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."