THE 'M' OF THE L. ARTORIUS CASTUS INSCRIPTION: A NOTE ON A FUTURE APPROACH

https://lupa.at/24235?query=1824236709

https://christophergwinn.com/arthuriana/lac-sourcebook/

Among the few Arthurian who care about the original reading of the L. Artorius Castus stone, the argument rages on as to whether the /M/ of the ARM[...]S lacuna was or was not ligatured to an /E/. 

The argument for ARMENIOS as a proper reading for the lacuna is currently preferred by some top epigraphers. While it is not necessary to have a ME ligature to allow for ARMENIOS, the alternative - an NI ligature - is not elsewhere evinced on the stone.

But, then, neither is an ME.

Of the 12 Ms on the stone (2 of which are partially or mostly reconstructed in other lacunae), none exhibit ligatures. The 2 reconstructed Ms do not require ligatures for the words of which they are presumed to be a component.

At present, I'm attempting to sponsor an attempt in Croatia to subject the problematic /M/ of the ARM[...]S lacuna to special high-tech imaging. While there is no guarantee such imaging (assuming it can even be arranged!) will reveal anything, there is at least the remote possibility that we might pick up something important that is not visible to the naked eye.

If images of this nature do produce positive results, I will publish those here. My wildest hope, of course, is that we might finally be able to determine whether it is likely the M was, in fact, ligatured. If it was, well, the proposed ARMENIOS reading is pretty much assured to be correct. If not, then my ARM.GENTES remains a valid contender.

I consider this my parting gift to the Arthurian Community.

THE PROBLEM OF THE M/E LIGATURE IN THE HISTORICAL RECORDS

It is fairly well-known that the only early scholar to record an M/E ligature for the Castus ARM[...]S lacuna was Francesco Carrara. But his reading is so replete with errors that we must wonder what he was really looking at. Was the inscription at the time encrusted over with compressed dirt or crushed rock?

The next authority to record the inscription, Theodore Mommsen, did not observe a M/E ligature and his rendering is much more accurate

https://books.google.com/books?id=XtLqUJEa-DIC&pg=PA303&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false:

Following Mommsen, we had Frane Bulik

https://books.google.com/books?id=fWBLAAAAMAAJ&q=166#v=snippet&q=166&f=false:

My own feeling is that Carrara cannot be given much credence, given that descriptions of the inscription not long after his time are much better and suggest no hint of a M/E ligature.

This assessment is buttressed by my following brief analysis of the errors in the Carrara reading. I'm using the following reconstruction of the stone from Christopher Gwinn for comparison:

Line 1

LATRORIS

A /RT/ transposition to /TR/, which can only be due to carelessness. V omitted (because obscured?). A presently nonexistent S supplied. Did Carrara here assume the personal name must end in an S and so added the letter for this reason alone?

Line 2

Correct.

Line 3

After ligatured AD for abbreviation ADIVT, the now missing I is supplied, but it is followed by an incorrect L. 

Line 4

His first E should be a TE ligature, and the following TE ligature should be just an E. This looks like a sort of dyslexic transposition.

Line 5

The final M exists only partially on the stone now.

Line 6

The second G of LEGG is separated from the abbreviation and recognized wrongly as a C.  This error could have been caused both by Carrara not being able to clearly make out the second G and by his thinking such a reading as LEGG could not be correct in the context.

Line 7

The ligatured ME appears. 

Line 8

The L of LI is missing, unless the L was partially obscured and the I entirely obscured. 

Line 9

Essentially correct, but with separation spacing issues.

What's most important there are the line ending errors - 4 in all. NOT COUNTING THE SUPPOSED ME LIGATURE OF LINE 7.

In my opinion, Carrara thought he saw the remnant of a ligatured E in the stone break edge at M. And so he inserted the E into his reading of the line ending. If so, the presence of the E is based upon supposition only, not on direct visual evidence.

MY FINAL POST ON THE MISTSHADOWS BLOG

The Lucius Artorius Castus Memorial Stone with 'GENTES' Reconstruction

During recent private conversations with Richard Johnson of the YouTube Channel O'R GOLWG

(https://www.youtube.com/@orgolwg), I've systematically gone through all my old attempts to identify a Dark Age British Arthur in the North.  In each and every case I've concluded that I was right to abandon past theories and that I have failed to produce a viable candidate.

I'm herewith formally abjuring all three of the chief candidates: an Arthur son of Sawyl Benisel, an Arthur placed at Stanwix on the western end of Hadrian's Wall and an Arthur son of Eliffer (who was perhaps a king at York).

The faults of the theory which sought to identify Uther Pendragon with Sawyl Benisel have been detailed in recent blog posts and I don't need to repeat those here.  The Arthur at Stanwix relies upon a very late local folk tradition and thus must be discounted.  Other factors in favor of it (see, for example, 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/01/stones-and-horses-on-reaching-final.html) 

rely upon extremely tenuous associations (one of which can just as easily be applied to the eques L. Artorius Castus).  Uther himself looks to be a creation, conjured from the 'terrible warrior' of the Irish Compert Mongan.  Or the name was invented because something with good poetic assonance was needed for a chieftain whose father was otherwise unknown. Arthur Penuchel son of Eliffer is a corrupt reading for Ardun Pen Askell.  But even if Arthur Penuchel is to be preferred (perhaps as the original form of the name, or as a substitution of another genuine traditional name), his chronology does not allow us to idenity him with the Arthur of the Annales Cambriae.  The latter Arthur fought at Badon in 516 (actually closer to 490-500, given the date of Badon according to Gildas) and died in 537, while his supposed brothers Gwrgi and Peredur died fighting at Carrawburgh in 580.  So even if we accept 537 as the correct date for Camlan, an Arthur Penuchel is dying 43 years before his brothers.  

I'm left then, with this honest confession: if there were an actual Dark Age British Arthur in the North (and the battle sites demand that he be put in the North) I have not been able to find him.  

As per my talk on L. Artorius Castus on O'R GOLWG 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICS0cyB8bqg), the only attested historical Arthur in the North was an early 3rd century Roman legionary prefect at York.  I still like my proposed reading of ARM.GENTES for the famous lacuna in his memorial text, but am okay with the more traditional ARMENIOS.  If the former, Castus took part in the major invasion of Northern Britain under Septimius Severus. If the latter, Castus was active in Britain during a period of major turmoil in the North that involved losing the Antonine Wall and withdrawing to Hadrian's.  Either scenario supports the notion that Castus could have become a legendary figure in the North, although it is far more difficult to account for such happening if he, in fact, led legionary detachments in Armenia, rather than in Britain. 

Historians and archaelogists, who have not benefited from a good knowledge of other disciplines such as folklore and mythology, are united in their belief that a late 2nd or early 3rd century Roman commander could not possibly be the prototypical Arthur.  This despite the fact that our hero appears in the Historia Brittonum with a Herculean 12 battles and already displays a mythical status by the time he shows up in the Mirabilia and early Welsh heroic poetry.  

For an argument against the recalcitrance that has coelesced around Castus as Arthur I would point to the Greek Herakles.  Herodotus, whose floruit was c. 484-425 B.C.E., dated Herakles to approximately 1300-1250 B.C.E.  That is a gap of some 800 years (give or take several in either direction of either date).  Despite the heavy mythologization of Herakles, the Greeks very much believed he had been a real historical entity. 

In the case of Castus, from the early 3rd century to the 8th or 9th century (the date of the HB), we have around 600 years. But if we measure to the supposed dates of Arthur - which are the first half of the 6th century - we are talking about only a few centuries. The GODODDIN, which contains our earliest reference to Arthur (assuming this is not a later interpolation), has been traced back by John  Koch to a 6th century original text. 

Thus there is no difficulty in allowing for a mythologized British figure of the early 3rd century being utilized first by Irish who were establishing kingdoms in Scotland and southwestern Wales and who were being assimilated by native culture, and then for Nennius's employment of the same character for the usual propagandist reasons.  The AC Arthurian entries, written a century or more after the HB, merely inserted Camlan (either a reference to a legendary Castus battle on Hadrian's Wall or a record of the death of Arthur son of Pedr of Dyfed at the Afon Gamlan in Merionethshire) and accepted the fiction of an Arthur at Badon.  

Of course, I keep coming back to the other battles - the ones which I am pretty confident were in the North, with some in the far North.  I cannot reconcile these locations with a Dark Age Arthur, and neither can the experts (Roman Britain and sub-Roman Britain historians and archaelogists).  The battles look Roman and point to only one man: L. Artorius Castus.

THE NONVIABILITY OF THE UTHER REFERENCES IN THE 'PA GUR' AND 'CULHWCH AC OLWEN' (with a note on my last Dark Age Arthur candidate)

In one of my most recent blog articles (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/09/as-i-transition-away-from-arthur-to.html?m=1) I said the following:

"The probable death-knell for Uther as Sawyl concerns my attempt to etymologize Uther's grandson Eliwlad as an Irish compound composed of aile + flaith. No such compound exists, and a search of Irish records failed to produce a single example of aile flaith. An ala flaith in the eDIL means 'another lord', and flaith aile is found in the Brehon laws.

It's also not impossible that the whole Uther = Illtud identification may be due to the PA GUR poet's TOTALLY FANCIFUL association of Uther with Illtud. In other words, originally Uther was not Illtud at all, but someone else."

The second paragraph there deserves a more thorough treatment.

What made me rethink the identification of Uther with Illtud  - something that seems to be implied in the PA GUR - is the very nature of the PA GUR itself.  My work on places mentioned in the poem showed that it could not possibly be as early a composition as is sometimes claimed. 

Why is this so?

Because there were Cymracized forms of both Gaelic and English place-names present.

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-pa-gur-battle-sites-revision.html?m=1

As this was the case, and given that purely folkloristic or mythological motifs are also manifest, it seemed more reasonable to suggest that the author of the poem had chosen to identify Uther Pendragon with the Latin military titles belonging to St. Illtud than it did to assume that Uther Pendragon - a perfectly acceptable Welsh name + epithet formula - was a native rendering of those titles that indicated actual identification of the two figures. And that once he had made his false association of Uther with Illtud he put the former's servant Mabon in the Ely Valley, a river region that dominates the center of Penychen where Illtud served as Master of the Soldiers under Pawl. A claim that Uther's servant was the youthful Sun God does not lend credence to the PA GUR account.

The same kind of unreliable localization of Uther occurs in CULHWCH AC OLWEN, where we are told the kin of Arthur's father are at Caer Dathal. As I've shown that Caer Dathal = Dinas Emrys, the Fort of Ambrosius, it is obvious that Ambrosius' brother Uther should be linked to the place. While CULHWCH AC OLWEN is considered pre-Galfridian, it is possible that elements of Galfridian tradition crept into the text during later copying. Or, as I've theorized before, the Terrible Chief- warrior of Dinas Emrys/Caer Dathal has his origin in Emrys himself, who was made lord of Dinas Emrys of the Red Dragon and in whom (as we are told in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM) Vortigern lived in dread. 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-creation-of-uther-pendragon-two.html?m=1

None of these Welsh sources, it seems to me, are valuable as historical documents. While I've often tried to find encoded history within them, I must confess to having been occasionally clever and to have concocted some compelling theory -  but to have never succeeded in convincing myself or others of the validity of such ideas.

A NOTE ON THE LAST POSSIBLE BASTION OF A NORTHERN DARK AGE ARTHUR

Have I abandoned all belief in a Northern Dark Age Arthur?

Pretty much.

While I cannot confirm a true genealogical trace (as I was trying to do with Uther = Sawyl Benisel), the location of the HB and AC battles and associated locations (like the 'Avalon' that is Burgh-By-Sands), coupled with an admittedly late tradition placing Arthur at the Stanwix Roman cavalry fort (Uxellodunum/Petriana), as well as that placement's possible significance to the horse cultures of Dalriada and Dyfed, once lead me to accept the possibility our hero could have been based on the west end of Hadrian's Wall.

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-northern-battles-of-arthur-with-no.html?m=1

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/01/stones-and-horses-on-reaching-final.html?m=1

And that really is the best that I can offer. 

But the book I had out there on a 5th-6th century Arthur based at Stanwix has been unpublished. It just feels safe and, indeed, wiser, to go with the historically attested L. Artorius Castus as the prototypical Arthur. 

Sure, it may be that a Dark Age battle-leader existed, a descendant of members of the Ala Petriana, the largest cavalry group in all of Britain whose fort was the command center of the Wall. But the concept is wholly an imaginary construct, with no supportive evidence other than extremely late local tradition and arguments (like the equine correspondence) that can better be applied to the undeniably historical early 3rd century Roman prefect.

My New YouTube Talk on Myrddin/Merlin at O'R GOLWG

https://youtu.be/oQ6a8VFQJvY?si=q4ZjUorhhcEnBFKF