Londinium Falling - 61AD

by Tim Walker

With some historians now casting doubt on whether Julius Caesar ever actually came to Britain in 55 BC (could it really have been Roman fake news - a PR campaign by his supporters?), greater importance is now placed on the invasion by the forces of Emperor Claudius in 34 AD. An army of eight legions (40,000 men) that included cavalry and elephants, led by General Plautius, established a foothold on the south coast before pushing northwards towards the River Thames.

Imagine Iron Age fishermen, open-mouthed to see Roman galleys, rowed by slaves, moving up the River Tamesis (as the Romans would name it), and dropping anchor at their village - a place the Romans would turn into the port and fortified town of Londinium. These Romans were the first of many men of vision who would come to shape the city we see today - but not before disaster struck one fateful day in 61 AD.

Londinium soon became a bustling garrison town, from where new roads radiated north and west towards frontier towns. A wooden bridge was built across the river and a settlement sprang up in what is modern-day Southwark. General Plautius soon made peace with the local Catuvellauni tribe, and occupied their town of Camulodenum (modern day Colchester in Essex and some people’s tip for the source of the name ‘Camelot’ – King Arthur’s fabled fortress). This became the capital of the new province of Britannia and its administrative headquarters, some 60 miles north-east from the port of Londinium.

Plautius and his successor, Paulinus, did not have an easy job of subduing their new province. The Briton tribes put up fierce resistance, their blue-painted faces terrifying even seasoned legionaries as they ran screaming from the dense forests with their primitive weapons. They were whipped-up into a frenzy by their religious leaders – The Druids – whose liking for human sacrifice helped them keep a powerful grip over the locals.

In the year 61, when General Paulinius was in the north-west with most of the ninth legion chasing druids, there was a revolt. Prasutagus, the king of the Iceni, was a friend of the Romans. When he died, he left half his kingdom to the Roman emperor, then Nero, and half to his wife, Queen Boudicca. The Romans, however, wanted it all. They also wanted extra taxes and they wanted Boudicca to give up her throne.

Boudicca was humiliated and publically flogged for voicing her objection to being disinherited, and her two daughters were raped by Roman soldiers. Well, this would be enough to raise anyone’s hackles, and soon she had an army baying for Roman blood. They first swooped on the Roman capital, Camulodenum, killing all and burning it down, before turning their attention towards Londinium.

There may only have been one or two cohorts (between 500 and 1,000 men) to defend Londinium. At that time there was no stone defensive wall – most likely just a ditch and earth bank, with perhaps a wooden stockade. It is now a known fact that Boudicca’s army swept the defenders aside and burnt the town down, killing all who stood in their way.

This day of murder and mayhem is the subject of my historical fiction story, Londinium Falling, in my book of short stories, Postcards from London. My research took me to the excellent display in the British Museum, and on a tour of the London Wall. The Romans returned to the ruins of Londinium some time after the Britons had returned to their tribal lands, and set about re-building it, this time surrounded by a wall of stone.

The city of London has suffered many fires in its history – most notably the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz of the 1940s – both of which cleared the way for new building to spring up around the site of St Paul’s Cathedral that miraculously survived both events. But it’s first major calamity and destruction by fire occurred in 61 AD at the hands of Boudicca’s tribal revolt.

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Tim Walker is an independent author and former journalist based near Windsor in Berkshire, UK. Born in Hong Kong, he grew up in Liverpool and studied in South Wales, before gravitating to London where he working in newspaper publishing for ten years. In the mid-90s he went to Zambia in Africa to do publishing-related voluntary work. Following this, he stayed on and set up his own publishing and marketing business, before returning to the UK in 2009.

His publications include Thames Valley Tales, a collection of fifteen contemporary stories, a near-future/dystopian thriller novel Devil Gate Dawn, a children’s book, co-written with his 12-year-old daughter Cathy, called The Adventures of Charly Holmes. In September 2017 he published a collection of short stories, Postcards from London. Currently, he is writing an historical fiction series, A Light in the Dark Ages. The first two parts, Abandoned! (a novella) and Ambrosius: Last of the Romans (a novel) are now available from Amazon in e-book and paperback formats. Part Three, Uther’s Destiny, should follow in early 2018.

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Book Links:
Postcards from London
Abandoned
Ambrosius
Devil Gate Dawn
Thames Valley Tales
The Adventures of Charly Holmes

The Celtic Community

by Annie Whitehead

Women
In the first of this series, Who Were the Celts*, I relied mainly on archaeological evidence. For the second, How the Celts Lived,** I relied on the Greek writers, who seem to have said little about the role of Celtic women, but are still our only real sources. Some of the information for this portion is taken from the findings of modern scholarship.

Women used to provide a dowry, but the men had to offer comparable value from their own property. Husbands had absolute power over their wives.

Among the Bretons, the women belonged to ten or twelve men at a time, particularly to brothers, fathers, or their children; however, the children born of such unions belonged to the man who had the woman while she was still a virgin. In Ireland, it was thought perfectly natural for men to have sexual relations with other men’s wives, mothers or sisters. Community of wives was the rule in Caledonia.

The status of women among the Celts seems to have been quite wretched. However, in the mid-first century AD, in what is now Great Britain, the Brigantes were in fact governed by a woman, Cartismandua (Cartimandua) and, in 61 AD, Boudicca, a woman of royal  blood, commanded the army of the ancient Britons. Yet no similar state of affairs can be found among other tribes or at earlier periods.

Queen Boudica by John Opie - public domain

The fidelity of Celtic women was famous throughout the ancient world, as can be seen from certain legends. Polybius [1] apparently spoke to a Galatian woman, Chiomara, wife of the king of Tolistobogii. She had been captured and raped by a Roman centurion around 189 BC. He was promised a large sum of money for her return. As she was being returned, she signalled to her compatriots to cut off the centurion's head. She presented the head to her husband, saying that it was finer thing even than fidelity, that only one man who had been her lover should remain alive.

Besides conjugal fidelity, Gaulish women had other qualities. Apparently they were beautiful, fertile, good nursing mothers, and they took great care of their children.

It is known that the Celtic women accompanied their menfolk into battle. The wives of the Helvetii defended entrenched positions against the Romans; the wives of the Britons encouraged them to a greater ardour in combat. Before the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul (Gaul on the Roman side of the Alps), a terrible civil war was fought, and the women strode into the midst of the armies, taking the role of arbiters to resolve the dispute.

Children
Caesar wrote that in Gaul, the father had the power of life and death over his children. This was also true of the Ancient Britons, and the Irish. Caesar also reported on a distinctive custom:
“The Gauls are unlike the other peoples in that they do not allow their children to address them in public until they have reached the age at which they are capable of performing their military service; they feel it is a disgrace for a man’s son to appear with him in public while still a child.” [2]
This could mean that sons remained with their mothers until they reached the age of military action or that children were brought up away from home.

The Family Unit
Irish Iron Age Celts had larger units consisting of four generations of descendants from a common great-grandfather; this unit was known as the derbfine and had its own identity in law, owning land collectively. The larger group, known as tuath or 'tribe', was ruled by the chief or king.

Society
Below the nobles were ordinary freemen, farmers who paid food-rent to the king and received cattle from the nobles in return for obligations. At the bottom of the social pyramid were, unsurprisingly perhaps, the slaves. There were learned men, the aes dána (men of art) whose skills gave them status above that or their birth and placed them on a similar level in society to warriors.

Homosexuality
There is some evidence to suggest that homosexuality was fairly openly practised among the Celts, and that it was not frowned upon. Diodorus [3] wrote that

“The Celtic women are not only as tall as the men but as courageous … but despite their charm the men will have nothing to do with them. They long instead for the embrace of their own sex. It is particularly surprising that they attach no value to either dignity or decency, offering their bodies to each other without further ado. This is not regarded as at all harmful; on the contrary, if they are rejected in their approaches, they feel insulted.” [4]

Strabo [5] confirms these homosexual practices with the brief mention that the young men of Gaul were “shamelessly generous with their boyish charms.”

Gerhard Herm wrote that as soon as they were old enough to bear arms, young people indeed lived away from home, living almost wholly with others of their own sex. They learned riding, swordsmanship, hunting, and drinking. They had to prove themselves in the field, and saw their like as the only suitable company. It is easy to see that this placed emphasis on male friendships, and Herm suggested that this gave rise to the cult of the male body. Certainly, according to Strabo, the Celts "tried to avoid becoming fat or pot-bellied, and they punished any boy whose waist was larger than the standard they set." Diodorus linked this to the wearing of the "armbands of all sorts" and said that the Celts "wear about their necks heavy rings of solid gold."

Death
The Celtiberians used to abandon their dead for the vultures to eat. The Gauls who took Rome used to bury their dead; and it was not until an epidemic occurred that they began to pile up corpses to burn them. Plutarch [6] remarked that the Gauls did not lament the passing of a dead man.

The Dying Gaul - public domain image

The funerals of the Celts of Gaul, who were relatively highly civilised, were quite splendid affairs. Anything thought to have been valued by a person during his lifetime was put on the pyre along with the body, even domestic animals.

At the time when bronze was the predominant metal for the manufacture of weapons, incineration was practised in various parts of Gaul, particularly in the southeast and north. When bronze swords disappeared, to be replaced by iron, burial under artificial mounds (tumuli) or in the earth itself, became more common.

Galician Celtic Stele for the deceased, called Apana, presumably an aristocrat of the tribe of Celtic Supertamáricos. Second Century of the Common Era. Image - public domain

One section of the Celtic community with which most people are familiar is the Druidic tradition. The Druids and their role will be examined in the last of this series, which will focus on government and Social Structure.

Next time: Occupations and Leisure Activities
*  ** Read the previous articles HERE and HERE

[1] Polybius, or Polybus, was a Greek historian born between 210 and 205 BC, in Arcadia. He wrote a general history of his time, and died around 125 BC
[2] Quote/translation The World of the Celts - G Dottin p40
[3] Diodorus (Sicilus) of Sicily was a Greek historian who used varied literary sources with little judgement of his own, and often without regard to exact chronology. For certain periods, though, he provides the best evidence available
[4] From Gerhard Herm's The Celts p57
[5] Strabo was a Greek geographer, who lived from about 58 BC - AD 25
[6] Plutarch was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, who lived from 45-120 AD

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Annie Whitehead is a history graduate and prize-winning author. Her novel, To Be A Queen, is the story of Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, who came to be known as the Lady of the Mercians. It was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society’s Indie Book of the Year 2016 and has been awarded an indieBRAG medallion. Her new release, Alvar the Kingmaker, which tells the story of Aelfhere of Mercia, a nobleman in the time of King Edgar, is available now. She is also a contributor to 1066 Turned Upside Down, an anthology of short stories re-imagining the events of 1066.
Annie's Author Page
Alvar the Kingmaker
To Be A Queen
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