My Spring 2024 MANCENT teaching

I'm repeating my Mancent online course on Screening Britannia from this January. Anybody who fancies joining, you can sign up through Eventbrite. Anyone who pays the full course fee will get the recordings. Alternatively, you can book for individual sessions here. 

I'm also doing a London mythology walk for MANCENT, going down Pall Mall and towards Victoria. 

And finally, another walk I'm doing for MANCENT is a visit to Roman Colchester. 

 MANCENT's full Spring 2024 prospectus can be found here.

2020 Movies #2: Boadicea

Boadicea. UK; dir. Sinclair Hill; scr. Anthony Asquith and Sinclair Hill; starring Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Lillian Hall-Davis and Clifford McLaglen; British Instructional Films; 1927

This is, at the moment, the earliest screen depiction of Roman Britain of which I am aware. It very much presents itself as 'authentic' - an opening caption proclaims that '[M]any incidents in this story were reconstructed in the neighbourhood where they actually occurred.' But this is misleading. Many incidents presented in this short movie have been invented for dramatic purposes, and sometimes flatly contradict the sources - so, for instance, Colchester is depicted with walls and gates, which Tacitus explicitly says it did not have.

It's still interesting (though clearly done on a shoestring budget). Phyllis Neilson-Terry, niece of the famous Ellen Terry, plays a more matronly Boadicea than some later portrayals. As is often the case with Boadicea/Boudicca narratives, the Druids are closely associated with the Queen. And clearly the viewer is meant to sympathise with the defeated Queen of the Iceni, even at the time when the identification of the British empire with the Roman was a major cultural theme. But because this is an 'educational' movie, the rapes of Boadicea's daughters are very much underplayed, to the point where no rape actually takes place - instead a daughter is roughly manhandled, causing Boadicea to strike the Roman. The Queen's flogging then follows.

They found Boudicca's brain!

Bonekickers is a show that seems to divide people. The division is between those who think it's utter nonsense, and those who think it's utter nonsense but enjoy it anyway.

This week's seemed more nonsensical than usual, but perhaps because I know the history that's being abused more than in previous episodes. But maybe it's the arsenal of live Roman napalm grenades. It's almost not worth listing all the lunacies in this. Mosaics on walls? Well, perhaps. The Life of Marcus Quintanus is, of course, completely made up - but can you really imagine that if they'd been researching this they wouldn't know that there were other more complete copies? And palimpsests made out of printed pages? Do what, guv'nor? And why does Professor Parton wear his hat at night?

It might have been interesting to spin off this into a discussion of the attitudes towards Boudicca that the programme shows, especially Boudicca as British queen, sheltered by villagers in the West Country, when there's no evidence that she cared about them or that they cared about her. But really, this is so bonkers and bears so little relationship to history that it's hardly worth it. (If you want to read what I think about Boudicca, it's all here.)

But yes, I'll be watching next week.

Recent TV

Sunday night ITV3 had a programme called Boudicca. With the usual dramatized reconstructions, it purported to be a historical account of Boudicca's life, but pretty soon it was making things up. Of course, you almost have to do that to get an hour's programme out of Boudicca's life, as the sources are so patchy. But this sort of programme is very bad at making clear what is backed by evidence, and what is speculation. And once something is stated with authority, it gets treated as a 'historical fact', regardless of evidential foundation. So, for instance, this programme had a detailed list of the tribes that joined the rebellion, whereas there is only evidence for two. All the others have been added by 'later tradition', which could be no more than someone's guesswork in the eighteenth century. But it's not worth going on about this. I've set out my opinions on Boudicca, and most modern treatments of her, here, here and here (and you can find a bit more if you scroll far enough down the comments here).

Rather better were Monday and Tuesday's repeats on UKTV History of the Greek Gods and Goddesses series, presented by Olympic athlete Jonathan Edwards. I wrote a little bit about the first one, on Jason and the Argonauts, when discussing Michael Wood's programme on the same subject. There were a few mistakes in this programme - not all Hollywood versions of the story keep Heracles to the end, the famous 1963 version getting rid of him mid-story, as per the legend, and the encounter with the Sirens belongs to the return from Colchis (which was misspelt on a map), not to the journey out. And it is interesting to see Medea presented as exemplary of good helpful womanhood, editing out her betrayal of her brother and her subsequent crimes. But I found interesting the presentation of the Jason legend as a 'rites of passage' tale, and a series of lessons about what Greek men needed to know. I still think one needs to be aware of the possibility that the original legend has grown in the telling - both Heracles and the Sirens I think are later additions. But that doesn't necessarily invalidate the reading Edwards presents of the story as it stands.

The second programme, on the Odyssey, had the potential to be more clearly focussed, centring on the tale as told by Homer, rather than a general aggregation of various tellings. Unfortunately, it cherry-picks the story to such a degree as to give a somewhat distorted version. Gone are the Lotus Eaters, Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, Circe, and the cattle of Helios. More importantly, gone is the theme of the wrath of Poseidon, and Odysseus' tendency to lie is underplayed. And the sanitization seen in the previous programme's view of Medea takes over at the end, and the slaying of the Suitors is completely excised.

This morning I also caught Alexander Siddig on BBC Breakfast (there's an article with a link to the interview here), talking about his role in Hannibal, to be broadcast this Sunday on BBC1, with a documentary on BBC2 either later the same night (if you believe the BBC History page), or the following night (if you believe the BBC Two listings). Siddig was talking about what a great general Hannibal was, almost as good as Alexander. Well, tactically, yes, and as a leader of men. But strategically Alexander succeeded and Hannibal failed (though his high-risk gamble was admittedly about the only thing that was likely to bring Carthage success against Rome). We shall see what the programmes are like. (Tom Holland apparently wrote about the programme in the Daily Mail, but I can't find it online and wouldn't link to it if I could.)*

Winner, predictably, was BBC4's programme Lost In Egypt on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, misleadingly sold in the listings as giving an insight into ancient Egypt, though actually they reveal daily life in Roman Egypt, and lost literature of ancient Greece. Lots of people I know or know of as talking heads, all done with BBC4's usual intelligence. This one will repay rewatching when I'm not distracted by making the dinner and feeding the cats.

* Please note, this is due to an objection to the Daily Mail, not to Tom Holland.

Three books read

Rosemary Sutcliff, Song for a Dark Queen



Read because Kate was devouring my Sutcliff collection, and I hadn't read this one. Written in 1978, it's a lesser Sutcliff, without the fine writing seen in The Silver Branch or The Lantern Bearers.

I'm not sure that I believe that the Iceni were matrilineal, or that there were contingents in Boudicca's army from tribes as far away as the Brigantes, but this is a work of fiction, so Sutcliff is entitled to suggest that this was the case, as long as she doesn't completely violate what little is known for certain. Arguably she does this when she has the sack of Verulamium take place at almost the same time as that of Londinium, and carried out by a separate section of Boudicca's army. But I think she does this to speed the novel along, and also because her conception of the campaign has the Romans wintering in Chichester in the hope of getting reinforcements from Gaul. In any case, any errors in this are as nothing compared to, say, Eagle of the Ninth, where much of the plot depends on serious misunderstandings of the way the Roman army worked.

As the reviewer for Amazon.co.uk, one David Langford, opines, Sutcliff does not spare her juvenile readers some of the horrors of the Boudiccan revolt, though she does find a circumlocution for 'rape', and the fate of the women of Colchester (hung up with their breasts cut off) is merely hinted at.

Lorna Hardwick, Reception Studies



Read to give some theoretical support to my own writings on the reception of classics in modern sf. It's a useful little volume, though I wish Lorna would use more commas. There were a number of times where I had to read sentences more than once to understand what she was actually saying.

Dan Simmons, Ilium



Finally got around to this, which I read for obvious reasons. As with most sf, it's far too long (and even at the end of 600-plus pages he story remains half-complete, with only two of the novel's three strands have been linked). But overall it works. At first the future Earth and future Mars stories seemed a distraction from the account of the Trojan War, but soon they gain momentum, and actually become more enjoyable. Many questions (how does this all link in with Homer? What are the gods?) remain for the sequel, Olympos.

Boudicca yet again

Given that I've written before about Boudicca, some comment on Five's Boudica's Treasures might be expected. Well, it was no better nor worse than I expected. There were some sensible points made - the fact that 'Britain' as a concept wouldn't really be acknowledged by Boudicca. But as ever there was a tendency to over-romanticize the Celts, who were 'in touch with the natural world as no other people have been'. The Romans, of course, are brutal conquerors, taking British young men off to the army (which I'm not sure there is evidence for,* plus service in the army was actually a relatively cushy job and a good way of improving one's status), and pursuing a campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' (I'll grant Tacitus does say that British tribes that had been disloyal were treated with fire and sword, but the same writer also says that more damage was done by famine, due to men being pulled off agricultural duties). London was 'a city of vile moneylenders', and Boudicca's own atrocities are passed over and granted a sheen of legitimacy - destroying the Romanized British city of Verulamium is acceptable because the city was run by a 'Quisling aristocracy'.

The main thing that was different with this programme was tying the account in with Neil Faulkner's archeological excavation in northern Norfolk. This is a site which is in the right area, and dates to the middle of the first century AD, and so it of the right period. But there was nothing presented in the programme to directly tie the site in with Boudicca. What this actually served to demonstrate was the way in which archaeological material and historical material tend to answer different questions. The study of the site, interesting though it was, didn't really help tell the story of Boudicca.

Not as bad as the Battlefield Britain programme on the subject, but not as good as Michael Wood's from nearly twenty-five years ago.

Edit 19/07/2007: Okay, yes there is - Tacitus, Agricola 15.

Boudicca again

I've been thinking, and not for the first time, about Boudicca quite a bit recently (the subject will probably come up in Saturday's tutorial). I've come to the conclusion that many modern treatments are flawed on three counts:

1) Use of sources:

We have surprisingly few sources on Boudicca - essentially, parts of three works by two authors, Tacitus (Annals 14.31-9 and Agricola 16) and Cassius Dio (62.1-12). In the Supplementary Texts volume that goes with the course I teach, all these sources take up less than ten pages. After that, we're in the realms of extrapolation.

Modern accounts tend to be quite credulous and unsophisticated in the way they handle the sources. For a start, they don't pay enough attention to what the sources actually say. For instance, Boudicca's daughters, who, according to Tacitus, were raped by Roman slaves, are often presented as underage. But Tacitus does not say how old the daughters were.

Nor are the contradictions between the sources properly addressed. Tacitus and Dio actually have completely different accounts of the revolt's origins. Tacitus tells the well-known tale of the kingdom of Boudicca's husband Prasutagus being left jointly to his daughters (note, not his wife and daughters, as people often assume) and the emperor Nero, and the Romans moving in, taking the lot, and brutalizing the royal family. (Though it should be noted that Tacitus does not blame the governor Suetonius Paulinus, for this latter incident - he blames centurions and slaves. Suetonius was certainly not actually present when Boudicca was flogged.) Dio's version is all about the recalling of loans, and blames the procurator, Catus Decianus. The usual approach has been to combine these accounts, while laying the emphasis on Tacitus' version (as Dio's makes for dull history lessons). But to do that without drawing attention to the differences is not a sophisticated approach to ancient sources.

Which leads to the third point that gets overlooked, why the sources say what they say. Almost everything gets taken at face value, except where the Roman sources reflect badly upon Boudicca. So the atrocities that Dio claims Boudicca's army perpetrated in Colchester and London get dismissed as Roman propaganda, but his description of the queen, which is equally part of a presentation of Boudicca as something alien and other to Roman eyes, is accepted without question, because to modern eyes it seems impressive.

The writers' motives get overlooked. Tacitus' history is a construction in which he is critiquing Roman imperialism and presenting it in the worst possible fashion, and in Book 14 he is very concerned with slaves getting above themselves, and killing their masters. So this story suits his purpose. As a result, and given the incident's absence from Dio's account, we don't actually know that the brutalization of the Iceni royal family actually took place at all. Nor can we be sure that Dio's version of the revolt's origins is correct. All we can actually say for certain is that, somehow, the Romans pushed the Iceni and the Trinovantes too far. The revolt certainly took place, and the cities burnt. That's clear in the archaeological record. But the spark may have been what Tacitus describes, it may have been Dio's recalling of loans. It may even be that it's correct to say both factors were at play (which may be what the brief account in Tacitus' Agricola implies), or it may be that neither story has any truth to it.

Accounts need to signal when they are in the world of extrapolation. Connections have been made with the notion of Celtic matrilineality. Now, this isn't a subject I know a great deal about, but it wouldn't surprise me if the evidence was quite thin. For a start, one's on shaky ground if one starts to say "The Celts were ..." This was a very wide cultural grouping, and what Celts in northern Scotland might have done might be very different from the practice of Celts in Asia Minor. There's some evidence, I understand, for matrilineal practices amongst the Picts, but I wouldn't be astonished to find that this had been combined with Roman accounts that the British accepted leaders who were women to produce a blanket assertion that goes beyond the evidence. Matrilineality was very popular amongst certain Victorian antiquarians, and quite a lot of their theories have been shown not to match up with the evidence. Certainly Tacitus does not say that Boudicca's daughters were raped because they carried the royal line, so again we're into extrapolation. It can't be shown that this wasn't why they were raped, but nor can it confidently be asserted that it was.

2) Too nationalistic:

Boudicca is often presented as a 'British' queen, and her revolt is a 'British' revolt (a view the ancient sources encourage). But her revolt actually did not spread far beyond East Anglia - the Roman allies and territories west of Watling Street and south of the Thames were not directly affected. I suspect Boudicca did not think of herself as 'British' - 'Britain' was an invention of the Romans.

In this context, the sack of Verulamium is often underplayed. It shouldn't be. Because whilst Colchester and London were Roman settlements, Verulamium was mostly populated by locals, whom the Romans would have called Britons - yet Boudicca still destroyed it. The only inhabitants of the British Isles she cared about were her own tribe and her allies the Trinovantes.

3) Too narrow a context:

The revolt is only seen in terms of the history of the province of Britannia. But there seems to have been something going generally wrong with provincial administration in the reign of Nero. At the beginning of his reign, there were a number of trials of provincial governors for financial misconduct while in post, charges brought by provincials after the governor's term of office. In every one of these, the governor got off. About AD 60, these trials stopped, and it looks to me as if this is because the provincials just gave up using the legitimate mechanisms of complaint, as they no longer worked. Instead, they sought other avenues for protest, and it is then that we get not just the Boudiccan revolt, but also the great Jewish revolt in AD 66, and the revolt of Julius Vindex in Gaul in AD 68, which, though directed at Nero personally, had definite nationalistic overtones. I'm not suggesting a direct link - but three major revolts in a decade is a bit of a coincidence, and it suggests that there are conditions repeating themselves through the empire.

One day I'll give Boudicca a proper treatment.

Battlefield Britain on Boudicca

(This post was originally written last August, in response to the first programme in the BBC's Battlefield Britain series, on the revolt of Boudicca.)

Very pretty CGI, but my god! What a load of rubbish! Dreadful simplistic nonsense in which Britons were good, and terribly oppressed by the nasty nasty Romans. The fact that many of the elite of the British tribes had been happily buying into Roman culture for a century before Claudius' legions was ignored. All the time we were being told about the 'Britons' in their revolt, yet it was only two tribes in east Anglia and the Midlands. All the others stayed loyal to Rome. In fact, the idea of 'the Britons' was a Roman invention - the people living on the island certainly didn't think of themselves as a single nation. The peoples of Kent and Sussex didn't seem particularly incensed by what was happening to the Druids.

As for the Druids, the programme presented a picture of nasty Roman legionaries butchering defenceless old priests. The fact that the one source suggests that the Druids commanded strong military forces gets overlooked, as was the suggestion that they indulged in human sacrifice. They wouldn't do that, you see - too nice. The one atrocity of the Iceni that was mentioned was qualified as 'probably propaganda' - yet every tabloid sensationalist tale of what the Romans did was repeated as fact, and even added to. We have no knowledge of the ages of Boudicca's daughters - you can't suggest, as this programme did, that they were mere children without any good reason.

It is sometimes assumed (and was again in this programme) that because the Roman governor Suetonius was off suppressing the Druids when the revolt happened, this was why the revolt happened; post hoc ergo propter hoc. There's not a shred of evidence for this hypothesis in either of the writers who give accounts of the revolt, both of whom see economic factors as being principally at work. (My own theory is that since the Druids appear to have been an independent power block within their society over which they could exercise no control, many British elites were glad to see the back of them.)

What is never done is for the revolt to be placed in the wider context of what is going on in the Roman empire at the time. We have a general collapse of the standards of provincial government in the reign of Nero. At the beginning of his reign, there were a number of trials of provincial governors for financial misconduct while in post, charges brought by provincials after the governor's term of office. In every one of these, the governor got off. About AD 60, these trials stopped, and it looks to me as if this is because the provincials just gave up using the legitimate mechanisms of complaint, as they no longer worked. Instead, they sought other avenues for protests, and it is then that we get not just the Boudiccan revolt, but also the great Jewish revolt, and the revolt of Julius Vindex in Gaul in AD 68, which, though directed at Nero personally, had definite nationalistic overtones.

The writers of Battlefield Britain hadn't done their homework properly - they stated that the IX Legion was destroyed, yet the same source that tells us the infantry were wiped out later says that it only took 2,000 legionaries from the Continent to bring the Legion back to its full strength of 5,000. And the Romans did not have 'flimsy sandals' on their feet. They had sandals with bloody great hobnails!

And the final statement that the Roman oppression drove the Britons into Wales and Scotland. Utter nonsense! The population of Britain under the Roman empire remained mostly people whose ancestors had been there before the Roman invasion. The driving of the language into the fringes of the island happened in the Anglo-Saxon period.

And the buggers can't count. 'Nearly a thousand years after Boudicca's revolt, new invaders are coming to Britain ...' Boudicca's revolt, AD 60. Battle of Hastings, 1066. When I went to school, that was not 'almost' a thousand years ...

(Subsequent editions were apparently less awful, but the only one I saw substantial parts of was the one on the Battle of Britain.)