Basically what I know about Boudica is:
Tacitus wrote about her
She's a character in Civ
The British have named several ships HMS Boadicea
She's supposedly buried between platforms 9 and 10 in King's Cross Station (which seems to be an odd place for a burial, but I digress)
What if any sources do we have about her actual life, and how reliable are they considered in the modern era?
u/Tiako has given a nice list of the available sources, but no interpretation thereof.^1 So I'll add that all those sources (Dio & two different works of Tacitus) are problematic, and none of them can be fully trusted.
To begin with, all three sources tell a different story. People usually prefer the Tacitus account from the annales, because it is the longest and most detailed and, well, frankly, it is by far the best story with the best speeches and the most plausible-sounding motivations. Roughly paraphrased by me, Tacitus' version goes like this:
Boudica is the wife of a pro-Roman British king, Prasutagus of the Iceni. When her husband dies, he leaves half his kingdom to their two daughters, and half to the Roman emperor Nero, probably because he is afraid the Romans might otherwise contest his will. Unfortunately for him, they do so anyway: the procurator of Roman Britain (who is the villain of the piece) sends some slaves and soldiers to take over the kingdom. When Boudica protests, she is flogged (an outrage: as the wife of an allied king she'd be a Roman citizen, who must never be flogged in Roman law) and her two daughters are raped by the Romans.
In response, the Iceni rise in revolt, and other British tribes join them. They march on the hated colonia of Camoludunum, modern day Colchester, where many retired Roman soldiers live, and burn it to the ground. They defeat a detachment of Roman troops of the Ninth legion sent to stop them. They then march on Londinium, the biggest Roman settlement in Britain.
Meanwhile, the governor of Britain, Suetonius Paulinus, is rushing back from Wales. (Where he was trying to exterminate the druids, as one does when one is a Roman general.) He warns the citizens of Londinium that he doesn't have enough men to defend them and tells them to evacuate, but many refuse. The Britons attack, sack the city, massacre the population and move on.
By this time Suetonius Paulinus has finally gathered most of the Roman forces in the province and picks a good place to face the giant British horde. Made overconfident by their success and their vastly greater numbers, the Britons march straight into his trap. Boudica and Paulinus deliver some rousing speeches to their respective troops, hers full of passion and fire, his reserved and practical, and the fight is on. Roman order and discipline quickly breaks the British army, who are massacred. Boudica kills herself, and the rebellion is over.
To this story they then add the physical description from Dio, because... well, he's the only one to give a physical description at all.
"In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire. "
The problem is that all three accounts of Boudica are extremely Roman in context. They're written by Roman historians, and are full of Roman ideas about virtue, femininity, justice, government, etc. The famous story of greedy Romans flogging Boudica and raping her daughters? It's only in the annales. Not only does Dio not mention it, but neither does Tacitus himself in his Agricola. (Which, I might add, he actually wrote much earlier.) In Tacitus' Agricola the Britons rebel for freedom, not to avenge the assault on the royal women and the usurpation of Prasutagus' kingdom. In Dio, taxation and extortion by Roman officials is the cause.
Later in the Agricola Tacitus refers to Boudica as leading the Brigantes, not the Iceni, and mentions the sacking of a Roman camp that the annales tell us she avoided. The end of her rebellion likewise is different in each case: in Dio, she dies of disease. In Tacitus' annales, she kills herself, in his Agricola there's no mention of her fate at all.
Whenever the supposedly Briton characters in these sources speak (and all speeches in all Roman histories are the work of the author, not the actual words of the historical personages) they do so for a Roman audience, referring to the Roman context. It's laughably obvious in Dio's history, where Boudica spends half the speech referring to legendary queens from Greek and Roman myth such as Nitocris and Semiramis, or to powerful women from recent Roman history such as Agrippina and Messalina. Dio actually puts a parenthetical "For we have learned about these from the Romans" after "Boudica" says this, because otherwise all this classical learning from a British queen might have been too much even for his audience to stomach. Even the rather fun dig Dio's Boudica aims at Nero, "[the Romans] are slaves to a lyre-player and a poor one too," is clearly more something a Roman historian would say rather than a British queen.
However, even the much more subtle and believable-sounding passages in Tacitus are replete with such Roman contexts and Roman ideas about morality and justice. Where Dio's Boudica is a brutal, masculine, Barbarian queen, and Tacitus' Boudica in the Agricola seems quite similar to Dio's version, his Boudica in the annales behaves and is described like a virtuous Roman matron, avenging a wrong done to her as a Roman citizen by greedy and low-born servants of a rapacious procurator. Tacitus' version of the rebellion is a morality tale: The greedy Romans offend against the natural order whilst the (brave, disciplined, properly Roman) governor Paulinus is away, and as a result they are punished by death and defeat at the hands of the Britons. However, the Britons aren't satisfied with their revenge and continue their war, and are then punished by the returning governor, who restores proper law and order.
Tacitus version is by far the best story. It is also the most appealing to us, because it is written with a much more sympathetic and understanding view towards the rebelling Britons, whom we are naturally inclined to sympathise with. (Particularly if we're British. Which, incidentally, I'm not.) But there's no more reason to take it at face value than the other two accounts we have. Maybe everything he tells actually happened, if not quite in the way he tells it. Likely parts of it are made up. It's impossible to tell for sure.
So what do we know for certain? The broad strokes of the story must be true. Roman historians were relatively free to add their own slant to what they wrote, but they wouldn't get away with making big events or battles up wholesale. There was a rebellion. We know Boudica's husband Prasutagus existed: we found coins minted in his name. We know the rebels sacked two Roman cities: archaeologists have found the layer of burning caused by the Britons' sack of Camoludunum and Londinium. (No mass graves matching this period have been discovered, though it's difficult to interpret what this means. Perhaps the population managed to flee, or perhaps the corpses weren't buried? Or perhaps the casualties were just wildly exaggerated?) Did Boudica lead the rebellion? Probably, though it's possible she was not the only leader and just the one that stood out the most to the Romans, who weren't used to seeing female leaders. Finally, we know that Paulinus defeated the Britons.
We'll probably never know what kind of a person Boudica actually was, or what motivated her. The sources on her life are extremely interesting, but they teach us much more about what conservative upper-class Romans thought about women, foreigners and justice than they do about the actual personality and motivations of the characters they're ostensibly describing.
Still, no matter what we believe or do not believe, Tacitus tells one hell of a story.
Sources:
Initially, I'd accidentally posted this as a reply to u/Tiako's post when it was meant as a top-level comment. Oops. Apologies to anyone who's confused by this.
Much of the above interpretation about the inherent Romanness of Tacitus' account and the difficulty in accepting any of our sources on face value comes from Braund's analysis, which I find very compelling. However, it is possible there are counterarguments or more modern scholarship I am not aware of. Anyone who is is more than welcome to add to this.
The paucity of sources for ancient history can certainly be frustrating, but the upside is that when someone wants to know all there is to know about something, it is often possible to say, well, here it is. So, well, here it is:
Tacitus
Annales XIV.31-37. It is a long section so I'm just linking it, suffice to say virtually everything I am about to post is connected with that.
Agricola 14-16:
So was maintained the ancient and long-recognised practice of the Roman people, which seeks to secure among the instruments of dominion even kings themselves. Soon after, Didius Gallus consolidated the conquests of his predecessors, and advanced a very few positions into parts more remote, to gain the credit of having enlarged the sphere of government. Didius was succeeded by Veranius, who died within the year. Then Suetonius Paullinus enjoyed success for two years; he subdued several tribes and strengthened our military posts. Thus encouraged, he made an attempt on the island of Mona, as a place from which the rebels drew reinforcements; but in doing this he left his rear open to attack.
15 Relieved from apprehension by the legate's absence, the Britons dwelt much among themselves on the miseries of subjection, compared their wrongs, and exaggerated them in the discussion. "All we get by patience," they said, "is that heavier demands are exacted from us, as from men who will readily submit. A single king once ruled us; now two are set over us; a legate to tyrannise over our lives, a procurator to tyrannise over our property. Their quarrels and their harmony are alike ruinous to their subjects. The centurions of the one, the slaves of the other, combine violence with insult. Nothing is now safe from their avarice, nothing from their lust. In war it is the strong who plunders; now, it is for the most part by cowards and poltroons that our homes are rifled, our children torn from us, the conscription enforced, as though it were for our country alone that we could not die. For, after all, what a mere handful of soldiers has crossed over, if we Britons look at our own numbers. Germany did thus actually shake off the yoke, and yet its defence was a river, not the ocean. With us, fatherland, wives, parents, are the motives to war; with them, only greed and profligacy. They will surely fly, as did the now deified Julius, if once we emulate the valour of our sires. Let us not be panicstricken at the result of one or two engagements. The miserable have more fury and greater resolution. Now even the gods are beginning to pity us, for they are keeping away the Roman general, and detaining his army far from us in another island. We have already taken the hardest step; we are deliberating. And indeed, in all such designs, to dare is less perilous than to be detected."
16 Rousing each other by this and like language, under the leadership of Boudica, a woman of kingly descent (for they admit no distinction of sex in their royal successions), they all rose in arms. They fell upon our troops, which were scattered on garrison duty, stormed the forts, and burst into the colony itself, the head-quarters, as they thought, of tyranny. In their rage and their triumph, they spared no variety of a barbarian's cruelty. Had not Paullinus on hearing of the outbreak in the province rendered prompt succour, Britain would have been lost. By one successful engagement, he brought it back to its former obedience, though many, troubled by the conscious guilt of rebellion and by particular dread of the legate, still clung to their arms. Excellent as he was in other respects, his policy to the conquered was arrogant, and exhibited the cruelty of one who was avenging private wrongs. Accordingly Petronius Turpilianus was sent out to initiate a milder rule. A stranger to the enemy's misdeeds and so more accessible to their penitence, he put an end to old troubles, and, attempting nothing more, handed the province over to Trebellius Maximus.
And that is pretty much it. There are a handful of other passing mentions, but nothing really substantial.