I've been attempting to produce a viable historical Arthur theory for the better part of three decades. Over that span of time, I came up with a handful of decent arguments. My Arthurian candidates, in order, were as follows:
1) Cadwaladr son of Meirion
2) Arthur son of Illtud
3) Arthur son of Sawyl Benisel
4) Ceidio son of Arthwys
5) Ceredig son of Cunedda ( = Cerdic of the Gewissei)
2) Arthur son of Illtud
3) Arthur son of Sawyl Benisel
4) Ceidio son of Arthwys
5) Ceredig son of Cunedda ( = Cerdic of the Gewissei)
The same period of intensive (and obsessive!) research saw the tentative offering of numerous personages for the "true identity" of Uther Pendragon, the only father known for the 6th century hero. For one reason or another, none of these prospective chieftains panned out. In each case it was assumed Uther Pendragon, the Terrible Chief-warrior, was a poetic title for someone else. If we insist instead on seeing it as a genuine name + epithet, we are doomed to remaining permanently dependent on the bogus pedigree supplied to us by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
And, in my opinion, that is quite unsatisfactory. We could, of course, accept name + epithet, but admit to ourselves that we simply don't know Uther's actual line of descent. That may, alas, actually be the truth of the matter. Or, worse yet, Uther - whoever he was - may not have been Arthur's father at all. The name of Arthur's real father may have been unknown.
I have been accused of being "wishy-washy" precisely because I have not settled on a single historical Arthurian candidate. I go "back and forth", and offer one theory one day and another the next. Well, to a degree, this is a legitimate criticism. We all like consistency, and we all want the final, incontrovertible, immutable truth to be revealed to us. We are understandably disappointed, irritated and frustrated when it is not.
Nowadays, though, research materials are available to us electronically. We can also communicate almost instantaneously with colleagues all around the world. What this means is that a ton of information is coming in all the time. Such a bounty of new facts and the latest educated opinions naturally brings about necessary - or desirable - and nearly constant revision.
Any revisions that I do involve ongoing research and, if I'm lucky, produce new and sometimes valuable findings. Recently, I delivered a paper at the Second International Symposium on Lucius Artorius Castus in Croatia. Presentations there did make me reconsider certain facets of my Arthurian theory. This is the way scholarship is supposed to work. Those who remain moribund in their ego-driven thinking do a great disservice to the community. Those who set about to disparage new theory for no other reason than that they refuse to relinquish what is unremarkable and inconclusive, but safe, do real damage to the pursuit of intellectual honesty.
One of the problems with old-style conventional publishing is that once a book is in print, that's the way it's going to be. Probably forever. The new electronic publishing allows the authors to refine their material and to make sure it is accurate and up to date. Things most readers appreciate. That more copies may occasionally have to be purchased is a fair price to pay, in my opinion, by anyone who is really after the "latest and greatest." Or those who are reluctant to buy books can do what many other people do: they can subscribe to journals. Better yet, they may access blog sites, which are free. And even get real-time updates on new blog posts via Facebook. I offer my readers both of the latter options, as these may be more satisfactory for some.
I have been accused of being "wishy-washy" precisely because I have not settled on a single historical Arthurian candidate. I go "back and forth", and offer one theory one day and another the next. Well, to a degree, this is a legitimate criticism. We all like consistency, and we all want the final, incontrovertible, immutable truth to be revealed to us. We are understandably disappointed, irritated and frustrated when it is not.
Nowadays, though, research materials are available to us electronically. We can also communicate almost instantaneously with colleagues all around the world. What this means is that a ton of information is coming in all the time. Such a bounty of new facts and the latest educated opinions naturally brings about necessary - or desirable - and nearly constant revision.
Any revisions that I do involve ongoing research and, if I'm lucky, produce new and sometimes valuable findings. Recently, I delivered a paper at the Second International Symposium on Lucius Artorius Castus in Croatia. Presentations there did make me reconsider certain facets of my Arthurian theory. This is the way scholarship is supposed to work. Those who remain moribund in their ego-driven thinking do a great disservice to the community. Those who set about to disparage new theory for no other reason than that they refuse to relinquish what is unremarkable and inconclusive, but safe, do real damage to the pursuit of intellectual honesty.
One of the problems with old-style conventional publishing is that once a book is in print, that's the way it's going to be. Probably forever. The new electronic publishing allows the authors to refine their material and to make sure it is accurate and up to date. Things most readers appreciate. That more copies may occasionally have to be purchased is a fair price to pay, in my opinion, by anyone who is really after the "latest and greatest." Or those who are reluctant to buy books can do what many other people do: they can subscribe to journals. Better yet, they may access blog sites, which are free. And even get real-time updates on new blog posts via Facebook. I offer my readers both of the latter options, as these may be more satisfactory for some.
But can I do even better? Can I settle, once and for all, on a single Arthurian candidate?
I believe so.
I have above alluded to the Second International Symposium on LAC. During that event, a paper was presented by Dr. Linda Malcor proposing a new reading for the LAC memorial inscription (see Linda A. Malcor, Antonio Trinchese, Alessandro Faggiani. 2019. "Missing Pieces: A New Reading of the Main Lucius Artorius Castus Inscription" Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 47, no 3 & 4 Fall/Winter. pp. 415-437). [1] The reading allows not only for LAC's using three British legions against enemy forces within Britain, but for his close association with the Sarmatians sent there in 175 A.D. For he was with the V Macedonica legion when it defeated the Sarmatians and the result of this defeat involved sending 5,500 of these steppe cavalrymen to Britain.
Having subjected the proposed new reading of the LAC stone to the usual critical testing, I can now say, without reservation, that I personally vouch for its validity.
Now, this does NOT mean that we are free to paint everything Arthurian with a Sarmatian brush! In the words of Professor Stefen Zimmer (personal communication):
"The whole story of the red Welsh Dragon (and its mischievous counterpart), including the epithed 'Uther Pendragon', may well be based on post-Roman misunderstandings of reminiscences of the Roman, originally perhaps Sarmatian, standard. But one should not overstress the Sarmatian-Alanian theory in discussing Arthurian matters. In case you read German, you may have seen what I wrote about in 'Die keltischen Wurzeln der Arthussage' (Winter: Heidelberg 2000)."
For all manner of traditional material from numerous sources went into the composing of the Arthurian legend - as did a large measure of poetic license on the part of international story-tellers throughout the centuries. Migrating folk motifs are often difficult to disentangle from purely native ones, and the specter of archetypes constantly comes into play. Is an element imported or was it developed independently? Or did one influence the other in a subtle or substantial way? This is territory upon which academics often fear to tread. And with good reason.
Have I myself been guilty of a subconscious Celto-centric bias? Probably. After all, Celtic culture as it pertains to all things Arthurian is one of my areas of specialization. In addition, although I have had to delve into the murky and dangerous depths of folklore on many occasions, I am not by training or profession a folklorist. I tend to look for patterns that others have not perceived and rely to a considerable extent on unique comparative analyses of sources. Recently, Professor Roger Tomlin, a notable epigrapher, has congratulated me on my "enviable ability to look at problems sideways." This method has yielded good results in the past. But it does not always help me to avoid pitfalls and dead-ends. If one continues to go out on the proverbial limb, that limb will inevitably break.
Still, given what I'm convinced I have discovered regarding a 6th century Arthur in Northern Britain, I would hope that my readers will keep an open-mind. This "discovery" is composed of a rather simple analysis of a portion of a pre-Galfridian pedigree for Arthur. Essentially, it predicates that the Eliwlad son of Madog son of Uther Pendragon is a sort of calque or dim folk memory for the Ailithir epithet belonging to Madog son of Sawyl Benisel (or Benuchel) of Sarmatian Ribchester. For a few of the important posts on this subject, please see the following links:
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/eliwlad-flies-again-or-is-there-still.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-fairly-radical-revision-of-my-earlier.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/gorlassar-kawell-and-kawyl-was-uthers.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/01/condensed-argument-for-eliwlad-son-of.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-strongest-linguistic-argument-for.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/03/ribchester-along-line-of-wall-and.html
I long resisted committing to this theory precisely because I felt I possessed no good independent evidence in support of it. But with the advent of the paper by Dr. Linda Malcor and her colleagues, I now feel confident that a sound, supportive argument has appeared.
This means that I can finally seriously propose that the reason the name Arthur was passed down through the generations at Ribchester to the 6th century hero is because the 2nd century Lucius Artorius Castus had made himself famous among the Sarmatians in Britain.
Adhering to Arthur as a son of Sawyl also permits me to retain all the Northern battles I so painstakingly labored over a decade to identity. The proximity of Ribchester to Badon ( = Buxton) is especially intriguing.
My Northern Arthur was a man I had previously been satisfied to place in the Irthing Valley of the *Artenses or 'People of the Bear'. But my identification of this man with Ceidio son of Arthwys could not be rooted in any extant genealogical trace - and that remained a major problem for me. An Arthur born at Ribchester could still have operated in the same area, and may even have risen to a high position there as a military leader.
So what to do about my Southern Arthur, Ceredig son of the Irish chieftain Cunedda? Having just revised my book THE BEAR KING: THE IRISH IN WALES AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND, I must at least briefly discuss why I think abandoning Ceredig as an Arthurian candidate is justified.
While there is little doubt the Arthur of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM occupies the same floruit as Ceredig/Cerdic of the Gewissei, identifying the two men is not our only option. Firstly, Cunedda is nowhere said to have had a son named Madog. Secondly, Cunedda was very celebrated in Welsh tradition. The dynasty of Gwynedd traced their descent to him and his sons with great pride. Why, then, create a title like Uther Pendragon for him? And then forget, somewhere along the line, that Uther was Cunedda? When we compare the Taliesin elegies on Cunedda and Uther we find no similarities (despite the fact that the one for Cunedda is built upon the false tradition that he came from Manau Gododdin in extreme Northern Britain, rather than from Drumanagh in Ireland). Geoffrey of Monmouth, though utterly unreliable as a historian, does bizarrely opt for the draco standard to account for the epithet Pendragon, even though he knew about the dragons of Dinas Emrys (which do not owe their origin to the draco).
We could, perhaps, explain the use of Uther for Cunedda as a means of accounting for the English insistence that Cerdic was not fighting for the Britons, but against them. In other words, for the Welsh to claim Cerdic as their own champion against the English, it was necessary to either change his name to Arthur or use Arthur because it was not commonly known or had, for the most part, been forgotten. If this were done, then, obviously, his father's name would also need to be concealed. Enter Uther Pendragon. None of this is impossible. The problem is that accepting such a paradigm would mean that Arthur is, demonstrably, a fake. A propagandist creation, in a matter of speaking.
The battles of Arthur as found in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM can be construed as Welsh translations of the English place-names found in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. But we can only do so if we allow for some mistranslations, as well as for the inclusion of battles which did not belong to Cerdic and instead are assigned in the ASC to other members of the Gewissei.
We don't have to go through any of these contortions with a Northern Arthur based at Ribchester. And, just as importantly, we don't have to subscribe to a scenario in which Arthur is a re-rendering of Cerdic, a war-leader who fought alongside the Saxons during the establishment of the nucleus of the kingdom of Wessex.
The name Artorius itself is also significant in the context of the Ceredig vs. Arthur son of Sawyl debate. For while the name is just fine as it is in the North, and especially at Ribchester, in the case of Cunedda's son we have to propose it as a decknamen for what originally would have been an Irish or British 'bear-king' name or title. And that earlier form Artri or Arthri does not exist in any of our sources.
All in all, then, while I still hold to my identification of the Gewissei with Irish or Hiberno-British "federates" centered in northwestern Wales, I can no longer promote the idea that Ceredig/Cerdic of that group was Arthur. Instead, Arthur was put forward as a British champion in the North, a natural foil to his contemporary in the South, Cerdic of Wessex.
[1]
There are still some sticking points in the proposed new reading of the LAC memorial stone's inscription. Most are not a big deal, but all come from reservations aired to me privately by a half dozen expert epigraphers. We need to resolve these in such a way as to satisfy the requirements of academic scrutiny.
1) Everyone seems to naturally default to detachments from the three legions, even if the text says literally three legions. It would not be to our advantage to follow suit. Three whole legions – the entire British garrison – would never have been removed from the province. Thus is we take the text as it is written, the three legions could only have been used INSIDE THE PROVINCE.
Roger Tomlin has told me that
"Within Britain is possible (say, to suppress a revolt in an emergency), but they would not be whole legions: this would be a major mobilization directed by the provincial governor, and would imply a major campaign like those of Agricola and Severus. 'dux' is used of a special command involving detachments from more than one legion, usually in an expeditionary force to another province. Quite often the legions are specified. You will have to trawl through the 'dux' inscriptions if you want to spell this all out, but you will find a selection in von Domaszewski's Rangordnung, p. 183."
2) 'ARMATOS' is considered much too unspecific, and there are inscriptions referring to the suppression of internal revolt, the language used being 'adversus rebelles', 'adversus defectores', 'adversus hostes publicos'. For example Dessau ILS 1140, Claudius Candidus, who was 'duci ... adversus rebelles'. Thus what the LAC stone says here would be a one-off with no precedents. That is genuinely worrisome.
3) The career of Valerius Maximianus shows that Marcus Aurelius was prepared to promote capable equestrians to senatorial commands, and we might argue this was always the case. It became a scandal with Perennis and Commodus, but there is no real difficulty in supposing that Artorius Castus enjoyed a similar career.
4) It is not true that high-status inscriptions did not contain stonecutters' mistakes: consider their transcription of 'Legion III Galicae' and Velius Salvus as 'procuatori provinciae Raetiae'. 'ius gladii', for example, on the LAC inscription should be ablative 'iure gladii' (according to Roger Tomlin).
5) A final, very important comment from Roger Tomlin regarding LAC's procuratorship in Liburnia:
"So far as I know, he was the only procurator of Dalmatia who was responsible for a particular area (Liburnia) with the powers of a provincial governor ('iure gladii'). You might check in Wilkes' Dalmatia. Dalmatia was governed by a senatorial legate, and any senatorial province contained a semi-independent procurator (since he was directly responsible to the Emperor), but Castus' post, which anticipates 3rd-century equestrian governor, would have directly infringed the governor's prerogatives.
I would have expected him to be acting-governor of Dalmatia, not of Liburnia. And senatorial legates are replaced in emergency by the next-most senior senator as 'pro legato' – a legionary legate (but Dalmatia no longer has them), or the quaestor, or a 'comes' (staff officer). Failing that, the procurator 'agens vice legati', but he would be appointed by the Emperor.
I can only guess that a special situation had arisen on the coast of Dalmatia, requiring close supervision by what was virtually a deputy governor. He would be reducing the senatorial governor's sphere of responsibility, which would likely be resented; and this is an attractive argument for the Perennis / Commodus date."
I believe so.
I have above alluded to the Second International Symposium on LAC. During that event, a paper was presented by Dr. Linda Malcor proposing a new reading for the LAC memorial inscription (see Linda A. Malcor, Antonio Trinchese, Alessandro Faggiani. 2019. "Missing Pieces: A New Reading of the Main Lucius Artorius Castus Inscription" Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 47, no 3 & 4 Fall/Winter. pp. 415-437). [1] The reading allows not only for LAC's using three British legions against enemy forces within Britain, but for his close association with the Sarmatians sent there in 175 A.D. For he was with the V Macedonica legion when it defeated the Sarmatians and the result of this defeat involved sending 5,500 of these steppe cavalrymen to Britain.
Having subjected the proposed new reading of the LAC stone to the usual critical testing, I can now say, without reservation, that I personally vouch for its validity.
Now, this does NOT mean that we are free to paint everything Arthurian with a Sarmatian brush! In the words of Professor Stefen Zimmer (personal communication):
"The whole story of the red Welsh Dragon (and its mischievous counterpart), including the epithed 'Uther Pendragon', may well be based on post-Roman misunderstandings of reminiscences of the Roman, originally perhaps Sarmatian, standard. But one should not overstress the Sarmatian-Alanian theory in discussing Arthurian matters. In case you read German, you may have seen what I wrote about in 'Die keltischen Wurzeln der Arthussage' (Winter: Heidelberg 2000)."
For all manner of traditional material from numerous sources went into the composing of the Arthurian legend - as did a large measure of poetic license on the part of international story-tellers throughout the centuries. Migrating folk motifs are often difficult to disentangle from purely native ones, and the specter of archetypes constantly comes into play. Is an element imported or was it developed independently? Or did one influence the other in a subtle or substantial way? This is territory upon which academics often fear to tread. And with good reason.
Have I myself been guilty of a subconscious Celto-centric bias? Probably. After all, Celtic culture as it pertains to all things Arthurian is one of my areas of specialization. In addition, although I have had to delve into the murky and dangerous depths of folklore on many occasions, I am not by training or profession a folklorist. I tend to look for patterns that others have not perceived and rely to a considerable extent on unique comparative analyses of sources. Recently, Professor Roger Tomlin, a notable epigrapher, has congratulated me on my "enviable ability to look at problems sideways." This method has yielded good results in the past. But it does not always help me to avoid pitfalls and dead-ends. If one continues to go out on the proverbial limb, that limb will inevitably break.
Still, given what I'm convinced I have discovered regarding a 6th century Arthur in Northern Britain, I would hope that my readers will keep an open-mind. This "discovery" is composed of a rather simple analysis of a portion of a pre-Galfridian pedigree for Arthur. Essentially, it predicates that the Eliwlad son of Madog son of Uther Pendragon is a sort of calque or dim folk memory for the Ailithir epithet belonging to Madog son of Sawyl Benisel (or Benuchel) of Sarmatian Ribchester. For a few of the important posts on this subject, please see the following links:
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/eliwlad-flies-again-or-is-there-still.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-fairly-radical-revision-of-my-earlier.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/gorlassar-kawell-and-kawyl-was-uthers.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/01/condensed-argument-for-eliwlad-son-of.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-strongest-linguistic-argument-for.html
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/03/ribchester-along-line-of-wall-and.html
I long resisted committing to this theory precisely because I felt I possessed no good independent evidence in support of it. But with the advent of the paper by Dr. Linda Malcor and her colleagues, I now feel confident that a sound, supportive argument has appeared.
This means that I can finally seriously propose that the reason the name Arthur was passed down through the generations at Ribchester to the 6th century hero is because the 2nd century Lucius Artorius Castus had made himself famous among the Sarmatians in Britain.
Adhering to Arthur as a son of Sawyl also permits me to retain all the Northern battles I so painstakingly labored over a decade to identity. The proximity of Ribchester to Badon ( = Buxton) is especially intriguing.
My Northern Arthur was a man I had previously been satisfied to place in the Irthing Valley of the *Artenses or 'People of the Bear'. But my identification of this man with Ceidio son of Arthwys could not be rooted in any extant genealogical trace - and that remained a major problem for me. An Arthur born at Ribchester could still have operated in the same area, and may even have risen to a high position there as a military leader.
So what to do about my Southern Arthur, Ceredig son of the Irish chieftain Cunedda? Having just revised my book THE BEAR KING: THE IRISH IN WALES AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND, I must at least briefly discuss why I think abandoning Ceredig as an Arthurian candidate is justified.
While there is little doubt the Arthur of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM occupies the same floruit as Ceredig/Cerdic of the Gewissei, identifying the two men is not our only option. Firstly, Cunedda is nowhere said to have had a son named Madog. Secondly, Cunedda was very celebrated in Welsh tradition. The dynasty of Gwynedd traced their descent to him and his sons with great pride. Why, then, create a title like Uther Pendragon for him? And then forget, somewhere along the line, that Uther was Cunedda? When we compare the Taliesin elegies on Cunedda and Uther we find no similarities (despite the fact that the one for Cunedda is built upon the false tradition that he came from Manau Gododdin in extreme Northern Britain, rather than from Drumanagh in Ireland). Geoffrey of Monmouth, though utterly unreliable as a historian, does bizarrely opt for the draco standard to account for the epithet Pendragon, even though he knew about the dragons of Dinas Emrys (which do not owe their origin to the draco).
We could, perhaps, explain the use of Uther for Cunedda as a means of accounting for the English insistence that Cerdic was not fighting for the Britons, but against them. In other words, for the Welsh to claim Cerdic as their own champion against the English, it was necessary to either change his name to Arthur or use Arthur because it was not commonly known or had, for the most part, been forgotten. If this were done, then, obviously, his father's name would also need to be concealed. Enter Uther Pendragon. None of this is impossible. The problem is that accepting such a paradigm would mean that Arthur is, demonstrably, a fake. A propagandist creation, in a matter of speaking.
The battles of Arthur as found in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM can be construed as Welsh translations of the English place-names found in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. But we can only do so if we allow for some mistranslations, as well as for the inclusion of battles which did not belong to Cerdic and instead are assigned in the ASC to other members of the Gewissei.
We don't have to go through any of these contortions with a Northern Arthur based at Ribchester. And, just as importantly, we don't have to subscribe to a scenario in which Arthur is a re-rendering of Cerdic, a war-leader who fought alongside the Saxons during the establishment of the nucleus of the kingdom of Wessex.
The name Artorius itself is also significant in the context of the Ceredig vs. Arthur son of Sawyl debate. For while the name is just fine as it is in the North, and especially at Ribchester, in the case of Cunedda's son we have to propose it as a decknamen for what originally would have been an Irish or British 'bear-king' name or title. And that earlier form Artri or Arthri does not exist in any of our sources.
All in all, then, while I still hold to my identification of the Gewissei with Irish or Hiberno-British "federates" centered in northwestern Wales, I can no longer promote the idea that Ceredig/Cerdic of that group was Arthur. Instead, Arthur was put forward as a British champion in the North, a natural foil to his contemporary in the South, Cerdic of Wessex.
[1]
There are still some sticking points in the proposed new reading of the LAC memorial stone's inscription. Most are not a big deal, but all come from reservations aired to me privately by a half dozen expert epigraphers. We need to resolve these in such a way as to satisfy the requirements of academic scrutiny.
1) Everyone seems to naturally default to detachments from the three legions, even if the text says literally three legions. It would not be to our advantage to follow suit. Three whole legions – the entire British garrison – would never have been removed from the province. Thus is we take the text as it is written, the three legions could only have been used INSIDE THE PROVINCE.
Roger Tomlin has told me that
"Within Britain is possible (say, to suppress a revolt in an emergency), but they would not be whole legions: this would be a major mobilization directed by the provincial governor, and would imply a major campaign like those of Agricola and Severus. 'dux' is used of a special command involving detachments from more than one legion, usually in an expeditionary force to another province. Quite often the legions are specified. You will have to trawl through the 'dux' inscriptions if you want to spell this all out, but you will find a selection in von Domaszewski's Rangordnung, p. 183."
2) 'ARMATOS' is considered much too unspecific, and there are inscriptions referring to the suppression of internal revolt, the language used being 'adversus rebelles', 'adversus defectores', 'adversus hostes publicos'. For example Dessau ILS 1140, Claudius Candidus, who was 'duci ... adversus rebelles'. Thus what the LAC stone says here would be a one-off with no precedents. That is genuinely worrisome.
3) The career of Valerius Maximianus shows that Marcus Aurelius was prepared to promote capable equestrians to senatorial commands, and we might argue this was always the case. It became a scandal with Perennis and Commodus, but there is no real difficulty in supposing that Artorius Castus enjoyed a similar career.
4) It is not true that high-status inscriptions did not contain stonecutters' mistakes: consider their transcription of 'Legion III Galicae' and Velius Salvus as 'procuatori provinciae Raetiae'. 'ius gladii', for example, on the LAC inscription should be ablative 'iure gladii' (according to Roger Tomlin).
5) A final, very important comment from Roger Tomlin regarding LAC's procuratorship in Liburnia:
"So far as I know, he was the only procurator of Dalmatia who was responsible for a particular area (Liburnia) with the powers of a provincial governor ('iure gladii'). You might check in Wilkes' Dalmatia. Dalmatia was governed by a senatorial legate, and any senatorial province contained a semi-independent procurator (since he was directly responsible to the Emperor), but Castus' post, which anticipates 3rd-century equestrian governor, would have directly infringed the governor's prerogatives.
I would have expected him to be acting-governor of Dalmatia, not of Liburnia. And senatorial legates are replaced in emergency by the next-most senior senator as 'pro legato' – a legionary legate (but Dalmatia no longer has them), or the quaestor, or a 'comes' (staff officer). Failing that, the procurator 'agens vice legati', but he would be appointed by the Emperor.
I can only guess that a special situation had arisen on the coast of Dalmatia, requiring close supervision by what was virtually a deputy governor. He would be reducing the senatorial governor's sphere of responsibility, which would likely be resented; and this is an attractive argument for the Perennis / Commodus date."
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