The story of Boudicca's revolt against the Roman occupiers in AD 61 is well known; and it is usually explained as having been caused by Queen Boudicca having been whipped and her daughters raped by agents of Nero.
But another idea struck me while reading Geoffrey Ashe's history of Glastonbury, King Arthur's Avalon (1957). Ashe emphasizes that the Druids were a major obstacle to Roman rule in Gaul, due to the proximity of the Druidic colleges in Britain, which Julius Caesar said was the centre of Druidry.
Druids seem to have been an elite and secretive caste, with a very long (twenty year) initiatory apprenticeship into an organization that combined many functions such as priests, prophets and augers, healers and repositories of history and lore.
In sum, British society could not function without Druids.
Ashe makes the plausible suggestion that the destruction of Druidry was in fact the major motivation for the successful Claudian invasion and occupation of Britain from AD 43.
It is therefore very likely that Druid control and coordination was extremely strong in Britain; since they were the grey-eminence rulers of the British regional kings, a national organization that bridged between the regional Kingdoms.
If their destruction was indeed the Roman aim, then from AD 43 onwards, the Druids were fighting not just to retain their power, but their lives.
This danger to the Druids became potentially terminal in AD 60 into 61, when the Romans had pushed the Druids back into the Island of Mona (modern Anglesey) off the north coast of Wales, and the Romans were preparing an invasion.
The Romans then planned to invade and occupy Wales, thereby completing the conquest of Druidic Britain.
My suggestion is that - as this threat to Druidry developed, and the Romans sent their legions to the north-west of Britain to attack Mona - the Druids sent word to Boudicca instructing her to start a rebellion in the South East of the country.
In other words, Boudicca's rebellion may have started as a military distraction, intended to divert Roman resources away from their plans to destroy Druidry.
The Boudicca diversion, if that is what it was, was partially and temporarily successful.
It did not save Mona, nor the Druids gathered there - perhaps the rebellion was too late; or perhaps the Roman's anti-Druid strategic priority trumped their desire to save the Romanized populace of south east England?
In the event, the Romans were able to win their battle against Mona, invade the island, kill the Druids and everybody else, and burn the sacred groves.
But thanks to Boudicca, the Romans could not consolidate their victory - not yet. The island of Mona was not occupied. The conquest of Wales was delayed.
The legions were compelled to return to the South East, where they defeated the Boudicca rebellion - which had by then grown to enormously destructive proportions. In their usual fashion the Romans proceeded to crush the responsible populations, in order to deter and prevent any similar event recurring.
But this took time and resources. So that Mona was not occupied by the Romans until another sixteen years had passed, and mainland Wales was not occupied until AD 78.
So, if Boudicca's rebellion was a distraction motivated by the Druids, it proved very costly and only temporary in effect.
On the other hand, Boudicca did kill many tens of thousands of Romans; and destroyed Colchester, St Albans and London.
And she delayed the conquest of Wales - and thereby probably delayed the final annihilation of the socio-political structures of Druidry - by a significant period.
In sum - what I am suggesting here is that the causality of Boudicca and the Druids of Mona may be the reverse of how these are usually explained.
Traditionally; the explanation is that Boudicca rebelled because the Roman legions were occupied in the opposite corner of the country in destroying the Druids. The rebellion was allowed by the attack on Druidry.
What I am instead saying is that Boudicca rebelled under instruction from the Druids, with the intention of bringing the Roman back from Mona: in hope of saving the Druids.
The idea is that Boudicca rebellion was instructed, not allowed. She was not taking advantage of the absence of Roman legions; she was instead intending to divert the legions from destroying the Druids.
5 comments:
The Romans do seem to have been particularly fixated on the druids. I have an otherwise totally unsupported theory that the druids were the escaped remnant of the carthaginian priesthood.
Returning to your point, Dr Charlton, your theory has considerable historical assonance in suggesting a supposedly 'grassroots' uprising was in fact orchestrated by a hostile external elite for ulterior reasons.
The real question: why did the Romans think it so important to destroy Druidry?
I mean, sure, they wanted to destroy all alternatives to Romanism in the lands they had conquered. But why did they think druidry was incompatible with Romanitas? I.e., why did they think druidry was incompatible with humanity, properly construed?
Could it, perhaps, have had something to do with their horror at human sacrifice, which motivated their animus toward Carthage?
@Kristor - I think the idea is that the Druids were fomenting continual unrest/rebellion in Gaul, from their safe base in Britain.
@Crosbie - "orchestrated by a hostile external elite for ulterior reasons" - Something like that. A transnational elite, at any rate.
I should say that I have a broadly sympathetic attitude to the British Druids, about whom I find plenty to admire. They were, after all, repositories of the "Celtic" spirit - which has been a source of much good, not least in their warm-hearted version of Catholic Christianity.
Although I do also believe that the Druids had a dark and sinister side, and practiced human sacrifice in an explicit way (rather than in the hypocritical way that most ancient societies practiced human sacrifice).
More exactly, I regard the Celtic Druids as having corrupted somewhat from the Neolithic-Bronze Age priesthood (about which nothing is recorded in writing) who administered the creation of the great ancient monuments of Southern England based around West Kennet barrow, and eventually culminating in Avebury.
I think (from archaeological evidence) these Bronze Age priests were inspirers and administrators of a benign and admirable civilization, probably literate, and highly spiritual in attitude (somewhat like ancient Egypt) - but that this took a rather sinister turn around the era when Stonehenge was constructed.
And consequently, the large and internally peaceful Southern English society of the late Neolithic and Early/ Middle Bronze Age; lost cohesion and broke up in the later Bronze Age and then into the rivalrous and warring regional kingdoms of the Celts - ruled overall (with a fair bit of iron rod) by the Druids.
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