Iron Age King Whose Exile Helped Spark Rome’s Invasion Of Britain — Was A Woman?

Archaeologist Argues Verica, Key Figure in Roman Conquest, Was Female

For nearly two centuries, history books have told the same story about Verica: a British king lost his throne, sailed to Rome to beg for help and handed Emperor Claudius the excuse he needed to conquer Britain. One archaeologist now argues that Verica was almost certainly a woman.

Miles Russell, director of archaeological fieldwork at Bournemouth University in England, makes the case in his book “Caratacus: Great King of Britain,” due out from Bloomsbury in January. Drawing on Verica’s name, the title stamped on the ruler’s coins and the figure riding across them, Russell argues that the monarch at the center of the A.D. 43 Roman invasion was female.

“Verica is assumed to have been male because of the patriarchal mindset of 19th century, classical historians,” Russell said in a statement.

An Iron Age king caught between Rome and rivals

Verica ruled the Atrebates, a tribe whose territory covered much of present-day Hampshire and West Sussex. Coins suggest a reign from about A.D. 10 to 40, with a capital at Calleva Atrebatum, the site of modern Silchester. Verica kept close ties with Rome, which recognized the Atrebates as a client kingdom, according to the Museums Victoria coin collection.

Around A.D. 40, Verica was forced out. English Heritage credits the neighboring Catuvellauni tribe, led by the brothers Togodumnus and Caratacus, the very figure Russell’s book is named for. Verica fled across the Channel to Claudius. Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote that the exiled ruler persuaded the emperor to invade.

Claudius had taken power in A.D. 41 after the murder of his nephew Caligula and needed a military win, English Heritage notes, adding that Verica’s expulsion may have served as his pretext. Two years later, roughly 40,000 soldiers under the general Aulus Plautius crossed the Channel, a fleet that may have required 700 to 1,000 ships.

Coins, a name and a gender-neutral title

Russell’s argument rests on three clues. First, the name itself ends in “a,” a common feminine ending in Iron Age Britain. Two of the era’s best-known female rulers share it: Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes in what is now Yorkshire, and Boudica, who led the Iceni of Norfolk in a bloody revolt against Rome in A.D. 60.

Second, Verica’s coins carry the Latin word “rex,” usually translated as “king.” Russell says that label proves nothing about gender, explaining that “rex is a non-gender-specific title; both male and female kings were recognized by Rome, Cleopatra of Egypt being the most famous.”

Third, the coins look different. Other British leaders who minted coins put clearly masculine fighters on them, Russell notes, while “Verica is depicted as a slender, feminine, bare-breasted figure riding on horseback.”

Museum catalogs have long described that rider differently. One gold coin in the Museums Victoria collection is listed as showing a “horseman galloping right brandishing spear,” with the letters “VIR” above the rider and “REX” below. Verica’s coins also carry the abbreviation “COM F,” traditionally read as “son of Commius,” an earlier Atrebatic king. In Latin, that “F” could stand for either filius (son) or filia (daughter).

Rethinking Verica’s role in the Roman invasion

A female Verica also changes how Dio’s account should be read. Dio wrote in Greek around A.D. 200, roughly 150 years after the fact, and Russell says the tale of Claudius acting on a woman’s urging fits an old Roman stereotype of the emperor as submissive and henpecked. “In effect, Dio was saying that the campaign was undertaken solely because of the whisperings of a barbarian femme fatale,” Russell said.

In Russell’s telling, Verica’s local knowledge helped the Roman campaign succeed, while Claudius got the military triumph he badly wanted. “Verica provided the excuse for regime change and the emperor seized it,” he said.

His theory fits a growing body of evidence about women’s power in Iron Age Britain. A 2025 study in the journal Nature, which included Russell among its authors, analyzed DNA from 57 people buried in Dorset and found that most were related through the female line, a pattern the researchers said had not been described elsewhere in European prehistory.

Still, Russell’s conclusion is an interpretation, not a settled fact. His case comes from a book rather than a peer-reviewed paper, the images on Iron Age coins are tiny and stylized, and Dio’s own Greek text renders the name as “Berikos,” a masculine-sounding form.

Russell argues that if Verica had kept the throne, Rome “may never have invaded Britain in the first place.” If he is right, one of the most consequential events in British history began with a queen whom generations of historians mistook for a king.