Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Renatus]

That's rubbish. We are explicitly told he is looking for a seat for war, that he was PREPARING to give up DELAY and that he was NOT BEING RASH like Cerialis. So, he was not looking for a battlefield, he was looking for a seat for war.

Let's unpick this:

We are explicitly told he is looking for a seat for war - We are not.  We are told only that Suetonius considered making London a 'seat for war' (We'll come back to what that means in a moment.) but decided against it because he had too few troops.

he was PREPARING - There is no magic in the word 'preparing'.  Paro with the infinitive (as here) does mean 'prepare' but in the sense of 'determine' or 'decide'.  The translators could just as well have said that he 'decided' to break off delay and fight a battle, which is what Michael Grant does in the Penguin edition.  It does not imply lengthy preparations.

to give up DELAY - Suetonius was indeed delaying engaging with the rebels but only, I suggest, until he had gathered sufficient reinforcements to give him confidence of victory.  In the event, he had augmented his force to some extent but the bulk of his reinforcements, the legions in North Wales, did not arrive in time and he decided to give battle with what he had.  As I have said before, Tacitus makes a virtue of necessity but Dio makes it clear that his hand was forced and the decision was made against his better judgment.

he was NOT BEING RASH like Cerialis - Tacitus' comment about rashness is made in the context of the situation in London and the decision to abandon the town.  Cerialis had tried to engage the enemy with too few troops and Suetonius was not going to make the same mistake, hence the need for reinforcements.  In fact, despite Tacitus' criticism of him, Cerialis' actions did his career no harm.  He served with distinction in the civil war in AD69 and became the governor of Britain.  The reason is that, faced with a rebellion, he did exactly what was expected of him and tried to snuff it out.  That he failed was no disgrace.

he was not looking for a battlefield, he was looking for a seat for war - As we have noted before, 'sedes bello' is an ambiguous expression which can mean a centre of operations or a place to fight.  I have suggested that it could also perhaps be stretched to include a rallying point for troops.  However, in the event, looking for a battlefield was exactly what Suetonius did.  He did not have the strength to engage the enemy in the open field and had to find a site that favoured his much inferior force.  Nathan's comment was made specifically in relation to that choice and was most certainly not 'rubbish'.