Her name was Boudicca (boo-DIK-uh). Ironically, she is better known by the Roman version of her name:
Boadicea (boh-uh-duh-SEE-uh). Her husband, Prasutagus (preh-SHOOT-uh-guhs), ruled over a tribe called the Iceni (both I and i pronounced as “eye”: I-SEE-ni).
Prasutagus tried to get along with the Romans. He did not offer any resistance to their invasion. Thus he must have been disappointed when, in a. d. 47, the Romans demanded that all Britons—including the peaceful Iceni—sur-render their weapons. This should have told Prasutagus all he needed to know about the Romans, but apparently it did not.
He died with no male heirs, only his and Boadicea's two daughters. In his will, he divided his property between the daughters and Emperor Nero, thinking that by so doing, he would please the Romans and thereby keep them from taking more. In fact his actions had exactly the opposite result.
Roman law dictated that in a will that left property to the emperor, the emperor had to receive the best share of the property. The Romans interpreted Prasutagus's will as favoring his daughters over Nero. Therefore they sent in soldiers to seize all of Prasutagus's property, which they did in the most savage fashion possible. Boadicea was publicly whipped, her daughters were raped, and many of their tribe were sold into slavery.
Deborah and Jael
Boadicea was not the first woman to prove that women could be every bit as fierce in battle as men. More than a thousand years before her lived the Israelite prophetess Deborah and a young woman named Jael (JAY-ehl). Deborah was a judge, one of the people who led Israel between the time of Moses (see entry) and that of the prophet Samuel, around the 1100s b. c. Her and Jael's story appears in chapters four and five of the Book of Judges in the Bible.
It was a frightening time to be alive in Israel, when the nation was threatened both by its own self-serving people and by outside enemies such as the Canaanites (KAY-nuhn-ightz). The author of Judges recorded that "the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the Lord"; therefore God allowed their lands to be invaded by a Canaanite general named
Sisera [si-SARE-ah], whose forces had "nine hundred iron chariots."
At that time Deborah was judge. She was the only judge referred to as a "prophetess," which meant that she could hear the voice of God and let the people of Israel know what he wanted them to do. In the attack against Canaan, she had the role of commander-in-chief. She did not engage in the actual fighting but goaded the military commander, Barak (BARE-ak), to lead the Israelite forces into battle. Barak was timid and begged Deborah to go with him. Deborah replied that she would, "but because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will hand Sisera over to a woman" (4:9).
Deborah was not talking about herself, but about Jael, who came from a
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