The Iceni are classified as a Celtic tribe. They lived in Britain in the present-day county of Norfolk and parts of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire in eastern England and are discussed as Celts or Britons. Coin finds dating to about 70 B. C.E., indicate that they were a thriving people in the first century c. e.
The Iceni did not resist the invasion of the Romans under Emperor Claudius I in 43 c. e., but when Publius ostorius Scapula became governor of Britain in 47 c. e. some tribesmen rebelled. Scapula defeated an Iceni force in battle.
Probably at that time Prasutagus became the client-king of the Iceni for the Romans. After his death in 60 c. e. and reported abuses by the Romans, his wife, Boudicca (Boadicea), led a rebellion (see sidebar “Boudicca” under Britons). Iceni and allied Trinovantes attacked a number of towns, destroying parts of Roman-held Camulodunum (modern Colchester) in Trinovantes territory and Londinium (modern London) and Verulamium (modern St. Albans) in Catuvellauni territory. Iceni warriors also annihilated the Ninth Legion. Yet in 61 b. c.e. were defeated in a battle, the site of which is unknown, by a Roman force under the Roman governor Suetonius Paulinus. Tradition has it that Boudicca took her own life soon afterward.
Venta Icenorum in Iceni territory on the site of present-day Caister St. Edmund was a civitas capital during the Roman occupation until 410 C. E.
Further Reading
Jodi Mikalachki. The Legacy of Boadicea: Gender and Nation in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1998).
Lucilla Watson. Boudicca and the Ancient Britons (Hove, U. K.: Wayland, 1986).
Ijores See IZHORIANS.
World History
