Neither before nor since has Britain ever been in a more uneasy or dangerous state. Veterans were butchered, colonies burnt to the ground, armies isolated. We had to fight for life before we could think of victory. The campaign, of course, was conducted under the strategy and leadership of another, and the decisive success and the credit for recovering Britain fell to the general [Suetonius Paulinus]. Yet everything combined to give the young Agricola fresh skill, fresh experience and fresh ambition, and his spirit was invaded by the passion for military glory – a thankless passion in an age in which distinction was misconstrued and a great reputation was as dangerous as a bad one

Tacitus Agricola1

Early on in his eulogy of his father-in-law, Agricola, Tacitus describesthe dire situation obtaining in the newly established province of Britannia, where Agricola first served as a military tribune on Suetonius

Paulinus’s staff in AD 60/1. This chapter represents the climax of the

Boudican story, and deals with the evidence for events immediately pre-

ceding and leading up to the rebellion and during the course of the revolt

itself. The ancient texts that describe the Boudican uprising consist of

Tacitus’s Annals, his Agricola and a later source, Dio Cassius’s Roman History. These we will analyse in some detail but, before doing so, it is worth standing back to consider the nature and tone of their accounts

because they have a bearing on how we should read them. Both authors

record dramatic events and one of the ways they do this is by putting

words into the mouths of the main dramatis personae (Boudica and Suetonius Paulinus). Such reported speech is evocative in written form,

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but we should appreciate that such texts were written to be read aloud

and so anything that can heighten the drama of the spoken word, whether

feigned speech, hyperbole, word-painting or sonority of language, would

have been employed.