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.