Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

the soft fruit are a red herring... If the revolt broke out in autumn but the final battle did not take place until the next year, there is no way that Suetonius would have had only 10,000 men.

.....but for a second there.... 

Hold on though! I can, in fact, answer both of the possible objections I mentioned...

1. Catus Decianus could have fled because he believed he would be blamed for the disaster he had caused 'by his rapacity', and wanted to exonerate himself as soon as possible. Perhaps he also feared the wrath of the provincials, or even of Suetonius himself? Tacitus does not, in any case, explicitly say that he was in danger of imminent attack. He may just have been a coward... But we could hardly blame him for thinking that he was under threat, even if events turned out otherwise.

2. With the province in turmoil over the winter of 60/61, Suetonius Paulinus may have believed that he could not draw men from any of his garrisons in Wales or the west without risking further outbreaks of rebellion in those places. He may also have had his hands full trying to contain such outbreaks across the country... Only in the spring of 61 did he concede that he had to confront and defeat Boudica's main army in order to break the back of the uprising. At that point, the only additional troops available to him were the veterans of the Twentieth and the Second - and the latter's commander refused to leave camp, perhaps feeling that the local situation was still too volatile.

p.s. - can we distinguish between grapes and raisins, archaeologically speaking? The Colchester reports do specify grapes...