This is a tale of an English rebellion (for poetic purposes I call it the ER) against the Romans in 60AD. The British Isles were considered a Roman colony. Their rule was heavy and brutal after their invasion and occupation in 43AD. The revolt was lead by a warrior woman named Boadicea, also known as: Boudica, Boudicca, Boadacaea. Loosely translated, her name reads either Victory, or Victoria. There is a statue of her in London. Boadicea was the wife of Prasutagus, who was head of the Iceni, or Icenti tribe in East England, in what is now Norfolk and Suffolk. After his death, she was publically humiliated and her daughters raped by the Romans. Led by Boadicea, about 100,000 British attacked Camulodunum (now Colchester), the main Roman garrison, and burned it to the ground, while forcing the Roman Governor to flee. Boadicea exhorted her troops from her chariot, her daughters beside her. Legend has it that she employed a form of divination, releasing a hare from the folds of her dress and interpreting the direction in which it ran, and invoked Andraste, a British goddess of victory, to rain fire down upon the enemy. Immediately Boadicea's army turned to the largest city in the British Isles, Londinium (London). Suetonius strategically abandoned the city, and Boadicea's army burned Londinium and massacred the 25,000 inhabitants who had not fled. Next, Boadicea and her army marched on Verulamium (St. Albans), a city largely populated by Britons who had cooperated with the Romans and who were killed as that city was destroyed. She was eventually defeated by the Romans. It was in the Victorian era that Boadicea's fame took on legendary proportions as Queen Victoria came to be seen as Boadicea's "namesake", their names being identical in meaning. So here we have a Roman colony in rebellion by the English against their overbearing masters. Being an American, I find this ironic. There is much more about her. Google her , if you are interested.

This poem is a Cleaved Acrostic Double LyriCat with 5-7-5 inset.
A Cleaved poem is one that can be read in three parts - the two halves can be read alone, or as one continuous poem. An Acrostic poem has the first letter of each line read as a word or phrase read vertically. In this case there are two. Each coloured poem above is a standard 3 stanza LyriCat, a form created by Fanstorian, I am Cat, with a syllable count over each 8 line stanza of 75555595 and a rhyme scheme of abcbdeFe. The seventh (F) line is repeated in each stanza. But I did insert a 5-7-5 Senryu between stanza two and three. The yellow poem's acrostic reads Boadicea Leader of The Icenti ER. The form for the blue poem reads Defeated Defeated the Romans ER (I stated it twice as she defeated them more than once). When the whole thing is finally read straight across I would describe the form as a Heroic LyriCat and Senryu with a syllable count of 14,10,10,10,10,10,18,10. Punctuation has been omitted.

Picture is from Yahoo images.

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