The Arthurian Battles
(The question mark indicates Agned, i.e. agued, which might be Catterick, rather
than High Rochester/Breguoin)
What it's going to take to produce a viable Arthur candidate is a synthesis of a lot of disparate elements. The end result will not so much be a historical reconstruction as a logically devised imaginary portrait. Not so much who/what was Arthur, but rather who/what he might have been. Methodology will be influenced by an admitted bias towards wanting an Arthur who matches the HB and AC chronology. I will not be resorting to L. Artorius Castus as a default explanation.
Okay, with that caveat/qualifying statement out of the way, here we go...
In looking at Arthur's battles from the Dark Age perspective, and bearing in mind what we are told of him in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM ("Then Arthur fought against them in those days with the kings of the Britons, but he himself was the leader of the wars."), we would have to have a man who was acting in the capacity of the Roman period Dux Britanniarum. I have often cited Dr. Ken Dark on what was going on in Britain at and around Hadrian's Wall in the sub-Roman era:
“Although it is difficult, therefore, to ascertain whether the military project which I have described was the work of an alliance or a north British kingdom or over-kingdom, there does seem to be reason to suppose that it may have represented a post-Roman form of the command of the Dux Britanniarum…
This archaeological pattern, however it is interpreted, is of the greatest interest not only to the study of the fifth-and sixth- century north of Britain, but to that of the end of Roman Britain and the end of the Western Roman Empire as a whole. It may provide evidence for the latest functioning military command of Roman deriva-tion in the West, outside the areas of Eastern Imperial control, and could be testimony to the largest Insular Celtic kingdom known to us.”
In another paper, Ken and S.P. Dark rebut P.J. Casey’s argument for a reinterpretation of the reuse and re-fortification of the Wall and its associated forts. His conclusion for this paper reads as follows:
“If one adopts the interpretation that the Wall forts were reused in the later fifth-early sixth century for a series of sub-Roman secular elite settlements, then the associated problems involved in explaining this new evidence of occupation at that time disappear…
So, the interpretation that the Wall became a series of secular elite settlements, discontinuous from the Late Roman activity at the forts within which they were sited, is compatible with the evidence of pollen analysis, while the alternative interpretations are both rendered unlikely by it.
This does not, of course, make the suggestion that this reoccupation represents the sub-Roman reconstruction of the Command of the Dux Britanniarum any more likely, but the pattern on which that interpretation is based has been strengthened, rather than weakened, by the new archaeological data, whilst the evidence also hints at a similar reoccupation with regard to the signal stations of the Yorkshire coast and their headquarters at Malton.
Perhaps, then, at last one is able to see answers to many of the most pressing questions regarding what happened in north Britain, and more specifically on Hadrian’s Wall, in the fifth and sixth centuries…
The answer to all of these questions may lie in the rise and fall of a reconstructed Late Roman military command, unique in Britain, which was organized in a sub-Roman fashion reliant upon the loyal warbands of warrior aristocrats (and Anglo-Saxon mercenaries) rather than paid regular soldiers. The organizing authority of this system, probably a king of the sub-Roman Brigantes, assigned a politico-military role to the defended homesteads of these elites, and (as in the location of churches at disused forts, through land-grants?) positioned these at what had been Roman fort sites, but which were (at least substantially) deserted by the time when they were reused in this way. Thus, the ‘Late Roman’ Wall communities dispersed during the first half of the fifth century, but the Wall – and perhaps the north generally – was redefended in the later fifth and early-mid sixth century on very different lines, yet not completely without regard for the Late Roman past.”
I would add only that it is my belief this ‘king’ of the sub-Roman Brigantes whom Dr. Dark proposes was none other than the dux bellorum Arthur.
If so, we only need determine where Arthur was based, and what we are to make of his father, Uther Pendragon.
Banna/Birdoswald (where St. Patrick was born) is still my favorite site, and not just because of its remarkable sub-Roman royal hall complex. I had made the following available as a summary of the significance of Banna, as written by the excavator of the site, Tony Wilmott:
There were several reasons for choosing Banna - one of which has to do with Uther Pendragon. But to link Uther to the Birdoswald Roman fort, we have to allow for an earlier meaning of his epithet.
Welsh literary scholars hold to the view that Pendragon (as Bromwich showed in a note to her Triads) meant, poetically, either the "Chief-warrior" or the "Chief of Warriors or, possibly, "Chief/Foremost Leader." This was misunderstood by Geoffrey of Monmouth as 'Dragon's head', and Bromwich links this misinterpretation to the Galfridian story of the dragon-comet.
I have suggested, however, that the dragon-star came from a line of the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN, where Uther claims to have been transformed by God, appearing 'like a cannwyll in the gloom', where W. cannwyll has the trans. sense of 'star.'
And John Koch, in his CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, says of the Pendragon epithet:
"For Geoffrey, the epithet Pendragon is ‘dragon’s head’,
an explanation of a celestial wonder by Merlin (see
Myrddin). This meaning is not impossible, but since
Welsh draig, pl. dragon < Latin drac}, dracones could also
mean ‘chieftain, military leader, hero’ (see draig goch;
dragons), Pendragon could be ‘chief of chieftains’."
What I think is lost in the discussion of Pendragon is that the word dragon itself, although it later came to be used metaphorically for a warrior or war-leader, originally designated the mythical monster of that name, and that memory of the Roman draco and continued use of some vestige of that standard up through the Middle Ages demonstrates that a title derived from the draco is not impossible. And, indeed, we know of a late Roman rank magister draconum, a man who was chief of the draco corp. Pendragon is the exact Welsh equivalent of the Roman rank.
I have thoroughly researched the Dacian draco, proving it to have been in existence as a wolf-headed, scaled serpent even before the Roman period. In contradistinction, there is absolutely zero evidence for a Sarmatian draco, although there is at least one literary reference for an Alanic one.
The Dacians were the late period garrison at Banna, and they had been there for centuries. I have made a good case for the 'draco' mentioned on the Ilam Cup being a poetic reference to the Banna fort with its Dacian garrison.
If we can establish the likelihood that the draco, ethnically speaking (as opposed to the standard becoming, well, "standard" in the Roman army), was of unique importance among the Dacians, then its veneration may have continued for some time - even after the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain. It is not inconceivable that the leader of the warriors at the Banna fort referred to their chieftain as the 'Terrible Chief-dragon.'
But even if this is so, what of Arthur, a name that is now universally recognized to derive from the Roman/Latin Artorius?
Two things. One, Banna and Castlesteads (Camboglanna) are in the Irthing Valley. The River Irthing is thought to be from a British name that means 'Little Bear.' I have proposed that the people of the Irthing Valley were the *Artenses, Bear-people, who are mentioned under the W. eponym Arthwys, a Man of the North.
Artorius/Arthur would have been seen by the British as containing their word for bear, 'arth.' We have evidence of this in the Welsh poetry. If so, then we must ask where the Artorius name would most likely have been preserved and passed down. There are three places - well, really just two.
One is the Praesidium at/hard by York (Tomlin), where there was a Dalmatian unit in garrison in the late period. York itself was the headquarters of the Sixth Legion, over which L. Artorius Castus was prefect.
Second, Carvoran on the Wall was manned in the late period by another Dalmatian unit. We have a funeral stone of a woman from Salona there. Carvoran, Roman Magnis, is the next fort on the Wall to the east after Birdoswald.
Salona has several attested Artorii, and Castus was buried at Epetium just a little to the south of Salona. Some scholars think that Castus may have been born in Dalmatia. He does appear to have had Dalmatian connections, at any rate, and he finished up his career as procurator of Liburnia, the northern part of Dalmatia. He went with the Roman governor of Britain, Statius Priscus, to fight in Armenia, commanding British legionary detachments. The war was a huge victory for Rome and Castus would have garnished considerable fame for his role in the campaign.
My "guess", therefore, is that a woman of Carvoran, of at least partial Dalmatian descent, was taken as wife by a leader at neighboring Birdoswald, the 'chief dragon' of the royal house there. They named their son Arthur, a name well-known in Dalmatia and, undoubtedly, among the Dalmatians who had served in the Roman garrison, and whose descendents lived there in the sub-Roman period.
Now, this "theory" is not perfect, nor is it new. It essentially represents the same "portrait" of Arthur I first offered at the Arthurian symposium in 2019. But of all the incarnations of theory that have come and gone for me, this one still best accounts for the Arthur story.
Yes, problems remain, and I don't think they are resolvable. The extreme northern battles do look a lot like Roman battles (under Ulpius Marcellus or Severus) or battles belonging properly to the Dalriadan Arthur a generation after the British Arthur. There is an overlap of Arthur son of Aedan's death fighting the Miathi and the Bassas battle of Arthur. I once tried to put the Caledonian Wood in the Scottish Lowlands, but this simply doesn't work.
And Badon is questionable, if only because there seems to be Welsh tradition pointing rather strongly at the Liddington Badbury (although, as I've pointed out, Badon when treated linguistically has to be Bathum). It is always possible Badon was tagged onto the Arthurian list just to make him more famous, or because he was already famous lending his name to the battle enhanced its importance.
But the other battles, and the death at Camboglanna on the Wall, do suggest a 'dux bellorum' who was mimicking the Roman dux britanniarum. He was fighting Saxons all up and down Dere Street, a sort of border at the time between British lands to the west and Saxon encroachment in the east. His power center was at Banna on Hadrian's Wall. His death at the Castlesteads fort just a little to the west of Banna may suggest that the Saxons defeated him there, taking the Irthing Valley in the process. The whole Medraut/Modred/Moderatus-as-enemy scenario is not born out by early Welsh tradition and really only comes to fore with Geoffrey of Monmouth. Thus it is often been said by scholars that for all we know Moderatus may have been fighting with Arthur against the enemy, rather than against the great British champion. It is clear that like Arthur, Moderatus is a Roman name. He most certainly was not a Saxon, Pict or Irishman. Yes, Camlan may have been an internecine struggle, with Arthur dealing with a rebellion on his flank. Perhaps Moderatus was the chieftain at Camboglanna. Welsh tradition, in rendering Geoffrey into their own language, has Medraut descend from the Rheged royal house, which originated in Annandale, but later expanded into Cumbria.
I'm not sure that I would so push the Banna argument as to link Arthur with Ceidio son of Arthwys, who may well have been present at Birdoswald. The name is, beyond doubt, a hypocorism for a fuller Cad- name, and 'Battle-leader' are among the top contenders. While it is not impossible for Celtic peoples to display both a Celtic and a Latin name, we only need Arthur's military activities to account for his dux erat bellorum description. In other words, we need not have a name meaning "Battle-leader" to apply to him. Still, if Arthur belongs at Birdoswald, and so does Ceidio, and both men have roughly the same floruit (which they do; see Bartrum), and Arthur and Arthwys were associated with 'arth', then the coincidence is intriguing. Maybe not quite compelling.
That, my readers, is the absolute best I can do for Arthur. It may be totally wrong - something I want everyone to keep in mind. But it does make sense, and I think it works historically, archaeologically, etc. If nothing else, it's a nice picture of a man who did his best to keep his part of Britain British and free from the Germanic barbarians. We know the North held out much longer than the south and that kings after Arthur (Urien of Rheged, Rhydderch Hen of Strathclyde, Gwallawg of Elmet and Morgan of the Tyne Gap) fought against the English, at least according to the HISTORIA BRITTONUM.
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