Boudica is a historical figure that continues to be shrouded in mystery. Not much is known about her beyond her role in the rebellion of the Iceni and surrounding Brythonic tribes against the Romans in Londinium in 60/61 CE. She has, however, captivated the imagination of the modern public as one of history’s strongest women, and is recognized in Britain as an icon of national heritage. So, who was she?   What’s in a Name?  Boudica, illustration by Charles Hamilton Smith, 1821, Source: Wikimedia Commons   Boudica’s name has been written in different ways throughout history. While “Boudica” is the most common spelling, she has also been identified as Boudicca, Boadicea, Boudicea, and Buddug. The first two spellings are from the Brythonic boudi (victory, win) and ka (having), indicating that her name translates to “Victorious Woman.” The names Boadicea and Boudicea are from Latin accounts of her, and Buddug is the Welsh translation of her name. The Gaelic word “boudeg” also translates to victory.   It is believed that Boudica was born into an elite family in Camulodunum—what is now Colchester—and that she would have been trained as a warrior, learning fighting techniques and the use of weapons. Though her family may not have anticipated the circumstances that led to her role in the uprising of 60/61 CE, when she was born, she was certainly equipped with the tools to ensure her authority as queen of a tribal people from a young age.   Boudica’s Personal Life Boadicea Haranging the Britons, by John Opie, 1807, Source: Wikimedia Commons   Boudica is believed to have been born in Camulodunum, the ancient Roman name for the Brythonic Celtic Camulodunum, or “stronghold of Camulos.” Camulos, or Camulus, was a war god that the Romans associated with Mars. Camulodunum became a satellite kingdom of Rome after its initial occupation and was the first capital of Roman Britain.   Boudica married her husband Prasutagus by the time she was 18, and they had two daughters. How Prasutagus came to be king of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe living in East Anglia, is unclear; he may have been one of the eleven kings who initially surrendered to Roman emperor Claudius following the conquest in 43 CE, or he may have been appointed after the rebellion of the Iceni against Roman occupation in AD 47, at which point the area became a satellite kingdom.   Prasutagus, by all accounts, seems to have been a loyal ally to Rome. He died in 60 or 61 CE, and he left his kingdom to both his daughters and the Roman emperor in his will. His provisions for his family were ignored, and the imperial procurator Decianus Catus seized his entire estate. According to Tacitus, “…his wife Boudicca​ was subjected to the lash and his daughters violated: all the chief men of the Icenians were stripped of their family estates, and the relatives of the king were treated as slaves.” These events directly led to the uprising of 60/61 CE.   Boadicea Shows the Marks of the Roman Rods, by W Parkinson, from Beric, the Briton: a story of the Roman invasion, by G.A. Henty, 1893, Source: The Internet Archive   Boudica’s role as queen of the Iceni raises the question of the social position of women in Celtic society. In truth, it was rare for Celtic women to occupy ruling positions without an accompanying ruling male partner. Boudica is one of two examples, the other being Cartimandua of the Brigantes.   Generally, whether women were able to obtain high status without the aid of a husband varied between Celtic societies. Some of the richest graves that archaeologists have uncovered from the Iron Age likely belonged to women, based on the specific furnishings and jewelry that were included. Celtic society was, by and large, patriarchal, but women of high status certainly existed and many, like Boudica, received training as warriors like that of Celtic men.   The Uprising of 60/61 CE British coin, attributed to the Iceni, 50-20 BCE, Source: The British Museum   After the events following the death of Prasutagus, Boudica led the Iceni in revolt against the Roman presence in Britain. To gather more forces, Boudica and the Iceni conspired with a neighboring Celtic tribe, the Trinovantes, among other tribes. The Trinovantes had similar cause to join the rebellion, as the imposition of a Roman colony on their formal tribal center—as well as the treatment of the native Britons as captives and slaves—had caused resentment over time. It is believed that Boudica amassed an army of around 100,000 Britons.   Boudica initiated the rebellion by launching an attack on Camulodunum, her birthplace and the provincial capital of Roman Britain. Camulodunum was entirely unprepared for the attack; its Roman citizens appealed to Decianus Catus for help, and he sent an armed force of only 200 men. Boudica and her troops burned the city to the ground and killed many of its inhabitants. In an act of pure defiance, they decapitated a bronze statue of the Roman emperor Nero.   Boadicea’s attack upon Camulodunum in 60 AD, by Henry A. Payne, from The History of the Nation, 1922, Source: Roman-Britain.co.uk   Boudica then marched her troops towards Londinium to advance another attack. By this point, the Roman provincial governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, had received word of the rebellion and attempted to fight back against her in Londinium. The city was, like Camulodunum, unprepared for the attack, and Suetonius abandoned the area upon realizing his few thousand troops would not be enough defense. Again, like Camulodunum, Boudica’s troops burned Londinium to the ground. Finally, Boudica’s forces attacked Verulamium. Anticipating how much Boudica’s forces outweighed his own Suetonius did not attempt to defend the site, and the troops once again destroyed the town and killed many of its people.   Boudica’s rebellion had a major impact on the Roman occupation of Britain. Various accounts estimate that around 70,000-80,000 people were killed because of the three attacks on Roman cities and that Nero may have even contemplated ending the Roman colonial project in Britain as a result. Suetonius, however, managed to gather an army of 10,000 troops to fight back against Boudica and the Britons. Though his army was much smaller than hers, he is said to have strategically waged the battle in a deep-sided narrow gorge surrounded by woods so that Boudica could not take advantage of her army’s numbers. Suetonius was victorious, and Boudica’s army was defeated and slaughtered.   Cassius Dio and Tacitus differ in their accounts of how Boudica died: Cassius Dio suggested that she fell ill and died after the battle, and Tacitus suggested that she poisoned herself. Southern Britain was re-secured by the Romans, Londinium was rebuilt and established as the new capital, and Rome would go on to occupy Britain until the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th century.   References to Boudica in Ancient Sources Tribes of Celtic Britain, Davies, 2000, and Cunliffe, 2012, Source ResearchGate   One of the most striking references made to Boudica in ancient textual sources is by Cassius Dio in his Roman History. He wrote:   “But the person who was chiefly instrumental in rousing the natives and persuading them to fight the Romans, the person who was thought worthy to be their leader and who directed the conduct of the entire war, was Buduica, a Briton woman of the royal family and possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women….In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of diverse colors over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire.”   Dio’s description of Boudica provides much of the information we have about her character today: that she was responsible for gathering troops in rebellion against Rome, that she possessed a degree of authority, that she was highly militaristic, and that she was a fearsome woman. Dio also states that she had “tawny” hair, a brownish-orange color that has led to many depictions of Boudica as redheaded, sporting a torc.   Boudica urges the Britons to defend their country against the Roman invaders, by Thomas Stothard, c. 1795. Source: Proantic   In Tacitus’s Annals, he describes Boudica’s speech to the Britons encouraging them to war:   “Boudicca, mounted in a chariot with her daughters before her, rode up to clan after clan and delivered her protest:—‘It was customary, she knew, with Britons to fight under female captaincy; but now she was avenging, not, as a queen of glorious ancestry, her ravished realm and power, but, as a woman of the people, her liberty lost, her body tortured by the lash, the tarnished honor of her daughters. Roman cupidity had progressed so far that not their very persons, not age itself, nor maidenhood, were left unpolluted. Yet Heaven was on the side of their just revenge: one legion, which ventured battle, had perished; the rest were skulking in their camps, or looking around them for a way of escape. They would never face even the din and roar of those many thousands, far less their onslaught and their swords!—If they considered in their own hearts the forces under arms and the motives of the war, on that field they must conquer or fall. Such was the settled purpose of a woman—the men might live and be slaves!’”   Tacitus was not an eyewitness to these events, so it is unlikely that these were Boudica’s exact words. He likely recorded this as a way of communicating to the Roman reader what their enemy’s motivations were. These words, however, formed Boudica’s legacy as a national hero in Britain.   References to Boudica, 16th-19th Centuries Boadicea and Her Daughters, by Thomas Thornycroft,1856-1883, Victoria Embankment, Westminster, photo by Paul Walters, Source: Wikimedia Commons   Boudica re-entered the cultural lexicon in the 16th century, when the works of Cassius Dio and Tacitus became available in England during the Renaissance. She appeared in early chronicles of British history like Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia (as early as 1506), Hector Boece’s The History and Chronicles of Scotland (1526), and Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (c. 1577-1587). She also appeared as a character in British theater, first in the 1612 Jacobean play Bonduca, and a different version of that play called Bonduca, or the British Heroine in 1695. The music from the 1695 production was the source of a popular patriotic song in the 18th and 19th centuries, “Britons, Strike Home!”   The revival of texts from antiquity during the English Renaissance, like those by Cassius Dio and Tacitus, aided in England’s “rediscovery” of its past over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. Many European countries had nationalist movements then, and historians, archaeologists, and antiquarians aided in national interests to trace the histories of modern nations to their “ancient” roots.   In the case of Britain, this past was “Celtic,” rather than Greek or Roman. Boudica became a popular national figure, put forth as representative of quintessentially British values, and she appeared as the subject of poetry, paintings, prints, and monumental statues.   Boudica in Popular Culture Today Olga Kurylenko in Boudica: Queen of War, Source: Deadline   Boudica remains a relatively popular figure today. She is particularly famous for her position as a strong, powerful woman from ancient history. She received a place setting in the contemporary artist Judy Chicago’s monumental 1970s work The Dinner Party, which contained 39 place settings dedicated to historical figures that have made contributions to women’s lives throughout history. Her history as a feminist figure goes back to the early 20th century, as she was adopted by the suffragettes as a symbol of women’s suffrage.   There have been a few different television and film depictions of Boudica, including the 2003 British television film Boudica, released in the United States as Warrior Queen, and the more recent 2023 film Boudica: Queen of War. She is also referenced in video games like Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword as leader of the Celts and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, where players can explore a “Boudicca Tomb” in East Anglia.   Bibliography   Champion, T. (1996). Power, politics, and status. In M. Green (Ed.), The Celtic World (pp. 85-94). Routledge. Crummy, P. (1997). City of Victory; the story of Colchester – Britain’s first Roman town. Colchester Archaeological Trust. Webster, G. (1996). The Celtic Britons under Rome. In M. Green (Ed.), The Celtic World (pp. 623-635). Routledge.

  “Celtic art,” makes for an interesting category in art history. It is plagued by the issues of the stickiness of the term “Celtic,” and by the fact that their “art” was primarily functional rather than being of purely aesthetic interest. This article will address these issues and will articulate the key aspects of the Celtic art style. One of the most important aspects of viewing Celtic art is understanding how Celtic people may have thought of naturalism. In the modern view, naturalism and realism are the standards to which art is held because of long-held conventions from the Renaissance. Celtic people, however, did not view the world the same way.   Phases of Celtic Culture(s) Strettweg Cult Wagon, c. 6th century BCE, Hallstatt, Steiermark, Austria. Source: World History Encyclopedia   An understanding of Celtic art is aided by an understanding of who the Celtic peoples were. The term “Celtic” is a broad umbrella term used to describe various peoples living across the European continent from the Iron Age through late antiquity, with some identifying Celtic peoples as far back as the late Bronze Age. The umbrella terminology “Celtic” was adopted to group these various peoples according to similar linguistic and cultural practices.   Historians generally regard what is now Hallstatt, Austria as the cradle of Celtic civilization, placing the Hallstatt culture as the first commonly recognized “phase” of Celtic culture. “Hallstatt culture” generally refers to the period c. 1200-450 BCE, and to Celtic peoples living in central Europe.   The Hallstatt culture was based on farming, though their metalwork was very advanced. As such, much Celtic art from this period depicts farm animals and farming tools. Historians believe that there were sharp class distinctions during this period, drawing evidence from the graves of elite chieftains. Occasionally, historians have included the Urnfield culture as a predecessor to the Hallstatt culture, which is a central European grouping that dates to c. 1300-750.   Detail of Celtic sword and scabbard, c. 60 BCE, Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art   The next, and most prolific, phase of Celtic culture was the La Tène culture. This period refers to the people living in central and western Europe, with some movement up into Ireland and the British Isles during the later centuries. It dates to around 450 BCE-50 CE.   Gaul was a locus of culture during this period, though it is generally characterized by exchange in and around the Mediterranean region. This period is also the best-documented phase of Celtic culture, as ancient Greek and Roman writers recorded their accounts of the Celtic people as they moved across the continent. These accounts cannot be taken as entirely truthful, as they were often biased and some were merely hearsay, but they offer a glimpse into what the Celtic people were like in the absence of written sources from their perspective.   Lastly, the Romano-British phase of Celtic culture refers to the people living in the Ireland and the British Isles during and immediately after the time of Roman occupation from c. 50-410 CE. This phase generally includes the material produced by the Brythonic Celtic tribes. This culture arose as a fusion between the Celtic Britons and the Roman culture that was brought to the islands, but its art is defined by a clear reflection of the pagan Celtic belief system.   Material Culture vs. “Art” Basse Yutz Flagon, c. mid-5th century BCE, La Tène, Basse Yutz, France, Source: The British Museum   Much of the literature that currently exists on Celtic peoples and their objects is from the field of archaeology. The objects produced by Celtic peoples, consequently, are often classified as “material culture” rather than “art.” Though art is certainly one aspect of material culture, Oxford Reference defines the latter as “the objects produced by human beings, including buildings, structures, monuments, tools, weapons, utensils, furniture, art, and indeed any physical item created by a society.”   It is implied that material culture is, first and foremost, functional. “Art,” as a concept, is often assumed to be produced for purely aesthetic reasons rather than functional ones. It is made to be admired. The line between material culture and art is blurred with Celtic art; most, if not all, Celtic art, is functional. That these objects would have been aesthetically pleasing was only a secondary aspect of their production. They were, however, a good way for local artisans to display their skills in metalworking and sculpting.   Unlike art from other cultures and periods throughout history, which may have been preserved in private collections, Celtic art has also predominantly been discovered by archaeologists in the ground at domestic settlements called oppida, religious sanctuary sites, and in elite graves. Some objects, like the Battersea Shield, have been found deposited in natural places like the River Thames. The circumstances of these discoveries offer further evidence that these objects were almost always used in some capacity at the time of their production, whether as functional objects (i.e., the Basse-Yutz flagons, one of which is pictured above and which was likely used to hold and pour wine) or as votive objects (objects deposited specifically as religious offerings).   Primary Characteristics of Celtic Art Battersea Shield, c. 350-50 BCE, La Tène, Battersea, London. Source: The British Museum   As mentioned above, Celtic art was typically made from metal or stone. These materials were often locally sourced, particularly those used for votive depositions. Occasionally objects made from locally sourced material were used in elite graves, though these graves also often featured objects that were imported. Both the ability to commission goods from local artisans, and to import materials, were signs of wealth.   Celtic art from the Hallstatt Period was typically very plain, not often adorned with other precious materials, and frequently depicted the most central aspect of Celtic life during that time: farming. If a human figure was portrayed, they were depicted without attention to proportions or the conventions of naturalism. More than any other phase of Celtic culture, La Tène Celtic art is characterized by swirling, vine-like motifs, whorls, and triskeles. The ornament on Celtic objects from this period is more delicate than on Hallstatt objects and signifies a slight turn toward aesthetic interests.   Inside of the Gundestrup Cauldron, c. 150-1 BCE, La Tène, Himmerland, Denmark, Source: Nationalmuseet København Danmark.   The human figure was most often depicted in the context of Celtic headhunting and head collecting during the La Tène Period. Celtic practices of headhunting and head collecting were recorded by their ancient Greek and Roman neighbors. These authors asserted that it was a common Celtic practice to behead their enemies in battle and keep severed heads as trophies for generations.   Though these accounts were often biased, there is archaeological evidence to support that this practice existed as a component of the Celtic religion. It was believed that severed heads could be used to harness divine power. Many depictions of humans from this period exist as disembodied heads, related to this practice. Though these depictions are not entirely “naturalistic,” there were clear attempts to render these heads as somewhat lifelike—and they were often life-size—to make them individual rather than carbon copies of one another, and to render them according to stylistic trends of Celtic male hair and facial hair patterns.   Celtic Art and the Natural World: Ornament Desborough Mirror, c. 50 BCE-50 CE, La Tène, Desborough, England, Source: The British Museum.   One of the defining aspects of Celtic culture was their relationship with nature. Much of Celtic religion was oriented around the natural world. According to John Sharkey, a scholar of Celtic history and spirituality:   “In common with most nomadic tribes, the Celts on their wanderings through Europe had no pantheon of gods but were at one with the elements and the Great Spirit. Wherever they settled, their poets and seers commingled local deities and others from Greek and Asian legends, suitably altered, to do battle against their own almost human warrior heroes; so all the ancient gods and residue of rites and folklore connected with them became part of an ancestral dream-world that was essentially Celtic” (Sharkey, 1975).   Many of these local deities included indwelling spirits that animated things like trees, rivers, and lakes. In Celtic belief, offerings, and sacrifices to natural resources were necessary for the well-being of the surrounding land.   Enameled bronze plaque from Celtic harness, c. 1st century CE, Santon, Norfolk. Source: Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.   It is only fitting that much of the ornament on Celtic art appears to have been inspired by the natural world; Hallstatt art often reflected the culture of farming, and La Tène art featured designs reminiscent of vines, other foliage, and the currents of moving water. Though not much is recorded about the process of making these objects and their designs, perhaps the act of producing the ornament on La Tène objects would have been contemplative for the artisan.   The materials that they were working with—metal and stone—would have been sourced from the natural world, so the act of imbuing them with designs inspired by nature may have reflected appreciation for the landscape. It also may have represented an acknowledgement that these objects were made from the landscape, and to the landscape they would return through the act of burial or ritual deposition in places like rivers and lakes.   Representations of Gods in Celtic Art Detail of Cernunnos on the Gundestrup Cauldron, c. 150-1 BCE, La Tène, Himmerland, Denmark, Source: Wikimedia Commons   As Celtic peoples did not have a clearly defined canonical pantheon of gods like their ancient Greek and Roman neighbors did, consistent representations of the Celtic gods are rare. It is even rarer to see depictions of Celtic gods and goddesses that appear to have been made by Celtic hands; several surviving examples of this imagery actually come from Roman Gaul and Roman Britain. The Romans utilized a practice called syncretism, in which they commonly incorporated deities from other cultures into their own pantheon of gods after they had conquered a people. While it is unclear whether the Romans who lived in Gaul and Britain would have consistently worshiped Celtic gods, they certainly knew of them and acknowledged them.   The image shown above is a detail from the Gundestrup Cauldron, one of the most famous works of Celtic art. It is a rare image of a god believed to have been crafted by a Celtic person. The god depicted is Cernunnos, “the horned god,” a god of beasts and wild places. He is shown both wearing a torc and holding one. Torcs (also spelled torq or torque) were neck-rings made from precious metals that were worn by elite members of Celtic society during the Iron Age and which acted as symbols of wealth and power. High-ranking warriors also would have worn them. Shown here surrounded by animals and even gripping a serpent by its neck, this image represents not only Cernunnos’s power, but the reverence that Celtic people likely had for him.   Representations of Humans in Celtic Art Mšecké Žehrovice Head, c. 150-50 BCE, La Tène, Mšecké Žehrovice, Czech Republic. Source: Arkeonews   Representations of humans in Celtic art, though not as common as non-figurative, natural motifs, were more pervasive than representations of god-figures. Representations of human figures were rare in Hallstatt Period art, though there are a few surviving examples. Typically, these humans were rendered simplistically, as shown in the above image of the Strettweg Cult Wagon.   One surviving example of a somewhat complex Hallstatt depiction of a human being is the statue of the Hirschlanden “warrior,” discovered in 1962 and believed to date to the late 6th or early 5th century BCE. This statue is often compared to a very early La Tène statue known as the “Prince of Glauberg,” c. 5th century BCE, which is a life-sized sandstone statue believed to depict either a warrior, a prince, or both. Both figures include the full body of the figure that they depict, which is rare in extant figurative Celtic art.   Much more common in Celtic art are sculpted heads. Archaeologists most frequently date sculpted heads to the La Tène Period. Coinciding with the practice of headhunting, these heads appear at various types of settlements as objects of ritual focus.   The Mšecké Žehrovice, shown above, was found in a Celtic domestic settlement in Bohemia (the Czech Republic), in an enclosure and surrounded by animal bones; evidently, a space for ritual practice. Other sculpted heads, like the nest of trophy heads found at Entremont in France, have been found at sites that were exclusively for ritual practice and were likely venerated alongside real, human heads.   Trophy nest of heads, c. 2nd century BCE, Entremont, photo by Michel Wal, Aix-en-Provence, France, Source: Wikimedia Commons   Celtic sculpted heads, importantly, are disembodied and individualized. That these figures were portrayed only through their heads, and not with an accompanying body, emphasized the Celtic belief that the human soul was contained in the head. Some of these figures are more identifiable than others—the Mšecké Žehrovice head, for example, is believed to represent either a warrior or a Druid, who would have been an important and high-ranking member of the community.   The Entremont heads, however, are not identifiable beyond the fact that they likely represent warriors from an enemy tribe. Regardless of their lack of identifiability, the figures in the Entremont trophy nest are still individualized. They have different expressions on their faces, different hairstyles, and different facial hair patterns. While Celtic sculpted heads may not be as “naturalistic” as much of the contemporary figurative art emerging out of Greece and Rome, there was still a clear attempt by Celtic sculptors to depict real, human people.   Rejecting “Naturalism:” How the Celts Saw the World Garniture de Roissy, “La Fosse Cotheret,” Dragon Dome, c. 3rd century BCE, Roissy-en-France, Source: Ministère de la Culture, France   One of the most important things for the modern viewer to understand about Celtic art—which often looks strange and as though it lacks any attention to proportions or realism—is that Celtic artisans were not looking at naturalism and aesthetics in the same way that their Greek and Roman neighbors were. Many of the conventions of naturalism that have been applied to Western art since the Renaissance Period were adopted from a look back to ancient Greek and Roman art, and they have shaped standards of beauty in the Western world.   Much of Celtic art prioritized symmetry in depictions of the natural world, rather than adhering to what the eye may have seen. Animals, for example, were depicted in symmetrical planes with each side of the body shown in the same position. Any attempt to represent movement would have disrupted the symmetry. In representations of humans, eyes were the dominant facial feature, as they were thought in Celtic belief to be windows to the soul.   French anthropologist Georges-Henri Luquet explained this phenomenon as a contrast between the “visual realism” of naturalistic representations from antiquity and the “intellectual realism” found in children’s drawings and archaic societies. Though Celtic peoples were not entirely “primitive,” and much of Luquet’s terminology is now outdated, his theory can be applied to explain that Celtic artisans depicted the surrounding world as it could be interpreted, rather than how it is seen. Therefore, while Celtic art may not be as “naturalistic” as ancient Greek and Roman art, it represents Celtic cosmology and the idea that Celtic peoples were intertwined with the natural world and the Great Spirit.   Bibliography   Luquet, G-H. (1930). L’art Primitif. Bibliotheque d’Anthropologie. Olivier, L. (2020). In the eye of the dragon: how the ancient Celts viewed the world. In T.F. Martin & W. Morrison (Eds.), Barbaric Splendour: The use of image before and after Rome (pp. 18-33). Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. Pennick, N. (1996). Celtic Sacred Landscapes. Thames and Hudson. Sharkey, J. (1975). Celtic Mysteries: The Ancient Religion. Thames and Hudson.

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