A new analysis suggests that Verica, a central figure in early British history who prompted the Roman invasion, was probably a queen rather than a king. Miles Russell, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in the UK and author of the forthcoming book Caratacus: Great king of Britain, says Verica is "probably the most important person at the end of the Iron Age, at that point where Britain gets dragged kicking and screaming into history."
The historical record of Verica stems from two main sources. The first is Iron Age coins from the southern English counties of Hampshire and West Sussex, which bear the name “Verica”. It appears Verica was a ruler of the Atrebates: a group that originated in what is now northern France, some of whom made their home in southern Britain. The other is the Roman historian Cassius Dio, who in the early 200s AD wrote a history of Rome. Cassius Dio records that a Briton called Berikos fled the island following an uprising and went to the Emperor Claudius to ask for help. Most historians agree that this was Verica and that Cassius Dio slightly mangled the name.
While previous Roman invasions of Britain, like those led by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC, had been unsuccessful, Claudius’s expedition in AD 43 succeeded and much of Britain became a Roman province for several centuries. Russell presents several lines of argument that Verica was a woman. The first point is Verica’s name. In Iron Age Britain, names that end with “a” are usually female, while names that end in “os” or “us” are typically male. The two other known female British rulers of this time, Boudica of the Iceni and Cartimandua of the Brigantes, both follow this pattern. “It’s not a clear-cut rule,” says Russell, but it applies to “about 95 per cent of Iron Age British names”.
Secondly, coins bearing Verica’s name tend to show images of female warriors on horseback, says Russell. “It is odd that Verica’s images are all female warriors,” he says. “Other coin-producing leaders don’t have that. They have male characters.” Meanwhile, there is little or nothing specifying that Verica was male. Verica’s coins sometimes have the inscription “COM F” or “COMMI F”, which has been interpreted as Commios filus or “son of Commios”. However, argues Russell, it could just as easily be Commios filia or “daughter of Commios”. Likewise, the inscription “rex” meant ruler, but wasn’t gender-specific.
Furthermore, if Verica was female, Cassius Dio’s account of her interactions with the Roman emperor makes more sense. “Claudius is always demonised by Roman writers because they say he’s weak-minded,” says Russell. “He’s governed by ex-slaves and he’s governed by women. He makes no decisions of his own.” A female British ruler persuading him to invade would fit that narrative. “It’s a highly compelling argument,” says Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, a prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Vienna. However, she is sceptical of the imagery on the coins, because they aren’t anatomically exact: “I find it a bit difficult to differentiate a naked female body from a naked male body in these very stylised images.”
The idea also fits our emerging understanding of the northern European Iron Age, says Rebay-Salisbury. While the preceding Bronze Age was “highly gendered” and “people differentiated a lot between women and men”, she says, in the Iron Age, there was more emphasis on social status rather than gender, so women sometimes held power. In 2025, Russell co-authored a study of ancient DNA from Iron Age cemeteries in southern Britain, which found that, for several centuries, women remained in their ancestral homes while men moved around – indicating that women held significant status. Similar patterns have been found in central Europe. “There are by now so many of these instances,” says Rebay-Salisbury, yet “people keep being surprised”. She wonders: “When do we just accept that this happens on a more or less regular basis?”
