Terrorism in the Ancient Roman World
By Gregory G. Bolich

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The Sicarii were such a plague that Josephus attributed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple to their foul deeds. He also claimed that as they fled the carnage of the war, they spread trouble abroad. In Alexandria, Egypt, the Sicarii promoted rebellion and assassinated the Jewish leaders who opposed their counsel. Similarly, under the leadership of a man named Jonathan, the Sicarii fomented rebellion in Cyrene. Neither Roman nor Jew could feel completely safe walking a crowded street as long as the Sicarii survived.

At the western end of the Roman world, Britain was a trouble spot as well. Though nominally conquered in the mid-first century, many tribes remained restless. However, the king of the Iceni, Prasutagus, pursued a policy of appeasement toward the Romans, going so far as making the emperor co-heir with his daughters. By this policy, he hoped to retain some measure of independence. It was a vain hope. Tacitus reveals that the Romans reduced his kingdom to provincial status. Romans flogged his wife, Boudicca, and raped his two daughters. Rome then annexed the lands of the Icenian chiefs and treated members of the royal household like slaves.

Encouraged by his success, in a.d. 60 the Roman governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, mounted a campaign against the island of Mona, a rebel stronghold. In his absence, many Britons were emboldened to murmur among themselves concerning their situation. As Tacitus frames it, they had plenty to complain about. Whereas once they had had a king to please, now they had to please two masters — the Roman legate and the procurator — and those officials might as easily quarrel as get along, leaving the people caught in the middle. In either instance, the Romans were trouble: Their centurions and slaves alike inflicted insults and violence. The people’s homes were robbed, their children were kidnapped, and their young men were taken and sent far away to serve Rome’s interests. How could war be any worse? As a result, they revolted. Led by Queen Boudicca, the Iceni, Trinobantes, and other tribes roamed the country and destroyed three towns: Camulodunum, Verulamium, and Londinium. Tacitus reports that they targeted the retired Roman military veterans whose settlement at Camulodunum had displaced the Trinobantes. To add insult to injury, the Roman settlers — urged on by the Roman troops — had further outraged the Britons by deriding them as prisoners and slaves. Taxes were imposed on the local economy to support a temple to Emperor Claudius. Humiliated and angry, the Britons not only swept down on the scattered outposts and attacked the forts but also ravaged the colony that had come to represent their oppression. Tacitus writes that in their fury, they were unrestrained in their cruelty, permitting themselves every form of barbarity imaginable.

Suetonius Paulinus returned to restore order. Assessing the situation, he sacrificed Londinium after evacuating those who could keep up with him; the rest, including the elderly and women, he left to be slaughtered. While the Roman governor awaited his opportunity, the victorious Britons continued their campaign, which became ever more wanton. It increasingly took on the character of terrorism rather than traditional war. They avoided Roman strongholds and concentrated on destroying the weak. They took no prisoners. They slaughtered every Roman or Roman sympathizer they encountered, slitting the throats of some, hanging some, burning others, and even resorting to crucifixion in some instances.

The later historian Cassius Dio Coeccianus supplements the historical record with his own account of the horrors. He recounts the Britons’ most bestial atrocity: the practice of hanging up noble women naked, cutting off their breasts and sewing the flesh to their mouths to make it appear as though they were eating their own breasts, and then skewering them on stakes. Tacitus reckons some seventy thousand Romans and provincials were executed in the rampage.

Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Historical Conflicts, Military Technology

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