Dr. Simon Elliott's Lecture on Emperor Severus in Britain

A nice lecture by Dr. Simon Elliott on the British campaigns of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus.

I'm convinced that L. Artorius Castus was fighting the northern tribes under Severus and that Castus is the figure who underlies the later legendary Arthur.

Click on the link below for the page containing the video:

https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/videos/septimius-severus-online-talk-with-dr-simon-elliot

ON FALLEN HEROES (NO, NOT WHAT YOU'RE THINKING)

In the course of some three decades, I've gone from seeing Arthur as a great high medieval king defending Britain from all manner of evils to accepting as the prototypical figure a Roman army officer who commanded legions during Emperor Severus's genocidal invasion of northern Britain.

How did this devolution happen?

Well, I see chiefly three principles at work here. 

One, I've grown considerably older. And that means youthful idealism has been replaced by seasoned realism.

Second, I successfully made the shift in my researches and theorizing from utilizing, accepting and adapting romantic or purely legendary sources to severely limiting myself to what a true historical treatment of the Arthur story demanded.

And, third, I met Dr. Linda A. Malcor.

This last is the most important formative influence on me. Although I disagreed with Linda from the start - sometimes rancorously and, to my great embarrassment, publicly - she not only "got me to thinking" about L. Artorius Castus as a possible Arthurian candidate, but invited me to an Arthurian symposium in Croatia in 2019. An event paid for by the Croatian sponsors of the event.

Because she did that for me, and arranged to have me present a paper at the said conference, I was able to participate in an exploration of the places where Castus lived and was buried. In what may have been the most profound experience of my life, I was able to examine and TOUCH the Castus' memorial stone.

Unfortunately, Linda and I held such strongly polarized opinions on Arthur and Castus that we eventually fell out. Our methodologies are radically different and we approach the subject from the perspective of different disciplines. I had already alienated myself from the majority of the so-called "Arthurian Community", eschewing those folks I considered Fringe or New Age/Neopagan for more traditional, "respectable" academic contacts.

But I will never forget Croatia, and I will never be able to express enough the gratitude I feel towards Linda for making the trip there possible for me.

More importantly, she successfully planted in my mind the notion - which I long fought against - that Castus may, indeed, have been the original King Arthur.

On and off, ever since the 2019 Croatian symposium, I flirted with the idea that the Castus inscription's lacuna ARM[...]S might indicate this prefect of the Sixth Legion had actually led legionary troops within Britain itself. Linda and her colleagues had proposed ARMATOS, and that Castus had been a governor missing from the record. I (and all the other scholars I had consulted) could not accept either claim. 

Might there be an alternative reading that was valid in terms of epigraphic use and historical probability?

My answer was ARM.GENTES or "armed tribes." When combined with several early strands of the Arthurian tradition (such as the presence in that tradition of the Maeatae and Caledonii), I suggested Castus had taken part in the Severan expeditions in north Britain. Leading academics thought the idea quite credible.

When I reached this conclusion (a painful one, I assure you, and one I resisted mightily), questions that had vexed me to no end (like the "Irish Arthur Problem") resolved themselves quite simply and with little effort.

And so I found myself light years from the chivalrous hero of my boyhood and early adulthood. Instead, I was agreeing with my arch-rival Dr. Linda A. Malcor, albeit for entirely different reasons, that Arthur was a reflection - an intentional, planted anachronism - of a man who had participated in a Roman campaign of attempted extermination  of the northern British tribes.

I find myself wishing I knew now what I didn't know in 2019. Had I been able to present my current findings in a Croatian paper, both the tourism applications for that country and my own professional trajectory might be on another track altogether. I also would have found the experience even more powerful and enriching.

Rather, I must content myself with thanking Linda for causing me to question my own beliefs and motives. For if we don't do that, there is no hope for any important breakthrough or discovery.

At some point in the future, I will put out a volume on this final theory of mine. The working title, the first half of which supposedly came from the mouth of Severus on the eve of the second invasion of northern Britain, is

"LET NOT ANYONE ESCAPE FROM SHEER DESTRUCTION": A NEW ARGUMENT FOR A ROMAN ARTHUR.

Plan for Final Nonfiction Arthur Book

Sword in the Stone, Podstrana, Croatia

Working title:

"LET NOT ANYONE ESCAPE FROM SHEER DESTRUCTION": A NEW ARGUMENT FOR A ROMAN ARTHUR

Not sure when I will get to this. I'm 65 and working full-time for a few more years. It may not appear, therefore, until after I retire. Assuming I'm still drawing breath, of course!

But I will strive - eventually! - to get it done.

The cover, hopefully, will be a computer-generated reconstruction of the L. Artorius Castus inscription showing my proposed reading of ARM GENTES for the ARM[...]S lacuna.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUANDARY: ANNALES CAMBRIAE OR HISTORIA BRITTONUM FOR ARTHUR?

Badon and Camlan in AC

Arthur's Battles in the HB

So what do we believe - that Arthur was of the 6th century A.D. and fought at the Liddington Badbury (Badon) and at a Camlan near Chichester (a Roman period Noviomagus, hence the wrongly incorporation of St. Medard of Noyen as Medrad) - or that he was L. Artorius Castus of the 3rd century and fought in a string of battles stretching from York to Highland Scotland? 

Badon, placed quite definitively in the time of St. Gildas, cannot have been a battle belonging to Castus.  And Castus did not die at a Camlan.  However, he almost certainly would have been involved in any action or rebuilding of the Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall.

Obviously, the Dalriadan Arthur may have gotten mixed up in the northern battles, but if so, the son of Aedan (or of Conaing) can have nothing to do with either Badon or Camlan.

That, in a nutshell, is the quandary I currently find myself in.

My gut badly wants the southern Arthur, a sort of savior of the Britons (at least for a short spell).  He may have been from the Roman period Durocornovium (if his father was Illtud), a town that replaced the Liddington hillfort. Or he may have been from Ercing (assuming this is not a relocation for the former location). In either case, there are grave difficulties when it comes to placing the other battles in the South (no one, including myself, has succeeded in doing this).  In addition, the settlement pattern of the Saxons in the South (as indicated by the presence of cemeteries) seems to preclude the possibility of victorious British military action in the vicinity of Liddington.  Unless, of course, our dates are way off - something that is entirely possible.

On the other hand, an acceptable (but not necessarily correct) reading of the Castus inscription's lacuna as "armed tribes" allows us to identify this Roman officer as one who led legions under Severus and Caracalla.  Battles were fought against the Maeatae and Caledonii ( = the Miathi of Dalraidan Arthurian tradition and the tribe inhabitating the Celidon Wood of the HB battle list) and it has been suggested (by no less an authority than Anthony Birley) that Severus may also have battled the Brigantes (which would account for the more southern of the HB battles).  Once again, if we are willing to let go of Badon, Castus would seem to be a perfect candidate in every way other than that of chronology. 

Confidence in the Welsh sources is not strengthened by the relocation of Badon to central Wales (in "The Dream of Rhonabwy") and of Camlan to northwest Wales.  For if a site can be moved once in folk tradition it can be moved again.  St. Medard could have been wrongly included in the Camlan story for no other reason than his death-date corresponded with a duplicated Irish Annal entry (see my earlier work on this subject).  

If L. Artorius Castus - a verifiable historical figure - was active along the Wall and there was a Camboglanna fort there - which there was - then we are hardly justified is seeking a second Arthur in southern England or northwestern Wales who perished at a place of the same name. 

I would be more prone to seeing the HB battles as a mere fictional construct were it not for how perfectly they seem to align with what we would expect Castus' martial career in Britain to look like. I mean, if these battles were literally all over the map, being arranged in such a way as to suggest Arthur was a superman defending every corner of the Island, then I could dismiss them just as easily as I do the fantasy composed by Geoffrey of Monmouth.  But I can't do that.

And that is where I find myself in the terminal stage of my Arthurian research.  Or is it simply a hiatus?

Well, it's a hiatus if I can ever come across new evidence or can develop new argumentation that will help sway me in one direction or the other. For now, my logical self is prevailing over my romantic self.  

Castus still looks to be the prototypical Arthur.  IF MY ARM.GENTES READING FOR THE CASTUS INSCRIPTION IS CORRECT.  If not, then we may all have to go back to the drawing board.

Am I particularly troubled by the use of a Roman Artorius as a Dark Age British champion?  Not really.  There is so much that is fraudulent or mistaken in the early British sources that in some way that material is not dissimilar to hagiography.  If the Britons of the time found they were lacking a great hero, well, why not invent one?  Or, at least, borrow one from a few centuries back.  That they may have done so is no less incredible than their utilization of Ambrosius Aurelianius, himself a conflation of the 4th century Gallic prefect of that name and his saintly son, as a mythic hero of 5th century Britain.  

Nicholas Higham expresses the same distrust in the historical sources of the time period. He recently wrote the following to me:

"The HB's author made up several British hero figures who he used to demonstrate the Britons were courageous and good at bashing foreigners. The best way to understand his technique is to focus on Dolabella/um, who is obviously a straight lift out of Roman history, specifically from Orosius, but who he converted to a British general fighting Caesar. Historical nonsense but of considerable propaganda value in 829."