The Roman historian Cassius Dio describes how Boudicca’s own soldiers then violently assaulted Roman women there: 'Their breasts were cut off and stuffed in their mouths, so that they seemed to be eating them, then their bodies were skewered lengthwise on sharp stakes.' Boudicca’s rebellion was eventually crushed by the Roman general, Gaius Suetonius in 60 or 61 A.D. Boudicca then assembled a powerful army and rebelled against the Romans, eventually sacking London (then called Londinium). When Prasutagus died, Rome claimed his kingdom, over the objections of Boudicca, who was flogged publicly and forced to watch her daughters raped by Roman soldiers. The Iceni, a Celtic tribe in East Anglia, were led by a king named Prasutagus, who was married to Boudicca. 'It's a myth,' contends Mary Beard, historian and author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.īoudicca, Queen of the British Iceni tribe, who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire.Ĭeltic tribes were a constant thorn in the Roman Empire’s side from the moment they invaded the Island of Britain in 45 A.D. As with the rape of Lucretia, and then Virginia, both recounted by Livy, there is disagreement among historians as to the veracity of this story.

In the resulting bloody war, the Sabine women called a halt to the hostilities, making allies of the tribes and allowing the Romans to multiply. According to Livy, the Roman leader, Romulus, held a religious festival and invited the neighboring Sabine tribe, (“Free food and drink,” notes Martin.) At Romulus’s signal, the Romans attacked and killed the Sabine men at the festival and carried off the women.

“Population growth was the most difficult thing to achieve in antiquity,” says Thomas Martin, author of Ancient Rome: From Romulus to Justinian. The Roman historian Livy, writing during the first century, traces Rome’s origins to the mid-8th century B.C., when the warrior tribe was facing a shortage of women. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

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