Gaius Suetonius Paulinus

Gaius Suetonius Paulinus was the Roman governor who defeated Boudica's revolt. He first came to notice as governor of Mauretania around AD 41, where he suppressed a rebellion and became the first Roman commander recorded to have crossed the Atlas mountains, leaving a description of the terrain and the peoples beyond. He was appointed governor of Britain around AD 58 and pushed the conquest westward, seeking a reputation to match his rivals in Armenia. In AD 60 or 61 he attacked Anglesey, the centre of British druidism and a refuge for fugitives. Tacitus describes his troops hesitating at the sight of black-robed women with torches and druids calling down curses before they crossed the strait and destroyed the sacred groves. While he was there, the Iceni rose. Their king Prasutagus had left his kingdom jointly to Nero and his daughters, hoping to preserve it; Roman officials annexed it, flogged his widow Boudica and raped her daughters. The Iceni and Trinovantes destroyed Camulodunum, killed most of the Ninth Legion's infantry, and burned Londinium and Verulamium. Tacitus puts the dead at seventy thousand. Paulinus marched back with about ten thousand men, abandoned Londinium as indefensible, and chose a battlefield with a wood behind him and defiles on either flank so that the British numbers could not be brought to bear. The legionaries advanced in wedges; the Britons' own wagon train blocked their retreat. His subsequent punitive campaign was severe enough that the procurator complained to Nero, and he was recalled. He commanded for Otho at Bedriacum in AD 69.

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