Page "Boudica" Paragraph 19

Boudica exhorted her troops from her chariot, her daughters beside her.

Tacitus gives her a short speech in which she presents herself not as an aristocrat avenging her lost wealth, but as an ordinary person, avenging her lost freedom, her battered body, and the abused chastity of her daughters.

She said their cause was just, and the deities were on their side ; the one legion that had dared to face them had been destroyed.

She, a woman, was resolved to win or die ; if the men wanted to live in slavery, that was their choice.