Stater: Three-Petal Flower (obverse); Horse and wheels (Cleveland Museum of Art 1969.156)

The Iceni were a native tribe inhabiting Norfolk, Suffolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire. They were described by the Romans as powerful, unbroken by war. In AD 61 the king of the Iceni, Prasutagus, died, leaving his apparently considerable wealth to his two daughters and to the Roman Emperor, as joint heirs. However, while the Roman legions under Aulus Plautius were in Wales taking drastic steps to exterminate Druidism, Boadicea, the widow of Prasutagus, was ill-treated by the Romans and her two daughters were outraged. The Iceni rose in revolt and helped by their neighbors the Trinovantes, they overran the Roman settlements. It is said that 70,000 Romans were massacred at Camulodunum, and the Iceni, with Boadicea in a war chariot at their head, sacked and burned Verulamium (St. Albans, Hertfordshire), and London. Suetonius, one of the leading Roman generals, returned from the west with all possible speed and came up with the Iceni in the northwest of Roman London. Here a great battle was fought, resulting in a complete victory for the disciplined Roman forces; thousands of Britons were killed. The site of this battle is supposed to have been near what is now Kings Cross, in central London, commemorated by Battle Bridge Road. Cleveland Museum of Art object 1969.156: Stater: Three-Petal Flower (obverse); Horse and wheels (reverse), 20 BCE–10 CE. England, Iceni. Gold; diameter: 1.9 cm (3/4 in.). Details are those of this museum object; how far it represents a wider type has not been independently verified.