A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

familiar over the past three centuries, since Rome extended its boundaries beyond Italy. The Roman
occupiers were callous and tactless, behaving as if everything in Britain was theirs for the taking.
The British were regarded as barbarians and treated with patronising contempt.
One of the subject kings, Prasutagus, ruled a tribe called the Iceni in what is now East Anglia. He
regarded himself as friendly to Rome and had, in fact, borrowed heavily from Roman
moneylenders. When he felt his end approaching, in 59 A.D., he decided that it might benefit his
wife and two daughters if he left half his fortune to the new Roman emperor, Nero. But after his
death, the procurator of Britain - a treasury official named Catus Decianus - took a different view; it
was his understanding of Roman law that all Prasutagus’s estate belonged to Rome. In 61 A.D. he
presented himself at the palace of Prasutagus’s queen Boudica (sometimes spelt Boadicea) and
made some completely impossible demand. (He regarded these Britons in much the same way that
later imperialists - including the Britons themselves - would regard savage tribes in Africa). When
Boudica protested he ordered his soldiers to strip and flog her. The men seized the opportunity to
grab her daughters and commit multiple rape. Then they proceeded to seize what they could for the
Roman treasury (and their own pockets - Roman officials were expected to be corrupt).
But the Roman had underestimated Boudica. She began to plan a rebellion. A few months later, in
June, she heard that a Roman army had invaded the island of Anglesey in Wales, and massacred the
Druids - priests of the suppressed British religion - and their followers. This was the signal for
revolt. Boudica and her troops marched against the Roman fortress town of Camulodunum -
Colchester, which had a population of about twenty thousand. Colchester sent to London for
reinforcements; but the incompetent Catus Decianus sent only two hundred men. The Britons
attacked savagely; after two days they burst into the town, and the survivors all retreated into the
half-completed temple of Claudius (who had been voted a god). The Iceni heaped brushwood round
the walls and set fire to it. All the defenders - including women and children - died in the flames.
A relief force of five thousand legionaries marched from Lincoln; Boudica ambushed them and cut
most of them down - only some cavalry escaped. She marched on the new Roman town of
Londinium (London). The Romans fled, and half the population fled with them. Then the Britons
arrived - 120,000 of them - and treated London with the same brutal thoroughness as Colchester.
The cruelties are described by the historian Dio Cassius: ‘... they hung up naked the most noble and
distinguished women and they cut off their breasts and sewed them into their mouths in order to
make the victims appear to be eating them; afterwards they impaled the women on sharp skewers
run lengthwise through their bodies.’ These atrocities probably had a ritual element - not unlike the
Mau Mau in modern times. The men were treated with similar ferocity. The Britons were taking
revenge for more than a decade of swaggering Roman brutality. London was burnt to the ground.
Boudica now found herself confronting the same problem that had destroyed Spartacus in the
previous century - how to discipline an unruly mob of looters. The governor of Britain, Suetonius
Paulinus, had an army only a tenth as large as that of Boudica; but her troops were now
overconfident and careless. Instead of waiting for the Romans to attack, they made the mistake of
hurling themselves on the packed ranks of shields. When attack after attack broke like the sea
against these highly-trained veterans, the Britons became discouraged and began to weaken; then a
Roman advance scattered them. The Britons fled towards the carts in which their families were
waiting; the Romans followed and began a massacre. Even the horses in the shafts were killed.
Everything was set on fire. Boudica escaped from the battlefield, but committed suicide by poison,
together with her daughters. Paulinus then sent for more legions from Gaul and Germany and
settled down to dispensing revenge. The Roman historians, understandably, offer no details, but we