Elodie Harper

It was much more widespread discontent than that.

So although it's useful to pin the story on a specific family drama, there may have been many similar stories of outrages against the

people who were aware of their neighbours being stolen from or their uncle was killed or their sister was raped.

Violence and aggression by Rome was probably quite widespread.

So Intacitus is telling of it.

It is very much like, this is such an outrage.

It's an outrage on every sense of, you know, coming into somebody's home and behaving this way.

The fact that they're girls.

Tacitus portrays it as a kind of outrage of virgins, which would be a very culturally resonant thing for Rome, like the rape of Lucretia.

But the Iceni were a different culture.

So I saw it more as they came into the house and they stole the daughter's honour as warriors.

So a key scene I have in the book is the daughters fighting to regain their

their honour as warriors, that they didn't have the same notion of sexual honour as the Romans, but they did have a notion of honour of having been defeated by Rome and needing to rectify that.

In terms of what Boudicca actually said to people and how she used it, we can't really know.

But I think it's a safe assumption that the account by Tacitus of

showing up with her daughter saying, this is what happened to us.

This will also happen to you.

It probably has already happened to you.

Look at how monstrous Rome is.

They even do this to women.