When the Romans invaded Britain, some of the British tribes weighed the odds of defeating them, didn’t like their chances, and cut deals with them. As far as I know, you won’t find statues to those tribes. They got their payoff at the time and to hell with posterity. 

By way of contrast, Boudicca–leader of the Iceni and scourge of the Romans–has a very nice statue in Westminster. Or if it’s not nice, it is at least big.  

Boudicca earned her statue by leading an uprising against Rome, burning what are now Colchester, St. Albans, and London. According to a Roman source, her troops killed 70,000 Romans and pro-Roman Britons and made mincemeat of the Ninth Legion. 

The word mincemeat isn’t in the original. It’s my translation and since I don’t know Latin you shouldn’t give it too much weight, but you might also want to substitute “a lot” for that 70,000. It’s from that impeccable source, the Britannica, which got it from a Roman writer, but at the time statistical reporting was no better than my Latin. 

I also question the number because Wikiwhatsia (sorry–handy for a shallow dive on a beside-the-point topic) estimates the late-second century population of what’s now the UK at somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million, which is close enough for a blog post. If we subtract all the people who lived outside of the area the Romans occupied, and then  eliminate children, old people, and people who had migraines when the battles took place or who were nine months pregnant (women fought–consider Boudicca–so we’re not eliminating them all), we’re left with–um, nowhere near as many people as we started out with. And we haven’t even eliminated all the people who weren’t pro-Roman.

What I’m saying is that if 70,000’s the right number, she would have killed off an unlikely proportion of the fighting population. I suggest we take it as a deceptively specific way of saying she did the Romans a lot of damage.

The Romans did eventually defeat Boudicca, but many centuries later she got her statue.

The tribes who collaborated with the Romans not only don’t get statues (as far as I know), they also don’t get much press, but I stubbed my toe on one of those tribes, the Brigantes, recently and I hate to let that pain go to waste, so let’s stop and learn a bit about them.

The Brigantes

The Brigantes were a confederation of tribes–the largest on the island at the time–occupying most of northern England. Or northern what’s-now-England. Or else they were one large honkin’ tribe, not a confederation. Take your pick. We’ll probably never know.

In 43 CE (that’s where we pick up the story), they were led by a queen, Cartimandua, who made an alliance with the Romans in order to avoid an invasion. 

Not invading, though, didn’t mean the Romans stayed out. It just meant they didn’t kill people on their way in. They came, they settled, and they rubbed their hands in glee at the minerals that were to be had. Above all, they made money. 

Unfortunately, the Brigantes left no written records, so we only get to see what happened from Roman sources and from archeology, and with all due respect to archeologists, they can never tell the full story of people’s lives. So we don’t know much about Cartimandua’s life and we don’t know the Brigantes’ experience of having the Romans move in. What we do know is that the Roman pattern was to create what an article on a Warwick University site calls “mutually beneficial relationships with the local elite.”

It would be a long time before the non-elite put their point of view on the record.

We also don’t know whether Cartimandua was one of the eleven British “kings” who surrendered to Emperor Claudius and who were mentioned–not by name–on his triumphal arch, but she might’ve been. It might’ve made more sense to the Romans to call a woman a king than to acknowledge a woman as a ruler.

 

Resistance to Rome

While Cartimandua was cutting her deal, some of the tribes to the south surrendered to the Romans and others fought the. The Catuvellauni tribe fought and lost, and Caratacus, the son of their king, fled to Wales–or what’s now Wales–where with one of the local tribes he kept the fight going for nine years. 

When he was finally defeated, he fled into the territory of the Brigantes, hoping for sanctuary. That makes it sound like he hadn’t been reading the newspapers–the Brigantes; deal with the Romans; should’ve been front-page stuff–but that can happen when you’re fighting an asymmetrical war. You’re too busy to send a kid running to the newsstand. Or you send the kid but then you don’t have time to unfold the damn paper, never mind read it. You’re too busy dodging spears and mending your shield and wondering how you’re going to feed your warriors. 

It’s also possible that he knew Cartimandua had cut a deal with the Romans but he didn’t have any other cards in his hand so he played the one he had.

Either way, Cartimandua handed him over to Rome.

It’s not the sort of move that fills her descendants with pride, but if you narrow history down to feel-good stories about heroes, it’s no longer history, it’s propaganda. Which is of course not a comment on what’s been happening to school books and museum exhibits in the US lately. 

Caratacus’s defeat pretty much settled the question of who controlled Britain: Rome did. He and his family were shipped off to Rome and paraded through the streets. The humiliation of enemies brought glory to Rome. So I’m about to tell you he was executed, right?

Wrong. He gave an impassioned speech asking for clemency and Claudius–the emperor–pardoned him. He and his family lived out the rest of their lives in Rome, quietly.

If life was a movie, it wouldn’t make a good ending.

 

Cartimandua, Venutius, Vollocatus, and a soap opera plot

Cartimandua did well out of handing him over. Or out of her deal with the Romans. Either way, archeologists have unearthed luxuries–glass; rare tableware; amphorae for wine and olive oil–from what may have been her capital. 

Remember that business of the Romans cutting deals with the local elite? 

But we have to backtrack here, because Cartimandua had a husband, Venutius. He seems to have been the lesser power in the relationship and–speculation alert here–may have been the leader of another tribe and their marriage a political alliance. Who knows? They’re both dead and we can’t ask. 

Somewhere around 57 CE, they split up, and Cartimandua not only married his armor-bearer, Vellocatus, but shared power with him. Or so Tacitus, a Roman historian, tells us. Again, who knows? It’s as close to the story as we’re going to get. Let’s pretend to believe it. 

Theirs doesn’t sound like the kind of divorce where the couple gets together every Friday night to eat popcorn and watch TV with the kids, because at some point Cartimandua captured some of Venutius’s relatives, which (life advice warning here) is never a good move if you’re looking to keep peace in the not-quite-family.

Venutius attacked her, but when I say her what I probably mean is her territory. Her tribe. 

It’s possible–or better yet, probable–that this wasn’t all about who shared a bed but about politics. Handing over Caratacus might not’ve been a popular move. Becoming an accessory to a new ruling elite–the Romans–slotting themselves into place over the Brigantes might’ve made Cartimandua unpopular. 

A lot of things are possible. What’s known is that the Romans sent soldiers to defend Cartamandua and Venutius lost but lived and tried again ten years later, when Nero’s death left Rome in turmoil. He attacked, the Romans had only auxiliary troops to send, and Venutius won. 

What happened to Cartamandua? Dunno. She might’ve survived. She might not have.  After that, we’re out of possibilities. Vellocatus drops out of sight. Venutius, though, ruled the Brigantes only until the Romans booted him out and ruled directly. To hell with these client queens and kings; they’re too much trouble. What might’ve been Cartimandua’s capital–it’s now Stanwick–fell out of use and the center of power moved to what’s now Aldborough, which became a Roman administrative center. Where Stanwick seems to have been a place for gatherings rather than a town or stronghold, Aldborough followed the Roman pattern and became a town. A Roman legion was stationed nearby, in what’s now York, so let’s assume that all was not peaceful. Or at least that it was an uneasy peace.

 

What does it all mean?

Cartimandua’s come down to us–I keep saying this, don’t I?–only from Roman sources, and the Romans didn’t take well to the idea of women rulers. As they told her story, it was about a woman’s lust and lack of wisdom and the corrective violence of a tribe that couldn’t accept a woman’s rule. But with her and Boudicca as evidence, we can pretty safely say the tribes had no problem with women rulers. Or leaders, if that’s a better fit. The two queens sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum–fight the Romans; cut a deal with the Romans–but both held power and didn’t have to hide behind a man to wield it.

Cartimandua ruled for more than twenty years, which is more than most politicians can claim. Still, though, no statue.

Why am I so sure of that? Because when I asked Lord Google to help me find one, he led me either to Boudicca’s statue or to statues of people with heavy beards who I’m reasonably sure aren’t Cartimandua.