ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the climax of the Boudican story, and deals with the evidence for events immediately proceeding and leading up to the rebellion and during the course of the revolt itself. According to Roman law, under which treaties with client-kings were automatically broken at their deaths, Icenian assets would, indeed, have become Roman property after Prasutagus died. Rape was also a war crime, an act that, unhappily, is still part of military behaviour in some parts of the world. Marcus Porcius Cato repeatedly spoke the famous words Carthago delenda est in the Senate about the need for Rome to destroy Carthage utterly, so that it could never again rise to challenge Roman power in the Mediterranean after the Second Punic War, and this came about in 146 BC. The torture and slaughter of the Roman noblewomen, happening as it did within a sacred grove, has all the hallmarks of human sacrificial killing.
