ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the archaeological evidence for the Iceni and Trinovantes in the first century bc and earlier first century ad. Shakespeare's British king Cymbeline was none other than Cunobelin, the great British king who ruled a huge swathe of south-east England between about ad 10 and ad 40. Caesar was not the only one to record the painted bodies of the islanders: the Augustan poet Ovid referred to them as green-painted; Martial mentions their paint and their blueness and Propertius warns his mistress not to imitate the Britons by painting her face. The reason for Commiuss importance to Caesar's Britain is that archaeology testifies to the presence of someone with the same name who, during the Caesarian period, was minting coins in south-east England. While Boudica lived perhaps a hundred years later than the deposition of the Snettisham and Ipswich hoards, it is nonetheless significant that Dio identifies this feature of Boudicas regalia.
