Verica, the ruler who invited Rome to Britain, may have been a woman

Verica, the Celtic tribal ruler whose request for help became one of the pretexts for the Roman invasion of Britain, may have been a queen rather than a king. The hypothesis comes from archaeologist Miles Russell of Bournemouth University, and a number of specialists have already questioned it.

In the middle of the 1st century AD, Verica led the Atrebates, a tribe living in southern Britain, mainly in what is now Hampshire and West Sussex. Around the year 40 he lost power amid disputes with neighboring rulers, fled to Rome and asked Emperor Claudius for help. According to the historian Cassius Dio, that request was one of the pretexts for the invasion. In 43, Roman legions crossed the English Channel and began the conquest of the island; much of it remained under Roman rule for almost four centuries.

King or queen

Verica was long assumed to be a man. Russell set out his case last week in a specialist archaeology journal. The main evidence for a male ruler was thought to be the Latin word “rex” (“king”) on coins. But, the scholar says, the Romans could also use it for female rulers they regarded as allies, such as Egypt’s Cleopatra. In his view, the idea of a male ruler also grew out of the prejudices of 19th-century historians, who automatically assumed that only men could play important political and military roles.

According to the Bournemouth University press office, the imagery on the coins also supports the theory that Verica was a woman. Some of them show a slender figure on horseback holding a spear; Russell believes this is a bare-breasted woman. Other British rulers usually had male warriors depicted on their coins. Another argument is the name itself: an ending in “a” was more common among women at the time, as in the names of the well-known Celtic queens Boudicca and Cartimandua.

Could a woman have persuaded Claudius?

The hypothesis also casts the emperor in a new light. Ancient authors, including Cassius Dio, portrayed Claudius as a weak and indecisive ruler, easily swayed by those around him, especially women. Russell therefore considers it possible that the emperor launched a military campaign at the insistent request of an exiled Celtic queen. “If she had not been overthrown and had not fled to Claudius for military support, Rome might never have invaded Britain,” he told a British newspaper.

The theory has its critics

Not all scholars find Russell’s arguments convincing. Roger Tomlin, an Oxford specialist in Latin inscriptions, points out that Cassius Dio called the exiled British ruler by the male name Berikos. He also doubts that the word “rex” was commonly applied to women: in his words, the Romans recognized both allied queens and kings, but Russell needs to show with other examples that they denoted both groups with the same title.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz