Boudica: Britain's Warrior Queen

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2021

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

Boudica has become a hero of British folklore. Her leadership of the Iceni in an uprising against the forces of the Roman Empire in around 60 AD is echoed around school classrooms. But what evidence do we have for her actions, appearance and eventual defeat? Caitlin Gillespie is the author of ‘Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain.’ In this first of two episodes, she speaks to Tristan about the sources that have helped us to find out more about this legendary woman.

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0:00.0	It's the ancient on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's
0:08.0	podcast well tomorrow Monday March the 8th is International Women's Day and
0:13.0	this month is Women's History Month. So in today's podcast we are talking about
0:17.6	the most famous warrior woman of ancient Britain. Budica. Also known as Bodhisaya.
0:25.0	Now join me to talk through what we know about Budica and in particular how she
0:29.1	is portrayed in our surviving Roman sources. I was delighted to be joined by
0:34.7	professor Kathleen Gillespie from Brandeis University. Kathleen is Budica's 21st
0:40.4	century biographer. She's written a fantastic book about this warrior woman of
0:44.6	ancient Britain and so it was great to get on the show to talk through this
0:48.2	amazing topic. Part 2 will be out in the near future. Without further ado is
0:54.8	Kathleen. Kathleen thank you so much for coming on the show. It's wonderful to
1:02.4	be here. Thanks for having me. No problem at all. This is an amazing topic.
1:06.8	Budica you've studied the life of this ancient Icne queen and particularly
1:11.8	can we say with a focus on her portrayal on how she's described in the
1:16.2	sources and also looking at the archaeology too. Yeah absolutely so my background
1:21.7	is more on the literary side of things so what I was really interested in
1:26.5	investigating was her different portrayals in our ancient authors so working
1:31.4	primarily with Tacitus and Cassius Diode and then seeing if the archaeology could
1:36.4	help me better understand aspects that those Roman authors do not pay
1:40.7	attention to. So things about daily life, things about the Ascene, things about
1:45.2	her people that we really don't get in the Roman historians. And you mentioned
1:50.5	them right there so we have two main literary sources for Budica, Cassius Diode and
	...

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