The first? The best? The biggest?
These are among the claims involving Hillary Clinton’s near-complete ascension to the nomination of her party for the Presidential race. The first? She’s actually not the first woman to run for president, several others have put their names forward throughout the years. The best? About the only thing she might be best at involves being a con artist. The biggest? That actually can be applied to Hillary Clinton, but not in a good way – this race is harder and harder on her already unfortunate physique.
There are some women throughout history who really have achieved greatness, and accomplished great things, and to discuss one of the more notable of these, we have to go back to the beginning.
And I really mean the beginning: in 43 AD, the Romans invaded (or discovered, or conquered, whichever you prefer), the island of Britain, and when this occurred most of the existing tribes had to submit to the greater power of the Roman forces. The Romans did allow two Celtic kings (in actuality the heads of the individual tribes) to retain some of their traditional power, and one of those was Prasutagus, who ruled the tribe known as the Iceni. They occupied territory in the east of England, in what is now Norfolk and Suffolk. Prasutagus was a shrewd fellow who thought he could outwit the Romans, so to try and guarantee the safety of his family and tribe after his death, he stated in his will that half of everything he owned was to be left to Nero, the Roman Emperor at the time, and the other half to his daughters and his wife, who was known as either Boudicca, Boadicea or Buddug, among other names.
Boadicea was said to be quite an impressive figure: “She was very tall, the glance of her eye most fierce, her voice harsh. A great mass of the reddest hair fell down to her hips. Her appearance was terrifying.” Perhaps there is that one similar aspect to the current Democratic presidential wannabee.
Boadicea was of aristocratic lineage, and of very strong temperament, so when her husband died, it was a natural progression that she became the leader, i.e., the queen, of the tribe. The Romans, in the form of the Governor of Britain at the time, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, decided to reject Prasutagus’ gesture and took everything, not just the half left to the Romans in the King’s will, at the same time calling in the considerable loans previously advanced to the Iceni. And just to teach the British savages an additional lesson, Suetonius also had the King’s widow publically flogged and his and Boadicea’s two daughters raped by Roman slaves. Other Iceni chiefs were humiliated by the Romans in like fashion.
Not surprisingly these outrages provoked the Iceni to revolt against the Romans, along with other tribes like the Trinobantes and the Durotiges. And the person to lead these forces that numbered 100,000 Britons was none other than the cruelly violated Warrior Queen, Boadicea. The fierce commander made the decision to attack the Romans right away, as the majority of the Roman army had gone with Suetonius to attack Wales in an attempt to rid the island of Druids, and many of the Roman settlements were virtually defenseless.
At first the Britons met with great success in their brutal campaign for freedom from the Romans. Boadicea’s army embarked on the rebellion by attacking Camulodunum, (the present English city of Colchester), because it was a Roman settlement. The populace of the city were slaughtered and the city itself was sacked – only the Roman temple was left.
The Britons then turned their attention to the relatively recent settlement of Londinium (the present London). The city at the time contained largely a population of travelers, traders and Roman officials, many of whom fled at the possibility of the attack by Boadicea’s advancing army. Suetonious returned to London with his forces with the thought of protecting the city, but he decided “to sacrifice the city to save the province.” As was reported by Tacitus in his “Agricola,” Suetonious:
“Resolved to save the province at the cost of a single town. Nor did the tears and weeping of the people, as they implored his aid, deter him from giving the signal of departure and receiving into his army all who would go with him. Those who were chained to the spot by the weakness of their sex, or the infirmity of age, or the attraction of the place, were (destroyed) by the enemy.”
Later archeological digs revealed a thick layer of debris and ash indicating that Londinium was indeed completely destroyed around 60 AD, with “Roman-era skulls found potentially linked to victims of the rebels.”
Verulamium (the present St. Albans) was the next to be destroyed by the rebels, and though it was populated by Britons, it was Britons who had been friendly with the Romans, so they were put to the sword and fire even more brutally than the previous victims of Boadicea’s forces. As Tacitus said in his later work, “The Annals of Rome:” “It was against the veterans that their hatred was most intense. For these new settlers in the colony…drove people out of their homes, ejected them from their farms, called them captives and slaves.”
Boadicea’s army was to fight one last battle. During his retreats from previous battles, Suetonius had rather brilliantly destroyed all the Roman stores with which he and his forces came into contact, thus causing near-famine conditions for the British rebels. When they finally met the now 10,000 strong army of Suetonius, made up primarily of the famed 14th Legion, the Britons were in a severely weakened state. They also fought only with long swords, which, in a pitched battle, were no match for the Roman fighting with short swords, which was to occur after their initial heavy javelin attacks. It is not known exactly where this final British effort to defeat the Romans was fought, though many think it was in what is now the West Midlands area of England. Just before the battle, it is reported, again by Tacitus, that Boadicea:
“…presented herself not as an aristocrat avenging her lost wealth, but as an ordinary person avenging her lost freedom, her battered body, and the abused chastity of her daughters. She said their cause was just, and the deities were on their side; the one legion that had dared to face them had been destroyed. She, a woman, was resolved to win or die; if the men wanted to live in slavery, then that was their choice.”
It was said that 80,000 Britons died in this battle, in comparison to 400 slain Romans.
It is not known what was the exact fate of the Warrior Queen. It is said that she poisoned herself and her daughters to prevent their falling into the hands of the hated Romans; it is also said that she fell sick and died, and was given a lavish burial. In a truly ironic twist, if true, it was reported by the historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus that “the crisis had almost persuaded Nero to abandon Britain.”
Further immortalized by the great 19th century British Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Boadicea was imagined to have said, as depicted in Tennyson’s poem entitled “Boadicea:”
`They that scorn the tribes and call us Britain’s barbarous populaces,
Did they hear me, would they listen, did they pity me supplicating?
Shall I heed them in their anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated?
Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
Must their ever-ravening eagle’s beak and talon annihilate us?
Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering?
Bark an answer, Britain’s raven! bark and blacken innumerable,
Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton,
Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it,
Till the face of Bel be brighten’d, Taranis be propitiated.
Lo their colony half-defended! lo their colony, Camulodune!
There the horde of Roman robbers mock at a barbarous adversary.
There the hive of Roman liars worship a gluttonous emperor-idiot.
Such is Rome, and this her deity: hear it, Spirit of Cassivelaun!’
Now THAT was a woman – Hillary Clinton, not so much.
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Susan Smith brings an international perspective to her writing by having lived primarily in western Europe, mainly in Paris, France, and the U.S., primarily in Washington, D.C. She authored a weekly column for Human Events on politics with historical aspects.. She also served as the Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism, and Special Assistant to the first Ambassador of Afghanistan following the initial fall of the Taliban. Ms. Smith is a graduate of Wheeling Jesuit University and Georgetown University, as well as the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France, where she obtained her French language certification. Ms. Smith now makes her home in McLean, Va.