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'm sending the map of HB sites as I've laid those out. Not telling him, though, that these are my Arthurian site identifications. Instead asking if he thinks the arrangement reasonable or at least possible for a sub-Roman ruler. Or if they look instead like something we'd find under Ulpius Marcellus or Severus.

Included is a note to the Caledonian site, as well as 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). With no specific reference to Arthur, of course.

Basically, I want his honest take on whether it is 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.

Will be interesting to find out what he has to say.

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."

In my book THE BEAR KING OF THE NORTH, I stress that a Dark Age Arthur on the Wall fighting in the old Brigantian territory and perhaps just to the north of the Wall makes sense, but that the extreme northern battles may mark intrusions into the list of Dalriadan battles or even folk memories of Castus.

THE GEWISSEI BASE OF OPERATIONS or WHERE ARTHUR FITS INTO THE GEWISSEI EQUATION

[For what brought me to write the following piece, please see this link:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/04/am-i-looking-at-arthurian-battles-wrong.html?m=1]

                The Gewissei Battles

I've discussed before the idea tentatively put forward by some top Anglo-Saxon historians (like Barbara Yorke) that the Gewissei may have been fighting against the Germanic invaders rather than for them. In other words, the supposed founders of the nucleus of the kingdom of Wessex had been co-opted by the conquerors.

For the sake of the current argument, let's go with this.

One thing needs to be said at the outset: if the Gewissei were defending the Britons, they didn't come up the Thames or the Hampshire Avon from the sea. They would have come from inland, and would have been pushing in the opposite direction.

I know Ceawlin of the Gewissei is Cunedda, and Ceawlin's son Cerdic is Ceredig son of Cunedda. And I know that Cunedda's son Cunorix, the Cynric of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, was buried in honor at Viroconium/Wroxeter in what was the Roman period kingdom of the Cornovii. Cunedda himself came from Ireland (Drumanagh directly across the Irish Sea from Gwynedd, not Manau Gododdin) and his "sons" (read teulu) were Irish or Hiberno-British.

Now, switch to Arthur. His name, thought by the Welsh to contain their word for "bear", belonged at Barbury in Wiltshire. Arthur's father, Illtud, belonged at nearby Liddington Castle or the Roman settlement named for it at Wanborough, viz. Durocornovium.

Durocornovium, according to all the specialists I've consulted, contains an element which points to the Cornovii kingdom that was centered on Viroconium. To quote from Rivet and Smith (whom Simon Rodway agrees with):

"The two names Durocornovium (qq.v.) indicate the presence of Cornovii also in Cornwall and Wiltshire. In Cornwall (to which they ultimately gave its name) they were presumably either a subdivision or a client-tribe of the Dumnonii and the appearance of the place-namc in Ravenna suggests that they were there before any supposed migration from the Shropshire area in the fifth century (e.g. J. Morris, The Age of Arthur (London, 1973), 68-69). The name in Wiltshire is unexplained, but it might represent a group who settled there in the course of an early migration or the early garrison of a fort."

Let us suppose, then, some kind of relationship between the Cornovii at the Liddington Badbury, i.e. Mount Badon, and the Cornovii tribe in Shropshire.

Now let's allow for the Gewissei under Cunedda/Ceawlin, who should perhaps be viewed as federate mercenaries, being sent to fight the Saxons in southern England. Their forward force was situated at Liddington, which was centrally located, allowing quick response from threats coming from the east and south.

Welsh tradition tells us Uther had kin at Caer Dathal/Dinas Emrys in Arfon. This was the chief fort of Cunedda.  Arthur is said to have taken a wife from there. This connection would represent a series of alliances formed through marriage between the rulers of Durocornovium and the Gewissei.

Such an alliance may well have led to Arthur's intervention in a dynastic dispute in NW Wales. In the dispute he perished at the Afon Gamlan. A church dedicated to his saintly father was established there sometime later.

While this whole scenario is incredibly speculative, it does have the advantage of avoiding the problems attendant on my past attempt to identity Uther Pendragon with Cunedda. 

Am I Looking at the Arthurian Battles the Wrong Way? or What Happens When Badon is Given Precedence

   The first page of annals in Harleian                             MS 3859

What happens if I change the way I look at the Arthurian battles?

Suppose instead of saying that Arthur never had anything to do with Badon and that the famous battle was merely tagged onto the HISTORIA BRITTONUM list, what if we instead go with Badon as Arthurian and the battle list as a fictional construction whose purpose is to present the Badonic Arthur as having fought, super-hero style, all over Britain?

If that were the case, we can say we 1) know where Badon was (as we can show Welsh tradition places it 3 times at the Liddington Badbury)  and 2) the only other important battle - and, indeed, the only other battle we can be fairly certain actually happened - is that of Camlan.

In other words, we give precedence to the two ANNALES CAMBRIAE entries and, essentially, ignore the HB list.

In this context the only Camlan worth paying attention is the one at Afon Gamlan in Gwynedd, as that is identied by Welsh tradtion as Camlan. The Afon Gamlan is within the parish of Llanelltyd. Illtud looks to be Uther Pendragon (whether we accept Uther as Arthur's father or not!).

Once we free ourselves of the straitjacket of the HB battles list (if even just provisionally), we are free to investigate more closely who Arthur really was and why he ended up falling in battle in what was at his time the ancient kingdom of Meirionydd.

My wife, a professional coach, has often warned me against falling victm to assessments. An assessment, as she defines it, is as 

“An interpretation that we believe is true, but that cannot be proven in the same way a fact can.”

This concept is foundational in ontological coaching, which views human beings through three domains: language, emotions, and body.

The term “assessment” in this specific ontological context was coined and developed by Julio Olalla, the founder of the Newfield Network and one of the leading figures in ontological coaching. Olalla distinguishes between "assertions" (statements that can be proven true or false) and "assessments" (subjective interpretations), emphasizing that recognizing and shifting our assessments can lead to powerful personal and professional transformation.

This being the case, I'm going to step back from my insistence on the primacy of the HB battle list and instead see where a switch in assessments might take me. 

Rather than actively seeking to dismiss the significance (or even existence!) of Badon and Camlan, what happens if we embrace both battles as the linchpin of Arthurian history?

With this in mind, I've had a new thought about Uther, Arthur and the Gewissei. And this is something I will be exploring in my next blog post.

THOSE PESKY IRISH-DESCENDED ARTHURS (WHO JUST REFUSE TO GO AWAY)

I keep trying to downplay the significance of the Dyfed and Dalriadan Arthurs, but that tactic isn't working.

We know of several Dark Age Arthurs in the North, and one in the South. 

Why did these Irish-descended dynasties in Britain give their royal sons the name Arthur?

Well, the Dalriadans came first. It is logical to assume they picked the name up from intermarriage with the Strathclyde Britons and we know, in fact, that such intermarriage did occur.

But here's the problem. We have to propose the following: there had been a famous Strathclyde Arthur the generation before. A man who had somehow fought from Caledonia in the Highlands down to York, and perhaps even to Buxton. 

I have failed to explain such a range of battles, actions that pretty much all follow the Roman Dere Street. And, indeed, such a military career in sub-Roman Britain seems impossible.

Is it not more probable that the Strathcylde Britons knew of a great legendary Artorius, a name that would have connoted a quasi-mythical, perhaps semi-divine Bear hero, who had led the legions of Rome along exactly the same path to his various victories?

If someone like L. Artorius Castus had not made himself famous in Lowland and Highland Scotland, how would the Strathclyde Britons have come to know the name? And why would it be important to them?

No, I'm afraid all my efforts to make someone other than Castus work have failed.

I must embrace ARM.GENTES for the Castus stone.

Camlan remains a problem, but could well belong to other temporally displaced Arthur, like the ones in Dyfed and Dalriada.  I will be concentrating future efforts on dealing with this issue.  Right now I'm leaning in the direction of connecting Castus with Camboglanna on Hadrian's Wall. 

Badon is pretty simple: the site is in the South and Arthur (whoever he was) never fought there.

Was I Wrong About Uther's Mount Damen (or Does a Strathclyde Arthur Work After All)?

                 Dumbarton Rock

I once identified Geoffrey of Monmouth's Uther battle of Mount Damen with The Roaches:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-galfridian-uther-in-northern-britain.html?m=1

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-discovery-of-uther-pendragons-mount.html?m=1

While exploring the whereabouts of this battle, I noticed the context was purely northern, i.e. all of Uther's battles were confined to northern England and Scotland.

Mt. Damen was particularly important as it was at this site that Gorlois made his first appearance. Gorlois is a character Geoffrey conjured from Uther's gorlassar epithet.

One of the primary reasons for choosing The Roaches for Mt. Damen was Geoffrey's description of the place as being very steep, with jagged rocks well suited to be the lairs of wild animals.

But in looking over the Galfridian account of Mt. Damen again, I think I might have missed something very important: it is followed immediately by military action at Alclud.

Alclud is, of course, the Rock of Clyde or Dumbarton Rock. We find Alclud in the Irish account of Ceredig Wledig called 'Aloo' or, simply, 'the Rock.'

Could it possibly be that Damen is a distant echo of the Damnonii of Strathclyde? Ancient forms for the tribal names of both the northern and southern Dumnonii tribes can be found here:

http://marikavel.org/personnes/damnonii/accueil.htm

http://marikavel.org/personnes/dumnonii/accueil.htm

If so, the "rock" of Alclud would nicely correspond to Geoffrey's rocks at Mt. Damen. 

Gorlois as Duke of Cornwall at Mt. Damen would then make eminent sense, as Cornwall was part of southern Dumnonia, which could be a mistake for northern Dumnonia.

The whole story of Igerna and Arthur's birth is copied from that of the begetting of Mongan (an Irish chieftain ultimately killed by Arthur son of Bicoir the Briton). Mongan's mother was Caintigerna, a name mistakenly or intentionally truncated as Igerna. The begetting of Mongan happens in the context of Aedan of Dalriada's Degsastan battle. Yes, the same Aedan who had a son or grandson named Artur.

CONCLUSION: 

Uther starts out at York, goes to the hill of the Damnonii, i.e. Alclud, then later goes to Lothian.  His death at St. Albans is an error for Albany, where he was said to have been just before going to St. Albans to die.  

Coming Soon: Was I Wrong About Uther's Mount Damen (or Does a Strathclyde Arthur Work After All)?

THE RATIONALE BEHIND CHOOSING L. ARTORIUS CASTUS AS ARTHUR

The Arthurian Battles (Including Badon and Camlan)

"ARM(ATAS) GENTES" Restored to Castus Inscription

The other day I concluded that my identifications of the Northern Arthurian battles of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM (many years in the making) were vastly preferable to anything I could locate in the South. 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/04/there-is-no-way-to-put-arthur-in-south.html

I provided some explanation there for why this was so, but I wish here to summarize how I feel about a Northern Arthur and why I think our best candidate for that man is the early 3rd century L. Artorius Castus.

Badon probably wasn't an Arthurian battle.  While Buxton is a candidate, I think Badon was in the South and Arthur's name only later became attached to it.

Camlan, while the Welsh place it at Afon Gamlan in NW Wales, looks to be a reflection of Camboglanna/Castlesteads on Hadrian's Wall.  L. Artorius Castus may well have fought at Castlesteads and/or done rebuilding work there.

When I look at the HB battles -

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

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

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 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

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

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.

- the questions that occur to me are these:

Are we talking about one Arthur or a conflation of several?  And if the former, is it possible that such a man could have performed such exploits over such a wide-range in the sub-Roman period?

It has long been thought by a great many scholars that when it comes to the HB Arthur we are dealing with a combined figure, i.e. a British Arthur fused with others, like the Dyfed and Dalriadan Arthurs - and maybe even Castus as well.  

I disagree.

Arthur son of Pedr of Dyfed cannot be associated with any of the HB battles (although he could be the Arthur who perishes at Camlan, if Camlan if the Afon Gamlan). The Dalriadan Arthur son of Gabran (or Conaing) is said to die fighting the Miathi, very far east of Dalriada, and east or northeast of the kingdom of Strathclyde.  But this may well be a confused folk memory applied to this Arthur, as a Castus fighting under Severus against the Maeatae may well have been intruded into the tradition.  There is no reason to have a Dalriadan Arthur involved in any of the other HB battles.  

If we are, then, talking about one man, is it reasonable to allow the existence of such a man in the early Dark Ages?

No.

Why? Because even if we go with the idea tentatively put forward by Dr. Ken Dark on a sub-Roman "pseudo" dux Britannarium centered on the old Brigantian territory, we cannot account for the several HB battles that are fought well north of Hadrian's Wall in Lowland and Highland Scotland.  It is simply not, in my opinion, logistically possible for a chieftain of the time - who would have been hard-pressed to hold together his warrior band and his territory surrounding a fortified residence - to have been running the show from York to Caledonia.

We might try defaulting to a sort of roving mercenary captain, hired alternately as need required by kings ruling over large areas of the North.  And the HB account, which has Arthur fighting with the kings of the Britons, but being the leader in the wars against the Saxons, would seem to support this notion.  

But it's also possible, perhaps even probable, that the compiler of the HB list, in writing his preamble to Athur's military career, recognized that no one king of the time could possibly have been defending a territory from York to Caledonia and that, therefore, Arthur must have been leading the campaign against the Saxons alongside other kings.  

Or the idea the compiler may have been trying to convey is that Arthur was a sort of High King like the Irish Ardrigh, or perhaps like the earlier British Vortigern (although, as I've discussed before, the very name Vortigern might well have suggested to later narrators a high king when, in fact, it was just a name - and one duplicated in several cognate Irish names of the period).

The problem with those scenarios is that we have no precedent for such an arrangement in Britain of the Dark Ages. Instead, we know that the moment the Romans were gone, and Picts, Scots and Saxons were pouring in, the Britons acted as Celtic societies always acted: they reverted to intertribal struggles.  Even in the generation after the supposed 6th century Arthur, when presenting a united front against the Germanic invaders had become of paramount importance, we have several separate Northern kings fighting against the Saxons, with one of them killing another out of envy (i.e. Morgan killing Urien). 

So far as I can tell, the battles as I've laid them out present a perfect portrait of only one man: a Roman leading British legions from York to the North under the Emperor Severus.  A man bearing the name Artorius who went against both the Maeatae and the Caledonii. 

Granted, we have potential problems with battle sites such as York.  It is unlikely Castus had to fight a battle there.  Instead, it was the base from which the Northern campaign was planned, and where many of the troops and supplies would have first been assembled.  We would need to be able to accept the location without requiring an actual battle to have been fought there.  The same may be said of some of the other northern England sites, although to be honest we don't know how far south the various confederated enemy tribes had been able to penetrate, and whether their actions precipitated rebellions of other groups within what had been the territory of the Brigantes.

 

THERE IS NO WAY TO PUT ARTHUR IN THE SOUTH: FINAL ANALYSIS OF THE BATTLES

The Three Southermost Arthurian Battles in the 'Pa Gur'

Over the past few days I have given my utmost to trying one last time to place the Arthurian battles in southern England.

I have failed.

The only way to do it is to resort to various types of linguistic trickery.  Methods involved include the much dreaded 'sound-alike etymology', proposing Welsh translations of English place-names or seeking folkloristic connections. Errors of placement can also be utilized (e.g. using the Essex Blackwater as Dubglas in Linnuis because that river was at Witham, and there is a similar Witham River in Lindsey).  But all results from such an effort share one thing in common: no matter what kind of geographical pattern emerges, none of the identifications are convincing.  

When I finally threw up my hands in defeat, I remembered to look back at the Arthurian battles of the PA GUR.  Most of the sites in this heroic poem actually belong in northern Britain or Scotland: 

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-pa-gur-battle-sites-revision.html

None belong in southern England.

The Gelli battle is almost certainly from a late saint's life that puts Arthur at Gelligaer.  The rest are in the North.

The same is true of the HB battles - even if we wish to include Badon, for there is Buxton in the High Peak.  Here again is the most recent map on the Northern battles, none of which have to undergo any kind of contortion in order to be able to fit the HB names:

The battle marked farthest south is Buxton.  That battle, in my mind, remains problematic when it comes to assigning Arthur to it.  I have said the same thing about Camlan at Camboglanna, as the pattern of the battles points decidedly to L. Artorius Castus - who certainly did not die on Hadrian's Wall.  However, Castus may well have fought there and/or engaged in rebuilding activities at Castlesteads.  We know the emperors Severus and Caracalla were there.  

Must as I hate to do so (for several reasons), I really feel that I have no choice but to see in the HB Arthur the ghost character, someone used to fill in gap in British history.  The same was done with Ambrosius Aurelianus of Gaul, who was 4th century, not 5th century.

The chief deciding factors for me were 1) the occurrence of the Miathi in a confused reference to the death of the Dalriadan Arthur and the HB Arthur's Bassas battle in Miathi territory and 2) the HB Arthur's battle in the Celidon Wood.

If I'm correct in identifying the HB Arthur with Castus, then I need to defend my new reading ARM.GENTES 'armed tribes' for the Castus inscription lacuna.  

NOTE ON AN ARTHUR OF ALCLUD

My recent treatment of an old idea - that Arthur might be son of Ceredig Wledig of Strathclyde, the crudelisque tyranni of St. Patrick - is now being abandoned.  I just don't think it's plausible to assign the battles of the HB to a war-leader from Alclud.  Yes, it is true that several generations later Rhydderch of Strathclyde was fighting the English.  But the spread of battles from the Caledonian Wood to Manau Gododdin and thence to York seems improbable in the extreme for someone fighting for Strathclyde in the early 6th century.  Such a pattern of battles doesn't even make sense for some kind of mercenary captain originating in Strathclyde who was fighting for several different kings.  

The best scholars will on occasion allow for the possibility of a sort of Dux Britannarium based on Hadrian's Wall (see the work of Dr. Ken Dark, for example).  But such a man would be trying to hold together what had once been the Brigantian Confederacy, and that group of tribes covered territory from roughly the Tyne to the Humber.  It did not extend well beyond the Wall, through Votadini (Gododdin) territory and all the way up to Caledonia.  

Trust me; I wanted the Strathclyde Arthur theory to work.  But I don't think it does.  I now hold Uther to be a fiction, one probably created to provide poetic assonance with the name Arthur.  There is the outside possibility Uther Pendragon is St. Illtud, but if so, Illtud was never Arthur's father. 

 

Minus Badon, Arthur = L. Artorius Castus, but...

                    Arthur's Battles

... what about Camlan?

          Castlesteads/Camboglanna

And that is the sticking point.

Sure, I can drop Badon from the list for the reasons I've expressed before. And then allow the ARM.GENTES reading for the Castus inscription's lacuna. 

That would do the trick - if we could explain Camlan away. Which I cannot.

Or we can allow Arthur to be the son of the northern Dumnonian king, Ceredig Wledig, the crudelisque tyranni/Uther Pendragon, and follow the HISTORIA BRITTONUM's description of Arthur as leading other British kings in war. The transfer of Arthur in legend from the Northern Dumnonii to the southern tribe of the same name (whose territory contained Cornwall) is not difficult to account for. And the Dalriadan royal house is most likely to have gotten the name Arthur from intermarriage with the Strathclyde Britons. Pedr or "Petrus" the Rock of Dyfed named his son Arthur after the famous Arthur of Alclud, the Rock of Clyde, called Petra Cloithe by Adamnan.

Such an Arthur, originating at Alclud in Strathclyde might well have fought in Caledonia, the Forth Basin, Manau Gododdin, as well as all the sites down through the old Brigantian kingdom and even to Buxton/Bathum itself. Not all sites would have witnessed action against Saxons, it goes without saying.

Let's explore how this might have worked.

We know from the HB that the later Strathcylde king, Rhydderch, fought against the Saxons with other powerful British kings. Whether we can say they fought as an alliance is u certain, but we do know that one of these other kings - Morgan Fwlch of the Tyne Gap - killed Urien, Rhydderch's contemporary, out of envy over the latter's power. The killing occurred on the coast opposite Lindisfarne.

We could, then, see in Arthur someone like Rhydderch. Only he was the son of the dominant chieftain of the North, Ceredig, and was acting in his father's stead as a commander of the forces of kingdoms that were subject to Strathclyde. In other words, Ceredig was a sort of high king of the North.

Clearly, as Arthur does not appear in the Strathclyde king list, he did not survive long enough to become king.

But it is surely possible that he marshalled an alliance of British kingdoms under his father's flag and may even have won a resounding victory in southernmost Brigantian territory at Buxton. While the Welsh seem to put the Badon battle in the South at the Liddington Badbury, the spelling of Badon and even the spelling of the Welsh form of Badon points to a Bathum site.

Is this view of Arthur prohibitively far-fetched? I don't think so. In fact, it seems a great deal more credible than seeing in a 6th century hero a folktale ghost from the early 3rd.

To circle back to Camlan... what happened there, exactly?

Well, it is possible the Saxons defeated Arthur and Moderatus there. Or we may have a foreshadowing of the later conflict between Morgan and Urien. 

This approach represents THE ONLY THEORY I'VE COME UP WITH THAT EXPLAINS EVERY FACET OF THE EARLY ARTHURIAN SOURCES.

And it is the one I will be going with in my final nonfiction book on Arthur.

NOTE: It is still possible the name Arthur found its way to Strathclyde via L. Artorius Castus. But as Professor Roger Tomlin has observed, Artorius was not a rare name, and Roman names would have been plentiful in Britain in the sub-Roman period. If Arthur son of Ceredig of Strathclyde works for the famous Dark Age hero, I'm no longer much concerned about where his name ultimately came from.