I'm convinced that L. Artorius Castus was fighting the northern tribes under Severus and that Castus is the figure who underlies the later legendary Arthur.
Click on the link below for the page containing the video:
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Dr. Simon Elliott's Lecture on Emperor Severus in Britain
Thursday, July 17, 2025
ON FALLEN HEROES (NO, NOT WHAT YOU'RE THINKING)
In the course of some three decades, I've gone from seeing Arthur as a great high medieval king defending Britain from all manner of evils to accepting as the prototypical figure a Roman army officer who commanded legions during Emperor Severus's genocidal invasion of northern Britain.
How did this devolution happen?
Well, I see chiefly three principles at work here.
One, I've grown considerably older. And that means youthful idealism has been replaced by seasoned realism.
Second, I successfully made the shift in my researches and theorizing from utilizing, accepting and adapting romantic or purely legendary sources to severely limiting myself to what a true historical treatment of the Arthur story demanded.
And, third, I met Dr. Linda A. Malcor.
This last is the most important formative influence on me. Although I disagreed with Linda from the start - sometimes rancorously and, to my great embarrassment, publicly - she not only "got me to thinking" about L. Artorius Castus as a possible Arthurian candidate, but invited me to an Arthurian symposium in Croatia in 2019. An event paid for by the Croatian sponsors of the event.
Because she did that for me, and arranged to have me present a paper at the said conference, I was able to participate in an exploration of the places where Castus lived and was buried. In what may have been the most profound experience of my life, I was able to examine and TOUCH the Castus' memorial stone.
Unfortunately, Linda and I held such strongly polarized opinions on Arthur and Castus that we eventually fell out. Our methodologies are radically different and we approach the subject from the perspective of different disciplines. I had already alienated myself from the majority of the so-called "Arthurian Community", eschewing those folks I considered Fringe or New Age/Neopagan for more traditional, "respectable" academic contacts.
But I will never forget Croatia, and I will never be able to express enough the gratitude I feel towards Linda for making the trip there possible for me.
More importantly, she successfully planted in my mind the notion - which I long fought against - that Castus may, indeed, have been the original King Arthur.
On and off, ever since the 2019 Croatian symposium, I flirted with the idea that the Castus inscription's lacuna ARM[...]S might indicate this prefect of the Sixth Legion had actually led legionary troops within Britain itself. Linda and her colleagues had proposed ARMATOS, and that Castus had been a governor missing from the record. I (and all the other scholars I had consulted) could not accept either claim.
Might there be an alternative reading that was valid in terms of epigraphic use and historical probability?
My answer was ARM.GENTES or "armed tribes." When combined with several early strands of the Arthurian tradition (such as the presence in that tradition of the Maeatae and Caledonii), I suggested Castus had taken part in the Severan expeditions in north Britain. Leading academics thought the idea quite credible.
When I reached this conclusion (a painful one, I assure you, and one I resisted mightily), questions that had vexed me to no end (like the "Irish Arthur Problem") resolved themselves quite simply and with little effort.
And so I found myself light years from the chivalrous hero of my boyhood and early adulthood. Instead, I was agreeing with my arch-rival Dr. Linda A. Malcor, albeit for entirely different reasons, that Arthur was a reflection - an intentional, planted anachronism - of a man who had participated in a Roman campaign of attempted extermination of the northern British tribes.
I find myself wishing I knew now what I didn't know in 2019. Had I been able to present my current findings in a Croatian paper, both the tourism applications for that country and my own professional trajectory might be on another track altogether. I also would have found the experience even more powerful and enriching.
Rather, I must content myself with thanking Linda for causing me to question my own beliefs and motives. For if we don't do that, there is no hope for any important breakthrough or discovery.
At some point in the future, I will put out a volume on this final theory of mine. The working title, the first half of which supposedly came from the mouth of Severus on the eve of the second invasion of northern Britain, is
"LET NOT ANYONE ESCAPE FROM SHEER DESTRUCTION": A NEW ARGUMENT FOR A ROMAN ARTHUR.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Plan for Final Nonfiction Arthur Book
Sword in the Stone, Podstrana, Croatia
Working title:
"LET NOT ANYONE ESCAPE FROM SHEER DESTRUCTION": A NEW ARGUMENT FOR A ROMAN ARTHUR
Not sure when I will get to this. I'm 65 and working full-time for a few more years. It may not appear, therefore, until after I retire. Assuming I'm still drawing breath, of course!
But I will strive - eventually! - to get it done.
The cover, hopefully, will be a computer-generated reconstruction of the L. Artorius Castus inscription showing my proposed reading of ARM GENTES for the ARM[...]S lacuna.
Thursday, July 3, 2025
THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUANDARY: ANNALES CAMBRIAE OR HISTORIA BRITTONUM FOR ARTHUR?
Badon and Camlan in AC
Arthur's Battles in the HB
So what do we believe - that Arthur was of the 6th century A.D. and fought at the Liddington Badbury (Badon) and at a Camlan near Chichester (a Roman period Noviomagus, hence the wrongly incorporation of St. Medard of Noyen as Medrad) - or that he was L. Artorius Castus of the 3rd century and fought in a string of battles stretching from York to Highland Scotland?
Badon, placed quite definitively in the time of St. Gildas, cannot have been a battle belonging to Castus. And Castus did not die at a Camlan. However, he almost certainly would have been involved in any action or rebuilding of the Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall.
Obviously, the Dalriadan Arthur may have gotten mixed up in the northern battles, but if so, the son of Aedan (or of Conaing) can have nothing to do with either Badon or Camlan.
That, in a nutshell, is the quandary I currently find myself in.
My gut badly wants the southern Arthur, a sort of savior of the Britons (at least for a short spell). He may have been from the Roman period Durocornovium (if his father was Illtud), a town that replaced the Liddington hillfort. Or he may have been from Ercing (assuming this is not a relocation for the former location). In either case, there are grave difficulties when it comes to placing the other battles in the South (no one, including myself, has succeeded in doing this). In addition, the settlement pattern of the Saxons in the South (as indicated by the presence of cemeteries) seems to preclude the possibility of victorious British military action in the vicinity of Liddington. Unless, of course, our dates are way off - something that is entirely possible.
On the other hand, an acceptable (but not necessarily correct) reading of the Castus inscription's lacuna as "armed tribes" allows us to identify this Roman officer as one who led legions under Severus and Caracalla. Battles were fought against the Maeatae and Caledonii ( = the Miathi of Dalraidan Arthurian tradition and the tribe inhabitating the Celidon Wood of the HB battle list) and it has been suggested (by no less an authority than Anthony Birley) that Severus may also have battled the Brigantes (which would account for the more southern of the HB battles). Once again, if we are willing to let go of Badon, Castus would seem to be a perfect candidate in every way other than that of chronology.
Confidence in the Welsh sources is not strengthened by the relocation of Badon to central Wales (in "The Dream of Rhonabwy") and of Camlan to northwest Wales. For if a site can be moved once in folk tradition it can be moved again. St. Medard could have been wrongly included in the Camlan story for no other reason than his death-date corresponded with a duplicated Irish Annal entry (see my earlier work on this subject).
If L. Artorius Castus - a verifiable historical figure - was active along the Wall and there was a Camboglanna fort there - which there was - then we are hardly justified is seeking a second Arthur in southern England or northwestern Wales who perished at a place of the same name.
I would be more prone to seeing the HB battles as a mere fictional construct were it not for how perfectly they seem to align with what we would expect Castus' martial career in Britain to look like. I mean, if these battles were literally all over the map, being arranged in such a way as to suggest Arthur was a superman defending every corner of the Island, then I could dismiss them just as easily as I do the fantasy composed by Geoffrey of Monmouth. But I can't do that.
And that is where I find myself in the terminal stage of my Arthurian research. Or is it simply a hiatus?
Well, it's a hiatus if I can ever come across new evidence or can develop new argumentation that will help sway me in one direction or the other. For now, my logical self is prevailing over my romantic self.
Castus still looks to be the prototypical Arthur. IF MY ARM.GENTES READING FOR THE CASTUS INSCRIPTION IS CORRECT. If not, then we may all have to go back to the drawing board.
Am I particularly troubled by the use of a Roman Artorius as a Dark Age British champion? Not really. There is so much that is fraudulent or mistaken in the early British sources that in some way that material is not dissimilar to hagiography. If the Britons of the time found they were lacking a great hero, well, why not invent one? Or, at least, borrow one from a few centuries back. That they may have done so is no less incredible than their utilization of Ambrosius Aurelianius, himself a conflation of the 4th century Gallic prefect of that name and his saintly son, as a mythic hero of 5th century Britain.
Nicholas Higham expresses the same distrust in the historical sources of the time period. He recently wrote the following to me:
"The HB's author made up several British hero figures who he used to demonstrate the Britons were courageous and good at bashing foreigners. The best way to understand his technique is to focus on Dolabella/um, who is obviously a straight lift out of Roman history, specifically from Orosius, but who he converted to a British general fighting Caesar. Historical nonsense but of considerable propaganda value in 829."
Sunday, June 22, 2025
IF ARTHUR = CASTUS, HOW DO WE EXPLAIN THE LATER IRISH ARTHURS?
My readers will be familiar with my past attempts to account for why the Dark Age Arthurs subsequent to the presumed earlier and more famous British war-leader all belonged to Irish-founded dynasties in Britain.
To date, I've not been able to satisfactorily resolve this problem.
But what happens if we plug in L. Artorius Castus, leader of legions against native tribes in the biggest invasion of northern Britain ever undertaken by the Romans, as that earlier, more famous war-leader?
Well, we'd have to allow for Castus having achieved a mythical status among the Britons. For the highly Romanized south of England and client kingdoms farther north, the campaigns of Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla would have been welcome, even applauded events. But for the Caledonii and Maeatae confederations and (if some scholars are right, that of the Brigantes), Castus would have been the villain of the story.
At this point we need to remind ourselves that the Irish Deisi who invaded and settled Dyfed, and the Irish Dalriada who invaded and settled Argyll, had done so at the expense of the native British tribes of those regions (the Demetae and Epidii, respectively).
Is it unreasonable to suggest that the Irish ruling families of the Deisi and the Dalriada chose Artorius as a name for their royal sons as a way of identifying themselves with the legions the great Roman dux had brought against the British tribes?
The Dalriadans borrowed Old English cyning, "king", as a personal name - Conaing in the Irish. In some genealogies it is Conaing and not Aedan son of Gabran who is father to an Arthur. Needless to say, the English, like the Irish, were enemies of the British.
While in this context Arthur from Artorius makes sense, the irony of such a possibility does not escape me. For if I'm right, the Arthur of legend was not defending Britain from the Saxons. He was defending a Roman province from the subjugated Britons.
This scenario in regards to the use of the Arthur name among the Deisi and Dalriada also explains why the name was not used by the British themselves in the sub-Roman period.
Saturday, June 21, 2025
MY PURELY IMAGINARY NORTHERN ARTHUR: THE "CONSTRUCT" I LOVE BEST
NOTE: The following piece is for entertainment value only. I've been invited to submit my new reading of ARM.GENTES for the Castus lacuna to https://www.eagle-network.eu/. In other words, people are taking the new reading seriously. If ARM.GENTES happens to be correct, and Castus did participate in the Severan campaigns in northern Britain, I cannot justify putting forward for consideration a second prototypical Arthur candidate.
A reader, disappointed on my settling for a Roman prototype for Arthur, has asked me to "put out there" what my "fantasy version" of a Dark Age British Arthur would look like - an Arthur who, while taking advantage of my past research findings was otherwise less constrained by evidence or even good argumentation and more "free-form" or "forgiving" in nature.
This is actually an easy thing for me to do, as I've long had exactly that kind of Arthur fleshed out in my imagination.
To begin, I would place his ruling center at Stanwix/Petrianis just north of Carlisle. This site was called Arthuriburgum in the 1700s. Carlisle itself has often been viewed as an Arthurian capital due to its misidentification with Carduel of the French romances. [1]
Stanwix or Uxellodunum housed Britain's largest cavalry force and was the command center of the Wall with a close connection to York. Castlesteads/Camboglanna is just a little to the east while Drumburgh/Concavata (the Grail Castle) and Burgh By Sands/Aballava (Avalon) is just a short distance to the west. Dea Latis or the Lake Goddess was present at Aballava.
Arthur would have been a sort of sub-Roman version of the Dux Britanniarum, in this case functioning as a sort of overlord for what had been the Brigantes confederation. His territory would have stretched from Buxton (Badon) on the southern boundary of the Brigantes to the northern boundary of Carvetii in the west to the border of the Votadini in the northeast (if we allow for the Votadini of this period to have withdrawn farther to the north).
The distribution of some of the more northerly Arthurian battles need not be seen as a problem. Breguoin/Brewyn/Bremenium in High Rochester as well as the River Glen in Northumbria are credible battles against as nascent, emerging Bernicia.
The other battles - Bassas at Dunipace, the Tribruit at Queensferry and the wood of the Caledonii - do not have to be relegated to L. Artorius Castus. They could well belong to any of the subsequent Dalriadan Arthurs.
Which brings up one final point. I have before discussed the oddness of the rock-stone motif found in the Arthurian tradition. The Dalriadans got the Arthur name, it would appear, frim the neighboring Strathclyde Britons. Their capital was Alclud or Petra Cloithe, the Rock of the Clyde. Arthur of Dyfed was the son of Pedr/Petrus. Arthur son of Bicoir the Briton killed Mongan with a stone.
I have suggested these rock-stone references can be traced back to the Petriana name of the cavalry unit at Stanwix, which was named for the original commander Titus Pomponius Petra. In other words, Arthur traced his ancestry through the descendents of the Ala Petriana. Because of this the name Arthur gained currency at the Rock of the Clyde and was chosen by Petrus of Dyfed for the obvious reason.
Needless to say, this "open theory" does nothing to dispell the notion that L. Artorius Castus may still have introduced his name to the north.
More critically, perhaps, it does not help us with Uther, Arthur's father. I had once placed the terrible chief dragon at Birdoswald of the Dacian draco, with Arthur belonging in the Irthing Valley. Irthing is, perhaps, from the Cumbric for "Little Bear" and the Bear People (Arthwys, *Artenses) may have lived in that valley. The next fort to the east - that of Carvoran/Magnis - housed a late period Dalmatian garrison where the name Artorius may have been present.
Alas, there is no tradition placing Arthur in the Irthing Valley. And Uther's dragon title is metaphorical, with Pendragon meaning "chief warrior" or "chief of warriors." This is made clear by early Welsh poetic use of the word dragon.
Uther is from a British cognate of Irish ochtar/uachtar. The original meaning of the former was the "high or lofty one." In a corrupt Triad, Arthur is called Penuchel. The -uchel element of Penuchel is the Welsh form of the British Uxello- of the Uxellodunum place-name for Stanwix/Petrianis.
Furthermore, situating Arthur at Birdoswald would also not allow us to forge a link between such a chieftain and the subsequent Arthurs.
So there you have it; the Arthur I would keep if only the argument as I have outlined it were to be allowed.
Needless to say, this portrait of a Dark Age "super-king" leaves open the question of how best to read the lacuna of the L. Artorius Castus memorial stone. To be honest, in the current context I don't think the question is even all that relevant. If the Arthur name came from Castus, then he may have done something notable in northern Britain. Or the name could have been preserved by other means that do not depend on his performing great deeds while stationed in the province.
[1]
Carduel is said to be in Wales (Gales). However, it has long been customary to identify this site with Carlisle, the Roman Luguvalium, in Cumbria. The "d" of Carduel is said to be due to dissimilation of the first "l" of Carlisle (Welsh Caerliwelydd). I have always thought this linguistic argument to be highly questionable.
Carduel is also hard by the Red Knight's Forest of Quinqueroy and not far from the castle of Gornemont of Goort. Goort is here definitely Gower. Quinqueroy is Welsh gwyn plus caer, a slight error for Caerwent.
While Kerduel in Brittany is derived from Caer + Tudwall (information courtesy Jean-Yves le Moing, personal correspondence; cf. Caer Dathyl in Arfon, from Irish Tuathal = Welsh Tudwall, possibly Caer-fawr or Caernarfon, information courtesy Brian Lile of The National Library of Wales, citing Ifor Williams' Pedair Keinc Ymabinogi, 1951), I think Carduel (Car-dyou-EL) probably derives from Caer +d'iwl, Iwl (pronounced similar to English 'yule', according to Dr. David Thorne of the Welsh Department at Lampeter) being the Welsh form of Julius, the name Geoffrey used for Aaron's partner, St. Julian.
When Perceval first comes to Arthur's court, it is at Carduel; but when Arthur sets off after Perceval when the latter sends the Haughty Knight of the Moor to the court, the king leaves Caerleon. In between the king's placement at Carduel and Caerleon, Anguingueron and Clamadeu find Arthur at Dinas d'Aaron, the Fort of Aaron/Caerleon. In other words, Caerleon and Carduel are the same. Indeed, Anguingueron and the Haughty Knight are sent to Arthur's court by Perceval, who knows only that Arthur is at Carduel. This means that Dinas d'Aaron and Carduel have to be Caerleon
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Professor Roger Tomlin on the Arthurian Battles
The above map was sent to Professor Roger Tomlin the other day. What follows is the accompanying message and then his reply to that message. Note that his assessment of the map agrees with those of Nicholas Higham and other experts on sub-Roman Britain.
***
So, I sent the attached map to several historians and archaeologists whose specialization is the sub-Roman period in Britain. Without telling them where I got the projected battle sites from, I asked if they thought the map was more likely to portray the battles of a Dark Age chieftain or a Roman general.
All of them thought it looked distinctly Roman.
I'm now asking you the same thing, although from the perspective of an expert on the Roman period. Yes, I realize you're more than slightly biased!
Please let me know what you think.
Prof. Tomlin's response:
Their axis is from the Antonine Wall to York, north to south, suggesting resistance to penetration from the north rather than to seaborne invasion from the east, but that's all that I can say. Suggestive of Roman advance from York or subsequent breakthroughs from the north, so I would go for Roman period.
Sunday, June 8, 2025
NO GOING BACK AFTER THE ARM.GENTES READING FOR THE CASTUS STONE
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.
Friday, June 6, 2025
CAN ARTHUR'S BATTLE OF BADON (AND, FOR THAT MATTER, CAMLAN) BE SAVED?
Liddington Castle (Badbury/Mount Badon)
If Arthur, perhaps Cerdic of Wessex/Ceredig son of Cunedda, died at The Cams in Hampshire, can his famous Badon battle be saved? And by that I mean can we make a decent case for Arthur actually being a victor at Badon and not simply have been assigned the battle because he was otherwise a famous war-leader?
For my final decision on The Cams as Camlan, please see the following two new blog posts:
As for Badon, there are three "proofs" for its proper identification with the Liddington Badbury:
[Illtud was a prime candidate for Uther, Arthur's father. While I have stepped away from that idea, this warrior-saint may still have hailed from Liddington Castle.]
And this is so despite the fact that linguistically, Badon remains a perfect British reflection of the English Bathum. It is this derivation of the hill-name that may well have contributed to its being confused with Bath in Avon, a known Anglo-Saxon Chronicle battle that supposedly happened as late as 577.
But what we need to do is look at Badon in light of the possibility that Cerdic of the Gewissei is Arthur, and that Arthur's later association with Cornwall may be due to the Durocornovium name anciently applied to Liddington Castle. And we need to allow for Barbury Castle or the Bear's Fort near Liddington having been named for Arthur, whose name was thought to contain Welsh arth, 'bear.'
The real question at the heart of the 'Badon Problem' has always been the date of the battle and how that is to be fit into what we know of the situation in southern Britain during Arthur's floruit. And all wrapped up with the date of the battle is the Historia Brittonum's battle list, one that ends with the great victory at Mount Badon. I have always favored a Northern arrangement of the battles, but have also identified them - if somewhat creatively - with locations in the South, i.e. with places where the Gewissei are said to have fought.
The starting point for treating of Badon in the context of the HB battle list are the sites from Tribruit on. Tribruit, as I've adequately demonstrated, is simply a Welsh rendering of the Latin trajectus, a word used to designate a water crossing-point. The Northern one, which seems to fit the description provided in the Welsh poem Pa Gur, is almost certainly Queensferry. But the only Trajectus we know of from the Classical period is the one that crossed from Bath's Avon to Caerwent in Wales. Although I have done what I can with the susequent hill-names - Agned, Breguoin and Badon - there is no denying that given a Tribruit terminal at/near Bitton (see Rivet and Smith) that looks to be a Welsh rendering of the ASC's Dyrham battle of 577 - the following three hill sites might naturally correspond to the three towns captured by the Gewissei following the victory at Dyrham: Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath.
Alas, Agned and Breguoin (the best of the forms that also include Bregion and Bregomion) do not represent either Cirencester or Gloucester. Agned is for agued, a rare word found used in The Gododdin for Catterick. Breguoin is exactly what we need for Brewyn, found listed in the Taliesin poems as one of the battles of the great Urien of Rheged.
Thus Tribruit, if it belongs in the same context, obviously is Queensferry and not Bitton.
All of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM battles sites - with the exception of Badon - are British place-names. True, we could opt for the Bassas as an English Bassa name, but as Dunipace between the two Maeatae forts and hard by the site of Arthur's Oven is a perfect candidate for a bas name at a river-ford there is no reason to resort to the former. Even getting rather desperate (as I have in the past) by selecting Buxton (given its association with Bathamgate Roman road) for Badon is unsatisfactory. How do we have a sub-Roman chieftain fighting in Derbyshire and in the territory of the Maeatae - never mind in the Caledonian Wood?
Granted, there has always been a debate about which group of battles we can trust as being actual engagements and which are to be interpreted as borrowed or purely fictional military actions. Some scholars have preferred to accept Camlan and Badon as real, while others have argued for the veracity of the HB battles and think poorly of the historicity of the two found in the Annales Cambriae.
On the face of it, I've lost all confidence in Arthur being the victor of the Badon battle. Firstly, although the ASC oddly reverses some of the generations of the Gewissei and archaeologists see the English as coming up the Thames valley before they came up the Hampshire Avon, Cerdic of Wessex's martial activities are restricted to Hampshire and Wight. The only site in the ASC mentioned at Cerdic's time and in that region which bears any resemblance whatsoever to Badon is Bedenham, which I take to be the site where we find the Bieda personal name preserved. A battle was fought there - although not by Cerdic - in 501. If a battle at Liddington Castle/Badbury took place, it must have been just after the one fought in 560 at Barbury Castle (a battle the English are not said to have won). This chronology is seriously out of whack for an Arthur said to perish in 537 (or even in 545 or thereabouts). I have pointed out before that there is a huge gap in battles in Wiltshire in the ASC, but this might be accounted for by supposing that the arrangement of battles for the foundation of Wessex was specifically designed to delineate the boundaries of the nascent kingdom. Thus any battles fought inside Wiltshire would not have appeared in this schema.
Going back now to Camlan, a site whose location seems to be confined to the old kingdom of the Regni. This is assuming, of course, we accept the Medrawd = Medard equation and use that to fix the context near Chichester. The trouble with this idea is that such an entry may be just as much an artificial construction as the ASC's "mapping out of Wessex" I alluded to in the previous paragraph.
Here, in a nutshell, is my problem with Camlan: it's very name. The Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall is ever-present when we consider Arthur and his possible relationship to L. Artorius Castus. The latter served in the North, and if my reading of his stone is correct he led three legions against the Maeatae and Caledonii under Severus.
I'm posting yet again the following selection from Simon Elliott's Septimius Severus in Scotland:
I've also posted before Anthony Birley's suggestion that the Brigantes became involved in these troubles, and if so, Camboglanna may well have been the site of battle and later rebuilding. We know rebuilding took place under Severus and Caracalla at nearby Birdoswald.
Thus as is the case with the HB battles (excluding Badon), Camlan is easy to place in the North in a known historical context at a time when a man who bore the name Arthur (Artorius) was doubtless present.
With Medrawd standing in for Medard, we can really only say that whoever recorded (or conjured) the AC Camlan entry was using Medard of Noviomagus to localize Camlan. We can't say at all that there was actually an Arthur somewhere in the vicinity of Chichester. Later Welsh tradition situated Camlan at the Afon Gamlan in Merionethshire. I don't think that is correct, either.
My conclusion is pretty much inevitable, if I strictly follow the chain of logic:
The famous Arthur of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM battle list, excepting Badon, is L. Artorius Castus. And the Badon of the ANNALES CAMBRIAE does not belong to Arthur at all, while the AC's Camlan is a reflection of Roman period action at Camboglanna in the North, which also saw Castus as the actual agent involved.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Medra(w)d, Medard and the Death of Arthur At/Near Chichester/Noviomagus
Some quick clarification regarding my earlier piece on the true identity of Medraut, as published here:
My idea is (and I believe it to be sound) that Medrawd is a reflection of St. Medard, who died in 545 - the same year we find the death of Comgall son of Domangart and plague mentioned in the Annals of Ulster. This entry is given earlier at 537/8 in the Ulster and Tigernach Annals. Arthur dies at Camlan in 537.
Medard was bishop of Noviomagus in Gaul. The name Noviomagus is mirrored in Britain, both at Crayford (mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 457 -
457
Her Hengest 7 Æsc fuhton wiþ Brettas in þære stowe þe is gecueden Crecganford 7 þær ofslogon .iiiim. wera, 7 þa Brettas þa forleton Centlond 7 mid micle ege flugon to Lundenbyrg.
- and at Chichester, the civitas of the Regni tribe. Their territory covered roughly the area of the later English Sussex.
An outstanding candidate for Arthur's Camlan is to be found near the western border of the Regni kingdom: The Cams. This pronounced bend is modernly referred to as Cams Shore. I once thought Cymenesora might be Camlan (with the Welsh interpreting Cymen as their own camen, "crookedness, curvature, turn, bend, loop; see GPC"). But instead I think Cymen represents a Welsh cyman, 'host, army', a word which is, essentially, a translation of the second component of the Wihthere name found at Wittering ('people of the Wight-host').
What might have happened is that the death of Medard of Gallic Noviomagus was wrongly associated with the fall of Arthur near an identically named place in Britain. We originally may have had separate or "stacked" year entries in a chronicle that at some point became conflated. And hence Arthur and Medard/Medrad were thought to have fallen at Camlan/The Cams.
Cerdic of Wessex, who died in 534, is closely associated with the men of Wight, and my gut is still telling me that Cerdic is Arthur (for the many reasons I have detailed before). But, this is so only if we insist on seeing the Camlan entry as otherwise genuine, i.e. Arthur, at least, really did fall at The Cams - even if Medard never did.
The question remains: if Medrawd is not an Arthurian figure, can we trust the Camlan entry at all?
Monday, June 2, 2025
Medraut at Camlan: The Final Reveal
St. Medard
The Cams, Hampshire
West and East Wittering
A bit of a bombshell here, which may or may not be well-received by the Arthurian community.
I now am, for the first time, not only fairly confident that I know who Medraut was, but also where Camlan was located.
How did I come to these realizations?
Well, it was during my comparison of the Annals Cambriae entry for the year 537 with entries in the Irish Annals that I noticed something peculiar. Where the AC has Arthur and Medraut perish in Camlan during a year that saw plague in Britain and Ireland, the corresponding year entry in the Ulster Annals had the death of Comgall son of Domangart, King of Dalriada. Yes, the same Dalriada that later saw an Arthur in its royal family. A later Domangart, billed as this Arthur's brother, dies with him.
That got me sidetracked for awhile. But only the other day I more thoroughly investigated the strange fact that there is no plague mentioned in the Irish Annal for 537. Instead, that source duplicates the death of Comgall son of Domangart in 545, and it is there that we are told about the plague.
T537.2 [538 in Ulster]
Comgall son of Domongort, king of Scotland died in the 35th year of his reign.
U545.1
The first mortality called bléfed, in which Mo-Bí Clárainech died.
U545.2
Death of Comgall son of Domangart, as some say.
I asked myself this question: what if we run with 545 instead of 537 and see what happens?
What happened is something so strange I find it difficult to assign merely to coincidence.
In 545, in Gaul, the famous St. Medard died. Medard was bishop of Noviomagus, modern Noyen. Alarm bells started going off in my head, for I knew there were other places named Noviomagus - and two were in Britain!
And not only were they in Britain, they were in the extreme SE, where fighting was going on (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) between the Britons and the Saxons during Arthur's floruit.
The two sites in question are Chichester, which was the capital of the old Regni kingdom in Sussex. The other was Crayford in Kent. Here are their respective listings from Rivet and Smith's The Place-Names of Roman Britain:
Now, after looking at all this, I believe Medraut - from an earlier Medrad - represents St. Medard. -ard to -rad is a simple metathesis, easily performed by a copying scribe. The famous bishop was wrongly transferred through the usual folkloristic processes from the Gallic Noviomagus to a British one.
Which one - Chichester or Crayford?
Definitely the former. I had long ago discussed two important sites near Chichester. The first was the ASC's Cymensora, once a contender for Arthur's Camlan. I later dispensed with this site in favor of The Cams or Cams Shore near Portchester. For more on these two sites, please see the following old blog posts:
Crayford is the scene of a battle in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It immediately follows the battle of Aylesford, during which Cattigern the son of Vortigern is killed. Cattigern means 'Battle-lord/leader' and has often been compared to Arthur as 'dux erat bellorum'.
455
Her Hengest 7 Horsa fuhton wiþ Wyrtgeorne þam cyninge, in þære stowe þe is gecueden Agęlesþrep, 7 his broþur Horsan man ofslog; 7 æfter þam Hengest feng to rice 7 Æsc his sunu.
457
Her Hengest 7 Æsc fuhton wiþ Brettas in þære stowe þe is gecueden Crecganford (Crayford) 7 þær ofslogon .iiiim. wera, 7 þa Brettas þa forleton Centlond 7 mid micle ege flugon to Lundenbyrg.
As Medard of Noviomagus in Gaul was related to the Noviomagus that was Chichester, we might be tempted to favor Cymenesora, i.e. Wittering, on Selsey Bill, which is very close to the Romano-British city. Whatever the origin of Cymen-, the Welsh may have taken it for their own camen, "crookedness, curvature, turn, bend, loop" (GPC) plus ora, 'shore, bank.'
The mixing in of Medard as Medrad may well have been accidental - indeed, I think it unnecessary to propose intentional creativity in this instance. Once Medard's Noviomagus was wronly associated with Chichester, it would have been an easy matter to combine annal entries. We might imagine original multiple entries for the same year, something like -
Year X Arthur perishes at Camlan. Blessed Medard rests. And there was plague in Britain and Ireland.
A copyist at some point merely assumed Medard died with Arthur at Camlan and shortened the entry.
Or sucessive entries -
Year Xa Arthur perishes at Camlan.
Year Xb Blessed Medard rests.
Year Xc Plague in Britain and Ireland.
Again, combined to read like the AC entry we now possess.
It seems to me this adequately explains the significance of the Camlan entry, and incidentally provides us with the most likely location for Arthur's last battle - at least according to tradition preserved in the AC.
Sunday, June 1, 2025
NO ARCTURUS ORIGIN FOR ARTHUR NAME
Occam's Razor strikes again.
Before allowing my theorizing to be influenced by the notion expressed in the following article -
- I decided to take the proposed Arcturus origin for the name Arthur to a Welsh expert, viz. Dr. Simon Rodway. Our discussion of the possible etymology follows in unedited form:
Several Arthurian scholars (like Thomas Green in Concepts of Arthur) and Latinists (like Benet Salway) are claiming that a second possible derivation for Arthur is Arcturus, the "bear-guard" star.
Is this possible, from the standpoint of Welsh language development?
Thank you.
D.
It could work if it was borrowed from a form in which the first consonant cluster was simplified to rt (i.e. *Arturus) and if the first u was short (like the oo sound in good).
Simon
All the dictionaries have it as long. So, no?
Lewis and Short:
arctūrus, i, m., = ἀρκτοῦρος.
Well, there's a difference between Classical vowel lengths and what you find in various registers of spoken Latin, so I wouldn't say impossible. As for the combination -rct-, I don't really know what would have happened to it. I suspect it would be simplified (cf. common English pronunciation of Antarctica as 'Antartica'). In the case of sanctus with a broadly similar combination we see two treatments: > santus > sant (cf. santo in Italian etc.) or > *sactus > seith. A bigger question is whether Arcturus was ever used as a personal name.
Simon
It was not used as a name. Nor is there an attested Arcturius.
The suggestion is that Arcturus was applied as a nickname.
I'm not finding this very convincing.
No, me neither. There is a perfectly normal development from Artorius from Arthur, which I've demonstrated for you before.
Simon
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