THE PROPOSED READINGS FOR ARM[...]S ON THE L. ARTORIUS CASTUS STONE (Short Version)

A condensed treatment of the proposed readings to date for the ARM[...]S lacuna of the L. Artorius Castus stone:

1) ARMENIOS is possible. Castus takes legionary troops under the Roman governor of Britain and commander of the war against Armenia, Statius Priscus. The problems with this scenario are distance (other known uses of British troops has them reach places only about halfway to Armenia) and chronology. There were huge forces already available to Priscus and we are told that when he left Britain trouble was stirring. The Armenian War under L. Verus was in the 160s, with Castus' procuratorship immediately following. While an Antonine date for the stone is accepted by several authorities, this is true only for the late or terminal Antonine. There is no evidence British troops served other emperors in later Armenian wars.

2) ARMORICOS. There is no record of Armorica rebelling. Proponents equate this problematically with the Commodan Deserters' War. Also, we need a nested C and O to make the reading fit the space, and we have side-conjoined C/O ligature elsewhere on the stone.

3) ARMATOS. Originated by Dr. Linda A. Malcor. 'Armed men', while it fits perfectly on the stone without ligatures and would thus seem to be an elegant solution, is universally rejected as too vague and nonspecific. I myself have failed to make it work (and I did genuinely try!) and was unable to find a single scholar who would back this reading. I've published numerous pieces that go into great depth on the unfeasibility of ARMATOS. Included in these articles are extensive citations from the most highly regarded Latin epigraphers and Roman military historians in the world. Interested readers can find these posts here on this blog.

4) AN UNKNOWN PLACE, PERSONAL OR ETHNIC NAME. Not helpful, and unlikely, as we would not expect an otherwise very rare or unknown entity to be recorded for posterity on a cursus.

5) ARM(ATAS) GENTES. My original idea. I've satisfied all necessary conditions for this to be a valid reading (as Salway and Graham can confirm). As Castus was prefect of the Sixth, a legion always northward-oriented, he might naturally have been expected to lead legionary forces against armed tribes in the North. This fits the Severus and Caracalla campaigns against the Caledonii and Maeatae confederations. This could have happened while Severus was sick at York and Caracalla had to go north on his own. As an aside, and strictly from the perspective of possible legend development (and not from that of history!), a Dark Age Arthur (now accepted as deriving from L. Artorius) fights the Miathi ( = Maeatae) and the Caledonians. He also fights at a trajectus (perfectly rendered by Welsh tribruit) that has been identified with Caracalla's Forth crossing at Queensferry. The rest of the Historia Brittonum Arthurian battles (save that of Badon, to which Arthur was improperly attached) stretch along or close to the Roman Dere Street, ending in the south at York, the headquarters of Castus' Sixth Legion.

So there you have it: why I think Castus fought under Caracalla. His special procuratorship of Liburnia may have been instituted on an emergency basis during Caracalla's Germanic wars. 

Some "In-Person" Photos of the L. Artorius Castus Memorial Stone

These were taken by my wife Hillarie in 2019, when at the invitation of Dr. Linda A. Malcor we were hosted in Croatia for an Artorius symposium.

Complimentary copy of LET NOT ANYONE ESCAPE FROM SHEER DESTRUCTION: A NEW ARGUMENT FOR A ROMAN KING ARTHUR (entire text)

 

LET NOT ANYONE ESCAPE FROM SHEER DESTRUCTION:

 

A NEW ARGUMENT FOR A ROMAN KING ARTHUR

 

By

 

August Hunt

 

 

Let Not Anyone Escape from Sheer Destruction:

A New Argument for a Roman King Arthur

 

Copyright © August Hunt September 21, 2025

 

Cover Photo: The “Sword in the Stone” at

Podstrana, Croatia.

  

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

August Hunt has a lifelong passion for the Arthurian stories and has been studying them since his youth. He has lectured extensively on King Arthur at colleges and for re-enactment organizations. His articles on British Dark Age topics are also featured on various award-winning websites.

 

Drawing on his considerable knowledge of folklore, heroic legend and myth, as well as place-name studies, history and archaeology, August is providing new and challenging material which illuminates many of the previously shadowy areas of the Arthurian tradition.

 

August holds a degree in Celtic and Germanic Studies.

 

An extensive blog is maintained at:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/

 

 

FOR MY BELOVED HILLARIE

 

On Our Twelfth Anniversary

 

 

“'Let not anyone escape from sheer destruction at our hands, not even anyone whom his mother carries in her womb, being a boy; let not even him escape sheer destruction.”

 

-      Emperor Septimius Severus on the eve of the second Roman campaign against the northern British tribes

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

Fig. 1 Map of Arthurian Battles                9

 

Fig. 2 L. Artorius Castus Inscription       10

 

Introduction                                              11

 

Chapter One                                              12

 

Chapter Two                                              21

 

Chapter Three                                           41

 

Chapter Four                                             48

 

Chapter Five                                              54

 

Chapter Six                                               79

 

Chapter Seven                                           82

 

Chapter Eight                                            93

 

Chapter Nine                                             95

 

Chapter Ten                                               98

 

Chapter Eleven                                          102

 

Afterword                                                   104

 

Appendix                                                    107

 

 Figure 1

Figure 2

 

Introduction:

MY FINAL ARTHURIAN THEORY

 

 

 

For going on three decades now, I've been treating of the Arthurian legend from a speculative standpoint.  Doing so has, as one would expect, put me at odds with academia, where reconstructions of the past that are not produced strictly by utilizing actual evidence are justifiably frowned upon. However, I have employed every respectable academic tool at my disposal in my quest for a historical Arthur candidate. Logical, rational argument coupled with the application of newly proposed ideas (themselves at least allowable, and sometimes preferred or even applauded by top professors in their respective fields of study) has provided me with some interesting and perhaps valuable discoveries. 

 

What has eluded me during the course of my researches is a theory I could really settle on as not just something that was possible, but probable. That is, until I bothered to ask myself one simple, conjoined question: Where was Lucius Artorius Castus, the 3rd century Roman prefect of the Sixth Legion in Britain, most likely to have led the three British legions (or large legionary detachments) and might there be a reading for an important lacuna on his memorial stone that no one had thought of yet?

 

What we could refer to as a "native" British Arthur of the 5th-6th centuries had remained a ghost.  Each time I felt I had found such, further investigation or self-critical analysis revealed that a sub-Roman or Dark Age or early Medieval chieftain appeared to be merely a reflection of a relatively late (or very late) Welsh traditional hero.  There was no history to be found in him.  Just storytelling. After exhausting the Welsh literary materials and the subsequent romance literature (which begain, really, with Geoffrey of Monmouth), I fell back once again to the two extant historical sources for Arthur, the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and the ANNALES CAMBRIAE. 

 

Years ago I had determined that the Arthurian battles could only properly be placed in the North of Britain.  Other writers, some of them good scholars, had come to the same conclusion.  Yet their errors in method had failed to firmly situate these battles at known locations.  My arrangement of Arthur's military activities succeeded in revealing an easily perceivable pattern.  The problem was that experts in Roman and sub-Roman military history who were consulted on the resulting map agreed practically unanimously that what we were looking at was not a Dark Age British Arthur, but instead a Roman general.

 

This fact, along with other equally weighty matters to be discussed in the following pages, led me back to a reconsideration of the Lucius Artorius Castus inscription. I had known about this man from practically the beginning of my naive, idealistic delvings into things Arthurian.  But it was not until Dr. Linda A. Malcor invited me to a Castus symposium in Split, Croatia in 2019 that I began to suspect that this prefect of the Sixth in Britain might have something to do with the Arthurian legend. 

 

Malcor had long held that Castus formed the kernel of the Arthur legend. I had found this improbable, pretty much solely because of the time gap that existed between a 3rd century man (2nd century in her theory) and the 6th century hero of the Saxon resistance.  But I was willing to concede that a Roman officer who had somehow made himself famous while he was in Northern Britain could have caused the name Artorius to be preserved there among future generations.  Such transmission was impossible to prove, of course, but it was certainly conceivable.

 

Of course, accepting that the Arthur name might have continued in the North opened the door to another possibility: that L. Artorius Castus had really done something so extraordinary in the North that he achieved legendary status and it was a folklore creation who was, for the sake of propaganda, temporally displaced to the 6th century.  In other words, Britain needed a hero as a counterbalance to the invading Saxons and so the 3rd century figure, who now had a mythological status, was co-opted for this purpose. 

 

The notion was not as outlandish as it sounded, for I had already made a convincing case for the supposed 5th century Ambrosius Aurelianus, Arthur's precursor, being a conflated figure drawn from 4th century Gaul (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-ghost-ambrosius-reading-4th-century.html).

Certain serious issues surrounding a 6th century Arthur had never been resolved.  For instance, why are the Arthurs subsequent to the most famous one all members of Irish-descended dynasties in Britain?  Various scholars had attempted to explain why this is so, but all of their arguments were quite weak or even downright poor.  Why would Irish invaders/settlers name sons after a famous British chieftain who had won numerous victories over Germanic invaders/settlers?  It seemed to me such royal families from Ireland would choose to name their sons after a man who had, like themselves, won notiable victories over the Britons. 

 

Could that man have been L. Artorius Castus?

 

It was time for me to address another nagging question that I had never been able to answer: if the name Arthur had survived in the North as a result of Castus' presence there, what had Castus done to make him seem to remarkable to the British?  Well, nothing, really, if we accepted the current reading of Armenia for the lacuna on his stone as the place where he led legionary detachments. [Armenia, as it turns out, is scarcely possible given the revised date for the Castus inscription.] I myself had successfully shown that Armorica could fit, but that it could only do so with a ligature that went against a C-O ligature found elsewhere on the stone. [In addition, we could not prove an Armorican rebellion during the Deserters' War under Commodus.]

 

Malcor and colleagues sought to remedy the situation by proposing ARMATOS, 'armed men', as the correct reading.  Unfortunately, while their suggestion fits perfectly in the space provided on the inscription, not a single epigrapher or Roman military expert I consulted approved of their reading.  It was thought to be too vague and nonspecific.  In short, it did not tell us who Castus fought with his legions or legionary detachments.

 

ARMATOS did have the advantage of pointing to military action within Britain, as had he fought 'armed men' outside of the province he would certainly have told us so.  For Malcor and her colleagues, armed men could mean anyone or any grouping of adversaries they wished to imaginatively select.  She decided, without any corroborative evidence, that Castus was the missing governor for the period c. 187-91.  This is not acceptable, as her choosing to interpret Castus's dux rank as being equivalent to a military governor for the period has been shown to be wrong.

 

On December 25, 2024, I published a blog article detailing my own proposed reading for the Castus memorial stone's lacuna.  This new reading, covered in detail below, for the first time allows us to not only place this Roman officer's leading of British legions in Britain, but to apply a chronological fix to his command.  And, not coincidentally, we can also assign the Arthurian battles as listed in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM to this same Roman officer.

 

More importantly, if my reading is correct, L. Artorius Castus was involved in the largest Roman invasion to ever be launched in Northern Britain - an invasion which, toward the end, was literally converted into a campaign encompassing the attempted extermination of the Northern tribes.

 

To demonstrate that all of this may, indeed, be so, I will begin with an examination of the age of the Castus memorial stone.  From there I will proceed to my new reading for the stone's lacuna, followed by the various implications such a reading may have for Arthurian Studies. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One:

THE MOST RECENT DATE ANALYSIS OF THE L. ARTORIUS CASTUS INSCRIPTION

 

 

 

The date of the now famous Lucius Artorius Castus memorial stone, found in Podstrana, Croatia, has long been subject of debate.  Needless to say, having some idea as to when the stone was made has a huge bearing on our ability to fix Castus in a historical context.

 

Fortunately, I was able to obtain excellent treatments of the stone’s style from two leading Roman epigraphers. 

 

The first comes from Dr. Benet Salway (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/history/people/academic-staff/dr-benet-salway):

 

“Coming to the stone cold without any presuppositions and basing my opinion purely on the script, I would favour a date in the Severan period (AD 193-235) or up to a decade or so later. I base this on the high degree of ligaturing in the design.”

 

This sentiment was echoed in more detail by Prof. Abigail Graham

(https://ics.sas.ac.uk/people/dr-abigail-graham):

 

“I have come across this before but not in detail.

 

A few key points.

 

Visual cues (like stop marks or ligatures) alone are seldom reliable indicators of date. However, combined with a series of other elements, they can be helpful.

 

I know Benet Salway and Roger Tomlin. For the Antonine date, I think Roger subscribed to Miletic's theory, which is based on archaeology and historical evidence for camps. My issue is that there are several mistakes in Miletics assessments of the inscriptions, that suggest he is referring to them, rather than looking at them carefully. He wants the pieces to fit together, but that does not necessarily mean they do. https://storicamente.org/miletic_bekavac_castus_liburnia_italy

 

I note several issues, and I can see why Benet has gone for a later Severan date.

 

Dating by style alone is dangerous, but there are stylistic, spelling and practical features that are incredibly rare before a certain time.

 

There are a few things that, in my mind, make it very hard to accept an Antonine date, at the earliest, one could say Commodus, but it’s a stretch. These have to do with a combination of visual features, ligatures, spacing, stops, textual organisation and spellings.

 

Ligatures & Spacing. Ligatures can happen at any time for practical reasons: when cutters run out of space (often in the right hand margin). As texts become more complex, this happens more often. By the time of Septimius Severus, however, they also become decorative, and some seem deliberate, even artistic. Quite a few ligatures in this text happen early on in a line (ll 2-3, 5, 6) not as the carver ran out of space, and with the letter T. Two unusual ones of curved forms also fall beneath each other. ll. 7-8. Also line 9, there was no need for a ligature of 'TE" there was plenty of space (compare with a practical use of ligature NTE at the end of line 8). Ligatures of vowels and T form become popular under Septimius Severus, and occur regardless of spacing. cf. Line 2 of this text from Britain. https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1151.

 

Terms: "Duci" tends to be used in the 3rd c. CE. I found one use in Pannonia on a shield referring to Commodus (180-191). for [Vi]ctoria [re] duci . All other uses are Severan or later.

 

Spellings: Another dating issue noted by Salway is the replication of letters "Legg" (or "Augg" ""praeff" to show a potential plural. I cannot find a single example of this anywhere in the empire before Sept Severus (201 CE), though it occurs frequently after.

 

The lovely letters, the contrast between deep and light chisel cuts (for another example of this Severan from Pannonia cf. https://lupa.at/26913,  also note the fine triangulate interpuncts), plus the double letters, the ligatures for decorative rather than functional use... As well as spelling and terminology all point to Severan or a bit later. At the earliest, this could be 180, but the issue is, it does not look anything like the parallel text cited by Miletic CIL 3. 11695 https://www.flickr.com/photos/156429244@N04/43444599171.

 

A monumental text from this period (ca. 179/180) has no ligatures, and different lettering style altogether. It is hard to believe that a man born in ca. 100, in his fifties by 154, as he claims, was commemorated in ca. 180-190. It is not impossible, but it would be incredibly rare.

 

Where do the interpuncts fit in? You are right to observe these: this is a beautifully arranged inscription with skilled carving. Dating at text involves taking in the whole picture, and reconciling skill and message with the medium. Few texts are perfect and this had moments of difficulty, but it is beautifully rendered. The idea that all ligatures are from lack of talent does not hold, in theory or in practice. That double letters are a series of errors in common terms "legg", "praeff" is hard to accept, especially when these features emerge after 200 CE Legg= at least 22 cases, all dating to the 3rd. C. CE, most between 200-250. "praeff" 40+ cases, none dating before 200. I lean towards Benet Salway's date: Severan or later. I'm not sure one can rule out something from 180, but it would be an anomaly. It's a shame Miletic's archaeology/history and the dating don't align, but this happens often.

 

We have to be very careful about seeing what is there, as opposed to what we want to see.”

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two:

A NEWLY PROPOSED READING FOR THE “ARM[…]S” LACUNA OF THE L. ARTORIUS CASTUS INSCRIPTION

 

 

 

If we accept a Severan date for the Castus memorial stone, we can proceed to attempt to solve the mystery of the ARM[…]S lacuna.  Until we have a satisfactory reading for that lacuna, it is impossible for us to determine exactly what as the nature of the military action which saw Castus take temporary command of three British legions (or legionary vexillations).

 

There have been a few different ideas for ARM[…]S. I covered these briefly in the Introduction and don’t feel the need to provide more detail here.  One point should be raised and that concerns an initial observation by Dr. Benet Salway on the dux command of Castus.  Note, however, that he changed his mind about this after reviewing my proposed new reading for ARM[…]]S:

 

“I don’t think that this [confirmed Severan date for the stone] helps enormously in deciding where the British legionary troops may have been led in campaign to, except to say that there were obviously opportunities for action against the Armenians by British-based troops in the second Parthian War of Septimius Severus, the eastern campaigns of Caracalla, Severus Alexander, and Gordian III.”

 

As mentioned by Prof. Roger Tomlin, there is absolutely no evidence that British troops were used in any of these Eastern campaigns. 

 

More importantly, Severus’ major British War came after his Parthian War. And it is this latter military operation that seemed to hold the most promise for a command of legions or legionary troops by L. Artorius Castus, a prefect of the Sixth legion stationed at York. 

 

The Sixth Legion was always oriented towards the North.  Its job, literally, in the time period we are considering, was to guard the northern limes and to strike back at tribes invading from the North.  That task was its primary - and one might go so far as to say - exclusive role in Britain.  Yes, while we can argue that its prefect took vexillations of his own legion and of the other two legions with him somewhere outside of Britain (even Armenia at the far other end of the Roman Empire), it makes more sense to see him moving his entire legion with generous detachments from the other two or, indeed, all three British legions against a Northern foe.

 

To the best of our knowledge, the only such use of all three legions in Britain during the Severan period would have taken place during the Emperor’s own invasion of the North.

 

With that thought in mind, I decided to take another look at ARM[…]S.

 

The funny thing about the human brain is that it tends to shut itself up in a box.  In looking at ARM[...]S again the other day, I decided to ask a rather simple, obvious question: why are we restricting ourselves to just one word in the lacuna?  Might there not be two words here, one or both perhaps being abbreviated?

 

I began looking for words that might fit and make sense in the context of the inscription.  Again and again I struck out.  I had almost given up when I realized I had missed something.  I had initially dispensed with gentes, 'tribes', because it would not fit.  And then I saw the splendid NTE ligature used for CENT just a little farther along in the same line as ARM[...]S.

 

Guess what?  Allowing for ARMATAS GENTES, 'armed tribes', written as ARM/GENTES with the NTE ligature, fit perfectly!

 

At first glance, this notion seemed to suffer from the same problem as Malcor’s ARMATOS – that is, it was too vague and nonspecific.  But, if we take into account the above-defined characteristics of the Sixth Legion, and recall that Severus fought in the North of Britain against two large tribal confederations, we might well imagine Castus saying he had been put in charge of legionary forces sent against armed tribes. 

 

And, in fact, no one reading the stone with ARM.GENTES present could possibly come to any other conclusion.  For as Castus does not add that these armed tribes were anywhere outside of Britain, it would naturally be assumed they were inside the province and were, therefore, British tribes.  Furthermore, given that a prefect of the Sixth was leading the troops, the action must have been in the North.

 

But to see if this idea actually worked, I had to satisfy a number of conditions.  Most of these had to do with finding precedents for the usage ARMATAS GENTES as well as ARM as an abbreviation (this last not just for other Arm- words, but specifically for armatas).  If I could not come up with sufficient examples, my case would collapse.

 

The last precedent had to address the apparent vagueness of ARM.GENTES.  Could I find similar phrases in ancient Latin epigraphy?

 

Well, let’s address this last question first.

 

I believe that concern can be quelled by looking at another ADVERSUS inscription.

 

In what way would this passage -

 

dux vexil(lationum) IIII / Germ(anicarum) VIII Aug(ustae) X<X=V>II{I} Pr(imigeniae) I / M(inerviae) XXX Ulp(iae) advers(us) defectores / et rebelles

 

[publication: CIL 03, 10473 = D 01153 = IDRE-02, 00280 = TitAq-01, 00021 = Legio-XXX, 00150 = AE 1972, +00378

dating: 208 to 211         EDCS-ID: EDCS-29500132]

 

be any different than

 

[pr]aef{f}(ectus) leg(ionis) VI / Victricis duci legg[ionu]m Britanici(mi)arum adversus arm[gente]s

 

"Prefect of the Sixth Victorious Legion, Dux of British legions against armed tribes"

 

I mean, it seems the first one is perhaps even more ambiguous. 

 

The following website on the first inscription is helpful.

 

https://leg8-fr.translate.goog/corpus-legio8/caius-julius-septimius-castinus/?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

 

"Caius Julius Septimius Castinus , consul-designate, legate propraetor of the three Augusti, for lower Pannonia, legate of the I Legion Minerva, according to the will of our masters head of a vexillation taken from the four Germanic legions, the VIII Augusta, the XXII Primigenia, the I Minerva and the XXX Ulpia against traitors and rebels...

 

Named Dux of a vexillation, he drew detachments from the two legions of Upper Germania, the VIII of Argentorate and the XXII of Mainz, as from the two legions of Lower Germania, the I Minerva of Bonne and the XXX Ulpia of Vetera ((Under the Severi, a considerable role was given to these large expeditionary forces organized for a single expedition and commanded by a Dux.)). Against whom and when was this armed force to fight? We do not know exactly and can only examine the possibilities:

 

1) Against Pescenius Niger in 193-194? The legions of the East proclaimed the legate of Syria, Niger (appointed in 191-192), Emperor. The legions of Septimius Severus won two successes, at Cyzicus, on the shores of the Black Sea, then at Nicaea, a little further east, in late 193-early 194. The decisive victory came at Issus, in April 194, practically where Alexander the Great defeated Darius III. Niger was captured and beheaded, his supporters hunted down and executed.

 

2) Against Claudius Albinus in 196? During the year 196, the governor of Brittany, Claudius Albinus, "associated Caesar" since 193, rallied all of Gaul, attached the Tarraconaise and set up his headquarters in Lyon from where he threatened all the garrisons on the Rhine border. Septimius Severus won a difficult victory on the outskirts of Lyon and Albinus committed suicide.

 

3) Against a revolt which would take place in 207 and of which we would ignore the leaders, the troops and the extent."

 

In exactly the same way Castus is made dux of British legionary troops and is sent against armed tribes.  I would go further, though, and say that the Castus inscription’s phrase is more precise than that concerning Castinus in so far as the action listed in the former must have taken place in the province of Britain.

 

Whether armatas could be rendered in an epigraphic context as ARM was proven easily enough.

 

Firstly, the database TRISMEGISTOS shows the following instances of ARM words abbreviated in extant inscriptions. There are, in fact, dozens of Arm- words abbreviated ARM on stones. 

 

Abbreviated word Frequency

 

ARM armorum 54

ARM Armini 26

ARM Armeniaco 16

ARM Armeniaci 12

ARM Arma 6

ARM Armilustrium 5

ARM Armeniae 4

ARM Armenico 4

ARM Arm 3

ARM armatura 3

ARM Armeniacus 3

ARM armamentarii 2

ARM armamentarius 2

ARM armillis 2

ARM Armato 1

ARM Armemiaco 1

ARM Armeni 1

ARM Armenicus 1

ARM armillae 1

ARM armis 1

ARM Armogio 1

ARM armorum 1 

 

But what of armatas? I found that rather quickly.

 

publication: CIL 03, 14320,02 (p 2328,159) = AHB p 605

dating: 201 to 300         EDCS-ID: EDCS-32300027

province: Dalmatia         place: Tomislavgrad / Duvno / Zupanjac / Delminium

Arm(ato) Aug(usto) s(acrum) / Mattonia / Tertia li/be(n)s posuit

inscription genus / personal status: mulieres;  tituli sacri;  tria nomina

material: lapis

 

https://lupa.at/24204

 

We may compare this inscription with another found dedicated to the same god in Dalmatia:

 

publication: CIL 03, 14320,01 (p 2328,159) = D 04880 = AHB p 604

dating: 101 to 250         EDCS-ID: EDCS-31300289

province: Dalmatia         place: Tomislavgrad / Duvno / Zupanjac / Delminium

Armato s(acrum) / Sest(ia) One/sime ex / voto pos(uit) / l(ibens)

inscription genus / personal status: mulieres;  tituli sacri;  tria nomina

material: lapis

 

Armatus is discussed in detail in željka pandža - Sveučilište u Mostaru, Filozofski fakultet, Odjel za arheologiju, University of Mostar, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Archaeology - BOG ARMATUS NA NATPISIMA S DUVANJSKOG POLJA/GOD ARMATUS IN THE INSCRIPTIONS FROM DUVANJSKO POLJE.

 

Yes, this is a proper name or epithet, and of a deity in Dalmatia who they think was originally a native "Mars".

 

But... armatus, just the word itself, means 'armed', of course, and a person or

deity named such would be 'the armed one' or ‘one who is armed’.

 

So here we do have an instance of ARM being used for 'armed.'

 

And what about the final epigraphic evidence required to demonstrate that the formation ARMATAS GENTES was allowable?

 

Well, there turned out to be a considerable body of material available to prove that point.

 

Firstly, I have found a phrase, armato milites, 'armed soldiers', in Virgil's Aeneid (ii.20). However, as Benet Salway has pointed out, "As verse Virgil's is not probative." But it does show again the adjective in front of the noun, as in my proposed armatas gentes for the LAC lacuna "ARM[...]S."  'armatis militibus', "armed soldiers", occurs in HISTORIA AUGUSTA Septimius Severus 7 and in the same source's Antoninus Caracalla 2. HA Maximus and Balbinus 8 has 'armatos hostes', "armed enemies".

 

In this source, from M. Lollius (https://www.proquest.com/openview/7b05c38fafed83474edb23a8e641b789/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y):

 

armati duces "armed leaders"

 

In Suetonius's Twelve Caesers, I found 'armata praesidii' (Julius), "armed guard."  Also 'armatis cohortibus', "armed cohorts" (Nero).

 

This as well -

 

armatum concilium "armed council"

 

armatum tribunum "armed tribunes" Cic. Pis. 77

 

armatus hostis  armed enemy Sallust  Bellum Catilinae

 

armatis hominibus  armed men Sallust BC

 

armata milia armed thousands Caeser Gallic Wars 2

 

armatum hostem an armed enemy Caeser Gallic Wars 5

 

armata civitas an armed city Caeser Civil Wars 3

 

armatos castris "armed camp" Tacitus Annals 2

 

armatis cohortibus "armed cohorts" Tacitus Annals 3

 

armatorum milia "armed thousands" Tacitus History 3

 

armati exercitus "armed army" Tacitus History 3

 

armatorum Romanorum "armed Romans" History 4

 

And even in later historical sources, like Ammianus Marcellinus (Book XX; V):

 

armatarum cohortium "armed cohorts"

 

Or here:

 

https://www.notitiadignitatum.org/extracod.pdf

 

armatos hostes "armed enemies"

 

And here:

 

https://www.notitiadignitatum.org/21a-mast.pdf

 

armatae militiae "armed forces"

 

As well as here:

 

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/gregorytours/gregorytours6.shtml

 

armatorum turbae "armed crowd"

 

I'm sure other examples could be found - perhaps many such.

 

Prior to this I had located armatas gentes in two instances from the historian Livy.

 

I have also found a use of armatus as an adjective fronting another noun IN THE INSCRIPTIONS, 'armatam statuam', "armed statue":

 

publication: CIL 06, 41142 = CIL 06, 01377 (p 3141, 3805, 4948) = CIL 06, 31640 = D 01098 = IDRE-01, 00010 = AE 2013, +00013

dating: 171 to 180         EDCS-ID: EDCS-01000261

province: Roma         place: Roma

M(arco) Claudio [Ti(beri)] f(ilio) Q[uir(ina)] / Frontoni co(n)s(uli) / leg(ato) Aug(usti) pr(o) pr(aetore) provinciarum Daciarum et [Moesiae] / super(ioris) simul leg(ato) Aug(usti) pr(o) pr(aetore) provincia[rum III] / Daciar(um) leg(ato) Augg(ustorum) pr(o) pr(aetore) Moesiae super(ioris) [et] / Daciae Apule(n)sis simul leg(ato) Augg(ustorum) pr(o) pr(aetore) pro/vinciae Moesiae super(ioris) comiti divi Veri / Aug(usti) donato donis militarib(us) bello Ar/meniaco et Parthico ab Imperatore An/tonino Aug(usto) et a divo Vero Aug(usto) corona / murali item vallari item classica item / aurea item hastis puris IIII item vexillis / IIII curatori operum locorumq(ue) publicor(um) / misso ad iuventutem per Italiam legen/dam leg(ato) Augg(ustorum) pr(o) pr(aetore) exercitus legionarii / et auxilior(um) per Orientem in Armeniam / et Osrhoenam et Anthemusiam ducto/rum leg(ato) Augg(ustorum) legioni(s) primae Minervi/ae in ex{s}peditionem Parthicam deducen/dae leg(ato) divi Antonini Aug(usti) leg(ionis) XI Cl(audiae) prae/tori aedili curuli ab actis senatus quaes/tori urbano Xviro stlitibus iudicandis / huic senatus auctore Imperatore M(arco) Au/relio Antonino Aug(usto) Armeniaco Medico / Parthico maximo quod post aliquo<d=T> se/cunda proelia adversus Germanos / et Iazyges ad postremum pro r(e) p(ublica) fortiter / pugnans ceciderit armatam statuam [poni] / in foro divi Traiani pecunia publica cen[suit]

inscription genus / personal status: Augusti/Augustae;  milites;  ordo senatorius;  tituli honorarii;  tituli sacri;  tria nomina;  viri

material: lapis

 

Nations (gentibus) found fronted by an adjective, diversis, 'different':

 

publication: CIL 13, 05954 (4, p 77) = CLE 01942 = AE 2013, 01106 = Vipard-2013, 00014

dating: 1 to 300         EDCS-ID: EDCS-10801366

province: Belgica | Germania superior         place: Grand / Grannum / Leuci

[In co]nubio iuncti diversis gentibu[s orti(?)] / Gallae cum Parthis mon<u=I>me[ntum 3] / [3]um statuerunt Basilidae [3] / [3 n]unc(?) et sibi non dubitantes / [n]omina noscentur satum c[

inscription genus / personal status: carmina;  mulieres;  tituli operum;  tituli sepulcrales;  viri

material: lapis

 

And nations fronted by another adjective, bellicosissimis, "warlike":

 

publication: CIL 06, 01014 (p 842, 3070, 3777, 4316, 4340) = CIL 06, 31225 = D 00374

dating: 176 to 176         EDCS-ID: EDCS-17400014

province: Roma         place: Roma

S(enatus) p(opulus)q(ue) R(omanus) / Imp(eratori) Caes(ari) divi Antonini f[i]l(io) divi Veri Parth(ici) max(imi) fratr(i) / divi Hadriani nep(oti) divi Traiani Parth(ici) [pro]nep(oti) divi Nervae abnep(oti) / M(arco) Aurelio Antonino Aug(usto) Germ(anico) Sarm(atico) / pontif(ici) maxim(o) tribunic(ia) pot(estate) XXX imp(eratori) VIII co(n)s(uli) III p(atri) p(atriae) / quod omnes omnium ante se maximorum Imperatorum glorias / supergressus bellicosissimis gentibus deletis et subactis / [

inscription genus / personal status: Augusti/Augustae;  tituli honorarii;  viri

material: lapis

 

And still more nations fronted by adjectives, in these two cases devictarum and maxsimis:

 

publication: CILA-02-03, 00927 = IUtrera 00001 = TabSiar = Espectaculos-01, 00004 = Crawford-1996, 00037 = HEp 1995, 00734 = HEp 1999, 00524 = HEp 2011, 00447 = AE 1983, +00515 = AE 1984, 00508 = AE 1986, 00275 = AE 1986, 00308 = AE 1988, 00703 = AE 1989, +00358 = AE 1989, 00408 = AE 1991, 00020 = AE 1999, 00031 = AE 1999, 00891 = AE 2001, +00033 = AE 2001, +00039 = AE 2001, +00087 = AE 2002, +00043 = AE 2002, +00044 = AE 2002, +00045 = AE 2002, +00046 = AE 2003, +00047 = AE 2003, +00048 = AE 2003, +00049 = AE 2003, +00050 = AE 2008, +00651 = AE 2014, +00070

dating: 19 to 20         EDCS-ID: EDCS-45500034

province: Baetica         place: La Canada / Siarum

[Quod M(arcus) Silanus L(ucius)] Nor[banus Balbus co(n)s(ules) v(erba) f(ecerunt) de memoria honoranda Germanici Caesaris qui] / [mortem obire nu]<m=N>quam debuit [3 uti de] / [honoribus m]eritis Germanici Caesar[is 3 ageretur] /[atque de] ea re consilio Ti(beri) Caesaris Aug(usti) prin[cipis nostri ageretur et cognoscendarum] / copia sententiarum ipsi fieret atque is adsu[e]ta sibi [moderatione ex omnibus iis] / honoribus quos habendos esse censebat senatus legerit eo[s quos ipse vellet et Iulia] / Augusta mater eius et Drusus Caesar materque Germanici Ca[esaris Antonia consilio] / adhibita ab eis et deliberationi satis apte posse haberi exist<i=U>[marent d(e) e(a) r(e) i(ta) c(ensuere)] / placere uti ianus marmoreus extrueretur in circo Flaminio pe[cunia publica posi]/tus ad eum locum in quo statuae divo Augusto domuique Augus[tae publice positae es]/sent ab C(aio) Norbano Flacco cum signis devictarum gentium

 

publication: CIL 11, 01421 (p 1263) = InscrIt-07-01, 00007 = D 00140 = DecretaPisana 00002 = Freis 00017 = Questori 00328 = Segenni = Bergemann 00036 = Epigraphica-2007-99 = AE 1991, +00021 = AE 2000, +00037 = AE 2002, +00451 = AE 2003, +00626 = AE 2007, +00070 = AE 2007, +00539 = AE 2009, +00014 = AE 2010, +00037

dating: 4 to 14         EDCS-ID: EDCS-20402891

province: Etruria / Regio VII         place: Pisa / Pisae

scrib(endo) ad]/fu[e]r(unt) Q(uintus) Sertorius Q(uinti) f(ilius) Atilius Tacitus P(ublius) Rasinius L(uci) f(ilius) Bassus L(ucius) Lappius / P(ubli) [f(ilius) G]allus Q(uintus) Sertorius Q(uinti) f(ilius) Alpius Pica C(aius) Vettius L(uci) f(ilius) Virgula M(arcus) Herius / M(arci) [f(ilius) P]riscus A(ulus) Albius A(uli) f(ilius) Gutta Ti(berius) Petronius Ti(beri) f(ilius) Pollio L(ucius) Fabius L(uci) f(ilius) Bassus / Sex(tus) [A]ponius Sex(ti) f(ilius) Creticus C(aius) Canius C(ai) <f=E>(ilius) Saturninus L(ucius) Otacilius Q(uinti) f(ilius) Panthera / quod [v(erba) f(acta)] sunt cum in colonia nostra propter contentiones candidato/ru[m m]agistratuus non essent ea acta essent quae infra scripta sunt / cum a(nte) [d(iem) II]II Nonas Apriles allatus esset nuntius C(aium) Caesarem Augusti patris patri/ae [po]ntif(icis) max{s}<i=U>mi custodis imperi(i) Romani totiusque orbis terrarum prae/si[dis f]ilium divi nepotem post consulatum quem ultra finis extremas popu/li [Ro]mani bellum gerens feliciter peregerat bene gesta re publica devicteis aut / in [fid]em receptis bellicosissimis ac max{s}imis gentibus

 

Some examples of gentis/gentes used with adjectives in inscriptions.  This is NOT an exhaustive list by any means, as if one searches for merely gent there are thousands of hits in the database to look at.  Frankly, I lacked the patience for that exercise!

 

publication: CIL 03, 00247 = D 00754 = IIulian 00020 = BritRom-14, 00017 = AE 2019, +01631 = GLIA-02, 00332

dating: 362 to 362         EDCS-ID: EDCS-22300504

province: Galatia         place: Ankara / Ancyra

Domino totius orbis / Iuliano Augusto / ex Oceano Bri/tannico vi(i)s per / barbaras gentes / strage resistenti/um patefactis adus/que Tigridem una / aestate transvec/to Saturninius / Secundus v(ir) c(larissimus) praef(ectus) / praet(orio) [d(evotus)] N(umini) m(aiestati)q(ue) [ei(us)]

inscription genus / personal status: Augusti/Augustae;  ordo senatorius;  tituli honorarii;  tituli sacri;  tria nomina;  viri

material: lapis

 

publication: CIL 03, p 0774 (p 1054, 2328,57) = IGRRP-03, 00159 = IDRE-02, 00394 = Scheid = Cooley-2012a = GLIA-01, 00001 = AE 2007, +00036 = AE 2007, +00037 = AE 2009, +00035 = AE 2013, +00004 = AE 2013, +00005 = AE 2014, +00010 = ZPE-220-281 = AE 2021, 012097

dating: 14 to 14         EDCS-ID: EDCS-20200013

province: Galatia         place: Ankara / Ancyra

Rerum gestarum divi Augusti quibus orbem terra[rum] imperio populi Rom(ani) / subiecit et i<m=N>pensarum quas in rem publicam populumque Romanum fecit incisarum / in duabus aheneis pilis quae su[n]t Romae positae exemplar sub[i]ectum // [1] Annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa / comparavi per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam / in libertatem vindicavi eo [nomi]ne senatus decretis honorif[i]ci(i)s in / ordinem suum m[e adlegit C(aio) Pansa et C(aio) Hirt]io consulibus consula/rem locum s[ententiae dicendae simu]l [dans et i]mperium mihi dedit / res publica n[e quid detrimenti caperet] me pro praetore simul cum / consulibus pro[videre iussit p]opulus autem eodem anno me / consulem cum [consul uterqu]e in bel[lo ceci]disset et triumvirum rei publi/cae constituend[ae creavit] / [2] qui parentem meum [trucidaver]un[t eo]s in exilium expuli iudiciis legi/timis ultus eorum [fa]cin[us] et postea bellum inferentis rei publicae / vici b[is a]cie / [3] [b]ella terra et mari c[ivilia ex]ternaque toto in orbe terrarum s[aepe gessi] / victorque omnibus v[eniam petentib]us civibus peperci exter[nas] / gentes

 

 publication: CIL 03, p 0774 (p 1054, 2328,57) = IGRRP-03, 00159 = IDRE-02, 00394 = Scheid = Cooley-2012a = GLIA-01, 00001 = AE 2007, +00036 = AE 2007, +00037 = AE 2009, +00035 = AE 2013, +00004 = AE 2013, +00005 = AE 2014, +00010 = ZPE-220-281 = AE 2021, 012097

dating: 14 to 14         EDCS-ID: EDCS-20200013

province: Galatia         place: Ankara / Ancyra

 

exter[nas] / gentes

 

 publication: D 09351 = CLE 01916 = ILCV 00779 (add) = BCTH-1976/78-152 = BCTH-1990/92-160 = CLEAfr-01, p 120 = CLENuovo p 138 = Hamdoune-2016, p 169 = AfrRom-19-1000 = AE 1901, 00150 = AE 1993, +01780 = AE 2016, +01832

dating: 370 to 370         EDCS-ID: EDCS-16800401

province: Mauretania Caesariensis         place: Ighzer Amokrane / Fundus Petrensis

Praesidium aeternae firmat prudentia pacis / rem quoque Romanam fida tutat undique dextra / amni praepositum firmans munimine montem / e cuius nomen vocitavit nomine Petram / denique finitimae gentes

 

publication: ASAE-1934-22,2

dating: 308 to 310         EDCS-ID: EDCS-72000104

province: Aegyptus         place: Luxor / Al Uqsur / Karnak / Al Karnak / Theben / Thebai / Thebae / Iounou-Shema / Diospolis Magna

Pietatis auctor[e]m et barbara/rum gentium extinctorem / d(ominum) n(ostrum) Val(erium) Licinium P(ium) F(elicem) Invictum / Aug(ustum) Aur(elius) Maximinus v(ir) p(erfectissimus) du[x] / Aeg(ypti) et Theb(aidos) utrarumq(ue) Libb(yarum) / devotus N(umini) m(aiestati)q(ue) eorum(!)

inscription genus / personal status: Augusti/Augustae;  ordo equester;  tituli honorarii;  tituli sacri;  tria nomina;  viri

 

publication: IK-12, 00313a = IIulian 00026

dating: 361 to 363         EDCS-ID: EDCS-00400018

province: Asia         place: Ephesus

D(omino) n(ostro) Fl(avio) Cl(audio) Iuliano / virtutum omnium magistro / philosophiae principi / venerando et / Piissimo Imperatori / victoriosissimo Augusto / omnium barbararum / gentium debellatori / Ael(ius) Cl(audius) Dulcitius / v(ir) c(larissimus) procons(ul) Asiae / vice sacra cog(noscens) / d(evotus) N(umini) maiestatiq(ue) eius

inscription genus / personal status: Augusti/Augustae;  ordo senatorius;  tituli honorarii;  tituli sacri;  tria nomina;  viri

material: lapis

 

Conclusion

 

The corpus of epigraphic and literary examples cited allows for the validity of my proposed reading ARMATAS GENTES for the L. Artorius Castus inscription’s lacuna ARM[…]S.

 

Having assembled my argument, I went back to the professional epigraphers Salway and Graham to ask them what they thought.  Here are their responses to my query:

 

“Leaving aside the Virgil, you have now assembled a convincing body of parallels to argue for your restoration of this lacuna on the epitaph for Artorius Castus.

 

Well done.”

 

Benet Salway

 

“Yes, your reading does make sense, and I applaud it! When you make your case for the restoration, perhaps you should send a copy of it to Silvia Orlandi so that she can add or reference your version to the EAGLE database, where most people hunt for inscriptions... (this would also advertise your work to more scholars).”

 

Abigail Graham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three:

THE ARTHURIAN BATTLES AND L. ARTORIUS CASTUS DURING THE BRITISH WAR OF SEVERUS

 

 

 

My extensive research on the Arthurian battles as these are found in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and the ANNALES CAMBRIAE led me to conclude that all save Badon were in the North of Britain.  For a detailed discussion of each identified site, I would refer my reader to my blog. For the purposes of this book the following simplified list will have to suffice:

 

primum bellum fuit in ostium fluminis quod dicitur glein.

 

Mouth of the Northumberland River Glen near Yeavering (the later AS royal center of Ad Gefrin).

 

secundum et tertium et quartum et quintum super aliud flumen quod dicitur dubglas et est in regione linnuis.

 

Devil's Water at Linnels ("Lake elbow; there are several lakes/pools here) near the Corbridge Roman fort. Richard Coates has approved both etymologies.

 

sextum bellum super flumen quod uocatur bassas.

 

Dunipace, "Fort of the Shallow", directly between the two Miathi forts and hard by Arthur's Oven Roman monument. This comes from Scottish place-name expert John Reid, further developed by Brittonic expert Alan James.

 

septimum fuit bellum in silua celidonis, id est cat coit celidon.

 

The Caledonian Wood in Highland Scotland, to the east of the Great Glen and along or the west of the Gask Ridge Roman forts.

 

octauum fuit bellum in castello guinnion, in quo arthur portauit imaginem sanctae mariae semper uirginis super humeros suos et pagani uersi sunt in fugam in illo die et caedes magna fuit super illos per uirtutem domini nostri iesu christi et per uirtutem sanctae mariae genetricis eius.

 

Binchester Roman fort of Vinovia. Once thought impossible, a slight one-letter, common change brought it back to life. See Rivet and Smith.

 

nonum bellum gestum est in urbe legionis, *id est cair *legion.

 

York, where Castus and his Sixth Legion were stationed

 

decimum gessit bellum in litore fluminis quod uocatur *traith tribruit.

 

The trajectus at Queensferry's Ardchinnechena[n] or Height of the Dog's Head on the Firth of Forth. The original, literal meaning of W. Tryfrwyd is 'pierced-through.' This is a shore name, not a river name. It accords perfectly with the L. trajectus (Graham Isaac of Galway). The Dog-heads Arthur fights there are reflected in the headland name or perhaps in the Venicones tribe (hunting or kindred hounds; Andrew Breeze and John Koch, respectively). Roman historians (see Simon Elliot) now believe the trajectus on Caracalla coins represent the Queensferry crossing.

 

undecimum bellum in monte qui dicitur breguoin, *id est cat bregion.

 

The High Rochester Roman fort of Bremenium, Urien's Brewyn. Agned is an error for agued, a word meaning "dire straits", found applied to Catterick in the Gododdin poem. That poem contains the earliest known reference to Arthur. Thus Agned may refer to either High Rochester or to Catterick. [Again, that from Graham Isaac.]

 

Could a Dark Age Commander Have Fought in These Places?: One Expert Says No

 

I've asked a sub-Roman/Dark Age and Arthurian expert - Professor Christopher Snyder - about the Arthurian battles.

 

Essentially, in order not to bias him, I sent the map of HB sites as I've laid those out - not telling him, though, that these are my Arthurian site identifications. Instead I asked him if he thought the arrangement reasonable or at least possible for a sub-Roman ruler. Or if they looked instead like something we'd find under Ulpius Marcellus or Severus.

 

Included was a note to the Caledonian site, as well as to the Miathi one (Arthur's Bassas appears to Dunipace, directly between the two Miathi/Maeatae forts, and Artur of Dalriada is said to have died fighting the Miathi). All of this with no specific reference to Arthur, of course.

 

Basically, I wanted his honest take on whether it was possible for a man of the newly fractured, post-Roman Britain to have fought battles in these theaters, or whether the pattern instead looks decidedly Roman.

 

RESPONSE (7 April 2025):

 

"Looking at your map, I would say that they are more likely to represent campaigns of a Roman general.  We know practically nothing about campaigns of post-Roman British military commanders.  If these are conjectured locations of battles from the Historia Brittonum, I would not use them as evidence for the fifth or sixth centuries."

 

I next needed to know what a historian of Roman Britain thought of my map.

 

Professor Roger Tomlin on the Arthurian

Battles             

 

The map and accompanying notes were subsequently sent to Professor Roger Tomlin.

 

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.”

 

Conclusion

 

The reader will have noticed that Arthur’s Badon was not included in my list of Arthurian battles. I once tried to make the case for Badon being for Buxton, where the English Batham Gate Roman road preserves a form of Bathum, which quite naturally became Badon in British.  But a great deal of thought on the ‘Badon Problem’ now has me agreeing with Prof. Nicholas Higham, who recently expressed to me his opinion on the battle and its dubious attribution to the British Dark Age hero:

 

“I have no doubt the HB list is a fantastical fiction put together c. 800 using whatever the author had available to pad out the required 12 battles (it was clearly a struggle).  The only one which fits the right sort of timeframe for his purposes is Badon, which was the siege he took from Gildas, but I have argued elsewhere this was not a particularly significant engagement, merely one of three ways Gildas sought to fix the date when the current era, in his view, began.”

 

Also missing from the list of Arthur’s Camlan.  That, too, was by design and is not an accidental omission. While I’ve proven that Welsh tradition firmly situates Camlan at the Afon Gamlan in NW Wales

(https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-thirteenth-battle-camlann.html), the presence of the Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall almost certainly indicates that once again we are dealing with a folk memory of L. Artorius Castus. Archaeology has shown that Severus and Caracalla were rebuilding and quite possibly fighting on Hadrian’s Wall, and their presence is attested as Castlesteads/Camboglanna and the Birdoswald/Banna Roman fort in the same Irthing Valley (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/02/camboglanna-roman-fort-and-l-artorius.html). 

 

The Welsh legendary material, utilized later by the authors of Arthurian romance, focuses on the Aballava/Avalana/’Avalon’ Roman fort just west of Castlsteads and the Roman fort of Drumburgh/Concavata (a possible Grail Castle prototype; see

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-new-theory-on-concavata-name-for.html). 

 

The presence of the Roman period Dea Latis or ‘Lake Goddess’ in this region seems to have contributed to the story of the Lady of the Lake.

 

The Irthing Valley itself (according to place-name expert Andrew Breeze; see

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-bear-river-of-birdoswald-banna-and.html)  may be from a British name meaning “Little Bear”.  I have hypothesized that the British *Artenses ( = the Welsh eponym Arthwys) lived in the Irthing Valley. Given that Artorius or Arthur was associated by the Welsh with their own bear word, arth, it is tempting to wonder about some king of relationship existing between an Arthur/Artorius at Camboglanna in the Irthing Valley and an indigenous bear tribe.

 

In short, as it is entirely historically plausible that L. Artorius Castus was present at Camboglanna during the Severan British War and may have even fought there, we really have no reason to accept as factual the invention of an Arthur at the Afon Gamlan in Wales.  This last would be simply a fairly typical relocation of a famous earlier figure from the North to the Celtic Fringe.

 

That Medrawd of the Welsh Camlan story is plainly a borrowing of Medard of Gaul (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/06/medraut-at-camlan-final-reveal.html), improperly inserted into the Camlan narrative either through error or creative intent, does not help us view the Welsh tradition any kinder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Four:

CARACALLA AND THE LIBURNIA PROVINCE OF L. ARTORIUS CASTUS

 

 

 

Before I enter into a more comprehensive exploration of L. Artorius Castus as the Arthur, it is important that we first establish a reasonable scenario by which Castus, after serving in the British War of Severus, might have gone on to become the Procurator of Liburnia with ius gladii, the right of the sword.

 

I once made the case for the division of Dalmatia into two parts, with Liburnian being the northern section, as something that could only have happened at the outset of the Marconmannic Wars. Classical texts seemed to confirm this notion, and it fit well with Prof. Roger Tomlin’s theory that Castus had served in Armenia under Lucius Verus.

 

But as it turns out, there was one other period in which the same kind of rank could have been created for Castus:

 

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_invasions_into_the_Roman_Empire_of_the_3rd_century:

 

“After about thirty years of relative quiet along the Rhine-Danubian frontiers [Commodus had ended the Marcomannic Wars c. 180], a new crisis broke out along the Germanic-Rhaetian Limes in 212, caused by the first invasion of the Alemanni confederation.

 

The invasions of the third century, according to tradition, began with the first incursion conducted by the Germanic confederation of the Alemanni in 212 under Emperor Caracalla...”

 

Having studied the L. Artorius Castus stone now since at least 2019, and having only recently proposed a new reading for the ARM[...]S lacuna, I've come to the conclusion that opting for a Castus fighting in Britain over one fighting in Armenia is the better alternative. 

 

My problem when looking into the possibility that Castus had taken part in Severus' massive invasion of the British North was what to do with his following procuratorship in the province of Liburnia.  The more research I did on the nature of this procuratorship the more I became convinced - as were the Roman epigraphers and Roman military historians I'd consulted - that for an equestrian to be granted ius gladii in what appeared to be a new province carved out of Dalmatia (or, at the very least, was an administrative district that was a subdivision of Dalmatia) called for extraordinary circumstances surrounding its formation.  Most likely this involved some kind of emergency preparedness. 

 

ARMENIOS for Armenia of the early 160s has remained a favorite for ARM[...]S.  We can also look to a reorganization of Illyricum and Dalmatia under Marcus and Verus at the onset of the Marcomannic Wars c. 168-170.  The Roman governor of Britain, Statius Priscus, had been sent to command the army in Armenia.  So, really, this argument appears to be very strong.

 

But Armenia is very far from Britain.  My analysis of British vexillations on the Continent and beyond (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2022/12/vexillations-sent-from-britain-to-fight.html) revealed that other than a proposed Armenia expedition, the two other most distant postings for British vexillations were Carnuntum in Austria and Sirmium in Serbia. 

 

Furthermore, my gut kept telling me that a prefect of the Sixth Legion at York (a legion whose purpose was always guardianship of the North), commanding British legionary troops, is much more likely to have been fighting in Britain and, indeed, in northern Britain.  But this was merely applying probability to the problem, as well as personal bias. 

 

An ARM.GENTES allowed me to find the idea that Castus had fought in Britain to be more acceptable. But, again, if I couldn't find a good reason to have Castus as procurator of Liburnia soon after he led troops in a major military action, I would have to dispense with the proposed reading.

 

It didn't take me long to find it.  I've posted at the head of this chapter a selection from Wikipedia.  That passage describes how a very similar situation arose on the Continent under Caracalla as had existed under Marcus and Verus, viz. the Germanic invasions started again in earnest.  For details on how severe these were, both in terms of real damage or threat level, I refer my readers to "Caracalla: A Military Biography" by Ilkka Syvänne (p. 155 passim). 

 

Caracalla had been in Britain with his father, Severus, during the invasion of the North.  Dr. Simon Elliott, author of "Septimius Severus in Scotland: The Northern Campaigns of the First Hammer of the Scots" (p. 152) attempts a hypothetical reconstruction of Caracalla's role in the invasion.

 

“Having crossed the Forth I believe the huge [Roman] force then divided into two legionary spearheads: a larger one comprising two-thirds of the troops available (likely with the three British legions, used to campaigning in this theatre) under the fitter Caracalla… Caracalla led his larger force in a blitzkrieg lightning strike south-west to north-east along the Hihgland Boundary Fault, building the sequence of fifty-four-hectare marching camps as he went along, to seal off the Highlands from the Maeatae and the Caledonians living in the Midland Valley and to prevent the Caledonian reserves from emerging into the campaigning theatre from the Highlands themselves.”

 

While we can never know what really happened, this is a sound approach by Elliott.  Even more interesting for our purposes is his reference to the three British legions being under Caracalla.  I have long argued - vociferously at times (because I was predicating my argument on Castus' having left Britain!) - that vexillations were implied on the Castus stone.  I even pointed to works like that of Robert Saxer, who had found dozens of instances of what he assumed were implied vexillations in inscriptions.  However, if we accept the huge force assembled by Severus and allow for all three legions to have been involved, then we can accept the reading of the Castus stone literally: he was put in charge of the three British legions under Caracalla.

 

Ilkka Syvanne, in her book EMPEROR SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS: THE ROMAN HANNIBAL (p. 233), further emphasizes that the second campaign to the North was likely conducted solely by Caracalla:

 

“… that this time Severus adopted a policy of extermination as a form of punishment, and that the campaign was conducted by Antoninus Caracalla alone because Severus was too ill to participate.”

 

One might speculate that because in the first campaign the huge Roman force had split in two, with Caracalla controlling one half and Severus the other, that in the second campaign Caracalla had found it necessary to assign the British legions or large vexillations of those legions to L. Artorius Castus.

 

We might then simply say this: after his successful stint as dux under Severus, Castus was placed over the province of Liburnia.  Now, we need not insist on the foundation of Liburnia at this time.  It is quite possible the province was created c. 170.  And that it continued in existence for some three decades.  Still, I cannot help but think that once the Marcomannic threat was gone, the new province's distinctiveness would have lapsed quite naturally and it would have again become simply a region within Dalmatia.  For this reason we should prefer that Liburnia was formed c. 212 as a response to the Alemannic invasion under Caracalla.

 

The rather exciting thing about this scenario is that Caracalla would have known Castus.  And it remains true that the ius gladii could only be given to an equestrian governor by the Emperor himself.

 

I asked Dr. Benet Salway (the same scholar who had accepted my proposed  ARM.GENTES for the Castus stone as a valid reading, and who thought the Castus stone was Severan in date) the following question:

 

"So far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with having Castus fight armed tribes in Britain under Severus and Caracalla, then be made Liburnian procurator under Caracalla.

 

Right?"

 

Dr. Salway responded:

 

"Yes, it is a hypothesis that is consistent with the evidence."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five:

ARTHUR AND THE MIATHI, ARTORIUS AND THE MAEATAE?

 

 

 

Although all the Arthurian battles in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and ANNALES CAMBRIAE (with the exception of Badon) belong in the North of Britain, three are especially important for identifying Arthur with Castus.  These battles are the Bassas River, the Caledonian Wood and the shore of the Tribruit.  I will devote the next three chapters to these battles.

 

The Bassas River battle first…

 

In the Irish sources on Dark Age Dalriada, Arthur son (or grandson) of Aedan mac Gabran is said to die in two different places. Various attempts to explain this difficulty have been attempted. Probably the best is by John Bannerman in his STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF DALRIADA:

 

https://archive.org/details/studiesinhistory00john/page/n11/mode/1up?q=Miathi

 

What I found the most interesting about an Arthur fighting the Miathi is that my best identification of the HB's Bassas River put the battle site at Dunipace. My identification was based on place-name expert John Reid's etymology for Dunipace as hill or fort of the bas/"shallow" and the presence nearby of Arthur's Oven. The oven was probably a Roman building which took on Arthur's name in folklore.

 

Dunipace itself is in the territory of the Miathi, the Classical period Maeatae. In fact, it is very close to Myot Hill, one of the forts of the Miathi.

 

Thus in my earlier Arthurian writings I tentatively suggested a link between Arthur of Dalriada in the Miathi lands and the HB Arthur at Dunipace. My thinking then was that Bassas in the HB might represent an intrusion into the battle list from Arthur of Dalriada's martial exploits. Such conflation of the various Arthurs has long been suspected.

 

But given the revised age for the Castus inscription, coupled with my ARM.GENTES reading for that inscription’s lacuna, there is another, better possibility.

 

The largest campaign every launched against Northern Britain by the Romans took place under Severus. The emperor's governor, Virius Lupus, had tried unsuccessfully to tame the Maeatae. Instead, he ended up buying them off. But they did not remain peaceful for long. They attacked to the South again, this time in league with another tribal confederation, the Caledonii. Severus was forced to go to Britain himself and gave orders for the northern tribes to be utterly destroyed. Although his desire for genocide was not accomplished, it is likely a great deal of damage was inflicted upon the tribes.

 

What I thought to myself was simply this: would not it be an astonishing coincidence had Artorius fought the Maeatae, the same Maeatae (Miathi) Arthur of Dalriada and/or Arthur of the HB were said to have fought?

 

And then I dared go one step further: what if it were not a coincidence?

 

What if the folk memory of the genocidal war Artorius engaged in against armed tribes had so impressed itself upon the traditions of the Northern British that later Arthurs were mistakenly, through easily garbled oral history and heroic songs, given a battle against the Maeatae/Miathi that had originally belonged to Artorius?

 

While this notion is impossible to prove, of course, it is not so hard to believe. It seems, at the very least, rather credible.

 

Now, it is time for me to make an important confession.  I've been working in the Castus inscription pretty steadily since 2019. It has become more than a bit of an obsession. But while I concentrated on the two generally accepted readings - ARMORICOS (since I showed it would fit on the memorial stone) and ARMENIOS - I have always harbored a secret desire for a designation that would allow us to put Castus in northern Britain.

 

I feel this way for this reason: if we accept the premise that the Artorius name was preserved in the North only to resurface in the 5th-6th centuries as British Arthur, then it follows that the original bearer of that name must have done something in the North that gave his name currency among the populace. It would have had to be something truly noteworthy. Had Castus been just another Roman officer who had his glory days elsewhere, and who retired in Dalmatia (where there are several Artorii), the idea that his name was preserved in Britain is pretty unsustainable.

 

Granted, everything rides on that stated premise. And that premise will be rejected by many. It may make others squirm. Both parties would doubtless prefer that the name Arthur is just a name and that its cropping up in Dark Age Britain is no more special than Tom, Dick or Harry popping up at a much later date. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

 

Still, I would add another premise to the first one. Is it unreasonable to assume that had an Artorius been instrumental in the first Hammer of the Scots' (Simon Elliot's term for Severus) exceptionally brutal campaign against the Northern tribes that he might have been remembered in the North well enough for his name to have been preserved among the ruling elite south of the Wall?  In this case, we need not adhere to the idea that there was a Dark Age Arthur. His existence becomes superfluous.

 

I, personally, do not find this an unreasonable assumption at all.

 

The Discovery of the Maeatae

 

Research on the Maeatae (known as the Miathi in early medieval sources) has been scant. This is in large part because the name of the tribe itself, combined with Cassius Dio's claim that it was a confederation of tribes (a claim he repeats for the Caledonii), has led to the belief that its amorphous nature makes it impossible to pin down geographically.

 

Before I point out why I think that is faulty logic, here is Rivet and Smith's treatment of the Maeatae from their THE PLACE-NAMES OF ROMAN BRITAIN:

 

* Rivet & Smith, p. 404 :

 

SOURCE

 

- Xiphilinus 321 (summarising Cassius Dio LXXVI, 12) : Maiatai (= MAEATAE; twice);

 

- Jordanes 2, 14 (also quoting Cassius Dio) : Meatae

 

DERIVATION. Holder II. 388 thought the name Pictish, and it is discussed by Wainwright PP 51-52; it may survive in Dumyat and Myot Hill, near Stirling and thus north of the Antonine Wall. Watson CPNS 58 seems to take the name as wholly Celtic, as is surely right in view of the Continental analogues he cites for the second element or suffix : Gaulish Gais-atai 'spearmen' (*gaison 'spear'), Gal-atai 'warriors' (*gal 'valour, prowess'), Nantu-atai (-ates) 'valley-dwellers'; he notes also the presence in Ireland of the Magn-atai. See also ATREBATES, with further references. One might therefore conjecture that in this name at least the force of the suffix is 'those of. . . '. The first element might be the same as in Maia, probably 'larger', in which case a sense 'larger people' or more strictly 'people of the larger part' may be suitable. It is to be noted that Cassius Dio, as quoted by others, seems to say that Britain north of the Antonine Wall was divided between the Calidonii and the Maeatae, these having subsumed lesser tribes, and it could well be that the Maeatae were the 'people of the larger part'. The name was still in use in Adamnan's day : Miathi in his Life of St Columba, I, 8.

 

IDENTIFICATION. A confederation of tribes in the southern part of Scotland (the northern part being occupied by a similar confederation of Calidonii, q.v.). As noted above, place-namcs indicate that they extended into Stirlingshire and their northern limit was probably the Mounth, but their southern extent is disputed and depends on the interpretation of the statement of Xiphilinus that they lived 'near the cross-wall which cuts the island in two'. Collingwood (Roman Britain and the English Settlements, Oxford, 1937). 157) interpreted it as the Antonine Wall and in this was followed by Richmond (Roman Britain (Harmondsworth, !963), 57~59), but Frère (1974, 188) prefers Hadrian's Wall and attaches the Selgovae (q.v.) to them.

 

And the Maeatae mentioned by Rivet and Smith in the context of their treatment of the CALIDONII:

 

IDENTIFICATION. Ptolemy locales a specifie tribe of this name in the area of the Great Glen, but it may be significant that Tacitus never uses the tribal name as such but always a periphrasis (habitantes Caledoniam, etc.). In general classical usage the name came to be applied to all the inhabitants of Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus, but in the reference by Xiphilinus (= Cassius Dio) they are specifically a confederation of tribes occupying northern Scotland, as opposed to the Maeatae (q.v.) who occupied the south".

 

Now, assumptions or judgments made on such names can seriously lead us astray. There are, in reality, only four things we can say for certainty:

 

1) The name of the Maeatae may be simply a standard, boastful tribal designation. They called themselves the Greater Ones - with the obvious meaning that they considered themselves to be greater than their neighbors. Tribes could be quite small - something place-names and historical studies tell us when we look at Ireland, Wales, Scotland. Ptolemy did not say the Caledonii was a confederation. It is even quite possible that by claiming both the Maeatae and the Caledonii to be confederations, the size of Rome's enemies was amplified for the usual propagandistic reasons. Finally, just because Ptolemy didn't know of the tribe doesn't mean it didn't exist at his time. He might well simply not have known about them. The Ptolemaic place and tribal names for Britain represent only a fraction of the names that would have been used by the native Britons themselves. Most place-names are major centers on the Romam roads, for example.

 

2) The Maeatae were below the Caledonii.

 

3) The Maeatae were near a wall that divided the island in half. Given that the two Miathi forts are just north of the east end of the Antonine Wall, it makes no sense to seek them next to Hadrian's Wall. And to opt for the latter would mean accepting that the Maeatae as a confederation included among its members the Novantae, the Selgovae and the Votadini.

 

4) Artur of Dalriada is said to have perished fighting the Miathi. If he did (and I have elsewhere suggested a possible confusion with a tradition concerning an earlier Artorius), then he would have been fighting to the northeast, possibly close to the Antonine Wall (see below). He would not have been fighting near Hadrian's Wall.

 

Is this all is so, where were the Maeatae?

 

Well, before I answer that question, as the Miathi forts appear to be in the ancient region known as Manau Gododdin, it would benefit us to see if we can get a better geographical fix on the latter.

 

Conventional wisdom points to the Clackmannan and Slamannan place-names and defaults to a general region centered there. But Dalmeny (see below) needs to be considered in this context, as does the etymology of the Manau name itself.

 

To begin, let's take a look at possible derivations for Manau as these are discused in Alan James' BLITON:

 

*man- 

 

205 IE *mṇ- (zero-grade of *men- ‘jut, project’,  see mönïδ, *mönju and *mönǭg)  > eCelt *mon- > Br * Mon-, Man- (in p-ns), cf. (< IE participial *mṇ-t-) W mant ‘mouth, lip’; OIr Man- (in p-ns); cf. (< IE o-grade *mon-) O-MnIr, G moniu ‘upper back’; cf. (IE *men-) Latin mentum ‘chin’, prōmineō ‘I project’. The Indo-European status of this root is supported by Hittite and Avestan forms, see OIPrIE §18.5 at p. 298, but cf. Sims-Williams (2000) at pp 3-4.  See also mönïδ. The root implies ‘projecting’, especially of facial and other bodily features: in place-names, the sense is presumably ‘outstanding, prominent, high’. With the suffix –awā-, it is seen in the North in the territorial name Manaw HB14.62, CT59(V) (and probably CT29(XI)), and in OIr forms at AU[582]583, AT[579]583, AU[710]711, AT[710]711, but see LHEB §47(1), pp. 375-6, YGod(KJ) pp. 69–75, and  discussion of Clackmannan under *clog. Elsewhere, a similar form underlies the Isle of Man, Ellan Vannin (see PNRB pp. 410-11 and DMxPN p xi) and Ynys Môn, Anglesey (see PNRB pp. 419-20, DPNW p. 17). There are as many as fourteen related place-names in Ireland (Anglicised Mannin etc.: D Mac Giolla Easpaig at SNSBI Conference, Douglas IoM, 7.4.2001). Manaw, like Ynys Môn and some of the Irish places, is not outstandingly mountainous, and some other sense seems needed. A deity-name, perhaps associated with water, might be indicated – cf. the legendary personal name Manawydan/ Manannán (see PCB pp. 412 ets, DCML pp. 139-40, DCM pp. 2856) – or else an ethnic name: see Muhr (2002) at p. 41. The line o berth maw ac eidin CT29(XI) might be amended to include a place-name with pert[h] +  -Manaw (but see pert[h]). In mediaeval Welsh literature generally, especially in the poetry, Manaw is used of a more-or-less legendary location in the North that could equally well be the Isle of Man or Manaw Gododdin, but is best not equated with either; see Haycock (2013) pp.10 and 30-1 n44, and Clancy (2013), pp 160-1; this applies, for example, to mynaw in BT 59 (V), pace Williams at PT p. 63. For a full review and discussion of this name, see Tayor (2020), pp. 54-60.  The name Manaw may be preserved in:  c2) Dalmeny WLo  CPNS pp. 103-4 and 515 n104, PNWLo pp. 3-4  + dīn-: early forms may favour *man- with analogical Gaelic genitive sg. –an, but see also maɣn and -īn. The specifier may be a saint's, or other personal, name, see A. Macdonald, PNWLo loc. cit., also Taylor's discussion of Kilmany Fif, 2010 p. 457. However, the territory-name Manau is possible here in a Gaelic formation with genitive –an: contra Watson, CPNS p. 104, Dalmeny could have been close to the eastern end of that territory; but see Taylor (2020), pp. 54-5. Slamannan WLo CPNS p. 103, WLoPN p. 4, with sliabh ‘hill-pasture’, again with a Gaelic genitive form -*Mannan. Clackmannan, across the Forth from our area, is probably + clog-, Gaelicised clach-, again with analogical gen. sg. –an. Pace Watson and Macdonald (CPNS and PNWLo loc.cits.), there is no overriding reason why all three of these should not have been included in, or affiliated to, the territory of Manaw. The specifier –manyn occurs in the earliest forms for Dalmeny and Slamannan; it does occur also in the earliest form for Kilmany Fif PNFif4 pp. 456-7), which is most unlikely to have been associated with Manaw, but the origin need not have been the same in all cases.

 

After reading that, I engaged in a long question and answer session with Alan.

 

Me:

 

What about an early borrowing of the following Latin word or a British cognate?

 

https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/verb/4844/

 

https://www.nihilscio.it/Manuali/Lingua%20latina/Verbi/Coniugazione_latino.aspx?verbo=mano+&lang=EN_

 

mano, manas, manare A, manavi, manatum

Verb

Translations

to flow

to pour

to be shed

to be wet

to spring

 

According to Rivet and Smith, the Forth is believed to be from *Voritia, the 'slow running one'.

 

The other Manaws are islands in the sea. Surrounded by currents.

 

Suppose Manaw Gododdin is simply the region where the river flows?

 

In fact, I'm reading that Stirling is the tidal limit.  An early Welsh name forth the Firth of Forth is Merin Iodeo, or the 'sea of Iudeu', with the latter being (according to the consensus view) a name for Stirling.

 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jim_Hansom/publication/233239719_The_carse_of_Stirling/links/0deec5328552211d90000000/The-carse-of-Stirling.pdf

 

See map. Stirling rose from the middle of the carse lands.

 

If Manau (borrowed early from Latin, or a cognate?) refers to the sea rise and fall affecting the river, or to sea currents, where is it?

 

Alan James:

 

Yes, Stirling is still the limit, at least of spring tides. But in the early-mid 1st millennium, it would have flowed further up. I'm familiar with the tides in the North Channel, Solway Firth, Menai Straits etc., and very tricky they are. I'm also aware that the relative sea-levels on the west Coast/ Irish Sea side have dropped by about 1mm p/a since the last glaciation, but that news from the Forth came as a surprise. Undoubtedly the IoM and Ynys Mon have serious and complicated tidal flows. And of course Mannanan is Mac Lir, 'son of the sea' - though whether he's named after the IoM or v.v. is debated, and personally I think both may preserve an older deity-name - so, yes, it might be that Manau was named from such a sea-god.

 

I’m especially interested in archaeologist John Morris's finding that the mean high tide at Cambuskenneth at the time of the Battle of Stirling Bridge was a metre higher than today. Half a millennium earlier it would have been even higher, what’s now the Carse would have been regularly under water, and the Stirling Rock would certainly have dominated the head of the Firth, the Merin Iodeo.

 

Me:

 

The Forth Estuary begins at Queensferry and ends at Kincardine.  In my Arthurian research, I have shown how the Welsh Manawyd is associated with the trajectus (Tribruit/Tryfrwyd) at Queensferry.

 

Looking at Slamannan and Clackmannan and drawing an imaginary line connecting the two, they do fit Kincardine.

 

Dalmeny, which you have shown me has an early form ending in the specifier -manyn, is at Queensferry, the beginning of the Estuary.

 

The same exercise with the Miathi forts shows Stirling to be in Miathi territory.

 

We might propose this:

 

Manau is the Forth Estuary from Queensferry to Kincardine (or slightly farther west, given higher water levels in the Dark Ages). From that point west is the river and Miathi lands. Their chief citadel would be Stirling.

 

James:

 

That's about the way I think they may have been.

 

Me:

 

Dumyat looks over the Allan and Devon where they enter the Forth.

 

Stirling is on the Forth.

 

Myot Hill looks over Carron.

 

I think we could see in these fortresses the Maeatae border guarding sites in the east.

 

As Dio says the Maeatae were near the Antonine Wall, and we have Myot at the Carron, it seems reasonable to propose that the Maeatae occupied the Forth (including the Teith) and Carron catchment basins.

 

https://www.sepa.org.uk/media/74972/doc-12-river-carron.pdf

 

https://www.sepa.org.uk/media/74959/doc-11-river-forth.pdf

 

In addition, they would have held Strathallan and the River Devon.

 

James:

 

Indeed, I think at the time of Columba, that would have been the likely land of the Miathi.

 

The onomastic evidence is indeed exiguous,but does seem to indicate that the homeland of the Maeatae was in the central belt, north of the Antonine line. I don’t think Dumyat, although not recorded early  (so far as we know, there’s a lot of work still to be done on Stirlingshire p-ns) is likely to be an antiquarian invention: a learned fellow in the time of such speculations might have invented *Dùn Miathi on the analogy of Dùn Breatainn, but Dumyat looks to have passed through Gaelic speech. Not of course definite proof, it could be a trace of Gaelic folklore misplacing the Miathi, but on the other hand, I don’t think it’s a good reason for special pleading.

 

As to the archaeology, I don’t claim specialist knowledge, but I try to keep up-to-date, and my understanding – based especially but not only on the major work being undertaken by David J. Breeze as Chair of the International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies (find his videos etc. online) – suggests that the prevailing consensus is that the frontier of the Empire was not a simple linear boundary, but quite a deep buffer-zone (maintained in a wide range fo different ways) between the border provinces and the ‘barbarians’. Viewed that way, the withdrawal to Hadrian’s Wall was not so much a retreat as a strategic development. I’m aware of growing evidence for Roman military presence and activity in land north of the Wall well after it had become the southern boundary of the limes, and of generous material encouragements to co-operative regional rulers in the inter-wall zone.

 

So, I see no problem with the Maeatae and Calidones taking advantage of a time of Roman distraction and military weakness to launch an invasion of the frontier zone. They probably weren’t aiming to attack Hadrian’s Wall, but the fact that they got that far was (reportedly) mentioned by Dio to emphasise how serious the threat was to the province of Britannia. And, in any case, compared to goings-on along the continental European, Levantine and African limites, the distance from the Forth to the Wall is relatively negligible.

 

Adding to the opinion of Alan James, I would cite a brief, but important personal communication on the matter of the Maeatae from Professor David J. Breeze, perhaps “the” expert on the Roman frontier in Britain:

 

“ My basic position has not changed since my The Northern Frontiers of Roman Britain, London, 129, which is that the Maeatae lived in the territory to the north of the east end of the Antonine Wall, supported by the place-names.”

 

Conclusion

 

Manau Gododdin would be that part of Gododdin territory that lay along the Forth Estuary, roughly between Queensferry and Kincardine. The remainder of Gododdin, at least in the Roman period, stretched from Edinburgh and North Berwick Law south past Traprain Law and thence to Hadrian's Wall. We do not know the extent of the kingdom in the Dark Ages, but as an army from Edinburgh was able to attack the English at Catterick, we might assume Gododdin covered basically the same area as had the Votadini.

 

If I'm right and the Maeatae kingdom was just north of the Antonine Wall, in the middle of the isthmus and running north to border on the Caledonii, then the Roman Emperor Severus and his sons were dealing with an incursion into Lowland Scotland.

 

NOT, as some have hypothesized, with an invasion past Hadrian's Wall.

 

As Professor Roger Tomlin has confirmed, "The general view is that the Antonine Wall was likely abandoned soon after the death of Antoninus in 161."

 

But if this is so, a major force such as that employed by Severus would indicate that Lowland Scotland was still of interest to Rome - if for no other reason than the tribes there were considered allies or were client kingdoms.

 

The Miathi and Circinn

 

I’ve discussed above the confusion expressed in the Irish sources regarding an Arthur’s death in either the territory of the Miathi or in a region/kingdom called Circinn.

 

The problem is, we really don’t know where Circinn was!  There have been several guesses, but nothing concrete has materialized to help us pinpoint its location.

 

The clue, I think, is to be found in the name of a lost site within Circinn.

 

Tigernach Annals Year Entry752.4

 

“Cath Asreith in terra Circin inter Pictones inuicem, in quo cecidit Bruidhi mac Maelchon.”

 

Where is Asreith?  Find that place and we solve the riddle of Circin(n)'s location.  How?

 

Well, we know from the Second Life of St. Patrick that Fordoun in Strathmore was in Mag Gerginn.  Unfortunately, the difference in spelling between Circinn and Gerginn has caused considerable debate.  So much so that some scholars have sought to distinguish the two place-names and have attempted to place them in different locations.  The best recent example of such an attempt is that of Dr. Nicholas Evans at The University of Aberdeen.  His study may be read here:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/uhgi34he3u2lb26soybtk/Evans-Circin-and-Mag-Gerginn.pdf?rlkey=d3l9apzzmvqx774n7bwk193f7&e=1&st=9srxsbdq&dl=0

 

I've always thought that the two names were, in fact, the same name, merely variant spellings.  But noted Brittonic place-name expert Alan James thinks otherwise.  He holds to Watson's opinion on the names, believing not that they are variant spellings, but due to scribal substitution of similar appearing/sounding names:

 

https://archive.org/stream/historyofcelticp0000unse/historyofcelticp0000unse_djvu.txt

 

“We may now take the districts separately. Cirech means in Gaelic, ‘ crested,’ from cir, a comb, a crest ; Crus mac Cirig, ‘Crus, son of Cirech,’ was the chief warrior of the Cruithnigh.?, In the Pictish Chronicle the name is given as Circinn and Circin, which is the genitive of Circenn, ‘Crest-headed’ (P.S., p. 4), and this corresponds to some of the other old forms : Cath Chirchind, ‘ battle of Circhenn ’ (Tighern., 596); cath Maigi Circin, ‘battle of the plain of Circen’ (YBL fes., 192 b 30) ; Magh Circinn i nAlbain (Mac Firbis—Hogan). Alongside of these we have a form Gergenn :

Koganacht maigi Dergind (read Gergind) i nAlbae, ‘ the

 

1 Skene, P.S., p. 186. There are other variations. 2 Ib., p. 41.

 

TERRITORIAL DIVISIONS 109

 

Koganacht of the plain of Gergenn in Scotland’ (Rawl., B 502, 148); Eoganacht maigi Gergind i nAlpae (LL 319) ; Koganacht maige Gerrghind a nAlbain (BB 172 b 4); Eoghanacht mhuighe Geirrghinn (Keating, ii. 386); Cairbre Cruthneachan a Muigh-gearrain, ‘Cairbre C. from Maghgearrain’ (Celt. Scot., iii. 475); defunctus est Palladius in Campo Girgin in loco qui dicitur Fordun (Colgan). The fact that Fordun was in ‘ the plain of Girgen’ shows that Girgen was the name of the Mearns or rather that the Mearns was in Girgen.

 

We have thus three forms of the name—Cirech, Circhenn, Ger(r)genn, of which the first two go together. The last form, Gerrgenn, suggests comparison with the Irish name Gerrchenn, ‘ Short-head.’ In the Tain Bo Cualnge a man of this name appears as father of the warrior Muinremur, ‘Thick-neck,’ who is styled Muinremur mac Gerrchinn, with variants—all in the genitive—Gerginn, Gercinn, Gerrcinn, Hirrginn, Erreinn; and nominative Cergend. There is also Gerrchenn mac [lladain, with variants Gerchenn, Gerrgen, Cerrcen, and, in the genitive, Gerrce, Errge.1_ Here ‘Cerrcen’ seems to be owing to confusion with the name Cerrchenn, ‘Wry-head’ (Tighern., A.D. 662). This com- parison leaves little doubt that the Irish writers who used the form Mag Gergind, etc., understood it as ‘ Gerrchenn’s Plain.” With regard to the other forms, the first 7 of Cirig is long, and if as I have assumed, Circinn is the genitive of Circhenn, ‘ Crest-headed,’ with its first 7 also long, it is difficult, if not impossible, to correlate it with Gerginn.”

 

But if I were to prove this correct, I needed an Asreith somewhere in the vicinity of Fordoun.  This seemed a futile quest.

 

That is, until I seemed to recall that in medieval Irish MSS. r could often be miscopied as s.  I put this question to Professor Jurgen Uhlich, an expert in such matters.  When asked if this happened, his response was:

 

"Yes, all the time basically! Especially when a Continental scribe was ignorant of Irish and the Irish script variety."

 

With that possibility in mind, I created a form ARRETH (as Asreith was in the genitive).  Suddenly, I had a place-name that looked a lot more Gaelic.  Of course, as Alan James pointed out, there could be a problem with a Gaelic name in Strathmore in the early period.  "Gaelic wasn’t being spoken, still less naming places, in Angus before 600."  But, the Tigernach Asreith battle is dated in the 8th century, and we know Fordoun of the Second Life of Patrick is a Gaelic name.  It is also possible that a Gaelic name was substituted at a later date for an earlier Pictish one, perhaps even one with a similar or idential meaning.

 

"It's a difficult business, and I certainly don't claim to be within my depth with it. It's similar to the controversies around Nechtansmere/ Dunnichen (which may or may not have been in the same neck of the woods). Battles and other events mentioned in the Irish Annals and other early sources at places with apparently Gaelic names, but seemingly in locations where we wouldn't expect that language to have been current, and even less likely to have established place-names, at the time of the event. It's a problem that historians seem to me to skate over, but I'm reluctant to say anything firmly - there was a lot going on that's not at all easy to explain from the scanty documentary evidence, and as onomastic research and archaeology progress, the problem only seems to become more complicated."

 

However, proceeding with a hypothetical Arreth, it didn't take me long to find a viable candidate for Asreith: Arrat near Brechin. 

 

https://fife-placenames.glasgow.ac.uk/placename/?id=1069

 

A couple of different etymologies are offered for this place, but James finds one the most likely:

 

"I think the Arraty Burn [in Fife] is probably different, so there's only one *Airecht. But I don't think that's so improbable, as a name for what shows every sign of being an ancient territory that might well have been a territory governed by an assembly of heads of leading families (cf. DIL definitions). The only problem is, that it would presumably have had a different name in Pictish; it probably wouldn't have acquired a Gaelic one as early as ca.600, ca.750 would still be interestingly early, but perhaps."

 

Arrat is only 20 kilometers as the crow flies from Fordoun to the north.

 

If Arrat is Asreth, then Circinn = Mag Gerginn, and the latter would definitely be the ancient Gaelic name for Strathmore. 

 

By, if so, why the Circinn name?  What is that a reference to?

 

The etymology of Circinn is not really in doubt.  It means 'Crest(ed?)-head'.  One tends to think of some geological formation, like a hill or headland that has a crest-like summit, perhaps formed of a spine of crags.

 

It was only when I noticed the proximity of the Caterthun forts (to both Arrat and Fordoun) that I realized the 'crest' in question might well have been a man-made one.

 

The double fort complex at the Caterhuns represents one of the largest and most impressive such sites in Scotland.  White Caterhun, especially, is noteworthy.  Its very high walls were made of a whitish stone and the various ramparts would have been surmounted by palisades.  Seen from a distance this would have resembled a crest on the rounded hilltop.  I would propose that this fort represents the crest of Circinn.

 

https://canmore.org.uk/site/35007/white-caterthun

 

https://canmore.org.uk/site/34969/brown-caterthun

 

Alan James' response to this idea was succinct, but encouraging:

 

"I think you can make a reasonable case."

 

And so here I am, doing so!

 

The question remains as to how far the Kingdom of Circinn extended.  Natural boundaries are often important in such cases, and as the Caterthuns are approximately at the midpoint of Strathmore, I would suggest that the kingdom was composed of Strathmore itself.

 

"Strathmore (The Great Glen) forms a wide valley between the southern Grampians and the Sidlaw Hills, extending from Perth in the southwest to Stonehaven in the northeast and including the districts in the northeast known as the Mearns and the Howe of Angus.

 

Its principal rivers are the Tay, Isla, Dean Water, North Esk and South Esk.

 

It is approximately 50 miles (80 km) long and 10 miles (16 km) wide. Strathmore is underlain by Old Red Sandstone but this is largely obscured by glacial till, sands and gravels deposited during the ice age."

 

https://visitangus.com/things-to-see-do/attractions/valley-of-strathmore/

 

Before concluding, I should point out that the Roman fort of Stracathro was very near to Arrat.

Kair House Roman camp, just on the opposite of the Bervie Water from Fordoun, is believed to have been built by Severus (according to Simon Elliott), and we know of that emperor's presence at Ardoch on the south end of Strathmore.  Thus we can be sure his forces were in the heartland of Circinn, although as yet archaeology has not confirmed this for us.

 

This fact may be important for Arthurian Studies.  I have suggested that the Miathi of both the Dalriadan Artur and of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM Arthur (Bassas battle) and the Caledonian Wood battle of the latter may be reflections of the ghost of L. Artorius Castus, a man who might well have led legionary forces in the North under Severus.  As the Severan campaign was against both the Maeatae and the Caledonii, the Tigernach reference to Artur son of Aedan's death in Circinn - where action against the Roman period Caledonii would certainly have been undertaken - in my opinion bolsters the likelihood that we are looking at Roman battles in the Arthurian tradition.  Not Dark Ages ones. 

 

Note:  I've been asked if Arthur's City of the Legion might not be York, but instead the legionary fortress of Inchtuthil.  I would answer no.  To quote from Simon Elliott's SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS IN SCOTLAND: THE NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE FIRST HAMMER OF THE SCOTS:

 

"The fortress at Inchtuthil was occupied for only a short time, being evacuated in AD 86/87. It was never reused, even during the Severan incursions in the third century...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Six:

The Caledonian Wood Battle and Severus Against the Caledonii

 

 

 

I've had a chance to review my old work on Arthur's Caledonian Wood battle.  Alas, as is so often the case, I've found it sorely lacking in the quality of its argument and conclusion. 

 

When treating of the battle initially, I had, of course, sought a way to make it conform to a list of battles that were all supposedly fought against the Saxons.  I had arrived at what I thought a clever solution, equating Celidon with a Scottish river-name that may have contributed to the original Caledonian Wood being relocated from the Scottish Highlands to the Scottish Lowlands.  By doing this, I was able to situate a plausible battle site near Dere Street, where several of the other battles were aligned.  For my earlier argument, please see

 

http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2016/08/arthurs-seventh-battle-celidon-wood.html

 

I now realize I must dispense with this idea.  Why?

 

Well, I began by re-reading studies such as "Calidon and the Caledonian Forest", Clarke B., Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies xxiii, 191–201, 1969.  And one thing became immediately clear: the Caledonian Wood before or up to the 10th century (the date of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM, although the substance of the Arthurian battle list likely predates the actual writing of the HB) could not have been in the Scottish Lowlands.  This is, literally, quite impossible.  The Lowlands did not become Scottish until much later in the Middle Ages.

 

So, we must allow for Arthur's Caledonian Wood battle to be in the actual Caledonia, a region covering, essentially, the Grampian Mountains in the Highlands of Scotland. This location is the only reasonable candidate for Arthur's Caledonian Wood.

 

Needless to say, this wrecks havoc with the HB's claim that all Arthur's battles were fought against the Saxons.  More than any other battle, that of the Caledonian Wood has given fits to Arthurian researchers (such as myself) who have opted for the Saxon champion over one who may have been either the ghost of L. Artorius Castus or a fusion of several Arthurs, with the extreme northern battles belonging to the later Arthur of Dalriada.

 

This problem intensifies when the battles of Bassas and the Tribruit are thrown into the mix.  Best arguments for those two sites, as I've explored in great depth, are Dunipace (between the two Miathi/Maeatae forts near the Arthur's Oven Roman monument) and North Queensferry.  These sites also do not point to an Arthur fighting Saxons.  The Dogheads at Tribruit in the PA GUR may owe their existence to the name of the headland at Queensferry, although the Roman era Venicones tribe ('hunting hounds' according to Andrew Breeze, or 'kindred hounds' according to John Koch) held the territory north of Queensferry.

 

When taken as a group, then – Dunipace, Caledonia and Queensferry – it is practically impossible not to prefer L. Artorius Castus as the man who was doing the fighting in these places.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven:

Tribruit of Arthur, Trajectus of Artorius – Another Echo of the Severan Campaigns in the North?

 

 

 

A couple of decades ago (!), I first proposed that Arthur's Tribruit battle, found in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM's list, represented a trajectus or crossing-point at Queensferry in Scotland.  Although linguistically and geographically sound, and a solution that respected the source material, the idea did not catch on.  Basically, the idea has been ignored. Amateur Arthurians continued to put the Tribruit shore wherever they wanted it to be - as they still do to this day.

 

But since I came up with a new possible reading for the ARM[...]S lacuna of the L. Artorius Castus stone (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-new-reading-for-arms-lacuna-of-l.html), I remembered that it was believed by some highly respected scholars that a trajectus across the Forth at Queensferry was built by Caracalla, son of the Emperor Severus.  I had actually mentioned this in my treatment of the Tribruit place-name (see entire discussion pasted to the bottom of this post).  Without the context of the Artorius inscription, however, it was merely an interesting observation.

 

Pages 151-152 from Simon Elliott's SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS IN SCOTLAND: THE NORTHERN CAMPAIGNS OF THE FIRST HAMMER OF THE NORTH are particularly illuminating for localizing Caracalla’s trajectus and describing the significance of this river-crossing.

There is a nice article available by a coin expert who agrees with Elliott’s localization of the trajectus.  The link is given for this online piece, as well as the Conclusions reached by the author.

 

https://collectingancientcoins.co.uk/roman-coins-about-britain-septimius-severus-caracalla-and-geta-more-about-the-bridge-coins-of-208-and-209-ad/

 

"Conclusions

 

It’s probably fair to say that we’ll never know for sure if these coins represented bridges in Scotland, never mind knowing where they would have been. However, their dates coincide perfectly with the British campaigns which were such a large undertaking that it’s hard to believe that the coins could represent something else. The fact that they were celebrated on coins suggests that they were important undertakings related to the war, rather than a run-of-the-mill bridges constructed in safe territory.

 

The arguments against Severus’ coins being a bridge in Scotland do not stand up well to scrutiny. There was time to build a large permanent bridge over the Tay because it’s not necessary to insist it to be monumental, and not necessary to assume that work could only begin once Severus himself arrived at the building site, ready to clock on for a shift of hard graft. There was a reason to build a permanent bridge over the Tay, and reasons why a boat bridge wouldn’t have been suitable.

 

The arguments for Caracalla’s bridge to be over the Tay don’t fare well either due to the topology of the river. A one-off boat bridge over the Forth, where a permanent bridge would have been impossible and unnecessary, makes much more sense."

 

If the Tribruit of Arthur is the trajectus of Caracalla, then we must add this HB battle to that of the Bassas (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/01/arthur-and-miathi-artorius-and-maeatae.html)  as being Artorius battles.  Given that Arthur is also said to have fought in the Celidon Wood, and Artorius would have fought the Caledonii, this battle, too, becomes highly suspect.  I have always identified Arthur's City of the Legion battle with York and, of course, that was the city where Artorius the prefect's Sixth Legion was garrisoned.  [It is unlikley we are talking about the legionary fortress of Inchtuthil in Highland Scotland, as this was evacuated in 86/87 and "never reused, even during the Severan incursions in the early third century" - Simon Elliott, SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS IN SCOTLAND, p. 129.]

 

Indeed, all of the Arthurian battles of the HB with the exception of Badon fit very nicely into the Severan campaigns as described by Simon Elliott.  The mouth of the Northumberland River Glen, the Devil's Water at its lakes near Linnels (Dubglas in Linnuis), Dunipace (Bassas), Binchester (C. Guinnion) and High Rochester (Breguoin; perhaps also Agned/agued, although this last could be for Catterick, called the place of agued, 'distress', in the GODODDIN) – all make the best sense for Castus, not for someone else.

 

The Tenth Battle: Shore of the River Tribruit

 

The location of the shore (W. traeth) of the river Tribruit has remained unresolved. The clue to its actual whereabouts may lie in the two possible meanings assigned to this place-name.

 

According to Kenneth Jackson (_Once Again A thur's Battles_, MODERN PHILOLOGY, August,

1945), Tribruit, W. tryfrwyd, was used as an a jective, meaning "pierced through", and sometimes as a noun meaning "battle". His rendering of traeth tryfrwyd was "the Strand of the Pierced or Broken (Place)". Basing his statement on the Welsh Traeth Tryfrwyd, Jackson said that "we should not look for a river called Tryfwyd but for a beach." However, Jackson later admitted (in The Arthur of History, ARTHURIAN LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES: A COLLABORATIVE HISTORY, ed. by Roger Sherman Loomis) that "the name (Traith) Tribruit may mean rather 'The Many-Coloured Strand' (cf. I. Williams in BBCS, xi [1943], 95).

 

Most recently Patrick Sims-Williams (in The Arthur of the Welsh, THE EARLY WELSH ARTHURIAN POEMS, 1991) has defined traeth tryfrwyd as the "very speckled shore" (try- here being the intensive prefix *tri-, cognate with L.  trans). Professor Sims-Williams mentions that 'trywruid' could also mean "bespattered [with blood]." I would only add that Latin litus does usually mean "seashore, beach, coast", but that it can also mean "river bank". Latin ripa, more often used of a river bank, can also have the meaning of "shore".

 

The complete listing of tryfrwyd from The Dictionary of Wales (information courtesy Andrew Hawke) is as follows:

 

tryfrwyd

2 [?_try-^2^+brwyd^2^_; dichon fod yma fwy

nag un gair [= "poss. more than one word here"]]

3 _a_. a hefyd fel _e?b_.

6 skilful, fine, adorned; ?bloodstained; battle,

conflict.

7 12g. GCBM i. 328, G\\6aew yg coryf, yn toryf,

yn _tryfrwyd_ - wryaf.

7 id. ii. 121, _Tryfrwyd_ wa\\6d y'm pria\\6d

prydir, / Trefred ua\\6r, treul ga\\6r y gelwir.

7 id. 122, Keinuyged am drefred _dryfrwyd_.

7 13g. A 19. 8, ymplymnwyt yn _tryvrwyt_

peleidyr....

7 Digwydd hefyd fel e. afon [="also occurs as

river name"] (cf.

8 Hist Brit c. 56, in litore fluminis, quod vocatur

_Tribruit_; 14 x CBT

8 C 95. 9-10, Ar traethev _trywruid_).

Tryfrwyd itself, minus the intensive prefix,

comes from:

brwyd

[H. Grn. _bruit_, gl. _varius_, gl. Gwydd. _bre@'t_

`darn']

3 _a_.

6 variegated, pied, chequered, decorated, fine;

bloodstained; broken, shattered, frail, fragile.

7 c. 1240 RWM i. 360, lladaud duyw arnam ny

am dwyn lleydwyt - _urwyt_ / llauurwyt escwyt

ar eescwyd.

7 c. 1400 R 1387. 15-16, Gnawt vot ystwyt

_vrwyt_ vriwdoll arnaw.

7 id. 1394. 5-6, rwyt _vrwyt_ vrwydyrglwyf rwyf

rwyd get.

7 15g. H 54a. 12.

The editors of GCBM (Gwaith Cynddelw

Brydydd) take _tryfrwyd_ to be a fem. noun =

'brwydr'. They refer to Ifor Williams, Canu Aneirin

294, and A.O.H. Jarman, Aneinin: Y

Gododdin (in English) p. 194 who translates

'clash', also Jarman, Ymddiddan Myrddin a Thaliesin,

pp. 36-7. Ifor Williams, Bulletin of the

Board of Celtic Studies xi (1941-4) pp. 94-6 suggests

_try+brwyd_ `variegated, decorated'.

On brwydr, the National Dictionary of Wales has

this:

1 brwydr^1^

2 [dichon ei fod o'r un tarddiad a@^

_brwyd^1^_, ond cf. H. Wydd. _bri@'athar_ `gair']

3 _eb_. ll. -_au_.

6 pitched battle, conflict, attack, campaign,

struggle; bother, dispute, controversy; host, army.

7 13g. HGC 116, y lle a elwir . . . y tir gwaetlyt,

o achaus y _vrwyder_ a vu ena.

7 14g. T 39. 24.

7 14g. WML 126, yn dyd kat a _brwydyr_.

7 14g. WM 166. 32, _brwydreu_ ac ymladeu.

7 14g. YCM 33, llunyaethu _brwydyr_ a oruc

Chyarlymaen, yn eu herbyn.

7 15g. IGE 272, Yr ail gofal, dial dwys, /

_Brwydr_ Addaf o Baradwys.

7 id. 295.

7 1567 LlGG (Sall) 14a, a' chyd codei _brwydyr_

im erbyn, yn hyn yr ymddiriedaf.

7 1621 E. Prys: Ps 32a, Yno drylliodd y bwa a'r

saeth, / a'r _frwydr_ a wnaeth yn ddarnau.

7 1716 T. Evans: DPO 35, Cans _brwydr_ y

Rhufeiniaid a aethai i Si@^r Fo@^n.

7 1740 id. 336, _Brwydrau_ lawer o Filwyr arfog.

 

Dr. G. R. Isaac of The University of Wales, Abe ystywyth, in discussing brwyd, adds that:

 

"The correct Latin comparison is frio 'break up', both < Indo-European *bhreiH- 'cut, graze'. These words have many cognates, e.g. Latin fr uolus 'friable, worthless', Sanskrit bhrinanti 'they damage', Old Church Slavonic britva 'razor', and others. The Old British form of brwyd would have been *breitos. It is sometimes claimed that there is a possible Gaulish root cognate in brisare 'press out', but there are difficulties with that identification.

 

It may be worth stressing that the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'very speckled' and the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'piercing, pierced' are the same word, and that the latter is the historically pri mary meaning. The meaning 'very speckled' comes through 'bloodstained' from 'pierced' ('bloodstained' because 'pierced' in battle). But I do not think this has any bearing on the arguments.

 

Actually, Tryfrwyd MAY mean 'very speckled', but that is conjecture, not certain knowledge. Plausible conjecture, yes, but no more certain for that."

 

That "pierced" or "broken" is to be preferred as the meaning of Tribruit is plainly demonstrated by lines 21-22 of the _Pa Gur_ poem:

 

Neus tuc manauid - "Manawyd(an) brought

Eis tull o trywruid - pierced ribs (or, metaphorically, "timbers", and hence arms of any kind,

probably spears or shields; ) from Tryfrwyd"

 

Tull, "pierced", here obviously refers to Tribruit as "through-pierced".

 

Professor Hywel Wyn Owen, Director of the Place-Name Research Centre, University of Wales Bangor, has the following to say on traeth + river names (personal correspondence):

 

"There are only two examples of traeth + river name that I know of, both in Anglesey (Traeth Dulas, Traeth Llugwy) but there may well be others. The issue is still the same however. Where a river flows into the sea would normally be aber. The traeth would only be combined with the river name if the river name was also used of a wider geographical context, and became, say, the name of the bay. Hence traeth + bay name rather than traeth + river name directly."

 

In the poem, the shore of Tryfrwyd battle is listed one just prior to Din Eidyn and once just after the same fort (I will have more on the Pa Gur battle sites below). The Gwrgi Garwllwyd or ‘Man-dog Rough-grey’ who is also placed at Tryfrwyd has been associated with the Cynbyn or ‘Dog-heads’ Arthur fought at Din Eidyn.

 

Manawyd's role at Tryfrwyd may suggest that this river or its shore is to be found in or on the borders of Manau Gododdin, which was the district round the head of the Firth of Forth, whose name remains in Slamannan and Clackmannan.

 

The Fords of Frew west of Stirling have been proposed as the site of the battle, but Jackson claims W. frut or ffrwd, ‘stream’, cannot have yielded frwyd. Jackson also countered Skene's theory that this was the Forth, on the grounds that the Welsh name for the Forth, Gweryd, which would be *Guerit in OW.

 

The poem may be even more specific, in that Traeth Tryfrwyd is said to be 'ar eidin cyminauc'

(line 28), ‘at Eidyn on the border’. Now, the ‘bo der’ here could be the Firth of Forth, but it is much more likely to be the line of division between Gododdin proper and Manau Gododdin.

 

The Cynbyn or ‘Dog-heads’ may partly owe their existence to the Coincenn daughter of Aedan, father of the Dalriadan Arthur, and to the Coinchend in the Irish story The Adventure of Art son of Conn. In this Irish tale, Art battles a monstrous woman named Coincenn or ‘Doghead’ who is a member of a tribe bearing the same name.

 

The Coincenn of the Irish are thought to be a reflection of the Classical Cynacephali.

 

Ole Munch-Pedersen cites the following note from Cecile Ó Rahilly text of the Irish heroic epic Cath Finntrágha or the “Battle of the White Strand” (Irish traigh is cognate with Welsh traeth):

 

"The Coinchinn or Coinchennaig are frequently mentioned in Irish literature. From the 8th cen-tury on the name was applied to pirates who ravaged Ireland. Cp. Thurneysen, Zu Ir. Hss., p. 24. In the Adventures of Art mac Cuinn they are represented as living in Tir na nIngnad whose King is called Conchruth (Éiriu III. 168). They are mentioned in a poem in the Book of the Dean of Lismore (Rel. Celt. I. 80) and in a poem is Duanaire Finn (xxxviii) where they are said to have invaded Ireland and been defeated by Finn. In the YBL tale Echtra Clérech Choluim Cille (RC XXVI 160 § 45, 161 § 48) men with dogs' heads are 'of the race of Ham or of Cain'. Similarly in the late romance Síogra Dubh the Caitchean-naigh and Coincheannaigh and Gabharchean-naigh are said to be do chinéal Caim mic Naoi (GJ XIX 99 5-6, cp. LU 122)." (Cath Finntrágha, (1962), lch. 65).

 

From the English translation of the Battle of Ventry/Cath Finntragha (http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/f20.html):

 

“'O soul, O Glas son of Dreman,' said the king of the world, 'not a harbour like this didst thou promise my fleet would find, but shores of white sand where my army might assemble for fairs and gatherings whenever they were not fighting.' 'I know a harbour like that in the west of Erinn,' said Glas, 'namely, Ventry Harbour… They went onward thence to Ventry, and filled the borders of the whole harbour so that the sea was not vis-ible between them, and the great barque of the king of the world was the first to take harbour, so that thenceforward its name was Rinn na Bairci (The Point of the Barque). And they let down their many-coloured linen-white sails, and raised their purple-mouthed speckled tents, and consumed their excellent savoury viands, and their fine intoxicating drinks, and their harps were brought to them for long playing, and their poets to sing their songs and their dark conceits to them...

 

Now, these hosts and armies came into Ciarraige Luachra and to red-maned Slieve Mis, and thence to Ventry Harbour. 'O Tuatha De Danand,' said Abartach, 'let a high spirit and courage arise within you in the face of the battle of Ventry. For it will last for a day and a year, and the deed of every single man of you will be related to the end of the world, and fulfil now the big words ye have uttered in the drinking- hous-es.' 'Arise,O Glas, son of Dreman,' said Bodb Derg the son of the Dagda ,'to announce combat for me to the king of the world.' Glas went where the king of the world was. 'O soul, O Glas,' said the king of the world, 'are those yonder the fi-anns of Erinn?' 'Not they,' said Glas, 'but anoth-er lot of the men of Erinn, that dare not to be on the surface of the earth, but live in sid-brugs (fairy mansions) under the ground, called the Tuatha De Danand, and to announce battle from them have I come.' 'Who will answer the Tuatha De Danand for me?' said the king of the world. 'We will go against them,' said two of the kings of the world, namely, Comur Cromgenn, the king of the men of the Dogheads, and Caitch-enn, the king of the men of the Catheads, and they had five red-armed battalions in order, and they went on shore forthwith in their great red waves.

 

'Who is there to match the king of the men of the Dogheads for me?' said Bodb Derg. 'I will go against him,'said Lir of Sid Finnachaid,'though I have heard that there is not in the great world a man of stronger arm than he.’”

 

It is the Dogheads who would appear to hold the key to unravelling the Traeth Tryfrwyd mystery.  Thanks to Lothian native and place-name expert John Wilkinson, who consulted a friend on the matter, I have learned the following:

 

“Ardchinnechena<n> is a place which the St. Andrews Foundation Account B says was where Hungus son of Forso placed the head of the de-feated Saxon king Athelstan on a pole “within the harbour which is now called Queen’s Ferry” (i.e. North Queensferry?); and which the shorter Account calls Ardchinnechun.  Simon Taylor’s Fife Vol 3 offers ‘height/promontory of the head’ for the first and hints at a dindshenchas con-taining con ‘dog’ (in genitive) for the second.”

 

Ardchinnechena[n] is generally supposed to be the headland used by the Railway Bridge (see “Place-names of Fife”, vol. 1, 381-2, vol.3, 582-3).

 

This ‘Height of the Dog’s Head’ in North Queensferry Harbor reinforces my view that the Welsh tryfrwyd, ‘through-piered’, is an attempt to translate Latin trajectus, which has the exact literal meaning.  However, trajectus also was the word used for a river-crossing, like the one at Queensferry. Frere (in his BRITANNIA, p. 162) discusses TRAJECTUS on a coin of Caracalla for a boat-bridge over the Forth or the Tay or both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eight:

Uther’s and Severus’s Two Campaigns in Scotland

or

“The Little-Borne King”

 

 

 

 

I've been becoming more and more convinced that the legendary Arthur who supposedly belongs to the 5th-6th centuries is actually a displaced reference to the early 3rd century L. Artorius Castus.  Several blog posts have been written on this idea (which is not new! - although my approach is), starting with a proposed reading for the Castus memorial stone which allows us to have this Roman officer leading legions to the North under Severus.

 

Several things involving later Arthurian tradition really stand out for me. These all have to do with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s character Uther Pendragon, supposedly the father of the famous Arthur.

 

To begin, Geoffrey has Uther carried on a litter during his northern wars, just as was the case with Severus. [Granted, there were other known leaders who were conveyed in this manner during battles.  I have written about the first known occurrence of this motif, one that features the Roman emperor Augustus.  There was also a count in 9th century Brittany whose name somewhat resembles the Pascent of Vortigern's family.  But none of the other litter-borne entities fought in the North of Britain.]

 

But I had totally forgotten that Uther's Northern wars are distinctly divided into two phases - something which again mirrors what happened with Severus.  When we take out the Ygerna interlude, we have Uther starting his rule at York.  Obviously, this was the headquarters of Severus (and Artorius) during the Roman period.

 

After York, Uther goes to Mount Damen, which I have recently identified as the mountain of the Damnonii (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/04/was-i-wrong-about-uthers-mount-damen-or.html).  Hence Alclud then immediately appearing in the story. 

 

The Caledonii were north of Strathclyde.

 

For the second campaign, Uther goes to Albany to assist Lothian, the old Votadini/Gododdin kingdom.  The Maeatae/Miathi were immediately to the west of Lothian.  St. Albans is a blunder on Geoffrey's part or an intentional alteration; it signifies that Uther actually died in Albany, i.e. Scotland.  We know this because Picts are involved and it is safe to say there were no Picts in St. Albans.  Yes, Severus died at York, but he was planning more action in the Scotland when that happened.

 

I really see no reason to keep fighting what seems to be the inevitable conclusion to my Arthurian research:  the man upon which the legend was based was not British.  Castus was Roman. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Nine:

Two Lupi, Two Severi – the Mechanism By Which

Artorius May Have Been Placed Anachronistically

in British History

 

 

 

Those of us who have studied the Arthurian period are familiar with the story of St. Germanus' two trips to Britain.  For those of my readers who aren't, here are the two relevant sources:

 

http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artsou/constex.htm

 

https://origin-rh.web.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book1.asp

 

It will be noticed that Germanus brings a companion named Lupus his first time over from the Continent, and one named Severus the second time.  As I'd just been reading up on the Roman emperor Severus' British campaigns, I was struck by an incredible coincidence.

 

After Severus had defeated Albinus in 197, in Simon Elliott's words his response to the rebellion

 

"... was to send military legates to Britain to bring the military back under his full control, and also to install his supporter Virius Lupus as the governor... However the Caledonians, soon to be joined by the Maeatae, lost no time in causing even more trouble and began agitating along the border again... With a new invasion across Hadrian's Wall now in prospect (and with no reserve troops to call upon given the emperor's current focus on Parthia in his second eastern campaign), Lupus had few options so opted to secure peace along his northern borders with massive payments of money. However this bought only a short period of stability, and the next developments as this paid-for peace collapsed fall within the remit of the direct build-up to the Severan incursions..."

 

The parallel is interesting, to say the least. Under Germanus, first a Lupus, then a Severus, come to Britain.  With Lupus, Germanus becomes a general of the Britons against the Saxons and the Picts, winning his great Alleluia victory.

 

I would hastily add that Septimius Severus' son, Caracalla, under whom (according to Simon Elliot) Artorius would have led his legions in Britain, assumed the title GERMANICUS MAXIMUS in 213.

 

So to the title of this blog I suppose one could add "TWO GERMANI."

 

In the Historia Brittonum, the life of St. Germanus (admittedly very different from what we have in the actual hagiography and in Bede) ends at the head of Chapter 50, which goes on to speak of St. Patrick.  The account of Patrick then intrudes into the 'British history", continuing through Chapter 55.  Arthur appears after the break in Chapter 56.

 

In Bede, a short Chapter 22 (of Book One) follows the Germanus story. It covers the period of 440-590 (the so-called Arthurian period) and descibes in very vague, general terms a period of "rest from foreign, though not from civil, wars."  Gildas is mentioned in the context of his sorrowful report of the "other unspeakable crimes" committed by the Britons upon themselves. This material in Gildas starts in Chapter 26 immediately after his mention of the Battle of Badon.

 

I would suggest that it was this concurrence of names and ordered sequence of events that led to the 3rd century L. Artorius Castus, who had fought under Severus (and perhaps served under Virius Lupus as well) - a man with legendary status in the North - being made subject to temporal displacment.  A Welsh monk, already in desperate need of an ethnic or national hero (a state of mind proven by the earlier borrowing of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a Gallic prefect conflated with his saintly son), either intentionally or accidentally decided Artorius, viz. Arthur, belonged to the time of Germanus. 

 

This is, in fact, exactly the way folklore and heroic legend works.  People naturally have trouble thinking that the Arthur of the Historia Brittonum cannot be anything other than historical precisely because they view the Historia Brittonum as historical.  Again, as I covered in an earlier blog

(https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/02/coming-soon-where-armgentes-reading-for.html), the Historia Brittonum is composed of cobbled together snippets of historical traditions.  It is replete with folktales (the Emrys story), hagiography (Germanus) and even outright "wonders"(the Mirabilia).

 

There is absolutely no reason why a hero who had achieved a mythological level of importance in the North could not have been used anachronistically to produce the great champion of the Britons we now possess.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Ten:

Artorius Castus and Arthur Vendigat – A Welsh

Epithet Used to Render a Latin Cognomen?

 

 

 

 

In the early Welsh poem KADEIR TEYRNON, Arthur is called vendigat, i.e. bendigad.  When I first read this, I wondered about bendigad, 'blessed', being an epithet, i.e. Arthur the Blessed.  But Nerys Ann Jones’ translation seemed to belie this possibility.

 

As always, when I found myself doubting such things, I consulted Welsh language expert Dr. Simon Rodway of The University of Wales.  Here are the questions I put to him, followed by his answers in boldface italics:

 

"In Nerys Ann Jones' Arthur in Early Welsh poetry, the line ' Arthur vendigat' of KADEIR TEYRNON - which follows the line 'y vendigat Arthur' - is rendered "Arthur has been blessed".

 

Shouldn't vendigat in the second instance be seen as an epithet, i.e. Arthur the Blessed?

 

Jones seems instead to connect Arthur vendigat to the following line ar gerd gyfaenat, in harmonious song. Which, however, seems to relate to the last 2 lines of the poem."

 

Rodway responded:

 

The first thing to say is that l. 18 of the poem reads y vendiga6 Arthur (6 = the 'six-shaped' Middle Welsh v, here for -w), i.e. 'to bless Arthur'. In l. 19, the MS reads Arthur vendigan, which is certainly to be emended to vendigat for rhyme. Nerys Ann Jones follows Marged Haycock (Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, second edition (Aberystwyth, 2015), 9.19, note on p. 302) in taking this to be impersonal preterite of the verb bendigaw 'to bless' (presumably imagining there to be an omitted leniting particle a before it). Alternatively (and preferably, I think) we can take this as an (otherwise unattested) adjective bendigad 'blessed' (cf. J. Lloyd-Jones, Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gynnar Gymraeg (Cardiff, 1931-63), p. 55).

 

"So perhaps 'blessed Arthur', rather than 'Arthur the Blessed'.

 

Correct? In other words, NOT an epithet, as with Bran the Blessed."

 

The opposite, in fact. It has to be an epithet rather than a descriptive adjective because of the mutation. 'Blessed Arthur' would be 'Arthur bendigat' because Arthur is a masculine noun, but epithets are normally (but not always) lenited regardless of the gender of the proper noun (thus Hywel Dda etc.).

 

"Oh!

 

So, Arthur the Blessed it may be after all."

 

I think so, but I'm a bit cautious because bendigad is otherwise unrecorded in Middle Welsh as an adjective (although formally unproblematic).

 

This was enough for me to go on.  If Blessed was an epithet, it seemed to fly in the face of Arthur's appearance in the Welsh hagiographical and didactic sources.  Nerys Ann Jones briefly discusses the nature of this Christian treatment of Arthur, and she refers to Patrick Sims-Williams’ statement in his "The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems" (THE ARTHUR OF

Sims-Williams translates the relevant section of the KADEIR TEYRNON as follows:

 

“The third profound [song] of the sage [is] to bless Arthur, Arthur the Blest…”

 

Granted, Arthur was portrayed as the great Christian champion against the pagan Saxons as early as the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and the ANNALES CAMBRIAE, in which he carried Christian religious symbols of his shield.  But that he himself was viewed as "blessed" is a designation only found in the poem being considered here.

 

According to the GPC, bendigaid has the following meanings:

 

worthy of worship or praise, glorious; blessed, beatified; sacred, holy.

 

We may relate this Welsh word to Latin benedīcō, found in Lewis and Short thusly:

 

bĕnĕdīco, xi, ctum, ĕre, v. n. and a., to speak well of anyone, to commend, praise.

 

I. In gen., in class. Lat. always as two words, v. bene, I. B. 1.

II. Esp.

A. In late and eccl. Lat. with acc.

1. Deum, to bless, praise, or adore (Heb. [??]), App. Trism. fin.; Vulg. Psa. 112, 2.

Pass.: benedici Deum omni tempore condecet, Tert. Orat. 3: Deus benedicendus, App. Trism. fin.; Vulg. Gen. 24, 48; id. Jacob. 3, 9.

Rarely with dat.: benedic Domino, Vulg. Psa. 102, 1 sq.

2. Of men and things, to bless, consecrate, hallow (Heb. [??] and [??])’ requievit die septimo eumque benedixit, Lact. 7, 14, 11; cf. Vulg. Gen. 2, 3; id. Marc. 6, 41: altarium, Sulp. de Vita S. Martini, 2, 2: benedictum oleum, Hier. Vit. Hilar. med.: martyres, Tert. Mart. 1; Grut. 875, 3 al.

Sometimes with dat.: benedixit domui Israel, Vulg. Psa. 113, 12; 64, 12.

B. Herba benedicta, the plant also called lagopus or leporinus pes, App. Herb. 61.

Hence,

1. bĕnĕdictum, i, n. (prop. as two words), v bene, I. B. 1. g.

2. bĕnĕ-dictus, i, m., an approved person, blessed one (eccl. Lat.): venite, benedicti Patris mei, Vulg. Matt. 25, 34 al.

 

This made me think of the cognomen of Lucius Artorius, viz. Castus.  Again citing Lewis and Short, castus has can be defined with these terems:

 

1. morally pure, unpolluted, spotless, guiltless

2.  pure, chaste, unpolluted, virtuous, continent

3. pious, religious, holy, sacred

Etc.

 

We can see, plainly, that bendigad could mean "holy, sacred" - as could castus.

 

Is it possible, I wonder, that Arthur vendigat is a traditional reflection of Artorius Castus?

 

For now I am content with merely pointing out that an epithet used for Arthur in an early Welsh poem is semantically analogous with the cognomen Castus.  There is no way to demonstrate, of course, that the Arthur of the KADEIR TEYRNON is actually a folk memory of the 3rd century Roman general.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven:

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?

 

While it is true Aedan of Dalriada fought one disastrous battle against the English at Degsastan, 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 the “civilized”, heavily Romanized southern half of the province from the barbarous, anti-Roman northern Britons.

 

This idea 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afterword:

THE SUCCESS OF THE EXPEDITIO FELICISSIMA

BRITANNICA AND THE LEGEND OF

L. ARTORUUS CASTUS

 

 

 

On pp. 174-178 of Elliott’s SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS IN SCOTLAND: THE NORTHERN CAMPAIGN OF THE FIRST HAMMER OF THE SCOTS, the author summarizes the goals and achievements of the British War under Severus and Caracalla.

 

The most important passage in this section of Elliot’s work is speculation, of course, but I think it is probably a very good one.  Severus, based upon his “reordering the regional limes to incorporate newly conquered territories” after his successful campaigns in the east and North Africa had “planned to do the same in Scotland… there seems no doubt that had he lived a significant potion of Scotland would have been taken into the Roman Empire, perhaps with new stone-built settlements emerging, and with the story of modern Scotland and the emergence of the Picts significantly changed.”

 

Elliot goes on to express his view that Severus was successful in countering the Maeatae and the Caledonians, that the genocide ordered by the Emperor “at some level did take place”.  The author concludes his judgment of Severus’ legacy with this remarkable paragraph:

 

“What we are left with is the story of one of the great campaigns of the ancient world, a fantastical military adventure at the furthest northern extremity of the Roman Empire in the west… Ultimately, despite Severus clearly securing peace in the north of the islands of Britain for four generations, the far north of the region there went unconquered and was to remain so throughout the Roman occupation of Britain.”

 

If we take all that into consideration, and then plug L. Artorius Castus as leader of the British legions into the equation, we must naturally ask how such a figure may have been perceived both by the northern tribes who suffered at his hands and by the southern part of Britain where he may have seen  not as a destroyer, but a savior.  We must also take into account the effect his nomen and cognomen may have had on the legend-building process.  With Artorius linked in the Celtic mind to the bear, the most powerful of all animals in Europe and one which took on a religiously-motivated taboo term (*matu-), and with Castus implying a pure or holy nature (see Chapter 10 above), we would seem to have a figure ripe for mythologization.

 

I’ve already discussed the possible association of Castus with Camboglanna in the Irthing Valley, a place that may have been home to the Bear Tribe (Chapter 3).  But we also have the Arthur of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM fighting at Bremenium, where a Roman period bear god named Matunus was worshipped

 (https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1265). My research into a possible bear god at Drumburgh on Hadrian’s Wall, a prototypical Grail Castle near the “Avalon” fort at Burgh-By-Sands, might also have some connection to Artorius (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/04/more-on-andematunnum-of-drumburgh.html).

 

In my mind, at least, there is no problem with L. Artorius Castus becoming the Arthur who suddenly materializes in the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and the ANNALES CAMBRIAE. We are talking about a leader of legions who contributed to an almost unimaginable devastation of Northern Britain.  Such a catastrophic event and the generals who were responsible for inflicting it could not help but be remembered for a very long time in the North. One of these generals also happened to have a name that would have automatically predisposed him to subsequent mythologizing among a Celtic population.

 

I feel that those who insist that such a figure could not have been brought forward a few centuries and misappropriated in a historical context for propagandist purposes have both a poor understanding of folklore processes and an inflated or even delusional opinion of the veracity of early medieval historiography.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix:

LUCIUS ARTORIUS CASTUS; BIRTH AND DEATH IN DALMATIA?

 

 

 

 

If Castus really is the famous King Arthur, can Croatia lay claim to him as their very own? Or must they share him with Italy, which some scholars prefer as his birthplace?

 

Scholars studying the military career of Lucius Artorius Castus are in agreement about only one thing: the man was definitely buried in Croatia. But when it comes to where this soldier was born, the opinion is divided.  Some opt for  Italy, while a majority looks towards Dalmatia itself.

 

I would in this brief paper like to cast my vote in favor the the latter location.  My reason for doing so lies in the nature of a Greek inscription found in Adana.  This particular inscription takes the form of a dedication to a Greek version of Jupiter Fulminator from a Lucius Artorius Marcianus.  What follows is the bibliographical information for an article on this inscription, as well as the abstract for the said study:

 

Lucius artorius marcianus' votive offering to zeus keraunios from the haluk perk museum

Hüseyin Sami Öztürk, C. Pilevneli

Marmara University

January 2013

 

"This essay presents an inscribed votive offering with the inventory number 604T1 held in the collection of the Haluk Perk Museum in Istanbul. The provenance of the Greek inscription, acquired in 2007, was recorded as from Adana province. The inscription is found on a well- preserved stele. Its translation reads: Lucius Artorius Marcianus, of the Sergian tribe, from Legio XII Keraunophoros (Fulminata), (offered this votive) to Zeus Keraunios. The Legio XII Fulminata ("Casting Thunderbolts") was probably the legio XII recruited by Caesar in 58 BC., which was reformed in 44-43 and then served under Mark Antony. After Actium it was taken over by Caesar Augustus and stationed in Egypt. It was transferred to Syria before A.D. 14, and later its garrison was at Raphaneae. The legion may have been temporarily deployed from Syria to Cappadocia for Corbulo's Armenian campaign of A.D. 57, as it was evidently in Cappadocia when Paetus became governor of that province in 61 and began his ill-fated Armenian campaign. The legio was among the troops of L. Caesennius Paetus, who "shamefully capitulated" in battle against the Parthians. In 66 the legio took part in the failed assault on Jerusalem by the governor of Syria, Cestius Gallus, and later under the command of Titus participated in the siege of Jerusalem. Thereafter Vespasian transferred it to Cappadocia, where it was stationed at Melitene. While at Melitene the Legio XII Fulminata frequently despatched groups of soldiers for service in other parts of Anatolia. It even sent detachments into Armenia under Domitian and again in A.D. 177. The discovery at Adana of an altar dedicated to the legion might indicate diat a detachment of the legion was stationed there at some point in its history. Its loyalty during the revolt of Avidius Cassius in 175 earned it the title of Certa Constans ("the Decisive and Steadfast") from Marcus Aurelius. Its original title was Paterna, which derived from Caesar's honorific title of pater patriae. The absence of the title Certa Constans given by Marcus Aurelius to Legio XII Fulminata in A.D. 175 in this inscription makes it most likely to be dated before this date. The legion was evidently still at Melitene in the late 4th century. The inscription does not indicate where Lucius Artorius Marcianus came from. But in the Latin epigraphic records the nomen Artorius is found most frequently in Rome and Italy, and in Africa Proconsularis, with a few others in the Balkan regions. This evidence suggests that the origin of Lucius Artorius Marcianus and/or his family is more likely with Italy or Africa or, less likely, with the Balkans. The tribe Sergia is often associated with Roman citizens who originated in Roman military colonies. This suggests a provincial and ultimately military origin for the Roman citizenship of Lucius Artorius Marcianus and/or his family. But more importantly, the tribus was rarely included in inscriptions after A.D. 212 as there was no need for this following the Constitutio Antoniniana."

 

The most important point raised in this analysis of the Adana inscription is the tribal membership of L. Artorius Marcianus.  For the gens Sergia was well-represented in exactly the area of Dalmatia (Pituntium) where we find the memorial stone of L. Artorius Castus.  To cite John Wilkes (according to Roger Tomlin, "the greatest authority in this country [the UK] on the epigraphy of Dalmatia"):

 

"The last piece of evidence bearing on this problem is the assignment to tribes of the early coloniae and municipia in Dalmatia . Two tribes only are represented, Tromentina and

Sergia . On analogy from other parts of the empire, Sergia

indicates an Augustan foundation (e.g . Pisidian Antioch ) and in Dalmatia we find Sergia at Iader (Augustan on the evidence of inscriptions) , Issa (hardly Caesarian) , Acruvium and Risinium in the south.

 

Sergia is one of the two tribes common at Salonae...

 

http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/10470/2/10470_7267-vol2.PDF

 

To better show the geographical proximity of these towns to Pituntium, here is a good map:

 

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-Illyrian-coast-with-approximate-survey-areas-and-site-locations_fig1_328248684

 

A recent study on the Artorii in the province of Dalmatia fails to mention the Adana inscription in the context of the Sergia gens:

 

Artorii u rimskoj provinciji Dalmaciji (The Artorii in the Roman Province of Dalmatia)

March 2012

Miroslav Glavičić

University of Zadar

 

S u m m a r y

 

"Conventional wisdom holds that the Artorii of the Roman province of Dalmatia were a family of Italian descent, which inhabited the area of Salona aroundthe second century. This assumption is based on two sepulchral inscriptions that

commemorate the equestrian status of Roman officer L. Artorius Castus. The inscriptions were found in the area of ancient Pituntium, today’s Podstrana. The inscription marked CIL III, 1919=8513=12813, the two passages of which were until recently built into the outer walls of the church of Saint Martin in Podstrana as spolia, lists the imposing cursus honorum of L. Artorius Castus, who had a

distinguished military career (centurio, primus pilus, praepositus, praefectus, dux). Since the inscription chronologically lists the order he conducted his duties in, it

is clear that L. Artorius Castus ended his career serving in the controversial role of regent of the region of Liburnia (procurator centenarius provinciae Liburniae iure gladi). A passage on the second inscription (CIL III, 12791=14224) lists only his name and the two duties he performed as an officer. Upon completing his duties as regent, L. Artorius Castus withdrew to his estate in Pitunia, where he lived out the rest of his life in peace. This is where he was entombed in the mausoleum he built during his life for himself and his family. The inscription clearly lists sibi et suis, with the possible reconstruction [ex te]st(amento), which suggests that L. Arturius Castus lived there with his family, and had heirs. The spatially closest inscription to bear mention of the Artorius name was documented in nearby Jesenice (Nareste), where a tombstone (CIL III, 8476) mentioning Aurelia Ursina, who had erected a monument to her deceased mother Artoria Privata, was found. An inscription from Klis (CIL III, 2520=8641) commemorates L. Gellius Artorius, son of

Gellius Felix and Artoria Secundina. It is important to point out that this inscription documents a woman from the Artorius family and her son, whose praenomen was changed to Lucius and cognomen to Artorius, which derives from his mother’s gentilicium, and which could indicate close family ties to L. Artorius Castus. One Artorius Felicissimus of Narona, was known to have erected a monument to his wife Aemelia Barbara (CIL III, 1846=8425). Considering the inscription it bears, queius beneficio me exportavi Salona, its origins must be connected to the Artorius family from the regional capital. The fragmented remains of a tombstone in Salona (CIL III, 9403) commemorate one C. Vibius Firmus, however, along with his official title (tria nomina) it also lists his nickname, qui et Artorius. The vocabulum he was known by among his peers, perhaps even more so than his official title, alludes to his potential connections to the Artorius family.

 

All of the above-mentioned inscriptions bearing the gentilicia Artorius, based on their epigraphic characteristics, belong to the period of the late Principate, i.e. they can be roughly placed in the period of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries.

 

While we cannot make the claim with certainty, what we know today is certainly sufficient to assume that the first Artorius to inhabit the territory of Salona was L. Artorius Castus. During the later period in Salona and its territories, the family grew and developed, and the last documented mention of the gentilicia Artorius in Salona is found on the inscription of a sarcophagus from the late 3rd or early 4th

centuries (CIL III, 9226), where Artoria Frontina is commemorated."

 

The omission of the Adana inscription's possible significance in the context of determing the birthplace of L. Artorius Castus is unfortunate.  When I discussed the very real possibility of this man's origin in Dalmatia, rather than in Italy (where the gens Sergia originated [1]), with Roger Tomlin, he responded thusly:

 

"I agree with you that there is quite a chance that Artorius Marcianus came from Dalmatia rather than Italy, and that Artorius Castus, by being buried in Dalmatia, quite likely came from there. But Artorius is quite a common nomen, and we do not know what tribe Artorius Castus belonged to. The coincidence you have noted makes a Dalmatian connection more likely, but cannot be conclusive. Still, the Adana inscription is certainly worth noting."

 

While the kind of measured, cautious response one would expect from the Professor, I take this as sufficient endorsement for the plausibility of a Dalmatian origin for L. Artorius Castus.

 

Professor Anthony Birley merely told me - "It's likely enough that LAC was born in Dalmatia." 

 

The question may come up regarding the dates for the Sergian city foundations in Dalmatia.  This obviously has a bearing on whether L. Artorius could have been born there or whether he instead came from Italy.  The answer to this question was kindly supplied to me by Dr. Dino Demicheli (https://www.academia.edu/16334519/Dalmatians_in_the_Roman_Imperial_Fleet):

 

"The Sergian foundations in Dalmatia can be dated to the period of 1st c. BC and the beginning of the 1st c. AD."

 

This means that L. Artorius Castus could easily have been born in Dalmatia in terms of the historical chronology.

 

Mattia Vitelli Casella of the University of Bologna's Department of History and Cultures (author of "The Romanization of the province of Dalmatia through the women’s inscriptions") had this to share with me:

 

"As for the foundation and voting tribe of the inhabitants of Pituntium, we can't affirm that it was a Sergian 'foundation', because it was until Marcus Aurelius a peregrine community and then with no tribe. Just at that time it was included in the ager of Salona, whose citizens were partly enrolled in the Sergia. Unluckily we have no inscriptions with mentioned tribe from Pituntium.

 

As for L. Artorius Castus, Dr. Casella thinks my hypothesis makes sense. "I would suggest his [LAC's] origin from Salona. As I know, he held familiary estates in Pituntium, but he should be a Salonitan citizen. "

 

Pituntium as being in the ager of Salona is discussed in more detail in ZBORNIK INSTITUTA ZA ARHEOLOGIJU SERTA INSTITUTI ARCHAEOLOGICI KNJIGA VOLUME 10 Sacralization of Landscape and Sacred Places by Željko Miletić and Silvia Bekavac:

 

"The network of centuriae belonging to the Eastern part of the Salonitan ager stretched out across the area of the present-day Strožanac, along the littoral part of the Lower Poljica, i.e. in the territory of Pituntium, as evidenced by the remnants of the regular square units (centuriae) of the fossilized landscape from the times of antiquity, as well as by the discovery of a cadastre pillar containing the marks and the direction of the cardo and decumanus (ILJug 1, 119; Suić 1955: 19; Gabričević 1952: 155–167; Wilkes 1974: 266; Maršić 2003: 436; 2014: 167; Borzić 2014: 83). However, the question remains whether these square land plots on the left-hand bank of the River Žrnovnica correspond to those found in the territory of Salona, situated at the opposite, right-hand bank. In other words, the orientation of the centuriae corresponds to those that are found in the Salonitan part of the territory, but the numerical marcation of the directions carved on the boundary stone do not correspond to the proposed numeration of the „Salonitan“ cardo and decumanus.1 This discrepancy has thus far been interpreted as the result of the secondary implementation of the centuriation of the relevant part of the ager, which proposedly led to a separate, secondary numeration of boundaries that would not have been correspondent to the original one (Alföldy 1965: 106; Wilkes 1969: 228; Campbell 2000: 469; Borzić 2014: 81). In contrast to such interpretations, we believe the aforementioned discrepancy to stem from an inaccurate interpretation of the centuriation process. Several important facts seem to support such a claim. Regardless of the actual timing of  the centuriation, it may be reliably claimed that, at least at the moment in which the centuriae had been organized in the Pituntine space, that this territory represented a constituent part of Colonia Salona’s ager. Moreover, had the Pituntine, the Nerastine, and the Onastine constituted peregrine communities (civitates peregrinorum) beforehand, and bearing in mind that such res publicae were autonomous, then the occupation of their territory on the part of another res publica (Salona) would have been illegal. Whether this were the case of a primary centuriation of Salona, or a subsequent extension, is immaterial, as plot subdivision in the area of Pituntium had been carried out in the Salonitan territory. In other words, castella Pituntium, Neraste and Oneum could only have been a part of the lower-level constituent territorial units within the Salonitan territory, of the pagus or praefectura type. This represents the customary Roman land-administrative internal subdivision of the municipal ager, confirmed in numerous inscriptions across the Roman world (the colony of Narona and pagus Scunasticus, listed in ILJug 1, 113, is an illustrative example). The population of these castles mentioned by Pliny, irrespective of the legal status of individuals within them, including the individuals with the autochthonous peregrine status did in fact belong to the single respublica Salona, i.e. inhabited the ager of the colony of Salona.

 

Pituntium, Neraste, and Oneum represented the districts (pagi) within the unitary territory of Salona. Although there were segments of the population with a peregrine status within the said pagi, the three communities did not have the status of peregrine civitates, but made a part of the ager of the colony. Each of the pagi had the defined boundaries, and the respective administrative structure that was subjected to the central authority in Salona. The term of castellum, utilized by Pliny (NH3, 142) in reference to Pituntium, Neraste, and Oneum, denoted the centre of each of the pagi, where the sanctuaries dedicated to patron deities (paganicum) were the dominant structures: to Venus in Petuntium, to the pairing of Diana and Asclepius in Neraste, and to Divine Emperors in Oneum (Fig. 9)."

 

Professor Miletic was kind enough to write the following to me via email:

 

"A few years ago, I wrote an article (in English) with my colleague Silvia Bekavac about the status of the Pituntium, Nerastae and Oneum communities. Our conclusion is that from the very foundation of the colony they belong to the ager of Salona. Thus, the demarcations between the communities are not demarcations between civitates peregrinorum, but between administrative districts (pagi or praefecturae?) within the eastern part of the territory of Salona. Onomastic records, cult, shrines… do not show any element of the peregrine status of Pituntium. We are not quite sure if LAC was born there, i.e. in Salona, ​​but the choice of burial place goes in favor of that, as do other people named Artorius who appear there."

 

From "A contribution to the topography (and the interpretation) of the so-called oriental cults from the territory of Salona, in: “Sacrum Facere. Atti del V Seminario di Archeologia del Sacro. Sacra peregrina. La gestione della pluralità religiosa nel mondo antico”, EUT , Trieste, 2019, pp. 257-290, Palma Karković Takalić, University of Rijeka:

 

"According to Suić ager salonitanus originally extended from Kaštel Stari (located in the middle of the Kaštelan Bay) in the north-west, Klis in the north and Epetion (Stobreč; river Žrnovnica) in the southeast. It seems, however, that from the time of Claudius [AD 41 to 54] it expanded in size, so that the areas of Tragurion in the west and the community of Pituntium located south-east of Epetion were also included. Suić 1955, pp. 17-19. It is hard to say whether this or perhaps some other later expansions also involved the territory of Narestae and Oneum located more south-east (in the mainland), and the island of Brač. The area of the city itself is marked by its position in the deep and protective Bay of Kaštela (Kaštelanski zaljev), the stream of the river Jadro, and the steep cliffs of the Klis Mountain in the hinterlands. The rest of the territory includes three vast, mainly agrarian areas of the Fields of Kaštela, Solin and Split (Kaštelansko, Solinsko and Splitsko polje), with a few zones of deciduous forest, while on the north-western and south eastern borders of ager, the fertile soil belt narrows towards the coast in favour of the karst terrain. In short, the territory of Colonia Maria Iulia Salona could be defined as agrarian and maritime. It is considered the biggest in the territory of Dalmatia, but not bigger than, for example, the ager of colonia Pola in Histria. On the territory of Salona, Suić 1955, pp. 17-20; Borzić 2014, pp. 81-82; Jadrić-Kučan 2014, 167-168."

 

Professor Drazen Marsic sent me this on the early relationship of Salona and Pituntium:

 

D. Maršić, Ancient profile of Podstrana and its surroundings, “Lucius Artorius Castus and the King Arthur Legend”, Proceedings of the international scientific conference held in Podstrana from March 30 to April 2, 2012, ed. N. Cambi - J. Matthews, Split, 2014, 187-230.

 

My current opinion is this one: there are a number of elements that support the thesis that Pituntium came under the auspices of Salona very early, let's say somewhere in the time of Augustus, i.e. the time of the founding of the colony. These are the elements or reasons:

 

1. Proximity to Salona. Salona is only 4-5 roman miles from the western part of Pituntium. Epetium has the same distance, and judging by the remnants of limitation (centuriation) was certainly under the auspices of Salona. Unfortunately, we do not know where the western border of roman Pituntium really was, but we assume it according to the configuration of the terrain (maybe somewhere between modern Strožanac and Podstrana?).

 

2. At the western end of Strožanac, smaller traces of centuriation have been preserved, and a square cipus terminus has been discovered. We know that the possession of a roman city often extended over the surveyed territory, and in this case it would have to be in the direction of Pituntium/Podstrana.

 

3. There are strong indications that Issa and Pharos once were organized as salonitan prefecturae. The basis for these indications is the inscription from Salona CIL 3 14712 and tittle „praefectura phariaca“. Some old authors believed it mentions the body that took care of the lighthouse, ie the lighthouse service (like A. Betz), and others that it is a territorial unit (like M. Suić, G. Alföldy , J. Wilkes). For the last two years I have been intensively studying the inscription and other material heritage in the Roman world in search of some analogies to the lighthouse thesis and there is NOTHING, ZERO. I believe that CIL 14712 mentions territorial organization (praefectura) which were numerous in Italy at that time (at first I believed in the lighthouse thesis). If Vis and Hvar were Salonitan prefectures (and consequently the islands of Solta and Brač) I don't see how much closer Pituntium would be outside of Salona? If the peregrini of Issa (Vis), Solentia (Šolta), and others fell under the Salonitan legal conventum (Pliny, NH, III 141-142), but also under the administration of Salona (thesis about prefecturae), why wouldn't that be the case with the Pituntini as well? In my opinion, the presence of well known termination inscriptions is not evidence for the contrary thesis (Alföldy thinks so). There are serious indications that in the time of Claudius the ager centuriatus of Salona expanded to the west (in the direction of Trogir), so the same may have happened to the east but without centuriation??? I do not see how the territory organized as autonomous, in the 2nd century would lose that status and enter to Salona (Alföldy thesis)?

 

If these scholars are correct, we might assume that LAC was born in Salona, and then given an estate in Pituntium…

 

[From

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330926088_Lucius_Artorius_Castus_i_Liburnia.]

 

[1] For the gens Sergia in Italy, see

https://www.academia.edu/6718546/J_Linderski_Lily_Ross_Taylor_and_the_Roman_Tribes_2013.

 

Finally, I have the following from Professor John Wilkes (personal communication):

 

"Moreover, since there are several records of Artorii from Dalmatia, it seems probable that his military career was honoured in his native land.