Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

Allowing the rebels to disperse to their homelands might not necessarily have been a bad thing.

Militarily, perhaps. But to allow such a thing would be very damaging to Roman prestige and to Paulinus's reputation and political future. The rebels had sacked two Roman towns and beaten an expeditionary force sent against them; Paulinus had a field army - albeit a small one - and it was his clear duty to oppose them. If he allowed them to return home he would not only appear weak and irresolute, but would be facing a lengthy punitive campaign with much gore and no glory.

So I agree that a move west or south from London would not have been in his interests.

The legions were trained, according to Vegetius, to march at the military pace of 20 miles in eight summer hours and a full pace of 24 miles in the same period.

That would be Roman miles, equating to approx 18.4 and 22.1 modern miles respectively.

With his reinforcements that far away, one can see why Paulinus felt that he had to give battle with the forces that he had immediately to hand.

I agree!

how realistic would it have been to expect Poenius Postumus and the men of the Second Legion to have reached the battle site in time to take part in the battle?

A good question! If they were at Exeter and he only gave them the order to move when he was considering evacuating London, then, as you say, there would be no chance of them reaching him in time.

So - either he ordered them to join him at an earlier point (either when making his initial plans, or as soon as he heard of Cerialis's defeat), or they were based somewhere closer than Exeter. If they were at Gloucester they could have joined him in about 4-5 days, I think.

Once again, our ignorance of the disposition of the Roman army at this point doesn't give us many clues!

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As this thread has briefly flickered back into life, I thought I'd add a bit of information I found recently about water requirements.

Pryor and Jeffreys's Age of the Dromon has a few notes about the watering of medieval galleys, which due to their limited carrying capacity had to measure and record the amounts carried very carefully. Apparently a French ordinance of 1318 specified 4 litres per man per day, for all needs - but these were passengers not crewmen. For oarsmen, French galleys of the 17th century allowed 7 litres per man per day, while the sea trials of the replica galley Olympias suggested that every oarsman needed 6 litres per day to drink, and an estimated 2 litres for cooking.

This is for men performing strenuous labour in the heat of the Mediterranean summer; we might assume that soldiers marching in the more temperate climate of Britain would require less. Even so, 6-8 litres per man per day would not be too far off Steve Kaye's estimate of 9 litres. However, multiplied by the size of an army this would produce very different requirements. Even leaving aside the question of supply by springs, and the changes in water flow over the centuries, I wonder what effect this sort of recalculation would have on the possible positioning of Roman camps in the areas we've been looking at?