Julius Caesar accepted the ‘surrender’ of a number of British kings during his campaigns into southern Britain, but annexed no lands. It was not until the campaign of Claudius in AD 43 that the Roman occupation of the British Isles actually began.
At the culmination of this campaign, the surrender of eleven kings was received by Claudius, although this only signalled the beginning of a long and haphazard process of Roman expansion into Britain. It is believed that out of these eleven kings, one of them was probably Antedios, king of the Iceni and predecessor to Prasutagus who ruled with Boudicca as his queen. Archaeological evidence from the Icenian heartland of Norfolk and Suffolk suggests that the Iceni were a prosperous yet isolated tribe, composed of a mixture of Celtic peoples, many of whom had emigrated from the Marne Valley in modern-day France, as well as various areas of Holland. From Iceni burials it seems as though the Iceni did not embrace much Roman culture, as many of the other British tribes did at this time.
Instead, the narrow spread of their coinage indicates that they remained relatively insular and by the first century BC had made their capital at Ventor Icenorum (modern-day Caistor St Edmund). After Claudius’ invasion, as a client kingdom of Rome, they would have enjoyed some self-autonomy but
