Milan Cathedral
The possibility that Ambrosius could be Uther Pendragon has recently resurfaced in my research:
This very old idea (not unique, I don't believe, to the current writer!) creates one very big problem: both of the historical Ambrosii, father and saintly son, were 4th century. A figure from that time period could not possibly have been the father of an Arthur whose AC dates are c. 516 and c. 537.
The solution to this problem would appear to be simple: just allow for another, later Ambrosius to be in Britain and to have fought some important battles against the Saxons. Granted, we have no independent evidence of such a man. Maybe such a battle leader was given his name in remembrance of one of the earlier Ambrosii. Or maybe there was actually some kind of blood relationship, if we allow for the 4th century Gallic prefect having gone to Britain with Constans in 343.
A.A. was Prefect of Gaul (and thus of Britain as well) c. 337-340. We do not know when he died, but his son St. Ambrose (with whom he appears to have been conflated in Welsh legend) moved to Rome with his mother not earlier than 353 (https://books.google.com/books?id=sc49DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=st.+ambrose+and+his+mother+went+to+rome&source=bl&ots=7w4smM9os3&sig=ACfU3U0AuKyqO3hjZIrPlxdpBvQVvfCZ5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_hL-SzqnpAhUOsp4KHZLYANQQ6AEwDHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=st.%20ambrose%20and%20his%20mother%20went%20to%20rome&f=false). Some have thought A.A. may have fallen at the same time as his Emperor Constantine II, who died in 340.
In 343, Constantine's brother Constans, the new Western Emperor, visited Britain. It is not known precisely why (see http://www.roman-emperors.org/consi.htm#9), but the reason is hinted at in Ammianus:
Book XX
1 1 Lupicinus, master of arms, is sent with an army to Britain, to resist the inroads of the Scots and Picts.
Such was the course of events throughout Illyricum and the Orient. But in Britain in the tenth consulship of Constantius and the third of Julian raids of the savage tribes of the Scots and the Picts, who had broken the peace that had been agreed upon, were laying waste the regions near the frontiers, so that fear seized the provincials, wearied as they were by a mass of past calamities. And Julian, who was passing the winter in Paris and was distracted amid many cares, was afraid to go to the aid of those across the sea, as Constans once did (as I have told),1
1 In one of the lost books; it was in 343.
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that A.A. did not perish with Constantine. That although he was no longer serving as Prefect of Gaul, he accompanied Constans to Britain in some capacity. If the comparison of Lupicinus' mission is taken literally, we may imagine Constans was fighting Scots and/or Picts.
This is certainly not out of the realm of the possible. Granted, Constantine I/the Great had made the praetorian prefecture a civil, rather than a military post. But A.A. could have been replaced by another prefect, and found himself in another role as part of a major military expedition to Britain. He could even, theoretically, have been made a governor of one of the provinces of Britain. Constantius Chlorus had reclassified Britain as a diocese, dividing it into four provinces: Maxima Caesariensis, Britannia Prima, Flavia Caesariensis and Britannia Secunda.
It's also conceivable that A.A. fled to Britain after Constantine II's death, although had that been the case we would have expected him to take his family with him.
However it happened, if A.A. was in Britain at the time, how do we account for the sequence of events in Gildas?
Rather easily, I suspect. The problem has to do with a simple confusion of the two emperors named Constans - the one who was in Britain in 343 and the Constans II, son of the Constantine III who had been proclaimed emperor in Britain in 407. It is thought that Constantine III actually named his son Constans after the son of Constantine the Great.
A very puzzling line in Gildas has not, to my knowledge, been analyzed. It occurs in 25:2, and runs as follows: "After a time, when the cruel plunderers had gone home, God gave strength to the survivors." These survivors, and those who flocked to them, had as their leader A.A. On the surface, this would seem to be a nonsensical statement. The Saxons invited in by Vortigern did not, in fact, go home. Gildas had just previously told us that they had invited in more of their kind and proceeded to take over the island. We are told in Nennius that Vortimer pushed them to the Isle of Thanet, but that after he was slain they continued their depredations and conquest.
So who went home when A.A. showed up on the scene?
I would propose that Gildas' account is here hopelessly confused. The enemy that withdraws in this context was forced to do so by Constans I, perhaps accompanied by A.A., who could have held the military command or been appointed a governor. We are probably talking about Scots and Picts, in any case, not Saxons. What we appear to have here is a simple jumbling of fourth and fifth century events.
In this blog post -
- I made a valiant - and some might call a Herculean - effort to suggest that Ambrosius (whoever he really was!) might have been relocated from Hadrian's Wall to southern Wales. The Northern location in question (Corbridge and vicinity) happened to be right next to where Arthur might well have fought several of his battles (the Devil's Water at Linnels).
Is that a reasonable proposition or mere wishful thinking?
Well, Campus Elleti first appears in Nennius, a 9th century text. Therefore, we cannot put any weight on the likelihood that the name came from the North, specifically through the agency of the de Umbreville family of Prudhoe, Aydon and Penmark. This family was post-Conquest. We would have to allow for Elleti in Nennius to be a much later addition to the text. Not impossible, but not something we can prove. Or we would have to have two Elleti names from a very early period, one of which (the Southern one) was confused with another (the Northern one). In other words, we need a place named for Alletius (a god?) at Corbridge at or before the 9th century.
None of this looks particularly attractive.
We could, instead, opt for a descendent of the 4th century Gallic prefect in Wales. Perhaps it was Wales that this earlier Ambrosius had been made a governor over, and his Romano-British descendents kept his name alive into the fifth. This sub-Roman leader could have been the father of Arthur - although it is extremely difficult to account for Arthur's battles in the North if his father belonged to the South.
All in all, everything seems too forced, too strained. I am not happy with any of the above-mentioned scenarios.
The only thing that keeps coming up for me is that the famous Arthur's real father was forgotten at some point, was unknown to the Dark Age tradition that remembered his military deeds. That Uther Pendragon as a "nickname" for Ambrosius was generated specifically to plug the time-gap between Ambrosius and Arthur with a valid-appearing paternal link.
And that makes me even less happy.
What I keep coming back to is this: given the fame of Campus Elleti as the birthplace of Ambrosius (never mind that an original W. Maes Elleti may have been chosen because the Gallic Ambrosii belonged on the River Moselle), why does the PA GUR not put Uther Pendragon there if the latter is Ambrosius? Why put Uther at Elei, which is where the terrible ( = uthr) soldier and master of soldiers ( = pendragon) Illtud was commander of Pawl Penychen's household troops? An Illtud who was confused/identified with Sawyl in various sources - a Sawyl Uther transforms into in the MARWNAT VTHYR PEN.
Time and time again, I come back to Sawyl Benisel. For the many reasons I list in my book THE BATTLE-LEADER OF RIBCHESTER. Whether right or wrong, the Uther = Sawyl theory is the one I have decided to stick with. Should I be able to make sense of Ambrosius in the future (or should some other enterprising researcher do this for me), I will make sure and post my thoughts on the subject here. For now, I'm resting my case.
NOTE:
The only "fact" that would dethrone even my Sawyl theory would be the adherence to the prevelent professional opinion regarding the correct reading for ARM[...]S on the Lucius Artorius Castus stone. As I've oft repeated, if this reads ARMENIOS, then Castus was not in Britain when the Sarmatians were there and thus any connection with an Arthur at Ribchester of the Sarmatian veterans is highly improbable. Only with a reading of ARMORICOS can we postulate Castus being in Britain with Sarmatian troops. Although I showed how Armoricos, with allowable ligatures, can fit on the Castus stone, scholars have not supported the idea, as no one would have claimed they were taking a force against Armorica during the time of the Deserters' War. Instead, any number of other terms would have been used, this not being, technically speaking, a war against Armorica. It was instead an action against the public enemy Maternus, an army deserter, and his bandits.
I'm working with Dr. Will Wootton (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/will-wootton) right now on his take for the age of the Castus stone. I will dedicate a blog post to his conclusion and what that might mean for Arthurian research going forward.
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