Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

You say 2 towns. Colchester and ?

It's not certain which towns are meant.

Tacitus, in Annals, describes Colchester (coloniam Camulodunum), London (cognomento quidem coloniae non insigne - "though undistinguished by the name of a colony") and St Albans (municipio Verulamio) being destroyed. He later says that Paulinus "resolved to save the province at the cost of a single town" (unius oppidi damno servare universa statuit). Note that each 'city' is called something different here! Colonia, Municipium and Oppidum...

In Agricola (1.5), T writes only of 'colonies burnt' (incensae coloniae). Confusing, as there was only one colony, Colchester... :unsure:

Suetonius, in Nero 34, writes of "a great disaster in Britain, where two of the principal towns belonging to the Romans were plundered" (clades Britannica, qua duo praecipua oppida magna civium sociorumque caede direpta sunt). But is that translation quite accurate? Surely 'civium sociorumque' means something like 'of citizens and allies'? This might suggest that Colchester (of citizens) and Verulamium (of 'allies') was intended.

This might be significant - if the text only mentions the 'principal' towns of both Romans and allies, then other places could have been destroyed too ( I think caede direpta means more than 'plundered'?). Would Silchester, for example, have been a more important 'allied' city than St Albans?

Cassius Dio (62.1) writes that "a dreadful disaster occurred in Britain: two cities were sacked..." This is very similar to Suetonius's version - Dio wrote in Greek, but they could have both drawn on the same Latin source. In which case it would be the same two cities - Colchester and St Albans. But Dio probably didn't actually know exactly which two cities his source was referring to!

He goes on to say (62.7) that Boudica was able to "to sack and plunder two Roman cities, and, as I have said, to wreak indescribable slaughter…" I don't know whether the Greek text is as certain about the status of the cities as the translation implies! If so, Dio could just be assuming that both cities were Roman, or explicitly referring to Colchester and London.