In the consulship of Caesonius Paetus and Petronius Turpilianus, a serious disaster was sustained in Britain, where Aulius Didius, the emperor's legate, had merely retained our existing possessions, and his successor Veranius, after having ravaged the Silures in some trifling raids, was prevented by death from extending the war.While he lived, he had a great name for manly independence, though, in his will's final words, he betrayed a flatterer's weakness; for, after heaping adulation on Nero, he added that he should have conquered the province for him, had he lived for the next two years.Now, however, Britain was in the hands of Suetonius Paulinus, who in military knowledge and in popular favour, which allows no one to be without a rival, vied with Corbulo, and aspired to equal the glory of the recovery of Armenia by the subjugation of Rome's enemies.He therefore prepared to attack the island of Mona which had a powerful population and was a refuge for fugitives.He built flat-bottomed vessels to cope with the shallows, and uncertain depths of the sea.
Thus the infantry crossed, while the cavalry followed by fording, or, where the water was deep, swam by the side of their horses.
On the shore stood the opposing army with its dense array of armed warriors, while between the ranks dashed women, in black attire like the Furies, with hair dishevelled, waving brands.All around, the Druids, lifting up their hands to heaven, and pouring forth dreadful imprecations, scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight, so that, as if their limbs were paralysed, they stood motionless, and exposed to wounds.Then urged by their general's appeals and mutual encouragements not to quail before a troop of frenzied women, they bore the standards onwards, smote down all resistance, and wrapped the foe in the flames of his own brands.A force was next set over the conquered, and their groves, devoted to inhuman superstitions, were destroyed.They deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars with the blood of captives and to consult their deities through human entrails.
Suetonius while thus occupied received tidings of the sudden revolt of the province.Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, famed for his long prosperity, had made the emperor his heir along with his two daughters, under the impression that this token of submission would put his kingdom and his house out of the reach of wrong.But the reverse was the result, so much so that his kingdom was plundered by centurions, his house by slaves, as if they were the spoils of war.
First, his wife Boudicea was scourged, and his daughters outraged.All the chief men of the Iceni, as if Rome had received the whole country as a gift, were stript of their ancestral possessions, and the king's relatives were made slaves.Roused by these insults and the dread of worse, reduced as they now were into the condition of a province, they flew to arms and stirred to revolt the Trinobantes and others who, not yet cowed by slavery, had agreed in secret conspiracy to reclaim their freedom.It was against the veterans that their hatred was most intense.For these new settlers in the colony of Camulodunum drove people out of their houses, ejected them from their farms, called them captives and slaves, and the lawlessness of the veterans was encouraged by the soldiers, who lived a similar life and hoped for similar licence.A temple also erected to the Divine Claudius was ever before their eyes, a citadel, as it seemed, of perpetual tyranny.Men chosen as priests had to squander their whole fortunes under the pretence of a religious ceremonial.It appeared too no difficult matter to destroy the colony, undefended as it was by fortifications, a precaution neglected by our generals, while they thought more of what was agreeable than of what was expedient.
Meanwhile, without any evident cause, the statue of Victory at Camulodunum fell prostrate and turned its back to the enemy, as though it fled before them.Women excited to frenzy prophesied impending destruction; ravings in a strange tongue, it was said, were heard in their Senate-house; their theatre resounded with wailings, and in the estuary of the Tamesa had been seen the appearance of an overthrown town; even the ocean had worn the aspect of blood, and, when the tide ebbed, there had been left the likenesses of human forms, marvels interpreted by the Britons, as hopeful, by the veterans, as alarming.But as Suetonius was far away, they implored aid from the procurator, Catus Decianus.All he did was to send two hundred men, and no more, without regular arms, and there was in the place but a small military force.Trusting to the protection of the temple, hindered too by secret accomplices in the revolt, who embarrassed their plans, they had constructed neither fosse nor rampart; nor had they removed their old men and women, leaving their youth alone to face the foe.Surprised, as it were, in the midst of peace, they were surrounded by an immense host of the barbarians.
All else was plundered or fired in the onslaught; the temple where the soldiers had assembled, was stormed after a two days' siege.The victorious enemy met Petilius Cerialis, commander of the ninth legion, as he was coming to the rescue, routed his troops, and destroyed all his infantry.Cerialis escaped with some cavalry into the camp, and was saved by its fortifications.Alarmed by this disaster and by the fury of the province which he had goaded into war by his rapacity, the procurator Catus crossed over into Gaul.