Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain by Caitlin C. Gillespie (review)

Since the 15^th century the story of Boudica's revolt has attracted a following. Told by Tacitus and Cassius Dio, it inspired generations of artists to adapt her stand against the Roman invader. Nor has interest in her abated in this century. In the fall of 2017 Shakespeare's Globe Theater introduced Tristan Bernays' play Boudica to enthusiastic London audiences, its ancient themes and brutality resonating with modern British contention over Brexit, misogyny, nationalism, ethnicity. Gillespie's bibliography, which contains no fewer than ten studies in English published since 2003, attests to the fascination of scholars as well.

Describing her project in her preface as "a comparative literary biography of Boudica, juxtaposing her different characterizations in our ancient authors and setting her beside other women and rebel leaders," Gillespie makes a significant contribution to the study of Boudica by placing her as complex literary construct in the geopolitical setting of Iron Age Roman Britain and its people and centering her textual sources within the cultural and historical framework of first- and third-century Imperial Rome. In her introduction Gillespie outlines her intersectional approach to the life and world of Boudica, interrogating its literary and material resources for insights into Roman attitudes as well as British culture, and identifying abuses endemic to imperialism during the Principate: physical and cultural subjugation, abuse of power, immorality, avarice. Her succeeding seven chapters are organized distinctively by gendered theme and therefore warrant brief summary.

Chapter 1 offers literary and material evidence for Boudica's rebellion (60 ce) within the context of invasions of Britain from Julius Caesar (55 bc) to Claudius (43 ce), probing the diverse implications of Roman occupation for Britain's tribal Iron Age cultures. Chapter 2 interrogates Boudica's status as wife, queen, and citizen during the accommodations and uneasy transitions after Claudius' invasion. Comparisons with queens, notably Tanaquil, Cleopatra, and Cartimandua, illuminate Roman bias against monarchy and women and toward urban development. Chapter 3 centers on Tacitus' singular portrayal of Boudica as sympathetic materfamilias and blameless victim. Extending her rejection of Rome's domination beyond personal injury to its devastation of family, morality, and freedom, her speech in Annales 14 unites inter-tribal resistance as it echoes Roman Republican values. Gillespie links abuse of the female body to Roman gender ideology: she offers coverage of the attacks on Lucretia and Verginia, as well as of Nero's brutality toward women of his family which Tacitus recounts also in Annales 14.

Chapter 4 focuses on Dio's presentation of Boudica as a barbarian warrior queen whose Amazonian appearance and aggressive speech crystalize conflicting gender ideologies and establish her as a moral leader superior to foreign queens and Claudian and Neronian women. Gillespie supports Dio's description of Boudica as Other with material evidence and compares her to Roman women described in his history (Hersilia, Veturia, Livia). Chapter 5 documents female participation in Boudica's revolt as watchers or fighters and Tacitus' application of the term dux femina to Boudica. Gillespie explores negative responses to women such as Cleopatra, Fulvia, and Agrippina, who aroused Roman anxiety for exercising authority beyond their status. Chapter 6 examines the implicit religious aspects of the Boudican rebellion: destruction of the Druid site and its worshippers, invocation of Andraste, goddess of Victory, ritual sacrifice of captives. Gillespie interprets rebel brutality as a symbolic erasure of Roman presence, likening their acts to the behavior of victorious soldiers and Nero's tortures. Chapter 7 views the revolt commanded by Boudica, the single female leader, beside provincial uprisings in the early Empire, identifying three shared motivations: Roman greed, inept governance, lost freedom. Gillespie considers Tacitus' Agricola and the Calgacus uprising twenty years later the earliest receptions of Boudica. In her epilogue Gillespie traces Boudica's enduring legacy as iconic queen, rebel, mother, and warrior, championing national agendas in various forms.

This book, the latest in the Women in Antiquity series, not only incorporates...