The British King of the Atrebates, whose expulsion brought Rome to Britain, turns out to have been a woman

A new reconstruction of Verica's image

Verica, ruler of the British tribe of the Atrebates, whose expulsion gave Rome a pretext to invade Britain in 43 AD, was a woman, not the man historians had depicted for two centuries. This reconstruction was proposed by archaeologist Miles Russell of Bournemouth University; his arguments are set out in the book Caratacus: Great King of Britain and in the latest issue of the journal Current Archaeology, reports Gazeta.Ru.

Who was Verica and what role did she play

Verica led the Atrebates in southern Britain — in the territory of modern Hampshire and West Sussex — and was an ally of Rome. Around 40 AD she was deposed and fled to the emperor Claudius. According to the historian Cassius Dio, it was she who persuaded him to cross the Channel. The invasion became Claudius's only triumph — a man Roman writers portrayed as weak and dependent on women and freedmen.

Three arguments in favor of her being a woman

Russell relies on three pieces of evidence. First, names ending in '-a' or '-ia' in that era belonged to women — for example, the Brigantian queen Cartimandua and the Iceni leader Boudicca. Second, the title rex on coins does not indicate gender: Rome also recognized female rulers, the most famous of whom was Cleopatra, and the very fact of minting means Verica ruled with the emperor's full approval. Third, while other British chieftains depicted clearly male warrior figures on their coins, Verica showed a slender, feminine horsewoman with a bare chest.

Reassessing her role in the Roman invasion

'Verica was considered a man because of the patriarchal views of nineteenth-century historians. Yet she not only played a key role in the special relationship between Britain and Rome in the early first century, but was also unquestionably a woman,' Russell said. According to him, the Roman tradition presented the invasion as the scheme of an emperor swayed by others' whispers: 'Dio essentially wrote that the campaign was launched because of a barbarian femme fatale. In fact, Verica's role was central: she supplied the expedition with tactical information and support on the ground, and gave Claudius a pretext to change the regime, which he did not fail to exploit.'

Context and the continuation of the Bournemouth archaeologists' line of research

If Boudicca, who led an uprising against the Romans in 60 AD, remains the most famous ruler of that era, then Verica, in Russell's view, was even more influential: without her overthrow and plea for help, Rome might never have invaded Britain at all. The work continues the line of the Bournemouth archaeologists: a year earlier they described evidence of an Iron Age matriarchal order in which husbands moved to live in their wives' communities. Earlier, archaeologists also discovered traces of a goddess cult and women's power in a Roman cave.