Why the Boudica Fought the Romans

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Why the Boudica Fought the Romans

The History of the Celtic People

The Iceni were a Celtic tribe which resided in Norfolk and Suffolk in

the east of Britain. Boadicea was part of this noble and warlike

people, the Keltoi or in Latin, Celtae.

The Celts of the first century appear to be farmers, traders and

crafts people. Frank Delaney 1989 quotes from Strabo writing in the

first century saying “They wear ornaments of gold, torcs on their

necks and bracelets on their arms and wrists, while people of high

rank wear dyed garments besprinkled with gold.” He also quotes from

Diodurus Siculus also first century who writes “They accumulate large

quantities of gold and make use of it for personal adornment, not only

the women but also the men. For they wear bracelets on wrists and

arms, and around their necks thick rings of solid gold, and they also

wear finger-rings and even gold tunics . . . They wear a striking kind

of clothing – tunics dyed and stained in various colours and trousers

. . . and they wear striped cloaks, fastened with buckles, thick in

winter and light in summer, picked out with variegated small check

pattern. Their armour includes man-sized shields, decorated in

individual pattern.”

This is a Golden Torc intricately

designed for Celtic men and women

using gold.

The picture that emerges therefore is very different from the dirty,

dull coloured and warlike people living in mud and filth too often

portrayed in our modern interpretations. These Celts were cultured and

civilized they would not easily risk their way of life to go to war

unless provoked in the extreme. From this information given to me I

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...te to the Iceni farms, even going so far as to

build drainage systems to pull all the water from the soil; they

desecrated sanctuaries, stole family heirlooms, money, and deprived

the people of weapons. Poenius Postumus, the commander of the legion

that failed to meet Suetonius in the Midlands, customarily fell on his

own sword for denying his troops the glory of battle.

Boudicca's revolt didn't free the British tribes of the Romans. It

also didn't result in any of the

lands of the Iceni or the Trinovantes being returned. What it did show

was that the Celts could not unite to fight a common enemy. The Roman

legions in Britain were filled with numbers of

Gaulish soldiers, cousins to the British. And the use of the allied

British tribes against the Iceni also showed the lack of unity the

Celts were famous for.

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