Portents and Paullinus

Author: * Demetrios Xanthippos - 5 Posts on this thread out of 1,068 Posts sitewide.
Date: Dec 11, 2004 - 13:41

I just reread Tacitus’ rather terse accounts of Boudica’s rebellion and a couple of thoughts struck me. First of all, there are the numerous portents that supposedly presaged the uprising. Now, of course, this sort of thing is common in ancient histories and need not be taken entirely seriously. OTOH, would it not have been rather easy for the druids to arrange for a few helpful rumors, both to demoralize the Romans and to stir up the British. Here is Michael Grant’s translation:

At this juncture, for no visible reason, the statue of Victory at Camulodunum fell down – with its back turned as though it were fleeing the enemy. Delirious women chanted of destruction at hand. They cried out that in the local senate-house outlandish yells had been heard; the theater had echoed with shrieks; at the mouth of the Thames a phantom settlement had been seen in ruins. A blood-red color in the sea, too, and shapes like human corpses left by the ebb tide, were interpreted hopefully by the Britons – and with terror by the settlers.
The statue could easily have been toppled in the night by agents of the druids. I particularly see a connection between those “delirious women” and the rather frightening women frequently mentioned in Roman sources, such as at Anglesey.

I was also thinking about Paullinus’ decision to abandon London and fall back to a better position. Certainly, he was in a very untenuous position and every moment before actual contact with the enemy was in his favor. But I was suddenly struck with the thought that he might have been hoping that the Britons might become a little too excited by their loot and start to split up. I’m sure he didn’t expect the wholesale slaughter of those who stayed behind, but it might not have been unreasonable to hope that a little new-found wealth would weaken the Britons.