Editing Boudica (section)

==Early literature==
One of the earliest possible mentions of Boudica (excluding Tacitus' and Dio's accounts) was the 6th-century work {{Lang|la|[[De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae]]}} by the British monk [[Gildas]]. In it, he demonstrates his knowledge of a female leader whom he describes as a "treacherous lioness" who "butchered the governors who had been left to give fuller voice and strength to the endeavours of Roman rule."<ref name="Hingley Unwin 2006 p. 61">{{harvnb |Hingley |Unwin |2006 |p=[https://archive.org/details/boudicaironagewa0000hing/page/60/mode/2up 61]}}</ref>

Both [[Bede]]'s ''[[Ecclesiastical History of the English People]]'' (731) and the 9th-century work ''[[Historia Brittonum]]'' by the Welsh monk [[Nennius]] include references to the uprising of 60/61, but do not mention Boudica.<ref name="Hingley Unwin 2006 p. 61"/>

No contemporary description of Boudica exists. Dio, writing more than a century after her death, provided a detailed description of the Iceni queen (translated in 1925): "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."<ref name="Ell9294">{{cite book |last1=Elliott |first1=Simon |title=Britain |series=Roman Conquests |date=2021 |publisher=Pen & Sword Books Limited |location=Barnsley, UK |isbn=978-15267-6-568-0 |page=92}}</ref><ref name="Dio 2015 pp. 84–87"/>{{refn|1=The term {{lang|grc-Latn|xanthotrichos}} ('tawny') can also mean 'red–brown' or 'auburn', or a shade ''short'' of brown.{{sfn |Williams |2009 |p=62}}|group=note}}