't influence each other. But
do you know what influences everything?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
What does influence everything? Margaret?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Tell me right now, whatever the next ad is, it
is the single most important thing you'll ever hear.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Actually that's probably not true.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And here's a word from palant here.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
God, damn it, here's ads and we're back. But to
speak the plain truth, it is we who have made
ourselves responsible for all these evils, in that we allowed
them to set foot on the island in the first place,
instead of expelling them all at once, as we did
(17:00):
with their famous Julius Caesar.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Say a girl, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yes, And in that we did not deal with them
while they were so far away, as we dealt with
Augustus and with Gaius Caligula, and make even the attempt
to sail hither a formidable thing. As a consequence, although
we inhabit so large an island, or rather a continent
one might say, that is encircled by the sea. And
although we possess a veritable world of our own, and
(17:26):
are so separated by the ocean from all the rest
of mankind, that we have been believed to dwell on
a different earth and under a different sky that some
of the outside world I, even their wisest men, have
not hitherto known for certainty even by what name we
are called. We have, notwithstanding all of this, been despised
and trampled underfoot by men who know nothing else than
(17:49):
how to secure gain. That's right, however, even at this
late day, though we have not done so before, led
us my countrymen and friends and kinsmen, For I consider
you all kinsman, seeing that you inhabit a single island
and are called by one common name. Let us, I say,
do our duty while we still remember what freedom is,
(18:10):
that we may leave to our children not only its
abolition but also its reality. For if we utterly forget
the happy state in which we were born and bred,
what prey will they do? Reared in bondage? So it's like,
oh shit, we remember being alive before Rome, we'd better
fucking go.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, this is like shit that Bobby Sands was yeah,
fucking saying like, damn, he's cooking. You gotta hand it
to him.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I know. I read this whole long ass academic paper
linked in the notes about this person who was kind
of trying to defend Cassius, Dio and Tacitus because most
modern historians are like, look, those are basically Roman propagandists,
and this historian, who probably I disagree with about a
lot of stuff, I tend to agree with this overall
point where he was like, no, he was actually just
(18:59):
trying to like present both sides of this, you know,
and like doing it from a kind of propagandastic point
of view, but like genuinely trying to present these arguments,
and they're not very accurate. Like someone from Britain would
be a lot less likely to say like here we
are over at the end of the world. They'd be
more likely to see themselves as the center of the world.
(19:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
It is like very interesting to think, like how far
that propaganda spread, if that was just in the Imperial core,
if that got out to you know, their vast colonies
or whatever, because I can only imagine that they would
have to temper that a little bit because that cooks
(19:41):
so hard. If that got out to anywhere, they'd be like,
you know what, this Buddhika has got a fucking point. Yeah,
let's get on over there, let's do some Buddhica shit
where we're at. Like, I wonder if it was just
you know, for the local paper.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
God, I honestly I really wonder too. I really want
to learn about, Yeah, how resistance to rome like does
and doesn't spread.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Before the printing press, a lot of propaganda was in
the hands.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Of very specific people, very specific.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
People, the people with some sort of means to produce stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah. And also this that we're reading right now, it's
what Cassius Deo said, as retold through an eleventh century
Christian monk.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Oh and it was like translated in the eleventh century,
but also written down forty years later by his dad's account.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Okay, so no, so okay, So that was Tacitus was
the forty years later. Guy Cassius Dio is one hundred
and forty years later. He is telling even a tale,
you know, But he's also theoretically on some level of
scholar he's writing this history of Rome. This is a
history of Rome that he starts writing.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
That also tells quite a tale of like maybe how
confident Rome felts or how yeah, you know how a
history of resistance doesn't play into like the modern sense.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
But he also this is the man who does the
hard primitive thing. So it's like kind of the like,
we're so tough and cool what he's actually doing on
some level, and we'll get into this moral get really explicit.
He's trying to contrast it with the weakness of like
Rome should be as hard as these guys.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
This is why, yeah, good times create soft man exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
That's what he's trying to do, which again is not true.
But okay, I'm gonna continue this quote. All this I
say not with the purpose of inspiring you with a
hatred of present conditions, that hatred you already have, nor
with fear of the future that fear you already have,
but of commending you, because you, now, of your own accord,
(21:45):
choose the requisite course of action, and of thanking you
for so readily cooperating with me and with each other.
Have no fear whatever of the Romans, for they are
superior to us, and neither in numbers nor in bravery.
And here is the proof. They have protected themselves with
helmets and breastplates and grieves.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
These fucking cowards want to preserve their lives, eh.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, and further provided themselves with palisades and walls and
trenches to make sure of suffering no harm by an
incursion of their enemies. For they are influenced by their
fears when they adopt this kind of fighting and preference
to the plan we follow of rough and ready action. Indeed,
we enjoy such a surplus of bravery that we regard
(22:35):
our tents as safer than their walls, and our shields
as affording greater protection than their whole suits of mail.
As a consequence, we, when victorious, capture them, and when overpowered,
elude them. And if we ever choose to retreat anywhere,
we con seal ourselves in swamps and mountains so inaccessible
(22:56):
that we can be neither discovered nor taken. Opponents, however,
can neither pursue anybody by reason of their heavy armor,
nor yet flea. And if they ever do slip away
from us, they take refuge in certain appointed spots, where
they shut themselves up as in a trap. But these
are not the only respects in which they are vastly
(23:17):
inferior to us. There is also the fact that they
cannot bear up under hunger, thirst, cold, or heat as
we can. They require shade and covering. They require kneaded
bread and wine and oil, and if any of these
things fails them, they perish. For us. On the other hand,
(23:39):
any grass or roots serves as bread. This is what
I was saying. They're just like, we eat dirt.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Fucking yeah, we eat dirt. This is our land. I
know this dirt better than you do. You fucking cowered,
you fucking nerd, you dorks. Yeah, you gotta have your
Oh I need my bread leavened. I need it at
a perfect temperature and with some Yeah me, I'm gonna
go eat some leaves.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah. Well, actually, the juice of any plant as oil,
any water as wine, any tree as a house. I
like that one.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah that rocks. Eco anarchists get on this.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, I know, right, Like, yeah, be a different kind
of weird, fucked up yeah, but a very appealing one.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It's waiting there for you, Sam Cruse.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Furthermore, this region is familiar to us and is our
ally but to them it is unknown and hostile. As
for the rivers, we swim them naked, whereas they do
not accross them easily even with boats. Let us therefore
go against them, trusting boldly to good fortune. Let us
show them that they are hares and foxes trying to
rule over dogs and wolves.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Whoa bitchin that rocks? He's got it? This would like
if I heard this and I was in one of
the colonies, I would be like this bouta isn't making
some sense?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I know? Yeah, Like, ah, maybe I'm gonna go paint
myself blue. See what's up.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I might be a wolf and I might have to
go blue, and I might have to get on some
maroon shit and wait for them in the swamps.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah. Like, realize that women can lead.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
When she had finished speaking, she employed a species of divination,
letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress
like an animal hair, and since it ran on what
they considered the auspicious side, the whole multitude shouted with pleasure,
and Boudica, raising her hand toward heaven, said, I thank
thee andraste, and call upon thee as women speaking to woman,
(25:40):
for I rule over no bird in bearing Egyptians as
did Nitocris, nor over trafficking Assyrians as did Semaramas. These
are other women leaders, But I don't know what's being
referenced here besides that, for we have by now gained
us much learning from the Romans, which is him being like,
this is why this lady knows this shit.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
This is how she discovered feminism because of her shining
the influence, and she would have never known. I mean
she probably yeah, yeah, it just comes naturally to be like, actually,
fuck these guys.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Wait, but wait, we're gonna get to the good shit.
Oh here we go much less over the Romans themselves,
as did Messina once and afterwards Agripana and now which
are two women leaders. And now Nero, who, though in
a name of man, is in fact a woman, as
is proved by his singing lyre plane and beautification of
(26:31):
his person.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Kind of making Nero sound cool.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I know it just you're like, all of a sudden,
it's just like, oh gosh, this deo doesn't like Nero.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Oh oh all right, yeah, it's presenting like the strongest,
most bad, like a Ripley of two thousand years ago,
and suddenly it's just like and you know why she's
fucked up because she's in the same lane as Nero,
but cooler than Nero. Wouldn't it be cool if we
had an effeminate war lord?
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, nay. Those over whom I rule are Britons, men
that know not how to till the soil or apply
a trade, but are thoroughly versed in the art of war,
and hold all things in common, even children and wives,
so that the latter possess the same valor as men
as the Queen. Then of such men and such women,
(27:21):
I supplicate and pray THEE for victory, preservation of life,
and liberty against men insolent, unjust, insatiable, impious, if indeed
we ought to term those people men who bathe in
warm water, eat artificial dainties, drink unmixed wine, annoint themselves
with mer sleep on soft couches with boys for bedfellows,
(27:44):
boys pass their prime at that.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Oh God, wow, I was a lot to take in.
Here is the thing. Women be one shopping two always
into comfort something men historically and forever like. And the
boys I just can't with because it's.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Like, come on, they sleep with adult men Unlike it'd
be perfectly reasonable and not gay for them to sleep
with children. You fucking hate I hate this man so much.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You know, it really drew me in, and it got
my ass because now at the eleventh hour in this quote,
and I'm like, wait, oh, oh, no.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I know, I don't agree. It's so messy. It's so messy,
and our slaves to a liar player, and a poor
one at that, like Nero doesn't even know how to
play liar right, even.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Play steroid Evan. When Rome was burning it sounded like shit.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, wherefore may this mistress demshia Nero basically being like
this fucking lady, Nero, rain no longer over me or
over you. Men. Let the wench sing and lord it
over Romans, for surely they deserve to be the slaves
of such a woman, after having submitted to her for
so long. But for us, Mistress, be thou alone ever
(29:05):
our leader, the goddess that she's talking about, having finished
an appeal to her people of this general Tenor Boudica
led her army against the Romans. For these chances to
be without a leader. Inasmuch as Paulinus, their commander, had
gone on an expedition to Mona an island near Britain.
Basically what happened is that part of the reason this
(29:26):
revolt happened, and we don't know whether it was coordinated
or not, but it's actually very likely. Mona is one
of the last strongholds of the Druids, and the Romans
are off to go fuck it up and like burn
down all the sacred groves and shit, and so while
the Roman army is away is when they launched their uprising.
This enabled her to sack and plunder two Roman cities
and as I have said, to wreak indescribable slaughter. Those
(29:50):
who were taken captive by the Britons, Oh, I'm gonna
say some grosshit, but this is the like now we're
gonna get barbarian on this shit. Those who were taken
captive by the written were subjected to every known form
of outrage. The worst and most bestial atrocity committed by
their captors was the following. They hung up naked the
noblest and most distinguished women and then cut off their
(30:13):
breasts and sewed them to their mouths in order to
make the victims appear to be eating them. Goodness, that's
no good, No, it really isn't. Afterwards, they impaled the
women on sharp skewers, run lengthwise through the entire body.
All this they did on the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets,
and wanton behavior, not only in all their other sacred places,
(30:34):
but particularly in the grove of Andante. This was their
name for victory, and they regarded her with the most
exceptional reverence. So like, there's no evidence of this, right,
But there's also like I don't I mean, there's like
no evidence against this. Yeah, it's it's the how evil
is the past? How spooky are these motherfuckers?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I don't need heroes to be perfect.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
No, it's like I don't even have a dog in
the fight, because it's like either either the passes metalist
fuck And that's interesting. More, it didn't happen, and that's
better for the people who were strung up, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah, the movie The Northmen. When that came out, huh.
I went with some people who knew quite a lot
about history, who were fucking hyped about it because it
was like it shows that morality back then was a
completely you're immersed in the immorality. The hero is a
lunatic murderer, berserker.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
He's a berserker. Yeah, he's a fighter. Yeah yeah, and
like which might not have been a real thing. It
probably was, but it might not have been.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Probably was, but who knows. Like history is just a
tale that you can tell yourself unless you're combing through receipts. Yeah, totally,
who cares about receipts.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
And I really like the It's like, okay, so Cassius
Dio really wants them to have been this because one,
it's sillacious, it's it's interesting, right, it's good entertainment. But
we just don't know. But that what's interesting. I found
this article. It's probably not sourced. I probably didn't include
this of my sources because I was like, this is
some dumb shit where like modern pro rome stands like
(32:17):
still say shit, Like it's the same kind of people
who will be like, it's good that the Catholics conquered
Mexico because they killed all the Aztecs, right, because the
Aztecs were sacrificing people, So that's good that we killed
all of them, you know, and civilized them. So you'll
find this like article that's like, you know, Boutica isn't
actually a feminist hero because she did all this shit,
(32:39):
and like most people are like, yeah, but she probably
didn't do this shit. Like, if I had to bet,
I would say this is made up whole cloth, this
particular part of it, partly because there's just like not
really archaeological evidence of mass slaughter.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean, I'm quite like fifty to fifty on
it where it's just like none of that is something
I'm like, cool, good they did any of this, but
it is like, yeah, they're like they got rid of
the Aztecs, and really what they did was getting rid
of people who did what is the death penalty but
a human sacrifice towards state. Like it's people who had
(33:15):
a bit of theater, who had a bit of fucking
pageantry about their human sacrifices that were horrifying public spectacles, nightmarish,
but like.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, just a completely different moral world than our current world. Yeah,
but that doesn't mean it was immoral. It was to
a different morality.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And our current moral world is not so much different
than that. It's just, for lack of a better term,
like boring, let's theatrical. We have institutionalized, we have like
locked up the human sacrifices the like there's more suffering
or a lateral move suffering.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
You can look at this really clearly, right, because like
when Caesar conquers gall he's like, oh, thank god, we
stop those druids from sacrificing people, and then kills somewhere
between and the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands
of people or millions of people and enslaves an equal number.
So like, yeah, you would have to sacrifice so many people.
(34:15):
Institutionalized slaughter is worse than individual murder, yeah, you know,
And so that's what they bring. That's what Rome is.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Rome is institution, yes, and to the institution, to the church,
to whatever, whether they you know, you're killing somebody according
to the Romans, to appease a sort of God, or
you know, just for your own sort of you've been conquered,
you got some beef. I don't support the guillotine imagery, etcetera, etcetera,
(34:45):
or whatever. That's a different conversation. But we get to
a point where it's just like the difference is in
how much of it is happening or the scale of suffering. Really,
at the end of the day, it's the present.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I actually think the scale of suffering goes up with
the institutional practice. But I agree with this overall point.
But do you know what is institutional?
Speaker 1 (35:09):
You know what's suffering.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Anyone who doesn't buy these things. These things will alleviate
your suffering. If there's an emptiness inside you, fill it
with stuff. That's what they always say. Get stuffed, fill
your holes.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Get stuff, fill your holes. Like what Margaret said.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Uh, here's ads, and we're back okay, and we're back
into the cashiers Dio description of Buddha's revolt. Now, it
chanced that Paulinis had already brought Mona to terms the island,
and so on learning of the disaster in Britain, he
(35:49):
sailed thither from Mona. However, he was not willing to
risk a conflict with the barbarians immediately, as he feared
their numbers and their desperation, but was inclined to postpone
battle to a more convenient season. This is the like
ditching London part. But as he grew short on food
and the barbarians pressed relentlessly upon him, he was compelled,
contrary to his judgment, to engage them. Boudica, at the
(36:12):
head of an army of two hundred and thirty thousand men,
which is like twice what we said before, rode in
a chariot herself, even though they had actually moved on
from chariots and were using cavalry at this point, and
assigned others to their several stations. Paulinis could not extend
his line the whole length of hers, for even if
the men had been drawn up only one deep, they
(36:34):
would have not reached far enough. So inferior were they
in numbers. Nor, on the other hand, did he dare
join battle in a single compact force, for fear of
being surrounded and cut to pieces. He therefore separated his
army into three divisions in order to fight them at
several points at one and the same time. And he
made each of the divisions so strong that it could
(36:56):
not easily be broken through. And gonna give three battle speeches.
This fucking author loves battle speeches. I might end up
abridging some. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Were they just like guys, I'm so this is so scary,
I'm gonna be cut to pieces. You go there, you
go over there.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Oh this is he exhorts his men. While ordering and
arranging his men, he also exhorted them, saying up fellow
soldiers up romans, show these accursed wretches how far we
surpassed them, even in the midst of evil fortune. It
would be shameful, indeed, for you to lose ingloriously. Now,
(37:36):
what but a short time ago you won by your
valor many a time assuredly have both we, ourselves and
our fathers, with far fewer numbers than we have at present,
conquered far more numerous antagonists. Fear not than their numbers
or their spirit of rebellion, for their boldness rests on
nothing more than headlong rashness, unaided by arms or training.
(38:01):
Neither fear them because they have burned a couple of cities,
For they did not capture them by force nor after
a battle, but one was betrayed and the others abandoned
to them. Exact from them now, therefore the proper penalty
for these deeds, and let them learn by actual experience
the difference between us whom they have wronged, and themselves. Yeah,
(38:22):
he's a.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Victim, this fucking guy.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
The reason that I was so interested in this and like, wow,
I was like, I'm gonna do this whole fucking thing.
This is the modern fascist.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
This is the like we're so strong, but they were
mean to us, even though we're better than them.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Can you believe it? We're mean to them and we're
doing everything we can to ruin their lives, and they
just don't see that they deserve it, and they should
integrate themselves into us. Yeah, exactly, the audacity of this Boudhica,
the audacity of these blue spiral people.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I know. After addressing these words to one division, he
came to another, and he said, now is the time,
fellow soldiers, Now is the time for daring for Rhodesia. No,
for if you show yourselves brave men today, you will
recover all that you have lost. If you overcome these foes,
no one else will any longer withstand us. By one
(39:17):
such battle, you will both make your present possession secure
and subdue whatever remains. For everywhere our soldiers, even though
they are in other lands, will emulate you, and foes
will be terror stricken. Therefore, since you have it within
your power, either to rule all mankind without a fear,
both the nations that your father's left to you and
(39:38):
those that you yourselves have gained an addition, or else
be deprived of them altogether, choose to be free to rule,
to live in wealth, and to enjoy prosperity, rather than
by avoiding the effort to suffer the opposite of all
of this. Whoa, oh my god, he it yeah yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Just comes out and says like the fascist crust crout
boys shit, yes, yeah, and grave that upon a bunch
of piss boy's graves.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah. After making an address of this sort to these men,
he went on to the third division. I think literally
the reason that this author was like, I'm gonna cut
up in three divisions is he wanted to give three
battle speeches, which should be fair is one of the
most fun things to write.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I would too. I kind of specialize in slogan earring,
which is, I know, a smaller battle speech.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
And what's funny though, is that, like the battle speeches
probably didn't happen historically because you kind of can't talk
to one hundred thousand people in like fifty one sixty
one ad like, you just kind of can't. There's not
a method by which you would do it. You'd have
to fucking people's microphone that shit, and no one wants that.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
No one wants the people's microphone. But wouldn't that be funny.
Mike check, Mic check and going down. Every time I
read loard of the Rings, I'm like, fuck, this rules, Bud.
He's so running his horse along this line of men.
It's got to be like death. Yeah, and you're like, what,
what the fuck? I was getting some.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Hype I'd die, which is funny because it's one of
the best battle speeches, both the Tolkien version and well
all three versions. The movie version is good, the Tolken
version is good, and then the original, which is I
think norse win time Wolf time.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I didn't know this.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, No, it's totally cribbed and it's a really good speech.
All of the versions are good. We use the original
one as lyrics and a feminosical song once. Anyway, okay,
third battle speech. You have heard what outrages these damnable
men have committed against us, Nay more, you have even
witnessed some of them. Choose then, whether you wish to
(41:46):
suffer the same treatment yourselves as our comrades have suffered,
and to be driven out of Britain entirely besides or
else by conquering to avenge those that have perished, and
at the same time furnish the rest of mankind and example,
not only of benevolent clemency towards the obedient, but also
the inevitable severity towards the rebellious. For my part, I
(42:10):
hope above all that victory will be ours. First, because
the gods are our allies, for they almost always side
with those who have been wronged. I love it. I
just love that we're the wronged ones.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Absolutely, that's what the gods are. I'm always saying this
about the gods.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, they totally care about us. Absolutely all.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
You must do a cursory glance at the Odyssey. Yeah, wait,
was this Christian Rome by this point?
Speaker 2 (42:34):
No, this is Pagan rom still Yeah, more so, Yeah, totally. Second,
because of the courage that is our heritage, since we
are Romans and have triumphed over all mankind by our valor. Next,
because our experience, for we have defeated and subdued these
very men who are now arrayed against us. And lastly,
because of our prestige, for those with whom we are
(42:57):
about to engage are not antagonists but our slaves, whom
we conquered even when they were free and independent. Yet,
if the outcome should prove contrary to our hope, For
I will not shrink from mentioning even the possibility it
would be better for us to fall fighting bravely than
to be captured and impaled, to look upon our own
(43:18):
entrails cut from our bodies, to be spitted on red
hot skewers, to perish by being melted and boiling water.
Like now, I'm kind of okay with all that shit.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
You are selling this. You're really bringing work to it.
But I can't imagine this guy had a voice that
wasn't a Ben Shapiro type. And get our entrails out,
and if they put in some boiling water, I'll be like,
that's fine, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
I love pain, in a word, to suffer, as though
we have been thrown to lawless and impious wild beasts.
Let us therefore either conquer them or die on the spot.
Britain will be ye a noble monument for us, even
though all the other romans here should be driven out,
For in any case, our bodies shall forever possess this land.
(44:10):
After addressing these and like words to them, he raised
the signal for battle. Thereupon the armies approached each other
the barbarians with much shouting mingled with menacing battle songs,
but the Romans silently and in order until they came
within a javelin's throw the enemy. Then, while their foes
were still advancing against them at a walk, the Romans
rushed forward at a signal and charged them at full speed,
(44:33):
and when the clash came, easily broke through the opposing ranks.
But as they were surrounded by the great numbers of
the enemy, they had to be fighting everywhere at once.
Their struggle took many forms. Light armored troops exchanged missiles
with light armed. Heavily armed were opposed to heavy armed cavalry,
clashed with cavalry and against the chariots of the barbarians.
(44:55):
The Roman archers contended. The Barbarians would assail the Romans
with a rush of their chariots them helter skelter, but
since they fought with breastplates, would themselves be repulsed by
the arrows. Horsemen would overthrow foot soldiers, and foot soldiers
strike down the horsemen. A group of Romans forming in
close order, would advance and meet the chariots, and others
(45:15):
would be scattered by them. A band of Britons would
come to close quarters with the archers and rout them,
while others were content to dodge their shafts at a distance.
And all this was going on not only at one
spot only, but in all three divisions at once. They
contended for a long time, both parties being animated by
the same zeal and daring. But finally, late in the day,
(45:39):
the Romans prevailed, and they slew many in battle beside
the wagons and the forest, and captured many alike. Nevertheless,
not a few made their escape and were preparing to
fight again. In the meantime, however, Bruduka fell sick and died.
The Britons mourned her deeply and gave her a costly burial,
but feeling that now at last they were really defeated,
(46:02):
they scattered to their homes and like literally that section
ends with him being like thus ended the trouble in
Britain anyway over here and now it was.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Roman Britain, and we loved it.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
It's like sword and sorcery fiction.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Absolutely. I do love it when they describe projectiles as missiles,
because it's like, what am I gonna do? Not imagine
a magic missile? And I will say I'm a big
fan of hardcore history, and wow, you've chosen some really
bitching quotes that no shade to whatever that guy's name is,
(46:36):
but like, yeah, you're crushing it.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Better, Thank you. I take them the high honor. Dan
Carlin is one of my favorite podcasters.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Dan Carlin really crushes it. But you found some really.
I was honored that we had what between like two
commercial breaks, just like quote after quote of just like
probably stuff that never happened. But I'm like riveted. I
keep forgetting to like comments because I'm like, fuck, this rocks.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
It's interesting too write, because like the description of this
battle versus the Last Battle Tacitus was like yeah, and
then we killed like eighty thousand of them and like
only four hundred of our dudes got rocked, well killed.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
About a billion of them. No, that was before breakfast.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, they ran away and they said.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Oh please please please, Oh we're so sorry.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
And this one is instead like no, we fought all day.
It was tooth and you know it was like, yeah
it was.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
And I love that he made sure to be like no,
and we took like the all of our equally matched
people were against their equally matched people, and we won
against the peasant mud farmers, and.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
It's like you could tell that he kind of likes
both sides, but his side is better, you know, because
they're being the real tough guys.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
That's a deep thing about fascism, like where they kind
of want to have the barbarian spirit, but they want
to have the civilized mind of the barbarian.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
They want to eat milk and flesh, but actually they're
pols are based on grain, and I say, this is
a vegan To be really clear, I am not trying
to be like, ah, effeminate people who don't eat milk
and flesh, you know, no.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
But that's a good way of especially because they have
this like weird fetish about meat and milk. I don't
know if the Proud Boys are still on milk, but
that was a weird time out in the streets in
twenty sixteen to see them just drinking milk freely amongst
each other. It's just like, I mean, it was a
little like when they were trying to you know, conguer Scotland,
(48:30):
where they would like go into war naked. It's just like,
what the fuck is going on? A little bit like
seeing them I always drink milk is like, what are
you this going on? Are you drinking fermented mare's milk?
And you're just gonna go fucking perserk on us, Like, no,
they were just doing some like psycho stuff that I.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yeah, they're just tucking hazeing and shit.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah yeah, I figured out what it was up to,
and I'm like, oh, that's neuro.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
No, they're not being as cool as they wish they were. Okay,
So this big fire, old battle that possibly hundreds of
thousands of people were involved in never been found. No
one knows where this was. There's like hundreds of places
it could have been. Also, Boudica's tomb, who was like
buried and richly or whatever, never been found. But now
(49:18):
I promised you I was going to go wild out
on a limb about gender.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Let's go, Yes, here we go a Strappan audience.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
In twenty fifteen, a grave site from yeoldie Roman Britain
was uncovered in Gloucester, Gloster. The tombstone said Bodicia or Bodikia.
It said Bodica but just spelled different. But literally, her
name is spelled different in every single account anyway. Not
(49:47):
a written culture.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
We love an incomprehensible queen.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
So they dig up this tomb of Boudica twenty fifteen,
but the skeleton in the grave was male, yes, all right,
So everyone is like, couldn't be her? Fuck yeah no,
and they just literally just moved on. They were like, well,
that's not her, so I guess we haven't found her.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
It's not as if Pagan gender dynamics were far more fluid,
and this fucking boot liquor king could have been married
to somebody and somebody else produced the children and they
just marry them.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Like I don't know if that's true, but I'm not
a historian. Fuck you, that's what I believe. And you
believe it now too, by merit of listening to me.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah no, and like there's no particular reason to believe it.
But I also don't know if Budica was a boy's
given name or not, and like I've only seen it
as a woman's given name. Also, like everyone's describing her
as this very tall woman with a like particularly interesting voice.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Tall girls with an interesting voice.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
And I'm gonna go out on the furthest limb possible.
And this is like almost more just like a magical level,
a synchronicity level. The reason I found out about Boudica
is talking about the Galley last week, and the galley
where the trans priestess is of ancient Roman who worshiped
the cult of Sibylly, and the galley had a specific
poetry meter, Galliambic meter, that was a specific like way
(51:14):
of balancing syllables and shit, a poem that was only
used by these trans priestesses for their goddess. Right, It's
called Galliambic meter. And the one English poem I could
find written in Galliambic meter is a Tennyson poem aha
about Boutika.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
That, Yeah, this rocks, so wow. I'm going back to
Greece in a month, and every trans person I hang
out with their has probably mentioned this. But it's just
like in America, you know, we trans people, We've got
all kinds of different naming conventions for what we like
(51:54):
to choose. There, they really do like to crib from
their mythology because it rocks. A lot of anarchists there
are just like no that represents nationalism, and a lot
of people are sort of reclaiming it a little bit. Yeah,
I'm going to bring that up and I'm going to
look like I'm going to look so cool. Thank you
for bringing that to me.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, yeah, you know, the trans cult was absolutely in
Greece as well as Rome Sibylly's cult, although it is
Magna Matar. It's different in different countries in different times
since the name of the specific goddess and it comes
from Anatolia immediately over the sea, like Turkey. Basically, yeah, yeah, yeah,
they started getting ostracized once they were in Greece, like
the Trans cult, and they were still an important, powerful
(52:33):
part of like society, but then like no one would
fuck with them. They were like kind of untouchable. And
it's like interesting too, Rite because like Rome is so
confused by warrior women that they made up the Amazons.
Probably I said this last week too, probably as a
representation of the fact that the Step people who kept
(52:54):
kicking their asses to the east had a lot of
warrior queens and warrior women, and so they were like,
what women are fighting? These are a whole weird mythical
creature women who fight.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Where's the factory where they make this?
Speaker 2 (53:10):
And so Boudica. There is literally no archaeological evidence that
Buddhica existed except possibly this skeleton of a man male whatever,
and so I was kind of like, at the last minute,
I was like, why is everyone writing about her? Like
she's real? Her name means Victory, which happens to be
the name that all the Romans name their fucking gods
of victory. Like this feels too on the nose, But
(53:33):
the overall rough consensus from historians is that Budica is
a historical figure. And to summarize why, there's a historian
Barry Cunleaf, who I think doesn't like Barry Cunleaf is
probably alive. I'm gonna be careful of how I phrased this.
I read Barry Cunnleaf's book on druids and it didn't
mention the fact that women were druids, and it barely
(53:54):
mentioned women at all, and it like you, And partly
it's because like there wasn't like specific Roman sources being
like there were women druids, but instead there was just
a fuck ton of people doing druid things that happened
to be women.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Do some real history, Barry, that's me saying it, not Margaret.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
Yeah. Yeah. And so Barry cunleief I don't think is
biased towards believing in women. Is the way I will
phrase it.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
I've always said they don't exist. I've seen a woman.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
Show me a woman. I don't even know what one is.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
What is a woman? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Barry Cunleif believes that Buddhka is real and was a
warrior queen and all that shit. To quote historian Barry
Cunnleaf quote, it just wasn't the sort of thing Romans
did to invent characters. It doesn't fit at all with
what we know about Roman historical writing. And so that's
kind of the primary argument about why Budhka is real,
(54:52):
is it they would propagandize shit, but they kind of
just didn't invent dudes, whole cloth or ladies.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
That is a like, yeah, I would. I would sort
of assume that maybe they made somebody up maybe, but
like I kind of trust him. Yeah, where that's concerned.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
At the very least, Fantastitas was alive when this happened,
and his dad was like one of the governors.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Yeah, and like there's plenty of evidence of warrior queens
out there, oh yeah, especially among the like Dagan tribes
that they were like yeah, fucking with among the Gauls,
Like they were all over the fucking place. Like, there's
really no reason to question it.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
There's a chance that she was like either already a
queen or just some fucking nobody who was like, I'm
a warrior queen now, and they were like, what's your name?
She was like, my name is fucking Victory. Let's fucking go.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
And so if it's like a CONTI trans woman's name,
I'm like eight times here for it.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yeah, let's go ahead and just think that.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah, just headcan and that shit. Yeah, that's what's so
fascinating about doing ancient history versus like mostly I do
kind of recent ish history by my standards, where I
constantly think that the nineteenth century is more important than
the twenty first century because my brain is broken. But
it's impossible to do the ancient shit without head cannoning everything,
(56:10):
because you can't tell a story without playing connect the dots,
and you can connect the dots so many ways.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
It's where the original hero's journey came from. And it's like,
fucking before patriarchy laid itself flat across like most of
the globe, some interesting shit was happening, and it was
from people who didn't concern themselves with being remembered in
this narcissistic way that people who were concerned with empires did. Yeah,
(56:39):
I mean, history's written by the winners anyway, how how
much more true is the stuff that was recorded rather
than the stuff that we're kind of like picking up.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
And actually, the thing that you talked about, I was
really struck earlier in the first episode. You talked about
being like, oh, this oral culture didn't care about legacy
in a permanent way, the way that these like I
must write my name on everything people were that really
stuck with me. And I think it's less that history
is written by the winners. History is written by the writers.
And I think about like even like and again, I'm
(57:09):
just going to throw in, like why I haven't talked
shit on Marx this entire episode. The fact that like
Marx kind of took over the First International, or rather
Marxism became a dominant ideology within it was because he
was the guy who showed up and took notes Like.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
God damn, you're right, quite right. Bakunan was in there
arguing Marx was in his book may be writing.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yeah, history is written by the writers. That's my pithy slogan.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
I mean it is why, like and I do like
defer a lot to like Marxist analysis of history, but
like because they Marxist analysis of history.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Yeah. Anyway, So that's the story of Budica. And it's
so funny that she's like literally people loved her partly
because like her name means victory and Queen Victoria's name
means victory. Fuck. Yeah, British pride as if it wasn't
like clearly this anti colonial struggle, Like clearly you're the
Rome in this story.
Speaker 1 (58:02):
But to Rome. Yeah, like Britain is very like one
to one is sort of just like oh a fucking pale,
sickly imitation of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Yeah, whereas they used to fucking live off a dirt, used.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
To be able to eat dirt and burn down London
look at you.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
Yeah, set people in Wickerman's and be like, don't come
investigating crimes in our town.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Cop, You're not even a peaky blinders. Now that's a
Scottish island. I don't even put them into Britain. Scotland
you're off the hook. Whales, you're off the hook. Ireland,
of course you're off the hook. Yeah, you're on notice
you already got rid of Prince Andrew the rest. It's
up to you.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
All right, that's the end of our episode. You guys
think you want to plug.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Yeah, I'm on the Internet. I guess I'm on Blue
Sky and Instagram at Bumlung. Maybe Blue Sky's citizen Io
I forget, but go ahead and look for it.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
I'm on the Are you talking about the fact that
we're doing a six part table top adventure called Donna
Frogs with Jason Bowman, who's basically the pathfinder man.
Speaker 1 (59:12):
Mister Pathfinder.
Speaker 2 (59:13):
All of your favorite podcasters are on it, Well, not
all of them, but many of them are on it.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah, we don't have Scott Ackerman or Paul F. Tompkins yet,
Fingers crossed. Listen and maybe we'll do more. I want
to do more. Please listen to it. I do the spectacle. Also, Yeah,
I got comics, I got writings. I probably got a
Patreon I do. I just rediscovered I have a Patreon.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Oh congrats, thanks.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah, it took some Internet digging to remember that it
was pre pandemic times.
Speaker 2 (59:44):
I have. I'm on the internet, Markyo Kiljoy. I have
a substack. I often talk about kind of things like
what I talk about in this Like my recent post,
all the posts that kind of matter are free on
that you don't have to pay me for it. But
if you want to do the weird parasocial thing where
you hear more about like my personal stuff, I also
post those behind a paywall, but I have like posts
(01:00:05):
like how metal is the Past, where it's just me
trying to figure this shit out because no one knows
and it confuses me.
Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
But anyway, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff after dark
on Margaret's substaff.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Zobey, I think you want to plug cool Zone Media
dot com. Bye everyone, Bye, love you. Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
More podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
(01:00:43):
Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the radio, app,
a Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Cool People who burn Down London.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me this week
is a person who probably hasn't burned down London, but
I haven't either, So who am I to talk shit?
It's Io, I Io, it's.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Me, and I refuse to say anything on this public forum,
but it's me, Io, and Hi, I'm io.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
See this only works when there's crimes that have actually
happened that you can be like, I don't know anything about.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
That crimes that have happened quote unquote, No I don't.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I haven't the foggist.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
The other person I don't have the foggiest idea of
how to introduce is Sophie.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The person who burned down Brighton.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, Sophie, did you burn down Brighton? Wait, don't answer that.
I'm not answering that question. How dare you accuse me
of such a thing? The promise that it's like a
lot of people live in these places are very nice anyway,
whatever crass as a whole whole lot of songs about
exactly this idea.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, I would never burn down the Santa Cruz of
England Brighton.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You can't blow up a social relation.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
But anyway, it's too late to do the crass episode again.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, let's just do the crass episode again. Let me
just pull up that script. We'll just do the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I'm really invested in this one. This fucking rocks.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Oh you want to hear part two about Boudica and
the ic and I revolt of sixty one a d.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Please Margaret, please tell me about Buddhika and the revolt
and et cetera.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well you can, but first we all have to say
hi to Eva, who's our audio engineer, hi Eva, hi Eva,
And our theme isic Go was written for us by
own woman. And in part one we took a big
picture look at the revolt of the ICNI. And now
I want to get into what's been written about it,
because I'm doing a different format than usual. Usually on
the show, the whole first half is basically context and
(01:58):
the whole second half is, you know, the actual event.
But this one, we did the whole event and a
lot of the context in part one, because there's just
honestly not that much written about this thing, right besides
like endless papers talking about how Tacitus may or may
not have meant this one thing when he said this
(02:18):
one thing or whatever.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I was a little thrown off when our hero died
at the end of the first episodes, like you're doing
a memento.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I know. But it turns out the shit that got
written about this shit is really interesting and really revealing.
So I think there's enough year, so I want to
get into what's been written about the Icni revolt. Tacitus
wrote about it kind of at the time, like forty
years later, but like his dad was around for a
lot of it and he was alive during it. And
(02:46):
then Cassius Dio wrote a lot more about it one
hundred and forty years later. Both were writing soiliciously. The
genre of barbarian queen is so old. It is a
two thousand year old basically fiction genre, and that rules.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It still captures the imagination to this day.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I know I want to write the barbarian queen novels now.
I whatever, It'll be fine. I just have to live
long enough to do the shit. When I was younger,
my bucket list was like, go to Antarctica, and now
my bucket list is like, but I haven't written a
Barbarian Queen novel yet. I'm still working on my Witch trilogy.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
But with the Witch's Friends, with the Barbarian.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Queen, it's got to be a separate book because it's
a totally different vibe. You know, it's got to be
like like chain mail bikini shit, which is basically the
way that people are writing about. Okay, well, I'll get
to it.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Okay, Yeah, let's get into the selasity of it all.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And it's more solasitaeusists than it is propagandistic in the end,
which is kind of interesting because like a lot of
modern historians, I did read all those papers about what
it testin to mean abot blah blah blah blah blah,
and you know, people are like, all, this is pro
imperial propaganda, and it is, but also it has a
lot of anti imperial shit in it. I honestly think
(04:03):
this is meant to be enticing and say certain things
about civilization that I disagree with but are interesting.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Every admission is a confession whatever they're saying.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Hey, yeah, whatever the Yeah, we're smart, we all know
what we're saying.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
We quote stuff all the time. I read books.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, got I. Actually it's so funny because for years
I read as a kid, and then I read like
some as an adult, and now I'm like, oh, I
actually just genuinely do read books because I read them
for work, and then now I read them for fun.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
This bitch reads. Let me tell you. Yeah, I'm like,
come jump our motorcycles over some cars. It's like, no,
I'm reading the universe and I'm nutshell, I'm briefing his
story of time.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, exactly, And I feel like my time jumping over cars,
burning cars and motorcycles will come back. It's going to
come back around your best user ahead of you. The
Roman people couldn't get enough of these barbarian queens, and
so by focusing on how women joined and ruling in warfare,
it was a way of pointing out just how barbarous
the Celts were. Tacitus wrote Prasitagus, king of the Icine,
(05:05):
after a life of long and renowned prosperity, had made
the emperor co heir with his own two daughters. Prasitagus
hoped by this submissiveness to preserve his kingdom and household
from attack, but it turned out otherwise. Kingdom and household
alike were plundered. Like prizes of war, the one by
(05:26):
Roman officers, the other by Roman slaves. As a beginning,
his widow Budokai, was flogged and their daughters raped. The
Icinian chiefs were deprived of their hereditary estates, as if
the Romans had been given the whole country. The king's
own relatives were treated like slaves, and Tacitus wrote that
Bhudico said, quote, if you weigh well the strength of
(05:49):
the armies and the causes of this war, the revolt
that she's doing, you will see that in this battle
you must conquer or die. This is a woman's resolve.
As for the men, they may live and be slaves.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
This is the first direct quote we're getting from her
in this episode.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, totally made up, but like this is her battle
speech before everyone. It's part of her battle speech. She's like, yeah,
you men, you can like survive and be slaves. I
guess if you want. For us women, we're gonna fucking
die unless we fucking win this war.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
It's almost certainly made up whole cloth, but it's like
getting into like the history I'm interested in is more
of the barbarian good thing, which you don't get history
from which like you can sort of self insert a
lot of like, oh, the queer dynamics were probably cool.
It's it's total like headcan and stuff, because the real
(06:43):
history comes from just like when people had to record
economic you know, receipts where.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Some of the first Yeah that's what we wrote.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah, stupid, boring bullshit.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah you owe me fifty cows.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, this guy didn't make good copper.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, totally bad yelp reviews.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, and we get to when people are talking about
barbarians and I'm sure that that you know, hit Roman
society and like, can you believe the women are just
like men, go ahead and be slaves. I'm on some
scum manifesto shit, like we're girls doing it for ourselves
out there, and people were supposed to be horrified, but
(07:23):
it also reads like it's a palpable horniness in the voice.
Oh yeah about these strong women. It's like sometimes you
hear like inshrud of men talking about like AOC and
they'll like be like complaining about like oh this, But
at the end it's just like but if it wasn't
for those of lack you know, wyes, it's like Jesus Man, Yeah,
(07:46):
you're gonna cut that one to yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But like, no, you're right that that is the thing.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, it's like paging doctor Freud.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, And now Tacitus wrote about the battle, the big battle.
At the end of the story, he wrote, quote, our
soldiers spared not to slay even the women, while the
very beasts of burden, transfixed by the missiles, swelled the
piles of bodies. Great glory, equal to that of our
(08:15):
old victories was one that day. Some indeed say there
fell little less than eighty thousand of the Britons, with
a loss to our soldiers of about four hundred, and
only as many wounded. Boudica put an end to her
life by poison, and so that's his account of the
battle is like, yeah, we like fucking killed like eighty
thousand of women, like only four hundred of us died.
(08:37):
It was like fucking cool. And then we like killed
like all the women and all the animals, and we
got glory. And this is like such a good example
of like this is propaganda for your side.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Like they loved killing back then, Yeah, they love killing
people outside their borders.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
But Cassius Dio wrote a whole lot more about what happened,
and I don't usually do this long of quotes. But
I found myself trying to paraphrase and then like rewrite
the things and then the interweave it into the story
like I normally do, but it didn't do it justice.
And when like pretty much the whole story is one source,
I'm just going to read like this man knew how
to write a Barbarian queen adventure story. There are so
(09:16):
many battle speeches in this, and I love a battle speech,
So I'm going to I'm giving you the primary source here. Well,
it's not really a primary source because it's the person speaking,
but it's the main source people have.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I'm locked in, let's go.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Dio wrote, A terrible disaster occurred in Britain. Two cities
were sacked, eighty thousand of the Romans and their allies perished,
and the island was lost to Rome. Moreover all, this
ruin was brought upon the Romans by a woman, a
fact which in itself caused them the greatest shame. Indeed,
(09:56):
Heaven gave them indications of the catastrophe beforehand, for at
night there was heard issue from the Senate House, foreign
jargon mingled with laughter, and from the theater outcries and lamentations,
though no mortal man had uttered the words or the groans.
So it's like haunted, right, They like know that bad
shit's going to happen because they're haunted by like weird barbarians.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, they're in the theaters.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Houses were seen under the water in the River Thames,
and the ocean between the island and Gaul once grew
blood red at flood tide. An excuse for the war
was found in the confiscation of sums of money that
Claudius had given to the foremost Britons. For these sums,
as Decaneus Catus, the procurator of the island, maintained, were
(10:44):
to be paid back. This was one reason for the uprising.
Another was found in the fact that Seneca, in the
hope of receiving a good rate of interest, had lent
to the islander forty million sestercees that they did not want,
and had afterwards called in this loan all at once
and resorted to severe measures and exacting it like I
(11:06):
love that. He's just like straight up like ah. And
then we loaned them forty million rome bucks. But they
didn't actually want the money, but we made them do
it anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
But we gave them money and they still wanted to
fight us and unreasonable.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, when we demanded all the money back.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, it's just like okay, yeah, have it. Your money's ugly,
it's got a nero on it.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Oh, we're gonna get into some nero shit talk.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
This is like I do love. You know, stand is
too hard, but love to hear about nero.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah, some new transphobia is gonna drop. That's what I
told you.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Let go.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
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 Budhica and
spelled different between every fucking account. A Briton woman of
the royal family, and possessed of greater intelligence than often
belongs to women.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Jeez.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
This woman assembled her army to the number of some
one hundred and twenty thousand, and then ascended a tribunal
which had been constructed of earth in the Roman fashion.
In stature, she was very tall in appearance, most terrifying
in the glance of her eye, most fierce, and her
(12:21):
voice was harsh. A great mass of the tawniest hair
fell to her hips. Around her neck was a large
golden necklace, and she wore a tunic of diverse colors,
over which a thick mantle was fashioned with a brooch.
This was her invariable attire. I love that she warn't tied.
I just I'm so into it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
She sounds so cool.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Yeah. She now grasped a spear to aid her in
her terrifying all beholders, and spoke as follows. You have
learned by actual experience how different freedom is from slavery. Hence,
although some among you may, previously, through ignorance of which
was better, have been deceived by the alluring promises of
(13:07):
the Romans, yet now you have tried both, and you
have learned how great a mistake you made in preferring
an imported despotism to your ancestral mode of life. And
you have come to realize how much better is poverty
with no master than wealth with slavery.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
What a fucking lunatic. He's just honoring the rigors of
his putrid, fucking nature by being as patriarchal, as misogynistic
as possible, and still dropping like the coole it like, Uh,
there's no way she actually said this, but like it's like, fuck, yeah,
she probably said something.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Cool like this, right yeah, and like genuinely like this
is also on some level, I think later shit is
absolutely him just trying to say his own shit about
Roman politics. But I think on some level he's trying
to kind of get into the character and be like,
all right, what would her problem be? You know?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Mm hmmm. I mean that's just good fiction writing. I'll
land it to them. Yeah, what a piece of work
is man?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeh? For what treatment there is of the most shameful
or grievous sort that we have not suffered ever since
these men made their appearance in Britain? Have we not
been robbed entirely of most of our possessions, and those
the greatest, While for those that remain we pay taxes,
besides pasturing and tilling for them all our other possessions.
(14:30):
Do we not pay a yearly tribute for our very bodies?
How much better it would have been sold to masters
once and for all, then, possessing empty titles of freedom,
to have to ransom ourselves every year? How much better
to have been slain and to have perished, than to
go about with a tax on our heads. Yet why
(14:52):
do I mention death, for even dying is not free
of cost with them? Nay, you know what fees we
deposit even for a dead among the rest of mankind,
death frees even those who are in slavery to others.
Only in the case of the Romans do the very
dead remain alive for their profit. Why is it that,
(15:14):
though none of us has any money, and how indeed
could we or where would we get it, we are
stripped and despoiled like a murderer's victims. And why should
the Romans be expected to display moderation as time goes
on when they have behaved towards us in this fashion
at the very outset, when all men show consideration, even
for the beasts they have newly captured. We're not even
(15:36):
done yet.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
She fucking Jesus. Wow. That's like every so often, like
a police chief will give this statement. It's just like
every attack on an officer is an attack on America
democracy and law and order. And I'm like, fuck, yeah
it is. I'm making patch.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
I wonder if there were people in like the lowlands
of the Roman Empire are making little making notes. Clay
tablet zines. Yeah, it's just like i'd poorly chiseled, Yeah,
covers with like quotes from this on it.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
God, that would be interesting to eventually learn. I mean,
I'm sure some people know more about it. Maybe I
will by the time I finish this. How much all
of the different revolts like tie into each other, and
how much they did and didn't influence each other. But
do you know what influences everything?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
What does influence everything? Margaret?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Tell me right now, whatever the next ad is, it
is the single most important thing you'll ever hear.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Actually that's probably not true.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And here's a word from palant here.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
God, damn it, here's ads and we're back. But to
speak the plain truth, it is we who have made
ourselves responsible for all these evils, in that we allowed
them to set foot on the island in the first place,
instead of expelling them all at once, as we did
(17:00):
with their famous Julius Caesar.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Say a girl, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yes, And in that we did not deal with them
while they were so far away, as we dealt with
Augustus and with Gaius Caligula, and make even the attempt
to sail hither a formidable thing. As a consequence, although
we inhabit so large an island, or rather a continent
one might say, that is encircled by the sea. And
although we possess a veritable world of our own, and
(17:26):
are so separated by the ocean from all the rest
of mankind, that we have been believed to dwell on
a different earth and under a different sky that some
of the outside world I, even their wisest men, have
not hitherto known for certainty even by what name we
are called. We have, notwithstanding all of this, been despised
and trampled underfoot by men who know nothing else than
(17:49):
how to secure gain. That's right, however, even at this
late day, though we have not done so before, led
us my countrymen and friends and kinsmen, For I consider
you all kinsman, seeing that you inhabit a single island
and are called by one common name. Let us, I say,
do our duty while we still remember what freedom is,
(18:10):
that we may leave to our children not only its
abolition but also its reality. For if we utterly forget
the happy state in which we were born and bred,
what prey will they do? Reared in bondage? So it's like,
oh shit, we remember being alive before Rome, we'd better
fucking go.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, this is like shit that Bobby Sands was yeah,
fucking saying like, damn, he's cooking. You gotta hand it
to him.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I know. I read this whole long ass academic paper
linked in the notes about this person who was kind
of trying to defend Cassius, Dio and Tacitus because most
modern historians are like, look, those are basically Roman propagandists,
and this historian, who probably I disagree with about a
lot of stuff, I tend to agree with this overall
point where he was like, no, he was actually just
(18:59):
trying to like present both sides of this, you know,
and like doing it from a kind of propagandastic point
of view, but like genuinely trying to present these arguments,
and they're not very accurate. Like someone from Britain would
be a lot less likely to say like here we
are over at the end of the world. They'd be
more likely to see themselves as the center of the world.
(19:19):
You know.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
It is like very interesting to think, like how far
that propaganda spread, if that was just in the Imperial core,
if that got out to you know, their vast colonies
or whatever, because I can only imagine that they would
have to temper that a little bit because that cooks
(19:41):
so hard. If that got out to anywhere, they'd be like,
you know what, this Buddhika has got a fucking point. Yeah,
let's get on over there, let's do some Buddhica shit
where we're at. Like, I wonder if it was just
you know, for the local paper.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
God, I honestly I really wonder too. I really want
to learn about, Yeah, how resistance to rome like does
and doesn't spread.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Before the printing press, a lot of propaganda was in
the hands.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Of very specific people, very specific.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
People, the people with some sort of means to produce stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah. And also this that we're reading right now, it's
what Cassius Deo said, as retold through an eleventh century
Christian monk.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Oh and it was like translated in the eleventh century,
but also written down forty years later by his dad's account.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Okay, so no, so okay, So that was Tacitus was
the forty years later. Guy Cassius Dio is one hundred
and forty years later. He is telling even a tale,
you know, But he's also theoretically on some level of
scholar he's writing this history of Rome. This is a
history of Rome that he starts writing.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
That also tells quite a tale of like maybe how
confident Rome felts or how yeah, you know how a
history of resistance doesn't play into like the modern sense.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
But he also this is the man who does the
hard primitive thing. So it's like kind of the like,
we're so tough and cool what he's actually doing on
some level, and we'll get into this moral get really explicit.
He's trying to contrast it with the weakness of like
Rome should be as hard as these guys.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
This is why, yeah, good times create soft man exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
That's what he's trying to do, which again is not true.
But okay, I'm gonna continue this quote. All this I
say not with the purpose of inspiring you with a
hatred of present conditions, that hatred you already have, nor
with fear of the future that fear you already have,
but of commending you, because you, now, of your own accord,
(21:45):
choose the requisite course of action, and of thanking you
for so readily cooperating with me and with each other.
Have no fear whatever of the Romans, for they are
superior to us, and neither in numbers nor in bravery.
And here is the proof. They have protected themselves with
helmets and breastplates and grieves.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
These fucking cowards want to preserve their lives, eh.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, and further provided themselves with palisades and walls and
trenches to make sure of suffering no harm by an
incursion of their enemies. For they are influenced by their
fears when they adopt this kind of fighting and preference
to the plan we follow of rough and ready action. Indeed,
we enjoy such a surplus of bravery that we regard
(22:35):
our tents as safer than their walls, and our shields
as affording greater protection than their whole suits of mail.
As a consequence, we, when victorious, capture them, and when overpowered,
elude them. And if we ever choose to retreat anywhere,
we con seal ourselves in swamps and mountains so inaccessible
(22:56):
that we can be neither discovered nor taken. Opponents, however,
can neither pursue anybody by reason of their heavy armor,
nor yet flea. And if they ever do slip away
from us, they take refuge in certain appointed spots, where
they shut themselves up as in a trap. But these
are not the only respects in which they are vastly
(23:17):
inferior to us. There is also the fact that they
cannot bear up under hunger, thirst, cold, or heat as
we can. They require shade and covering. They require kneaded
bread and wine and oil, and if any of these
things fails them, they perish. For us. On the other hand,
(23:39):
any grass or roots serves as bread. This is what
I was saying. They're just like, we eat dirt.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Fucking yeah, we eat dirt. This is our land. I
know this dirt better than you do. You fucking cowered,
you fucking nerd, you dorks. Yeah, you gotta have your
Oh I need my bread leavened. I need it at
a perfect temperature and with some Yeah me, I'm gonna
go eat some leaves.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah. Well, actually, the juice of any plant as oil,
any water as wine, any tree as a house. I
like that one.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah that rocks. Eco anarchists get on this.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, I know, right, Like, yeah, be a different kind
of weird, fucked up yeah, but a very appealing one.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It's waiting there for you, Sam Cruse.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Furthermore, this region is familiar to us and is our
ally but to them it is unknown and hostile. As
for the rivers, we swim them naked, whereas they do
not accross them easily even with boats. Let us therefore
go against them, trusting boldly to good fortune. Let us
show them that they are hares and foxes trying to
rule over dogs and wolves.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Whoa bitchin that rocks? He's got it? This would like
if I heard this and I was in one of
the colonies, I would be like this bouta isn't making
some sense?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I know? Yeah, Like, ah, maybe I'm gonna go paint
myself blue. See what's up.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I might be a wolf and I might have to
go blue, and I might have to get on some
maroon shit and wait for them in the swamps.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah. Like, realize that women can lead.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
When she had finished speaking, she employed a species of divination,
letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress
like an animal hair, and since it ran on what
they considered the auspicious side, the whole multitude shouted with pleasure,
and Boudica, raising her hand toward heaven, said, I thank
thee andraste, and call upon thee as women speaking to woman,
(25:40):
for I rule over no bird in bearing Egyptians as
did Nitocris, nor over trafficking Assyrians as did Semaramas. These
are other women leaders, But I don't know what's being
referenced here besides that, for we have by now gained
us much learning from the Romans, which is him being like,
this is why this lady knows this shit.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
This is how she discovered feminism because of her shining
the influence, and she would have never known. I mean
she probably yeah, yeah, it just comes naturally to be like, actually,
fuck these guys.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Wait, but wait, we're gonna get to the good shit.
Oh here we go much less over the Romans themselves,
as did Messina once and afterwards Agripana and now which
are two women leaders. And now Nero, who, though in
a name of man, is in fact a woman, as
is proved by his singing lyre plane and beautification of
(26:31):
his person.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Kind of making Nero sound cool.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I know it just you're like, all of a sudden,
it's just like, oh gosh, this deo doesn't like Nero.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Oh oh all right, yeah, it's presenting like the strongest,
most bad, like a Ripley of two thousand years ago,
and suddenly it's just like and you know why she's
fucked up because she's in the same lane as Nero,
but cooler than Nero. Wouldn't it be cool if we
had an effeminate war lord?
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, nay. Those over whom I rule are Britons, men
that know not how to till the soil or apply
a trade, but are thoroughly versed in the art of war,
and hold all things in common, even children and wives,
so that the latter possess the same valor as men
as the Queen. Then of such men and such women,
(27:21):
I supplicate and pray THEE for victory, preservation of life,
and liberty against men insolent, unjust, insatiable, impious, if indeed
we ought to term those people men who bathe in
warm water, eat artificial dainties, drink unmixed wine, annoint themselves
with mer sleep on soft couches with boys for bedfellows,
(27:44):
boys pass their prime at that.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Oh God, wow, I was a lot to take in.
Here is the thing. Women be one shopping two always
into comfort something men historically and forever like. And the
boys I just can't with because it's.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Like, come on, they sleep with adult men Unlike it'd
be perfectly reasonable and not gay for them to sleep
with children. You fucking hate I hate this man so much.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You know, it really drew me in, and it got
my ass because now at the eleventh hour in this quote,
and I'm like, wait, oh, oh, no.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I know, I don't agree. It's so messy. It's so messy,
and our slaves to a liar player, and a poor
one at that, like Nero doesn't even know how to
play liar right, even.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Play steroid Evan. When Rome was burning it sounded like shit.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, wherefore may this mistress demshia Nero basically being like
this fucking lady, Nero, rain no longer over me or
over you. Men. Let the wench sing and lord it
over Romans, for surely they deserve to be the slaves
of such a woman, after having submitted to her for
so long. But for us, Mistress, be thou alone ever
(29:05):
our leader, the goddess that she's talking about, having finished
an appeal to her people of this general Tenor Boudica
led her army against the Romans. For these chances to
be without a leader. Inasmuch as Paulinus, their commander, had
gone on an expedition to Mona an island near Britain.
Basically what happened is that part of the reason this
(29:26):
revolt happened, and we don't know whether it was coordinated
or not, but it's actually very likely. Mona is one
of the last strongholds of the Druids, and the Romans
are off to go fuck it up and like burn
down all the sacred groves and shit, and so while
the Roman army is away is when they launched their uprising.
This enabled her to sack and plunder two Roman cities
and as I have said, to wreak indescribable slaughter. Those
(29:50):
who were taken captive by the Britons, Oh, I'm gonna
say some grosshit, but this is the like now we're
gonna get barbarian on this shit. Those who were taken
captive by the written were subjected to every known form
of outrage. The worst and most bestial atrocity committed by
their captors was the following. They hung up naked the
noblest and most distinguished women and then cut off their
(30:13):
breasts and sewed them to their mouths in order to
make the victims appear to be eating them. Goodness, that's
no good, No, it really isn't. Afterwards, they impaled the
women on sharp skewers, run lengthwise through the entire body.
All this they did on the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets,
and wanton behavior, not only in all their other sacred places,
(30:34):
but particularly in the grove of Andante. This was their
name for victory, and they regarded her with the most
exceptional reverence. So like, there's no evidence of this, right,
But there's also like I don't I mean, there's like
no evidence against this. Yeah, it's it's the how evil
is the past? How spooky are these motherfuckers?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I don't need heroes to be perfect.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
No, it's like I don't even have a dog in
the fight, because it's like either either the passes metalist
fuck And that's interesting. More, it didn't happen, and that's
better for the people who were strung up, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yeah, the movie The Northmen. When that came out, huh.
I went with some people who knew quite a lot
about history, who were fucking hyped about it because it
was like it shows that morality back then was a
completely you're immersed in the immorality. The hero is a
lunatic murderer, berserker.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
He's a berserker. Yeah, he's a fighter. Yeah yeah, and
like which might not have been a real thing. It
probably was, but it might not have been.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Probably was, but who knows. Like history is just a
tale that you can tell yourself unless you're combing through receipts. Yeah, totally,
who cares about receipts.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
And I really like the It's like, okay, so Cassius
Dio really wants them to have been this because one,
it's sillacious, it's it's interesting, right, it's good entertainment. But
we just don't know. But that what's interesting. I found
this article. It's probably not sourced. I probably didn't include
this of my sources because I was like, this is
some dumb shit where like modern pro rome stands like
(32:17):
still say shit, Like it's the same kind of people
who will be like, it's good that the Catholics conquered
Mexico because they killed all the Aztecs, right, because the
Aztecs were sacrificing people, So that's good that we killed
all of them, you know, and civilized them. So you'll
find this like article that's like, you know, Boutica isn't
actually a feminist hero because she did all this shit,
(32:39):
and like most people are like, yeah, but she probably
didn't do this shit. Like, if I had to bet,
I would say this is made up whole cloth, this
particular part of it, partly because there's just like not
really archaeological evidence of mass slaughter.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean, I'm quite like fifty to fifty on
it where it's just like none of that is something
I'm like, cool, good they did any of this, but
it is like, yeah, they're like they got rid of
the Aztecs, and really what they did was getting rid
of people who did what is the death penalty but
a human sacrifice towards state. Like it's people who had
(33:15):
a bit of theater, who had a bit of fucking
pageantry about their human sacrifices that were horrifying public spectacles, nightmarish,
but like.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, just a completely different moral world than our current world. Yeah,
but that doesn't mean it was immoral. It was to
a different morality.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And our current moral world is not so much different
than that. It's just, for lack of a better term,
like boring, let's theatrical. We have institutionalized, we have like
locked up the human sacrifices the like there's more suffering
or a lateral move suffering.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
You can look at this really clearly, right, because like
when Caesar conquers gall he's like, oh, thank god, we
stop those druids from sacrificing people, and then kills somewhere
between and the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands
of people or millions of people and enslaves an equal number.
So like, yeah, you would have to sacrifice so many people.
(34:15):
Institutionalized slaughter is worse than individual murder, yeah, you know,
And so that's what they bring. That's what Rome is.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Rome is institution, yes, and to the institution, to the church,
to whatever, whether they you know, you're killing somebody according
to the Romans, to appease a sort of God, or
you know, just for your own sort of you've been conquered,
you got some beef. I don't support the guillotine imagery, etcetera, etcetera,
(34:45):
or whatever. That's a different conversation. But we get to
a point where it's just like the difference is in
how much of it is happening or the scale of suffering. Really,
at the end of the day, it's the present.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I actually think the scale of suffering goes up with
the institutional practice. But I agree with this overall point.
But do you know what is institutional?
Speaker 1 (35:09):
You know what's suffering.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Anyone who doesn't buy these things. These things will alleviate
your suffering. If there's an emptiness inside you, fill it
with stuff. That's what they always say. Get stuffed, fill
your holes.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Get stuff, fill your holes. Like what Margaret said.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Uh, here's ads, and we're back okay, and we're back
into the cashiers Dio description of Buddha's revolt. Now, it
chanced that Paulinis had already brought Mona to terms the island,
and so on learning of the disaster in Britain, he
(35:49):
sailed thither from Mona. However, he was not willing to
risk a conflict with the barbarians immediately, as he feared
their numbers and their desperation, but was inclined to postpone
battle to a more convenient season. This is the like
ditching London part. But as he grew short on food
and the barbarians pressed relentlessly upon him, he was compelled,
contrary to his judgment, to engage them. Boudica, at the
(36:12):
head of an army of two hundred and thirty thousand men,
which is like twice what we said before, rode in
a chariot herself, even though they had actually moved on
from chariots and were using cavalry at this point, and
assigned others to their several stations. Paulinis could not extend
his line the whole length of hers, for even if
the men had been drawn up only one deep, they
(36:34):
would have not reached far enough. So inferior were they
in numbers. Nor, on the other hand, did he dare
join battle in a single compact force, for fear of
being surrounded and cut to pieces. He therefore separated his
army into three divisions in order to fight them at
several points at one and the same time. And he
made each of the divisions so strong that it could
(36:56):
not easily be broken through. And gonna give three battle speeches.
This fucking author loves battle speeches. I might end up
abridging some. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Were they just like guys, I'm so this is so scary,
I'm gonna be cut to pieces. You go there, you
go over there.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Oh this is he exhorts his men. While ordering and
arranging his men, he also exhorted them, saying up fellow
soldiers up romans, show these accursed wretches how far we
surpassed them, even in the midst of evil fortune. It
would be shameful, indeed, for you to lose ingloriously. Now,
(37:36):
what but a short time ago you won by your
valor many a time assuredly have both we, ourselves and
our fathers, with far fewer numbers than we have at present,
conquered far more numerous antagonists. Fear not than their numbers
or their spirit of rebellion, for their boldness rests on
nothing more than headlong rashness, unaided by arms or training.
(38:01):
Neither fear them because they have burned a couple of cities,
For they did not capture them by force nor after
a battle, but one was betrayed and the others abandoned
to them. Exact from them now, therefore the proper penalty
for these deeds, and let them learn by actual experience
the difference between us whom they have wronged, and themselves. Yeah,
(38:22):
he's a.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Victim, this fucking guy.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
The reason that I was so interested in this and like, wow,
I was like, I'm gonna do this whole fucking thing.
This is the modern fascist.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
This is the like we're so strong, but they were
mean to us, even though we're better than them.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Can you believe it? We're mean to them and we're
doing everything we can to ruin their lives, and they
just don't see that they deserve it, and they should
integrate themselves into us. Yeah, exactly, the audacity of this Boudhica,
the audacity of these blue spiral people.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I know. After addressing these words to one division, he
came to another, and he said, now is the time,
fellow soldiers, Now is the time for daring for Rhodesia. No,
for if you show yourselves brave men today, you will
recover all that you have lost. If you overcome these foes,
no one else will any longer withstand us. By one
(39:17):
such battle, you will both make your present possession secure
and subdue whatever remains. For everywhere our soldiers, even though
they are in other lands, will emulate you, and foes
will be terror stricken. Therefore, since you have it within
your power, either to rule all mankind without a fear,
both the nations that your father's left to you and
(39:38):
those that you yourselves have gained an addition, or else
be deprived of them altogether, choose to be free to rule,
to live in wealth, and to enjoy prosperity, rather than
by avoiding the effort to suffer the opposite of all
of this. Whoa, oh my god, he it yeah yeah exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Just comes out and says like the fascist crust crout
boys shit, yes, yeah, and grave that upon a bunch
of piss boy's graves.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah. After making an address of this sort to these men,
he went on to the third division. I think literally
the reason that this author was like, I'm gonna cut
up in three divisions is he wanted to give three
battle speeches, which should be fair is one of the
most fun things to write.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I would too. I kind of specialize in slogan earring,
which is, I know, a smaller battle speech.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
And what's funny though, is that, like the battle speeches
probably didn't happen historically because you kind of can't talk
to one hundred thousand people in like fifty one sixty
one ad like, you just kind of can't. There's not
a method by which you would do it. You'd have
to fucking people's microphone that shit, and no one wants that.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
No one wants the people's microphone. But wouldn't that be funny.
Mike check, Mic check and going down. Every time I
read loard of the Rings, I'm like, fuck, this rules, Bud.
He's so running his horse along this line of men.
It's got to be like death. Yeah, and you're like, what,
what the fuck? I was getting some.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Hype I'd die, which is funny because it's one of
the best battle speeches, both the Tolkien version and well
all three versions. The movie version is good, the Tolken
version is good, and then the original, which is I
think norse win time Wolf time.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I didn't know this.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, No, it's totally cribbed and it's a really good speech.
All of the versions are good. We use the original
one as lyrics and a feminosical song once. Anyway, okay,
third battle speech. You have heard what outrages these damnable
men have committed against us, Nay more, you have even
witnessed some of them. Choose then, whether you wish to
(41:46):
suffer the same treatment yourselves as our comrades have suffered,
and to be driven out of Britain entirely besides or
else by conquering to avenge those that have perished, and
at the same time furnish the rest of mankind and example,
not only of benevolent clemency towards the obedient, but also
the inevitable severity towards the rebellious. For my part, I
(42:10):
hope above all that victory will be ours. First, because
the gods are our allies, for they almost always side
with those who have been wronged. I love it. I
just love that we're the wronged ones.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Absolutely, that's what the gods are. I'm always saying this
about the gods.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, they totally care about us. Absolutely all.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
You must do a cursory glance at the Odyssey. Yeah, wait,
was this Christian Rome by this point?
Speaker 2 (42:34):
No, this is Pagan rom still Yeah, more so, Yeah, totally. Second,
because of the courage that is our heritage, since we
are Romans and have triumphed over all mankind by our valor. Next,
because our experience, for we have defeated and subdued these
very men who are now arrayed against us. And lastly,
because of our prestige, for those with whom we are
(42:57):
about to engage are not antagonists but our slaves, whom
we conquered even when they were free and independent. Yet,
if the outcome should prove contrary to our hope, For
I will not shrink from mentioning even the possibility it
would be better for us to fall fighting bravely than
to be captured and impaled, to look upon our own
(43:18):
entrails cut from our bodies, to be spitted on red
hot skewers, to perish by being melted and boiling water.
Like now, I'm kind of okay with all that shit.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
You are selling this. You're really bringing work to it.
But I can't imagine this guy had a voice that
wasn't a Ben Shapiro type. And get our entrails out,
and if they put in some boiling water, I'll be like,
that's fine, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
I love pain, in a word, to suffer, as though
we have been thrown to lawless and impious wild beasts.
Let us therefore either conquer them or die on the spot.
Britain will be ye a noble monument for us, even
though all the other romans here should be driven out,
For in any case, our bodies shall forever possess this land.
(44:10):
After addressing these and like words to them, he raised
the signal for battle. Thereupon the armies approached each other
the barbarians with much shouting mingled with menacing battle songs,
but the Romans silently and in order until they came
within a javelin's throw the enemy. Then, while their foes
were still advancing against them at a walk, the Romans
rushed forward at a signal and charged them at full speed,
(44:33):
and when the clash came, easily broke through the opposing ranks.
But as they were surrounded by the great numbers of
the enemy, they had to be fighting everywhere at once.
Their struggle took many forms. Light armored troops exchanged missiles
with light armed. Heavily armed were opposed to heavy armed cavalry,
clashed with cavalry and against the chariots of the barbarians.
(44:55):
The Roman archers contended. The Barbarians would assail the Romans
with a rush of their chariots them helter skelter, but
since they fought with breastplates, would themselves be repulsed by
the arrows. Horsemen would overthrow foot soldiers, and foot soldiers
strike down the horsemen. A group of Romans forming in
close order, would advance and meet the chariots, and others
(45:15):
would be scattered by them. A band of Britons would
come to close quarters with the archers and rout them,
while others were content to dodge their shafts at a distance.
And all this was going on not only at one
spot only, but in all three divisions at once. They
contended for a long time, both parties being animated by
the same zeal and daring. But finally, late in the day,
(45:39):
the Romans prevailed, and they slew many in battle beside
the wagons and the forest, and captured many alike. Nevertheless,
not a few made their escape and were preparing to
fight again. In the meantime, however, Bruduka fell sick and died.
The Britons mourned her deeply and gave her a costly burial,
but feeling that now at last they were really defeated,
(46:02):
they scattered to their homes and like literally that section
ends with him being like thus ended the trouble in
Britain anyway over here and now it was.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Roman Britain, and we loved it.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
It's like sword and sorcery fiction.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Absolutely. I do love it when they describe projectiles as missiles,
because it's like, what am I gonna do? Not imagine
a magic missile? And I will say I'm a big
fan of hardcore history, and wow, you've chosen some really
bitching quotes that no shade to whatever that guy's name is,
(46:36):
but like, yeah, you're crushing it.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Better, Thank you. I take them the high honor. Dan
Carlin is one of my favorite podcasters.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Dan Carlin really crushes it. But you found some really.
I was honored that we had what between like two
commercial breaks, just like quote after quote of just like
probably stuff that never happened. But I'm like riveted. I
keep forgetting to like comments because I'm like, fuck, this rocks.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
It's interesting too write, because like the description of this
battle versus the Last Battle Tacitus was like yeah, and
then we killed like eighty thousand of them and like
only four hundred of our dudes got rocked, well killed.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
About a billion of them. No, that was before breakfast.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, they ran away and they said.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Oh please please please, Oh we're so sorry.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
And this one is instead like no, we fought all day.
It was tooth and you know it was like, yeah
it was.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
And I love that he made sure to be like no,
and we took like the all of our equally matched
people were against their equally matched people, and we won
against the peasant mud farmers, and.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
It's like you could tell that he kind of likes
both sides, but his side is better, you know, because
they're being the real tough guys.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
That's a deep thing about fascism, like where they kind
of want to have the barbarian spirit, but they want
to have the civilized mind of the barbarian.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
They want to eat milk and flesh, but actually they're
pols are based on grain, and I say, this is
a vegan To be really clear, I am not trying
to be like, ah, effeminate people who don't eat milk
and flesh, you know, no.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
But that's a good way of especially because they have
this like weird fetish about meat and milk. I don't
know if the Proud Boys are still on milk, but
that was a weird time out in the streets in
twenty sixteen to see them just drinking milk freely amongst
each other. It's just like, I mean, it was a
little like when they were trying to you know, conguer Scotland,
(48:30):
where they would like go into war naked. It's just like,
what the fuck is going on? A little bit like
seeing them I always drink milk is like, what are
you this going on? Are you drinking fermented mare's milk?
And you're just gonna go fucking perserk on us, Like, no,
they were just doing some like psycho stuff that I.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
Yeah, they're just tucking hazeing and shit.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Yeah yeah, I figured out what it was up to,
and I'm like, oh, that's neuro.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
No, they're not being as cool as they wish they were. Okay,
So this big fire, old battle that possibly hundreds of
thousands of people were involved in never been found. No
one knows where this was. There's like hundreds of places
it could have been. Also, Boudica's tomb, who was like
buried and richly or whatever, never been found. But now
(49:18):
I promised you I was going to go wild out
on a limb about gender.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Let's go, Yes, here we go a Strappan audience.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
In twenty fifteen, a grave site from yeoldie Roman Britain
was uncovered in Gloucester, Gloster. The tombstone said Bodicia or Bodikia.
It said Bodica but just spelled different. But literally, her
name is spelled different in every single account anyway. Not
(49:47):
a written culture.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
We love an incomprehensible queen.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
So they dig up this tomb of Boudica twenty fifteen,
but the skeleton in the grave was male, yes, all right,
So everyone is like, couldn't be her? Fuck yeah no,
and they just literally just moved on. They were like, well,
that's not her, so I guess we haven't found her.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
It's not as if Pagan gender dynamics were far more fluid,
and this fucking boot liquor king could have been married
to somebody and somebody else produced the children and they
just marry them.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Like I don't know if that's true, but I'm not
a historian. Fuck you, that's what I believe. And you
believe it now too, by merit of listening to me.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah no, and like there's no particular reason to believe it.
But I also don't know if Budica was a boy's
given name or not, and like I've only seen it
as a woman's given name. Also, like everyone's describing her
as this very tall woman with a like particularly interesting voice.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Tall girls with an interesting voice.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
And I'm gonna go out on the furthest limb possible.
And this is like almost more just like a magical level,
a synchronicity level. The reason I found out about Boudica
is talking about the Galley last week, and the galley
where the trans priestess is of ancient Roman who worshiped
the cult of Sibylly, and the galley had a specific
poetry meter, Galliambic meter, that was a specific like way
(51:14):
of balancing syllables and shit, a poem that was only
used by these trans priestesses for their goddess. Right, It's
called Galliambic meter. And the one English poem I could
find written in Galliambic meter is a Tennyson poem aha
about Boutika.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
That, Yeah, this rocks, so wow. I'm going back to
Greece in a month, and every trans person I hang
out with their has probably mentioned this. But it's just
like in America, you know, we trans people, We've got
all kinds of different naming conventions for what we like
(51:54):
to choose. There, they really do like to crib from
their mythology because it rocks. A lot of anarchists there
are just like no that represents nationalism, and a lot
of people are sort of reclaiming it a little bit. Yeah,
I'm going to bring that up and I'm going to
look like I'm going to look so cool. Thank you
for bringing that to me.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, yeah, you know, the trans cult was absolutely in
Greece as well as Rome Sibylly's cult, although it is
Magna Matar. It's different in different countries in different times
since the name of the specific goddess and it comes
from Anatolia immediately over the sea, like Turkey. Basically, yeah, yeah, yeah,
they started getting ostracized once they were in Greece, like
the Trans cult, and they were still an important, powerful
(52:33):
part of like society, but then like no one would
fuck with them. They were like kind of untouchable. And
it's like interesting too, Rite because like Rome is so
confused by warrior women that they made up the Amazons.
Probably I said this last week too, probably as a
representation of the fact that the Step people who kept
(52:54):
kicking their asses to the east had a lot of
warrior queens and warrior women, and so they were like,
what women are fighting? These are a whole weird mythical
creature women who fight.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
Where's the factory where they make this?
Speaker 2 (53:10):
And so Boudica. There is literally no archaeological evidence that
Buddhica existed except possibly this skeleton of a man male whatever,
and so I was kind of like, at the last minute,
I was like, why is everyone writing about her? Like
she's real? Her name means Victory, which happens to be
the name that all the Romans name their fucking gods
of victory. Like this feels too on the nose, But
(53:33):
the overall rough consensus from historians is that Budica is
a historical figure. And to summarize why, there's a historian
Barry Cunleaf, who I think doesn't like Barry Cunleaf is
probably alive. I'm gonna be careful of how I phrased this.
I read Barry Cunnleaf's book on druids and it didn't
mention the fact that women were druids, and it barely
(53:54):
mentioned women at all, and it like you, And partly
it's because like there wasn't like specific Roman sources being
like there were women druids, but instead there was just
a fuck ton of people doing druid things that happened
to be women.
Speaker 1 (54:07):
Do some real history, Barry, that's me saying it, not Margaret.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
Yeah. Yeah. And so Barry cunleief I don't think is
biased towards believing in women. Is the way I will
phrase it.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
I've always said they don't exist. I've seen a woman.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
Show me a woman. I don't even know what one is.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
What is a woman? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Barry Cunleif believes that Buddhka is real and was a
warrior queen and all that shit. To quote historian Barry
Cunnleaf quote, it just wasn't the sort of thing Romans
did to invent characters. It doesn't fit at all with
what we know about Roman historical writing. And so that's
kind of the primary argument about why Budhka is real,
(54:52):
is it they would propagandize shit, but they kind of
just didn't invent dudes, whole cloth or ladies.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
That is a like, yeah, I would. I would sort
of assume that maybe they made somebody up maybe, but
like I kind of trust him. Yeah, where that's concerned.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
At the very least, Fantastitas was alive when this happened,
and his dad was like one of the governors.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Yeah, and like there's plenty of evidence of warrior queens
out there, oh yeah, especially among the like Dagan tribes
that they were like yeah, fucking with among the Gauls,
Like they were all over the fucking place. Like, there's
really no reason to question it.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
There's a chance that she was like either already a
queen or just some fucking nobody who was like, I'm
a warrior queen now, and they were like, what's your name?
She was like, my name is fucking Victory. Let's fucking go.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
And so if it's like a CONTI trans woman's name,
I'm like eight times here for it.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yeah, let's go ahead and just think that.
Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah, just headcan and that shit. Yeah, that's what's so
fascinating about doing ancient history versus like mostly I do
kind of recent ish history by my standards, where I
constantly think that the nineteenth century is more important than
the twenty first century because my brain is broken. But
it's impossible to do the ancient shit without head cannoning everything,
(56:10):
because you can't tell a story without playing connect the dots,
and you can connect the dots so many ways.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
It's where the original hero's journey came from. And it's like,
fucking before patriarchy laid itself flat across like most of
the globe, some interesting shit was happening, and it was
from people who didn't concern themselves with being remembered in
this narcissistic way that people who were concerned with empires did. Yeah,
(56:39):
I mean, history's written by the winners anyway, how how
much more true is the stuff that was recorded rather
than the stuff that we're kind of like picking up.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
And actually, the thing that you talked about, I was
really struck earlier in the first episode. You talked about
being like, oh, this oral culture didn't care about legacy
in a permanent way, the way that these like I
must write my name on everything people were that really
stuck with me. And I think it's less that history
is written by the winners. History is written by the writers.
And I think about like even like and again, I'm
(57:09):
just going to throw in, like why I haven't talked
shit on Marx this entire episode. The fact that like
Marx kind of took over the First International, or rather
Marxism became a dominant ideology within it was because he
was the guy who showed up and took notes Like.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
God damn, you're right, quite right. Bakunan was in there
arguing Marx was in his book may be writing.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
Yeah, history is written by the writers. That's my pithy slogan.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
I mean it is why, like and I do like
defer a lot to like Marxist analysis of history, but
like because they Marxist analysis of history.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
Yeah. Anyway, So that's the story of Budica. And it's
so funny that she's like literally people loved her partly
because like her name means victory and Queen Victoria's name
means victory. Fuck. Yeah, British pride as if it wasn't
like clearly this anti colonial struggle, Like clearly you're the
Rome in this story.
Speaker 1 (58:02):
But to Rome. Yeah, like Britain is very like one
to one is sort of just like oh a fucking pale,
sickly imitation of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (58:15):
Yeah, whereas they used to fucking live off a dirt, used.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
To be able to eat dirt and burn down London
look at you.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
Yeah, set people in Wickerman's and be like, don't come
investigating crimes in our town.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Cop, You're not even a peaky blinders. Now that's a
Scottish island. I don't even put them into Britain. Scotland
you're off the hook. Whales, you're off the hook. Ireland,
of course you're off the hook. Yeah, you're on notice
you already got rid of Prince Andrew the rest. It's
up to you.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
All right, that's the end of our episode. You guys
think you want to plug.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
Yeah, I'm on the Internet. I guess I'm on Blue
Sky and Instagram at Bumlung. Maybe Blue Sky's citizen Io
I forget, but go ahead and look for it.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
I'm on the Are you talking about the fact that
we're doing a six part table top adventure called Donna
Frogs with Jason Bowman, who's basically the pathfinder man.
Speaker 1 (59:12):
Mister Pathfinder.
Speaker 2 (59:13):
All of your favorite podcasters are on it, Well, not
all of them, but many of them are on it.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah, we don't have Scott Ackerman or Paul F. Tompkins yet,
Fingers crossed. Listen and maybe we'll do more. I want
to do more. Please listen to it. I do the spectacle. Also, Yeah,
I got comics, I got writings. I probably got a
Patreon I do. I just rediscovered I have a Patreon.
Speaker 2 (59:37):
Oh congrats, thanks.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah, it took some Internet digging to remember that it
was pre pandemic times.
Speaker 2 (59:44):
I have. I'm on the internet, Markyo Kiljoy. I have
a substack. I often talk about kind of things like
what I talk about in this Like my recent post,
all the posts that kind of matter are free on
that you don't have to pay me for it. But
if you want to do the weird parasocial thing where
you hear more about like my personal stuff, I also
post those behind a paywall, but I have like posts
(01:00:05):
like how metal is the Past, where it's just me
trying to figure this shit out because no one knows
and it confuses me.
Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
But anyway, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff after dark
on Margaret's substaff.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Zobey, I think you want to plug cool Zone Media
dot com. Bye everyone, Bye, love you. Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
More podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
(01:00:43):
Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the radio, app,
a Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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