A Side-By-Side Comparison of Two Arthurian "Theories" and Why I've Selected One as the Winner

Ribchester Roman Fort

Birdoswald Roman Fort

In 2019, I was invited by Dr. Linda A. Malcor to attend a L. Artorius Castus symposium in Split, Croatia.  While I am honored to have had the opportunity offered to me and owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Malcor, it was also made plain to me at the time that I was to be the "resident outsider."  In other words, everyone at the conference with the exception of myself (and fellow Arthurian scholar Chris Gidlow) were staunch adherents and defenders of Malcor's own 'Sarmatian theory.'  You might say I was the token opposition.  And I was absolutely fine with my role.

Since then, I did additional work on my own theory - one which relied on the second century Castus not as "THE Arthur", but as the man whose name may have been preserved in northern Britain and passed down to the famous Arthur the British sources claim had his floruit in the 5th-6th centuries. Many years of research had led me to abandon the quest for a southern Arthur, primarily because the HISTORIA BRITTONUM's Arthurian battles were so easily placed in the North. Equally intensive research into Castus pointed to his having gone to Armenia with the British governor Statius Priscus and to have been granted the Liburnian procuratorship at the time of its most likely founding, i.e. c. 168-170. If that was Castus' career, then he was in Britain before the Sarmatians arrived there and any attempt to connect the later Arthur with the Sarmatian veteran fort at Ribchester had to be relinquished.

If any currency could be given to Uther Pendragon and his dragon star and draco standard, I could point to the Birdoswald Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall, with its draco-venerating Dacian garrison.  As Castus could have been born in Dalmatia, or at least engendered the family attested there in the Roman period, it did not seem like a coincidence that the Dalmatian-manned fort of Carvoran lay just a couple miles to the east of Birdoswald.  The latter fort is known for its remarkable sub-Roman/early Medieval royal hall.

Now, that all seemed fine (allowing for several assumptions, such as the name Arthur actually deriving ultimately from Castus) until I made another discovery. While exploring the true identity of Uther, I found that it seemed fairly certain that his name/title was a straight-forward Welsh rendering of military terms used for the warror-saint Illtud of South Wales. What led me in that direction were the three 'predatory birds' of Elei/Elai.  Elai, the modern River Ely, had on its west the Dark Age fortress of Dinas Powys, and the VITA of Illtud made it clear that the saint had been the captain of the soldiers of the chieftain there. Alas, nothing else in the life of Illtud pointed to his being Arthur's father.  He was Arthur's cousin, to be sure, but he had put away his wife when he became a religious and no children are mentioned.

At this point I was despairing of making sense of what I was sure was an Illtud-Uther identification. I flirted with the idea that Geoffrey of Monmouth, the great story inventer, had merely "borrowed" Illtud/Uther and made him Arthur's father.  

But then I looked more closely at the problem, trying to find something I might have missed.  As it turned out, I had neglected to take into account a curious correspondence: in the Welsh poem MARWNAT VTHYR PEN, Uther says that he was transformed by God (not into Gorlois, Geoffrey's fictional character created out of the gorlassar epithet beloning to Uther in the same elegy) into a second Samuel (W. Sawyl).  Going to Illtud's story, I found him not only confused with a Samuel in the Vita of St. Cadog, but in Geoffrey of Monmouth (Eldadus = Illtud) compared to the same Biblical figure.  

As it happens, there was a famous Sawyl among the Men of the North in Welsh tradition, the head of a family of princes.  Independently, and years before, I had proven that this northern Sawyl's name was preserved at Samlesbury hard by the Ribchester Roman fort of the Sarmatians.  But then some more "coincidences" starting piling on. This Sawyl had a son named Madog, as did Uther. Madog became an Irish saint and was given the epithet Ailithir, ''other land", a term for a pilgrim. Uther's son Madog had a son named Eliwlad, whose story paralleled another Welsh didactic poem featuring a pilgrim.  The very name Eliwlad, when analyzed, was semantically identical to the Irish Ailithir.  Even better, Sawyl had married an Irish princess.  That alone would account for why all subsequent Arthurs belonged to Irish-descended dynasties in Britain.  And, finally, the Sarmatians were fond of their own draco, and so there was no reason why an Uther Pendragon could not belong to the Ribchester fort.  Current excavations at Ribchester are showing a continuation of occupation into the sub-Roman period (although any official report on this has not yet been published).

Suddenly, I was forced to acknowledge the possible veracity of the Welsh tradition as it pertained specifically to Uther's true nature and place of origin.  And that meant, in turn, that if we continued to go with Arthur as a name descending from Castus then we needed to have the latter in Britain at the same time as the Sarmatians.  Which meant, obviously, that the fragmentary ARM]...]S of the Castus inscription had to stand for ARMORICOS, and we would be talking about the prefect of the Sixth, in his capacity as dux/commander, leading British legionary detachments against the deserters in Armorica.  We also must consider the very real possibility that the 1,500 British spearmen who went to Rome to eliminate the Praetorian Prefect Perennis was this same force.  And, indeed, 1,500 equates to 500 spearmen each drawn from the three British legions.  THE ACCOUNT OF THE 1,500 BRITISH SPEARMEN IS THE ONLY ACCOUNT OF SUCH A MISSION FOUND IN THE LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD.  WHILE WE CAN OPT FOR ARMENIA, THAT REMAINS SO ONLY IF THE STONE'S ARM[...]S ACTUALLY STANDS FOR ARMENIOS.  IN THE CASE OF ARMORICOS ON THE STONE, WE CAN POINT TO THE 1,500 BRITISH SPEARMEN WHO WERE ON THE CONTINENT AT THE RIGHT TIME TO BE CASTUS'S FORCE.  Thus in one case we have no independent source of historical confirmation, while in the other we do.

There is no problem having Castus made procurator after the fall of Perennis, for Dio tells us that Perennis' successor, Cleander, was bestowing many procuratorships. 

So which way to go?  Well, I will be perfectly candid about this: I personally have long detested the 'Sarmatian Theory'.  Why?  Because its proponents are not good scholars.  They have proven time and time again to instead be fanatics who have decided, through magical thinking, to conjure a speudo-academic argument in order to convince people to subscribe to what they want to be believe.  They consistently refuse to accept evidence or good argumentation to the contrary, and have gone out of their way to repeatedly besmirch the expert opinions of the world's top Roman miliary and art historians, epigraphers and archaeologists.  They continue to make absolute statements that are not in any way supportable and to declare impossible anything that threatens their own views.  From my standpoint, the most galling aspect of how the Sarmatian Theorists treat Arthurian speculation is by insisting all major Arthurian motifs found in medieval literature can be traced to Sarmato-Alanic tradition.  They do this despite our ability to show that all such motifs, when not pure invention of the romance authors, can be derived from a combination of Classical, Christian and Celtic sources. 

Still, as my late Dad often said, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water." A very old expression, but quite apt in this case.  I cannot justify dispensing with 

1) The Welsh tradition concerning Uther Pendragon, which I cannot help but see as pointing directly at Sawyl of Ribchester

and

2) The independently recorded account of the march of the 1,500 British spearmen 

To forsake those two valid argument points in exchange for an "Armenian maybe" does not feel like a wise decision to me.  And if I'm to be truthful, during those intervals when I was steadfastly promoting an Arthur at Birdoswald, I continued (sometimes subconsciously, and even in my dreams) to be haunted by Eliwlad the Eagle son of Madog son of  Uther.  Yes, this sounds rather crazy, but a mind at war with itself on these kinds of complex concepts can manifest its preference for this or that belief in strange ways.

For, as always with us humans, no matter how much we profess objectivism, we tend to rationalize whatever course of action we wish to pursue.  I am not immune to this human proclivity.  

Despite that caveat/disclaimer/qualifier, I am now ready, at last, to publicly state that my Arthurian theory maintains that the Dark Age Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, was quite possibly Sawyl of Ribchester.  As a result, I will be reissuing my book THE BATTLE-LEADER OF RIBCHESTER in the coming days.