Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.

[Nathan Ross]

second on 23rd is for Vulcan, God who makes the implements for warfare, and blesses the weapons and gear for war.

Convenient, wouldn't you say? I mean, he couldn't bless the weapons if they'd already been taken off to war!

Mars was originally a god of agriculture, I believe - traditional fighting seasons are based on agriculture in central Italy. Seasonal differences elsewhere mean differences in practical military matters. I would rather trust evidence from contemporary sources than ideas about traditional beliefs.

Celtic farming was a single crop of emmer allowing its natural cycle, which takes 8 months to grow without manure,  the adoption of a 2 crop cycle with manure, is a man made adaption.

When are you referring to? As I understand it, the single emmer crop was prehistoric. The book I linked above suggests evidence both for spelt cultivation, manuring and autumn planting in Britain in the late Iron Age. Again, I would rather trust modern archaeology over whatever Pliny thought was going on.

If you look at when emmer or spelt are harvested, your going to have to be creative in getting it all in a year.

This is the problem - the revolt began while Paulinus was away at war (Agricola, 18), but had almost completed his operations. The war was in progress during the planting season, which the Iceni missed as they were away on campaign.

Since the Roman campaign season in Britain began in summer and would have ended in late summer or early autumn, the revolt must have begun around then. If the spring planting season is the one to which Tacitus refers, it must have been the following year's crop - that of spring AD62 - that was not planted. The war would therefore have lasted over the winter with the Iceni away from their own lands for many months. Paulinus would surely have been reinforced with more men in that period. By the time troops from the Rhine arrived and he put his army into winter quarters it would be autumn AD62 - and Paulinus had been replaced by Turpilianus by then.

If you want the spring planting of AD61 to be the missed one, you would have to assume that Paulinus had gone to war in the late winter and had completed the subjugation of Anglesey by around March at the latest.

the distance a legion can March was defined by how they measure time, if you then say but there is 16 hours of daylight they can triple that

Weirdly, Pliny seems to believe that there are 17 hours of summer daylight in Britain (NH 1.77)!

The distance a legion could march was defined by the stamina of the troops and the state of the roads, not time measurement. Vegetius (I.9) says that 'at the military step, 20 miles should be covered in five hours, at least in summer time.' That would be 18.3 modern miles.

The Roman day always lasted twelve hours (at least in Italy), but the summer hours were longer. The first hour always began at sunrise, and the twelfth ended at sunset.

In our estimates above of how long the battle might have lasted, we were referring to sunset and sunrise, mid-morning, noon, etc - not Roman hours (we have no sources giving the times as they would have been judged by contemporaries). The stages of the day, and the length of the day, would remain the same however they were counted.

veterans of Legio XIV...he would have summoned them, along with those of Legiones XX & II after he had made his assessment of the crisis

That sounds very plausible indeed - you don't call out the reserves unless matters have come to a crisis!

---

you would have thought that Cerialis would have got a message to SP at Mona, telling of his march to Colchester or even a later message of his defeat whilst SP was on the road or at Wroxeter.

By my current reckoning Paulinus would only have been two days or so away from combining his forces with Cerialis, and was marching as fast as he could, when Cerialis decided to push on ahead and try to save Colchester. A reckless decision, maybe, but clearly one which was subsequently held to be reasonable. We don't know what orders Paulinus had given Cerialis beforehand, and how open they may have been to interpretation.

why didn’t the Twentieth come in force from Monmouth, Usk and Cardiff?

I agree with Michael's idea that the main force of the Twentieth would have been with Paulinus in North Wales, along with the main force of the Second under their legate. Bringing his army together to crush the last of the rebellion would also have meant Paulinus giving up much of his recent conquests.