The Boudican Revolt Against Rome

Shire Classics from Shire Library

• Paperback,
• 64 pages
• Illustrated B&W
• 15cm x 21cm

Contents:

• Icenian grievances
• Trinovantian collaboration
• Colchester destroyed
• London and Verulamium sacked
• Boudica defeated
• Native wealth hoarded
• Aftermath and rebirth
• Museums and sites to visit

On the back cover:

The Boudican Revolt against Rome

In AD 60, only seventeen years after the Roman invasion of Britain, the lceni and Trinovantes of East Anglia and Essex joined forces in revolt against the harsh and oppressive Roman administration of the province. Their leader was Queen Boudica of the Iceni. With most of the Roman army away on campaign in north Wales, the Britons faced little initial resistance. The Roman cities of Colchester, London and Verulamium were sacked before Boudica and her warriors were defeated in a pitched battle against the Roman general Suetonius Paullinus in the Midlands. In AD 61, the revolt came to an end after the concentrated might of the Roman army descended on East Anglia. The war was one of the most ferocious ever fought on British soil, with no mercy given or expected by the combatants. This book tells the story of how the Romans coped with the most serious threat to their hold on Britain and explains the important contribution archaeology has made towards understanding the revolt.

About the author

Dr Paul R. Sealey was born in Gloucestershire in 1948 and educated at Bristol Cathedral Grammar School. He read archaeology and ancient history at the University of Birmingham. After graduation, he researched trade between the Roman world and late Iron Age Britain at the University of Bristol. Since 1977, he has worked in the archaeology department of Colchester Museum. His 1985 book on the Roman pottery amphoras from the 1970 excavations on the Sheepen site at Colchester was well received. Subsequent work in this field included an invitation from the National Maritime Museum to publish an amphora from the Thames estuary, complete with its original contents of six thousand olives. His published work includes several  Bronze Age hoards and a survey of the Iron Age of Essex. Dr Sealey served on the council of the Essex Society for Archaeology and History and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1995. He is working on a history of Roman Colchester and a gazetteer of the Bronze Age hoards of Essex.