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Source Description

The Iceni were a native tribe inhabiting Norfolk, Suffolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire. They were described by the Romans as powerful, unbroken by war. In AD 61 the king of the Iceni, Prasutagus, died, leaving his apparently considerable wealth to his two daughters and to the Roman Emperor, as joint heirs. However, while the Roman legions under Aulus Plautius were in Wales taking drastic steps to exterminate Druidism, Boadicea, the widow of Prasutagus, was ill-treated by the Romans and her two daughters were outraged. The Iceni rose in revolt and helped by their neighbors the Trinovantes, they overran the Roman settlements. It is said that 70,000 Romans were massacred at Camulodunum, and the Iceni, with Boadicea in a war chariot at their head, sacked and burned Verulamium (St. Albans, Hertfordshire), and London. Suetonius, one of the leading Roman generals, returned from the west with all possible speed and came up with the Iceni in the northwest of Roman London. Here a great battle was fought, resulting in a complete victory for the disciplined Roman forces; thousands of Britons were killed. The site of this battle is supposed to have been near what is now Kings Cross, in central London, commemorated by Battle Bridge Road.

Scholar Source Context

Document identity
localId
144357
label
Stater: Three-Petal Flower (obverse); Horse and wheels (reverse)
core
obj
dtoType
object
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
144357
contentType
object
title
Stater: Three-Petal Flower (obverse); Horse and wheels (reverse)
description
The Iceni were a native tribe inhabiting Norfolk, Suffolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire. They were described by the Romans as powerful, unbroken by war. In AD 61 the king of the Iceni, Prasutagus, died, leaving his apparently considerable wealth to his two daughters and to the Roman Emperor, as joint heirs. However, while the Roman legions under Aulus Plautius were in Wales taking drastic steps to exterminate Druidism, Boadicea, the widow of Prasutagus, was ill-treated by the Romans and her two daughters were outraged. The Iceni rose in revolt and helped by their neighbors the Trinovantes, they overran the Roman settlements. It is said that 70,000 Romans were massacred at Camulodunum, and the Iceni, with Boadicea in a war chariot at their head, sacked and burned Verulamium (St. Albans, Hertfordshire), and London. Suetonius, one of the leading Roman generals, returned from the west with all possible speed and came up with the Iceni in the northwest of Roman London. Here a great battle was fought, resulting in a complete victory for the disciplined Roman forces; thousands of Britons were killed. The site of this battle is supposed to have been near what is now Kings Cross, in central London, commemorated by Battle Bridge Road.
date
20 BCE–10 CE
rights
CC0
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
wikidata
Q79921444
genreSpecific
Coins
imageCount
1
source
import
dimensionsRaw
Diameter: 1.9 cm (3/4 in.)
cul
England, Iceni
accession
1969.156
Source extras
tec
gold
tombstone
Stater: Three-Petal Flower (obverse); Horse and wheels (reverse), 20 BCE–10 CE. England, Iceni. Gold; diameter: 1.9 cm (3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Norweb Collection, 1969.156
collection
MED - Numismatics
didYouKnow
The obverse design may be a rose, a flower that appears on many earlier, mostly Greek, coins.
citations
citation
Cleveland Museum of Art, and Emery May Norweb. English Gold Coins, Ancient to Modern Times, On Loan to the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Norweb Collection. 1968.
page_number
pp. 15
citation
Emery May Norweb Collection (Cleveland, Ohio), Emery May Norweb, C. E. Blunt, F. Elmore Jones, and R. P. Mack. Collection of Ancient British, Romano-British and English Coins. London: Spink, 1971.
page_number
pp. 17-18
creditline
The Norweb Collection
updatedAt
2026-05-29 07:24:46.547000
sourceId
144357
dept
Medieval Art
coll
MED - Numismatics
med
gold
thumbnail_url
image_url
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
d3a318cad9033559