Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/158

144 ideas, she gave herself up to study and prayer. On the death of her husband, though so young, she refused to enter into any other engagement, and is much extolled by St. Jerom, for her memory and eloquence. She knew perfectly the Greek and Latin languages, and had conquered so well the difficulties of the Hebrew as to speak it with facility. F.C.

, king of the Iceni (the inhabitants of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdonshire) in order to secure the friendship and protection of Nero to his wife and family, in his will, left the emperor and his daughters co-heirs. But no sooner was he in the grave, than the emperor's officers seized upon his effects in their master's name. Boadicea, widow of the deceased king, strongly remonstrated against these unjust proceedings; but her complaints were so far from being heard, or her grievances redressed, that she found herself exposed to farther wrongs and injuries. For, being a woman of high spirit, she resented her ill usage in such terms, as provoked the officers to treat her in the most barbarous manner; they caused her to be publicly scourged; and her daughters' innocence fell a sacrifice to their barbarity.

This story soon spread through the island, and the public indignation so generally raised, that all, excepting London, agreed to revolt. The Roman historians themselves acknowledge, that the universal violence and injustice of the emperor's officers, gave the Britons sufficient reason to lay aside their private animosities, aid the queen to revenge her wrongs, and recover their own liberty.

Boadicea.