Berkeley Undergraduate Journal of Classics

This paper will be concerned with unpacking the language employed by ancient historians Tacitus and Cassius Dio to create the foreign, rebellious queen, Boudicca. I will argue that Tacitus and Dio’s accounts each create a Boudicca that is more dynamic than simply a negative exempla. While there has been debate as to how legitamet Cassius Dio's account can be, and the extent to which Tacitus seriously portrays female characters, I believe that equally important history can be taken from the speech that both male writers put in the mouth of a female, savage queen. This paper will focus on each of the speeches given by Tacitus and Dio’s Boudiccas. It will then contextualize each author’s language by bringing in other materials concerned with women, sex, and gender in the ancient world.