NO GOING BACK AFTER THE ARM.GENTES READING FOR THE CASTUS STONE

     Arthurian Battles (Minus Badon)

                       Castus Stone

So, I've spent the last few days going over my past theoretical work on a northern, sub-Roman British Arthur.  I took that and cross-compared it with the four proposed readings for the ARM[...]S lacuna of the L. Artorius Castus memorial inscription.

The result?

Let's start by listing the four proposed readings for ARM[...]S:

1) ARMATOS. Proposed by Dr. Linda A. Malcor and colleagues. Not deemed acceptable by the academic community for the various reasons I have discussed before at length.

2) ARMENIOS. A strong contender in terms of space fit on the stone and possible historical context. Unfortunately, the best recent scholastic opinion on the date of the Castus stone (Severan) cannot be squared with the Antonine Armenian War.

3) ARMORICOS. I was the first to show that this could fit in the lacuna. Still, a c nested in o is not matched by a side-ligatured c/o in the same inscription and the Deserters' War under Commodus cannot be equated with an unrecorded Armorican rebellion.  Still, had Castus fought in the Deserters' War, his stone could have been set up at the beginning of the Severan period (193 A. D.).

4) ARM.GENTES. For 'armed tribes', this would be a reference to the Severan campaigns in northern Britain. The date of the stone, recorded historical events and the Arthurian battles (excluding Badon) all match each other marvelously well.

I would add the obvious here again: Castus' Sixth Legion was a northward oriented unit. Its primary responsibility was defense of the northern frontier. Thus the most logical place for a prefect of the Sixth to lead legionary troops was to the north. York, headquarters of the Sixth, was the command center of Severus during his northern campaigns.

In the past, determining a solid candidate for a sub-Roman British Arthur was dependent on his being the most famous man of that name in Britain prior to his later namesakes in Dalriada and Dyfed. But as the battles were in the north, it also made sense to wonder if the name might have come from L. Artorius Castus.

We could accomplish this by employing lacuna readings 2 or 3. These readings suggested a prefect of the Sixth who had led legionary troops on a mission outside the province. While neither a Castus who went to Armenia nor one who went to Armorica was doing anything significant in Britain, if he went to the former place his name might have been remembered among the Dalmatian troops at Carvoran or York. If we went to the latter place, he might have employed Sarmatian auxiliary  troops while in Britain and have been remembered at Ribchester.

I built theories on both of those possibilities. Neither of them worked because I always had to divvy up the battles, allowing a Dark Age Arthur at Ribchester, York or on Hadrian's Wall to have some of the battles, while allowing the more northerly conflicts to belong to the later Arthur of Dalriada or to Castus as a folklore "ghost." Buxton as Badon was an outlier and I did my best to make a case for it. Ultimately, I had to admit to myself that Arthur's name was probably attached to Badon in folk legend and that the latter did not properly belong to the Arthurian battle list.

Camlan as Camboglanna on Hadrian's Wall was no problem for a Dark Age Arthur based in northern England. It was a problem for Castus, who died in Dalmatia. Until, that is, more research revealed that had Castus served under Severus then he might well have fought at Castlesteads and/or engaged in the rebuilding of the fort there. Perhaps a Moderatus ( = Medraut) who had some connection to Castus fell at Camboglanna. As the Dark Age Arthur needed a death story, the site was chosen to serve that purpose. Camboglanna's proximity to the "Avalon" fort at Burgh By Sands may well have had something to do with this.

It therefore seems to me that the ARM.GENTES reading changes everything. When going over studies or discussing those studies with their highly reputable authors, the message from the standpoint of both the Armenia and Armorica readings for the Castus lacuna was that a Roman officer of the 2nd century who had done nothing notable in Britain could not possibly form the kernel of Arthurian legend. 

Nicholas Higham went so far as to say it would be a mistake to assign the battles to a Dark Age war-leader. To him, they looked like something belonging to a Roman general.

But when faced with ARM.GENTES and a Castus leading legions north against various tribes in the largest and most destructive invasion the Romans had ever undertaken in the province, a curious kind of cognitive dysfunction was displayed. For when presented with an Artorius who could very well have become a legendary figure in the North, and battles that seemed decidedly Severan in nature, every single one of the scholars did one of two things: they either shut off completely or they repeated yet again the same tired, worn-out refrain they'd been offering for years. 

I choose to take those negative reactions as a sign that I'm definitely onto something.

And unless someone provides me with a reason to think otherwise, I'll  be sticking with my final Arthur = L. Artorius Castus theory.