Middenshire under the Romans

The Britain in which the Romans found themselves was divided into tribal kingdoms. Most people have heard of at least one or two of these; the Brigantes, the Cornovii, and, probably the most famous, the Iceni, whose Queen Boudica (erroneously named Boadicea by the Victorians) very nearly overpowered the Romans in her revolt of 61 AD. The existence of these tribes is well-documented, but the deliberate removal of Middenshire from the annals of British history in the fifteenth century meant that up until now, the tribe of the Thicii, and their warrior queen, Vicii, have remained in total obscurity. No more than brief facts are available; Thuck's description of the tribe is a "tenth generation" document. The original, probably dictated to a Roman scribe, was copied and re copied during the intervening years, no doubt being embellished on each occasion. For this reason, the 'facts' may not be wholly reliable.

Vicii of the Thicii

Queen Vicii was a contemporary of Boudica and, like her more famous counterpart, had two daughters. For some reason now unknown (since the Romans were almost universally hated and reviled) Vicii took a fancy to Caius Libidinus Naso, the prefect of the region, and attempted to win him by making sacrifices to the Thicii god of carnality, Bubotostis. Naso was appalled, since she and her daughters were of repulsive appearance and had awful table manners. He attempted to nip the problem in the bud by having her whipped and thrown into the River Medder, but this was a terrible mistake. Vicii, roused to fury, mustered her tribe and, mounting her battle sledge (It was not possible to operate a chariot, with or without the scythes that writer Pomponius Mela claimed British tribes had access to in the muddy conditions which prevailed), rode at their head to Naso's villa. Standing on the steps of his house, she delivered her ultimatum - either he took her as his wife, or she would massacre the Roman garrison. The sight of this screaming harridan, stripped to the waist and anointed with battle mud, was too much for the already terrified Naso. He retreated into his villa and threw himself upon his sword, choosing to die by his own hand rather than submit to the amorous advances of a woman who would have been regarded as a paragon of vileness, even if she had been a man.

The distraught Vicii realised too late that she had destroyed the only man she had ever loved. She had not realised (says William Thuck) that Roman courtship was more delicate than that dictated by Vicii custom. The latter involved the woman (since the society was matriarchal) indecently exposing herself, howling like a wolf, and inviting the man of her choice to take her in a muddy puddle. In her grief, she embarked upon an orgy of rape and murder. Her palace guards captured and held down the more handsome members of the Roman garrison until they could be 'dealt with' by the queen. Most died of shame within a few minutes; those who did not were handed over to Vicii's daughters, who soon finished them off. At the conclusion of this terrible banquet of ritual slaying, the Thicii made a huge pile of their enemy's kneecaps (they believed the soul resided in the patellae) and then boiled and ate their sandals. Vicii abdicated in favour of her elder daughter, married Carrac the Sightless of Dumnonia, and the word 'bath' was not mentioned in the Shire for many years.

Thus was the light of civilisation extinguished in Middenshire. Then, 150 years after these events, (around 208 AD) troops of the Emperor Severus crossed the causeway, demolished the mud wall erected by tribal leaders and quickly overran the shire. There was some brief resistance when the more warlike elements of the Thicii escaped to the Floody Plain. However, a Roman legion, specially trained to fight on short stilts, forced its way into the boggy wastes and slaughtered the tribe in a particularly unpleasant manner by force feeding them with live frogs, washed down with muddy water. The Romans were eventually able, by their ruthlessness, to overawe the native dwellers. But not for long. The Brito-Middenites began a campaign of civil disobedience. They refused to speak Latin, wore their togas back to front, and did unspeakable things in bath houses. The Romans made a valiant effort to combat the unco-operative attitudes of the natives, by building ingenious aqueducts, hypocausts, and settlements with the streets laid out in "grid" patterns, but it was no use. They gradually became more and more disillusioned, and the initially strong system of Roman government in the shire began to collapse. By the time Emperor Constans (337-350) visited Britain in 343, things were far too free and easy for his liking; in fact, Thuck claimed that the Emperor's risky winter Channel crossing was mainly for the purpose of restoring firm rule in Middenshire.

It seems that Constans was responsible for the building of a fort near Pussing as part of the so called "Saxon Shore," a defensive measure against the Saxon raids. He also stationed three cohorts of Legio XXXIV Canis Magnus in the shire, but, within ten years, many of the soldiers, used to much warmer climes, were so depressed by the rain, the mud and the cold that they made away with themselves. Those who were left gradually died from self neglect until, in 360, the Emperor Julian's representative in the shire, Publius Aurelius Gallo, installed a cohort of barbarians. If Gallo thought that the auxiliaries from Germania would grind the Middenites into the mud, he was mistaken. The Germani and the natives possessed such similar characters that they struck up a firm friendship, which even included intermarriage of the two. This situation lasted until all troops were withdrawn around 401. Once more, the shire vanished into the mists of oblivion, a period aptly named "The Dark Ages."