The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts

BOUDICCA

Queen of the Iceni tribe. Boudicca was born in about AD 25 and lived at Thetford in Norfolk at the time of the Roman invasion of Britain. She married Prasutagus in AD 48, when she was about 23 and he was perhaps ten years older. He was King of the Iceni, one of three Celtic tribes to have treaty arrangements with Rome; the others were the Regnenses and the Brigantes. Boudicca gave birth to two daughters: one in AD 49 and one in 50. On the death of Prasutagus, in AD 60, she became regent.

Prasutagus bequeathed half his kingdom to Nero, reserving the rest for his widow and daughters. The Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus was away on campaign in Wales when Prasutagus died, and the procurator, Decianus Catus, decided to swoop in and take the whole of Prasutagus’ estates for Rome. Decianus Catus was ruthless and acquisitive, and his officials were backed by undisciplined troops. The operation was bungled and army discipline broke down. The soldiers raped Boudicca’s daughters, who can only have been 11 or 12 years old, and flogged the queen herself.

The Iceni rose against Rome behind their humiliated queen, joined by their neighbors to the south, the Trinovantes, who had also been roughly handled by greedy legionaries at Camulodunum (Colchester). Together, the Iceni and Trinovantes attacked and burned down the new town. Then Boudicca and her army moved on to sack Verulamium (St. Albans) and London. Paulinus brought 10,000 legionaries back from Wales to confront her somewhere to the north-west of London. At an unidentified location somewhere along Watling Street, Boudicca’s army was slaughtered. The queen herself escaped from the battlefield but died shortly afterward of some illness, perhaps after taking poison; according to Dio Cassius she was given a rich burial. Boudicca’s treasure-laden grave has never been discovered.

Boudicca was famously described in Rome: “She was huge of form and terrifying of aspect and with a harsh voice. A great mass of red hair fell to her knees and she wore a great twisted gold necklace, and a tunic of many colours.”

Dio Cassius makes a point of describing her as invariably wearing a “great twisted golden necklace.” The marvelous gold torc found at Snettisham was made in about 50 BC, which at first sight makes it too early to have belonged to Boudicca. But royal regalia is often several generations old—its antiquity is part of its ceremonial value—and it is possible that this torc, and the rest of the Snettisham hoard, did belong to the queen.

BOYA

See David.

BRENDAN OF CLONFERT

Brendan (486–578) was a pupil of Bishop Erc of Kerry. He was a navigator and sailed to Iceland. From there he sailed west to a “beautiful land beyond the fogs.” He also sailed to the Fortunate Islands (assumed to be the Canary Islands). The ocean voyages took place in the years before 560.

Exactly where Brendan went is the subject of endless speculation. Some believe he discovered North America long before Columbus. What is certain is that he traveled to Wales, to Iona, and then to Ireland, where he founded a monastery at Annaghdown. There he spent the rest of his days, dying there in about 578 while visiting his sister Briga. Before his death, he arranged for his body to be taken secretly back to the monastery he had founded at Clonfert; it was transported hidden in a luggage cart. What he feared was that his followers might dismantle his body for relics. He was buried, intact, in Clonfert cathedral.

BRENNUS

There were two Gaulish chiefs of this name, both leaders of invasions. It is possible that “Brennus” was a title, meaning dux bellorum or “commander-in-chief” rather than a personal name.

Diodorus Siculus tells us about the second Gaulish King Brennus, who lived in the third century BC:

Brennus the King of the Gauls, on entering a temple [at Delphi in Greece] found no dedications of gold or silver, and when he came only upon images of stone and wood, he laughed at them [the Greeks], to think that men, believing that gods have human form, should set up their images in wood and stone.

The implication is that the more sophisticated Gauls did not think of the gods in anthropomorphic terms and this tallies with their art, much of which at that time did not feature humanoid forms.

It was an earlier Gaulish King Brennus, who was the King of the Senones tribe, who led the Celtic warriors in the sack of Rome in 387 BC. He caused more havoc there than would be seen again until Alaric the Goth descended on the city in the fifth century AD. Brennus demanded his own weight in gold, with the cry, “Vae Victis!” (“Woe to the defeated!”) He was interested in loot rather than conquest, which was perhaps unfortunate in the longer term, though the Celts remained a force to reckon with in Italy until 295 BC.

BRIDEI

King of the Picts, who reigned from 555 to 584. He is the only British king from the fifth or sixth centuries to be mentioned in a chronicle on the European mainland. Bede describes him as rex potentissimus, “most powerful king,” which suggests that the Picts had their own overking. Bridei, or Brudeus, was a son of Maelgwn, King of Gwynedd, and he was elected king. The Picts would not have chosen an obscure or low-ranking person as their king, and Maelgwn, we know, was an overking. Pictish succession passed through the female line, so it is likely that for him to be eligible for the Pictish throne; Bridei’s mother or grandmother was a Pict. In fact Welsh tradition has it that Maelgwn’s mother was a Pict.

Bridei’s high reputation among the Picts rests on a great military victory won in 560. Gabran, King of Dal Riada, had taken a large area of Pictland and, by defeating him in 560, Bridei won most or all of this land back and once more united the northern and southern Picts.

St. Columba visited him and asked Broichan, his chief magician, to set free his Irish slave girl.

Bridei was eventually killed in 584 during a rebellion of the southern Picts.

BRIGANTES

An Iron Age tribe in the north of England. At the time of the Roman invasion, Queen Cartimandua was their ruler; she had a treaty arrangement with Rome.

BRIGHID

See Religion: Brighid.

BRIOC

St. Brioc was born in 468 in the West Wales kingdom of Ceretigan (or in Latin Coriticiana, modern Cardigan). He was the son of Cerpus and Eldruda. He performed various miracles, including rescuing a stag from a king in Ceretigan.

In about 510 he sailed away with 168 companions to a port in Cornwall and converted King Conan (or Kynan) and his people to Christianity. Later he crossed the Channel to Brittany, but went back to Ceretigan again to comfort his people when plague struck them in 547.

The Cornish port was probably on the Camel estuary: St. Brioc’s (now St. Breock’s) parish is very large, covering the area south of Padstow. Recently a Dark Age port has been uncovered on the Camel estuary near Padstow.

BROICHAN

The wizard of the Pictish King Bridei. Broichan covered Loch Ness with darkness and raised a storm so that for a time St. Columba was unable to set sail on the lake (See Magicians).

BRUDEUS

See Bridei.

BRYCHAN

See Nectan, Theodoric.

BRYNACH

Brynach or Bernacus was of noble birth, and probably Welsh rather than Irish. He visited Rome and killed a dragon. He returned by way of Brittany to Milford Haven in south-west Wales. There he resisted attempts at seduction and founded many churches. He resisted a demand from Maelgwn for food and managed to secure a grant from him exempting him from future royal exactions.

CADFAN

A king of Gwynedd who died in about 620 or 630. The Llangadwaladr Stone on the island of Anglesey is his memorial. Translated from some oddly laid-out Latin, the inscription reads “Cadfan, wisest king, most renowned of all kings.” The lettering suggests a date around 620, which fits with the information in the Welsh Annals, to the effect that Cadfan’s father died in 616 and his son Cadwallon was killed in 633 by Oswald of Northumbria. This is his genealogy: Cadfan, son of Iago, son of Beli, son of Rhun, son of Maelgwn of Gwynedd.

CADO

See Geraint.

CADOC OF LANCARFAN

Son of Gwynnliw of Glevissig, educated at Caerwent, Cadoc refused the royal scepter of Penychen because of his commitment to the Church and was granted Llancarfen by Paul Penychen; there he built Castil Kadoci, perhaps to be identified as Castle Ditches near Llancarfen. Much later he left Llancarfen to Elli of Llanelli and moved to Beneventum (possibly Abergavenny), where he was visited annually by Elli and became bishop under the name Sophias.

He visited Rome in the time of Pope John III (560–72). He also visited Jerusalem, Cornwall, and Brittany. He acquired Gildas’ bell, though Gildas refused to surrender it to Cadoc until he was ordered to do so by Pope Alexander; he also acquired the Gospel book that Gildas wrote while studying at Nantcarvan for a year while Cadoc was away in Scotland.

He was finally martyred “by the soldiers of a cruel king.”

Cadoc has more church dedications than any other Welsh saint except David and he is very prominent in both Welsh and Breton fable.

CADWALLON

A Dark Age king of Gwynedd. He fought alongside Penda of Mercia in the Battle of Meicen in which King Edwin of Northumbria was killed. The battle was noted by a British scribe as gueith meicen, ‘the strife of Meicen.” The battle in which the great King of Northumbria was slain justified a longer-than-usual entry in the annals.

CALEDONII

A major tribe living in the Grampians in Scotland at the time of the Roman occupation. The incredibly hardy Caledonii were described by Dio Cassio:

The Maeatae live near the wall [Hadrian’s Wall] that divides the island [of Britain] in two, the Caledonii beyond them. Both inhabit rough mountains with marshy ground [the Scottish Lowlands] between them, neither have walled places or towns or cultivated lands. They live by pasture, hunting, and on a kind of fruit with a hard shell [hazelnuts?]

They eat no fish, though their waters are full of many species. They live in tents, unclothed and barefoot. They have their women in common, and raise all their children. Their government is democratic, and they delight in raids and plunder. They fight from chariots and have small, fast horses. Their infantry move fast, and have great stamina. Their weapons are a shield and a short spear with a bronze knob at the butt end.

They can stand hunger, thirst, and all other hardship. They dive into the marshes and can hold out there for several days with only their heads above water. In the forest they live on bark and roots.

CALETI

A Gaulish tribe with its main center at Harfleur. Its territory was in what is now Normandy.

CANTII

The Iron Age British tribe who lived in Kent. The Cantii probably went into a state of shock when they saw Julius Caesar landing with his troops in their territory. Cassivellaunus was disappointed with the poor support they gave to his resistance to the Roman invasion.

But there was one useful attack by the Cantii. Four Kentish kings—Cingetorix, Carvilius, Taximagulus, and Segovax—organized a surprise attack on Caesar’s ships, where they were drawn up on a Kentish beach. The Roman troops managed to beat this attack off by capturing Lugotorix, a British noble. Caesar does not make much of the incident, though he was present when it happened.

At least it was not the case that the Cantii did nothing.

CARADOC VREICHVRAS

Caradoc Vreichvras, “Strong-Arm,” was the king of lands in both south Dorset and Brittany in around 550. South Dorset, between Chesil Beach and Lulworth Cove, is the likeliest location for Caradoc’s British territory, as this was the only area on the central south coast of England that was not in Saxon hands in 550.

CARADOG

See Caratacus.

CARATACUS

A king of the Catuvellauni tribe, who led the British resistance to the Roman invasion in the first century AD.

Caratacus (Caradog in Welsh) was a son of King Cunobelin of the Catuvellauni and a warrior chief already experienced in warfare before the Roman conquest began. He was actively involved in the expansion of his tribe’s territory, fighting battles to achieve this. He was the protégé of his uncle Epaticcus, who was responsible for extending the power of the Catuvellauni westward into the territory of the Atrebates. Epaticcus died in about AD 35, and after that the Atrebates, under their leader, King Verica, were successful in regaining some of their lost territory. But Caratacus regained the upper hand, completed the Catuvellaunian conquest of the Atrebates, and Verica was deposed.

Success for Caratacus meant defeat for his enemies, and defeated kings went to Rome with their grievances. Verica went and appealed to Claudius to have his kingdom restored to him. This gave Claudius the pretext he was looking for to invade and conquer Britain in AD 43. By now, the powerful Cunobelin was dead and the defense of his Southern Kingdom was in the hands of two of his sons, Caratacus and Togodumnus. The smaller kingdoms in Britain were relatively powerless and disorganized, so it was left to Caratacus and Togodumnus to provide the leadership.

Rome meanwhile pitted four legions against Britain, under Aulus Plautius: around 40,000 men. In his resistance to Rome, Caratacus used a combination of guerrilla warfare and set-piece formal battles. He was more successful in guerrilla fighting and kept to this whenever he could.

The Catuvellauni were defeated in two crucial battles, on the Medway and Thames, and this led to the loss of most of the south-east to the Romans. According to one reading of the Roman accounts, Togodumnus was killed and the Catuvellauni territory was overrun by Rome. Another reading suggests that Togodumnus may have been on the side of Rome against his brother, survived the two battles and later continued to collaborate with the Romans.

Claudius arrived in Britain in time to witness his legions marching in triumph into the town of Camulodunum.

Caratacus survived this final defeat, retreating to the west, where he continued the resistance against the spread of Roman control in Wales, leading the Silures and Ordovices tribes. He was now fighting Plautius’ successor as governor, Publius Ostorius Scapula. Scapula defeated Caratacus in the Battle of Caer Caradoc, captured Caratacus’ wife and daughter, and received the surrender of his brothers. Caratacus himself somehow escaped capture and fled northward into the territory of the Brigantes. There Queen Cartimandua captured him and handed him over to the Romans.

Once Caratacus had been captured, the Romans were in control of most of what is now England and Wales. He was sent to Rome as a prize of war, and would, according to normal Roman practice, have been executed after a triumphal procession. In spite of being a captive, he was allowed to make a speech to the senate:

If the degree of my nobility and fortune had been matched by moderation in success, I would have come to this City as a friend rather than a captive, nor would you have disdained to receive with a treaty of peace one sprung from brilliant ancestors and commanding a great many nations. But my present lot, disfiguring as it is for me, is magnificent for you. I had horses, men, arms, and wealth: what wonder if I was unwilling to lose them? If you wish to command everyone, does it really follow that everyone should accept your slavery? If I were now being handed over as one who had surrendered immediately, neither my fortune nor your glory would have achieved brilliance. It is also true that in my case any reprisal will be followed by oblivion. On the other hand, if you preserve me safe and sound, I shall be an eternal example of your clemency.

This speech was so impressive and effective that Claudius pardoned Caratacus. He was granted a pension and he and his family were permitted to live in Rome. Caratacus in his turn was so overwhelmed by the majesty of the city that he was bewildered that the Romans could be interested in conquering Britain. He said, “And can you, then, who have such possessions and so many of them, covet our poor tents?”

CARTIMANDUA

Queen of the Brigantes in the first century AD. Her kingdom was in northern England and she ruled from about AD 43 until 69.

Little is known about her, though she was clearly influential in Roman Britain. Unlike Boudicca, who opposed the Romans, Cartimandua was an ally of Rome. In fact she formed a large tribal alliance that was loyal to Rome. The inscription on the triumphal arch of the emperor Claudius declared that 11 “kings” of Britain surrendered to Rome without fighting, and Cartimandua may have been one of them. She was of noble birth and probably ruled by hereditary right rather than by marriage. Her husband was Venutius. The couple were seen by Rome as loyal and, in return, they were “defended by our [Roman] arms.”

In AD 51, when Caratacus sought refuge with Cartimandua after he had been defeated by Ostorius Scapula in Wales, she put him in chains and handed him over to the Romans. In return for supplying Claudius with the prize exhibit for his triumph, she was rewarded with enormous wealth.

Eventually Cartimandua divorced Venutius and married his armor-bearer, a common soldier called Vellocatus. She took the precaution of holding Venutius’ brother and other relatives hostage, but Venutius still made war against her, building alliances against her. In about 55, he invaded her kingdom, but the Romans anticipated this and supplied Cartimandua with troops for her defense. There was some inconclusive fighting until Caesius Nasica appeared with a legion to defeat Venutius and the rebels. Rome recognized its debt to Cartimandua and helped her to keep her kingdom.

In 69, the year of four emperors, she was less lucky. During the instability Venutius mounted another revolt, aided by other tribes. Cartimandua asked the Romans for help, but this time they sent only auxiliaries. Cartimandua was evacuated and Venutius took over the kingdom of the Brigantes.

From this moment, Cartimandua vanishes from history.

CASSIVELLAUNUS

A great Celtic chief, and the earliest British Celt whose name we know. He was known as Caswallawn by his fellow Britons; the Romans knew him by the Latin form of his name, Cassivellaunus. He was king of the powerful Catuvellauni tribe and led the British resistance to Julius Caesar’s invasion of 55 and 54 BC. Caesar mentions him by name in his reminiscences. Cassivellaunus killed the King of the Trinovantes, whose son Mandubracius fled for his life to the European mainland to seek Caesar’s protection. At that time, Caesar was engaged in the conquest of Gaul and some of the British tribes had been supporting Gaulish tribes in resisting him, which explains his interest in invading Britain.

The Roman legions landed in Cantium (Kent) and their focus of attention was on the Thames estuary. Cassivellaunus’s strategy was to draw the Roman columns into the interior, with a view to mounting an attack on their landing-site, perhaps to cut off their retreat. His difficulty was in persuading his fellow kings to collaborate with his strategy. His ancestral tribal base was at St. Albans, but he had an ongoing feud with his neighbors to the east, the Trinovantes, who gave in to Caesar without a fight. Cassivellaunus also failed to rally the Cantii. Alone, the Catuvellauni were no match for the heavily armed legionaries of the Roman army. On the other hand, Cassivellaunus’s 4,000 chariots were able to harry the Romans very effectively as they tried to ford the Thames River, and the Catuvellauni put up a good fight in pitched battle.

Cassivellaunus and his soldiers fled north, perhaps first to St. Albans and then to Camulodunum, hoping for an attack on the Romans’ rear from Cantium. When he saw that it was not going to happen, Cassivellaunus surrendered hostages to Caesar, who made him promise to leave the Trinovantes in peace and agree to pay Rome an annual tribute. Caesar also allowed the Trinovantes to appoint Mandubracius as their king.

After Cassivellaunus’s submission, Caesar considered that as far as Rome was concerned Britain had been conquered, and sailed away.

Cassivellaunus was the grandfather or great-grandfather of Cunobelin.

CASWALLAWN

See Cassivellaunus; Myths: Branwen.