Caractacus and Boudicca

[FlorivsVirilis]

Growing up in the United Kingdom, I have always come across the name of Boudicca in history. She seems to be a symbol of pride for Britain. However, why is it, then, that someone such as Caractacus, who, all in all was far more successful against the Romans, gets effectively ignored by us? How is it that an intelligent military commander has become undermined by an ex-collaborator who slaughtered colonials, and was defeated once faced by a real army?

[Nathan Ross]

Caratacus was undoubtably the better warrior - 'Even in Rome, the name of Caratacus was not without honour' says Tacitus (Annals 12.36). It's very unlikely, in fact, that Boudica was a warrior at all. But while Tacitus gives Caratacus a speech of noble submission, he gives Boudica an (imaginary) address of flaming defiance. Dio provides another rousing speech, and also a portrait (again, probably imaginary), allowing readers to better visualise her than the anonymous Caratacus. Boudica may have been defeated, but she died rather than surrender - Caratacus ended his days in comfortable captivity in Rome.

There's more to it than this, of course. Roman-British history was not widely known until the first English translations of Tacitus and Dio in the late 16th century: this was the era of Elizabeth I, another female leader defying invaders from across the sea, and 'Bonduca' (the Jacobean form of the name) was adopted as a British hero. The Victorians elevated her even further - the name Boudica (or 'Boadicea' as they called her) apparently meaning 'Victory' in the ancient British language, they saw a direct parallel with Queen Victoria. The Victorians chose to ignore the wilder atrocities attributed to her, and also the irony of the world's paramount imperial power celebrating an anti-colonial rebel! (As an aside, the Thorneycroft statue of Boadicea that stands beside the Thames was originally commissioned in 1859, only a year after the British defeated the Indian Rani of Jhansi, whose story oddly echoes that of Boudica in many ways).

More recently, Boudica has provided a versatile figure for reinterpretation and wishful thinking - generations of semi-scholars, populists and pseudo-historians have (while turning their noses up at Roman 'bias') accepted the Roman idea that Boudica and her forces were the barbarous opposite of Rome in every way, and presented the ancient Iceni as a liberated matriarchy of valiant warrior-women, in contrast to those wicked patriarchal Romans. The figure of Boudica the Warrior Queen, leaping from her chariot in a leather corset, brandishing a sword, will probably be with us for a long time to come.

In a way, Caratacus gets the better deal - he remains a truly historical figure, set in the context of his day. Boudica, instead, gets hijacked by fantasists, political propagandists, novelists and filmmakers, and the reality fades into mist...

- Nathan

[Chock]

You can lay the blame squarely at the door of the Victorians. It's been speculated that Boudicca's name derives from the celtic word, bouda, which means victory, and this was seized upon by several Victorian artists and writers in an attempt to equate Queen Victoria as the then-modern incarnation of Boudicca. This is ironic when we consider that Boudicca was fighting against Rome's expanding empire, whereas Queen Victoria's Britain was doing its best to emulate it, and even more ironic that the statue is actually in London, which was one of the places Boudicca completely flattened when on her vengeance-fueled rampage against the Romans.

As noted in the preceding post, the Victorian revivalist trend of Boudicca is best observed in the statue of 'Boudicea and her Daughters', sculpted by Thomas Thornycroft, which is near Westminster Bridge in London on a big pedestal. It's an impressive piece well worth checking out, but it's a typically Victorian idealised incarnation, with such things as Persian-style scythes on the wheels of her chariot, which although admittedly possible, is rather unlikely.

Rather unsurprisingly, it was Victoria's husband, Prince Albert who commissioned the statue, no doubt liking the notion of his missus being equated with a warrior heroine, although it's again ironic that Prince Albert (a German) stuck a statue up in a city which his countrymen, like Boudicca, later also attempted to raze to the ground (twice), although in fairness to Prince Albert himself, he did practice the admittedly ideallised Victorian notion of Boudicca, he being one of the people at the forefront of the abolition of slavery.

In literary terms, Alfred Lord Tennyson, who at the time was Victoria's Poet Laureate, wrote a long and rather tedious poem, 'Bodicea', which has lots of stuff about her standing loftily aboard her chariot and such, which is doubtless where Thornycroft culled his idea for the statue from. Nevertheless, it was in fact a much earlier poet, William Cowper, most famous for having translated Homer's works from Greek into English so that a wider audience could read them, who also wrote a poem about Boudicca. It is Cowper's poem 'Ode to Bodicea' which gets quoted on the statue of Boudicca in Westminster, in the form of a plaque bearing the words 'Regions Caesar never knew, thy posterity shall sway'. Cowper's poem is much better than Tennyson's incidentally if you care to compare the two. In addition to these poems, there were also idealised novels and plays concerning Boudicca, with the stories invariably being twisted somewhat to suit the politics of the day.

On such a wave of revivalist popularity for Boudicca in the Victorian era, there were numerous ships of the Royal Navy named 'HMS Boudicea' during Victoria's time on the throne, although one of these was in fact built before Victoria was crowned. Nevertheless, during Victoria's reign there were several such ships constructed bearing the name. Oddly enough, the Royal Navy actually considered naming the ill-fated Type-42 Frigate HMS Coventry (sunk in the Falklands War) in honour of Boudicca, but changed their collective mind, which is ironic when you consider that Margaret Thatcher, who prosecuted the war in the Falklands invited several unfavourable comparisons to Boudicca at the time, most notably from the famously witty Dennis Healey, who said she was 'charging around like some bargain-basement Boudicea'.

When we consider what Caratacus did in comparison to what Boudicca achieved (i.e came damn close to actually winning), there's little doubt that Caratacus should be the more famous of the two, but of course the notion of a warrior queen who refused to give in to the might of the Romans after a terrible misdeed acted on her daughters, is the stuff that legends are more easily constructed from, and as we can see from that statue in Westminster, it's easy to put such characters quite literally on a pedestal.

Redressing the balance somewhat, if you read some of Simon Scarrow's 'Eagle' novels about the Romans, you'll see Caratacus getting his moment in the limelight and giving the Legions a bit of a tough time, so among the less lightweight literary offerings concerning the period, he's not forgotten.

Al

[Nathan Ross]

One of the best recent books on this topic is Hingley and Unwin's Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen. The first part of the book is a study of the historical background, including an up-to-date and suitably cautious survey of archeological evidence and a rather insightful review of Tacitus and Dio. The authors manage to avoid airy speculation, and the whole thing is well supported by references.

The second part turns to the legacy of Boudica over the following centuries, and the ways in which she has been reinterpreted to suit the times. Apparently, until the nineteenth century Boudica (Voudica/ Bouda/ Bonduca/ Boidika) and Caratacus (Caractacus/Caratach/ Caradoc) shared more or less equal billing - one Jacobean play even had them as cousins. Only in Victorian times, as Alan points out, did Boudica expand to fill the stage, and Caratacus shrink back into history.

Towards the end of the book, Hingley runs through many of the various modern historical and mythological versions of the Boudica story, including museum displays, town pageants and (in an ill-advised sign of the times!) assorted internet sites found while Googling c.2004. Aside from that (and it all gets a bit baggy towards the end), it's a very decent study.

- Nathan

[Ghostmojo]

And there is that famous statue in Westminster, near the Thames.

[john roberts]

Also, you can imagine Boudicca as a hot babe, something difficult to do with Caractacus.

[Ghostmojo]

I know it is further lowering the tone of this worthy discussion, but whenever I think of that name I am reminded of Dick Van Dyke as Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

[Forty-One]

I always think of the Rolf Harris song:


"The fascinating witches who put the scintillating stitches in the britches of the boys who put the powder on the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the Court of King Caractacus, were just passing by."