The word eques is like English 'knight', a social rank originally applied to men rich enough to have a horse and serve as cavalry. The prefect of a legion ranked as an eques, i.e. 'equestrian', but didn't necessarily ride a horse, although he may well have done so.
I think you will find that eques is mostly used of (cavalry) horsemen. If you need to make your own or someone's else's equestrian status explicit – and 'equestrian' officers do not need to – you use the terms equo publico or uir egregius. Castus had no need to specify his social status. It was implicit in his various posts.
- Roger Tomlin
eques (sing.), equites (pl.): (i) a member of the equestrian centuries; (ii) a member
of the equestrian order; (iii) a cavalryman.
eques Romanus (sing.); equites Romani (pl.): a member of the Roman equestrian
order.
eques equo publico (sing.), equites equo publico (pl.): equestrians with the public
horse, members of the equestrian centuries.
equites equo suo: equestrians serving on their own horses; they possessed the
equestrian census, but not the public horse.
equus publicus: the ‘public horse’, granted by the Roman state in the form of
money to buy and maintain a horse.
ordo equester: the equestrian order.
- A History of the Roman Equestrian Order
Caillan Davenport
After narrowing down my search for a decent historical Arthur candidate to just two candidates (see
https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/02/and-then-there-were-three-who-will-be.html), I quite naturally evolved to a logical approach to the problem.
What do I mean by this?
Well, there are chiefly three questions that need to be asked - and, if possible, answered - at this juncture in the last phase of my research.
1) Do we need a Dark Age Arthur at Petrianis of the 1,000 horse Ala Petriana when L. Artorius Castus was himself an eques/knight?
and
2) Do we need a Dark Age Arthur period, if the name itself derives from Castus? [Obviously, the Arthur name could have been inherited in Northern Britain from another source, but if I'm right about Castus leading legionary forces inside Britain in some noteworthy fashion and having thereby acquired legendary/mythical status among Britons in the sub-Roman period, then it is probable the Arthur name did originate with the Roman dux.]
3) Badon is lost to Arthurian history if we subscribe to Castus as our hero. And while Camlan can easily be granted to Castus as a battle site, the latter most certainly did not perish there. The veracity of the Camlan battle as it is found listed in the ANNALES CAMBRIAE is suspect, in any case, as I've been able to demonstrate that Medrawd is actually a misplaced reference to St. Medard (see
To tackle these questions as honestly as I can, one by one...
For an Arthur to have been special enough to have caught the attention of the Horse-people (Epidii) of Kintyre and the Epona (Rhiannon) worshipping kingdom of Dyfed I have proposed that he must have had pronounced equine associations himself. There is no problem with that being the case with a Dark Age Arthur who claimed descent from the Ala Petriana. But can it realistically be said that Castus' eques/knight status was sufficient to engender this kind of enthusiasm among the royal families of Dalriada and Dyfed?
Almost certainly not. The following extract is from Caillan Davenport's A History of the Roman Equestrian Order (p. 606):
"Although the ordo equester and the dignitas equestris continued to exist
until at least the mid-fifth century AD, equestrian status lost its aristocratic
significance. In his speech of thanks to Gratian for his consulship in AD 379,
the emperor’s former tutor Ausonius boasted that he had no need to
campaign or flatter the people to earn the honour of the consulship, as his
Republican predecessors would have had to do. He proclaimed:
The Roman people, the Campus Martius, the equestrian order, the rostra, the
voting pens, the senate, and the curia – it is Gratian himself who is all these things
for me.
The influence and prestige of the ordo equester – and its role as
a constituent body in the res publica – was thus expressly positioned by
Ausonius as a relic of a bygone age. The ordo equester ceased to be
celebrated as a constituent part of the res publica. When Sidonius
Apollinaris delivered a panegyric for the emperor Majorian in AD 458 he
proclaimed that ‘every order gave kingship to you in turn – the plebs, the
senate, and the soldiery’ (ordine vobis | ordo omnis regnum dederat, plebs,
curia, miles). The equites Romani who lived in the late Roman empire
still earned the title through imperial benefaction. They still had privileges
that surpassed ordinary men, but this was far below what members of
their ordo had possessed in the days of Cicero, Augustus, or Marcus
Aurelius. Now one had to enter imperial service and become a senator,
a vir clarissimus, to earn the rewards that had once been granted to
equestrians. The domestication of status in the monarchical res publica
had made elites dependent on the emperor for privileges, honours
and status, all of which he could refashion at his will."
To this we should add the fact that Arthur in the earliest sources is never called an eques. He is, instead, simply referred to as a miles, "soldier." Had his eques status been important to the kings of Dyfed and Dalriada, we might expect him to have been presented as a knight.
As for Question No. 2 above, there is only really one thing for me to say here. That is, simply put, if the name Arthur can be traced back to L. Artorius Castus, then the latter must have done something truly significant while serving as dux. If we accept the usual reading of Armenia (or even default to Armorica) on his memorial stone, it is impossible to point to him as someone who would have achieved a high degree of fame within Britain. In this case, Arthur would just be a name and would not necessarily be traceable to Castus.
However, if Castus did play a major role in Septimius Severus' invasion of the North, and he did develop into a sort of folk hero by the 5th or 6th centuries, then we must admit that there is really no reason to require the existence of a sub-Roman Arthur based at Petrianis. We may allow for the name Artorius - renowned in northern British story - to have been given to princely sons by Irish conquerors/settlers in Britain merely because of the mythical connotations the name had taken on.
BUT, that rings rather hollow, precisely because of the answer I supplied to Question 1: the name Arthur must be important to the Irish kings for a reason, and that Castus had achieved a mythical status among the sub-Roman Britons seems insufficient cause. Castus wasn't British, he was Roman. And so Irish kings seeking to make themselves appear more "British" [1] would be unlikely to choose the name of an invading Roman general for their noble sons. They would instead have sought out a more recent British hero - like one who may have originated from Petrianis.
We might, at least for the Dalriadans, propose that Artorius as an enemy of the Britons of the North was identified with by the Irish infiltrating northern British lands. But this hardly works for Dyfed in the SW of Wales, where a northern Castus could hardly have been in any way important.
Question No. 3 is the easiest one to answer, in a sense. Given Gildas's chronology for Badon, only a Dark Age Arthur could have fought there. It is true that Welsh tradition (which I have shown in several blog aricles) seems to favor the Liddington Badbury as the site of Badon. However, strictly from a linguistic standpoint (and this is agreed upon by the top Celtic philologists), Badon is the natural British reflex of English Bathum. And for a northern sub-Roman Arthur there is a very nice Bathum at Buxton in the Peak of Derbyshire. The place is on the extreme southern fringe of what would have been Brigantes territory during the Roman period.
The intrusion of Medard as Medraut in the Camlan entry need not disqualify that entry, as we may easily have started with Arthur's death at Camlan and then had the Medard name accidentally or intentionally (for dramatic effect?) inserted. The Aballava (variant Avalana) Roman fort just to the west of Camboglanna/Castlesteads would seem to be Avalon with its own Dea Latis or "Lake Goddess." I've even made a case for Drumburgh/Concavata nearby being a prototypical Grail Castle. Thus if Camboglanna is not where Arthur died, its proximity to these other forts - not to mention its proximity to Petrianis or Arthur's Fort - seems to be just too much of a coincidence.
CONCLUSION
On the balance of things, it seems more reasonable to accept a Dark Age Arthur from Petrianis as the more immediate prototype for the legendary hero than it does to have to resort to L. Artorius Castus of the 2nd or 3rd centuries.
Of course, we must always bear in mind that given the way heroic legend works, we may have some conflation of the various Arthurs going on in our sources. In fact, I think any folklorist would tell you that if you have a famous man with a certain name, then his deeds might over long stretches of time have become muddled together with the activities of other men of the same name.
A good example: the Welsh themselves place Camlan at the Afon Gamlan in NW Wales (something else I have definitively proven). Now, we might choose to view this as a relocation of the Camboglanna Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall. Or, it is possible that because Dyfed historically was often at war with its Welsh neighbors to the north, the Arthur who perishes at the Afon Gamlan may be Arthur son of Pedr.
I would also mention the confused tradition concerning the death of Arthur son of Aedan (or Conaing). One Irish source has him dying in a battle with the Miathi (the Roman period Maeatae), while another has him dying in Circinn (Strathmore; see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-discovery-of-ancient-pictish.html). I have discussed the Maeatae in the context of L. Artorius Castus' possibly participation in the Severan invasion of North Britain (and shown that Arthur's Bassas River battle occurs between the two Miathi forts, while the shore of the Tribruit is the Caracallan trajectus across the Forth at Queensferry). The Caledonian Wood battle also looks remarkably like a Roman battle - or, if we must, a battle fought by the Dalriadan Arthur.
The validity of other Arthurian battles may also be called into question. Breguoin is thought to be a borrowing of Urien's Brewyn (= Bremenium) battle. Interestingly, a bear god named Matunus was worshipped at the Bremenium Roman fort at High Rochester. Agned, a copying error for Agued, is a descriptor found used of the Catraeth battle in the GODDODIN, a poem containing the earliest dated instance of the name Arthur. The urbs legionis is, in a northern context, the city of York, where Castus was stationed as prefect of the Sixth Legion.
We all want just one Arthur, but the one Arthur we have may well be an amalgamation of Arthurs. I think the key to finding the most important one - the one who started the whole Arthurian ball rolling, so to speak - is to find the man the kingdoms of Dalriada and Dyfed named their royal sons after. And I still feel that such a man should be sought in a time and place that has a lot to do with horses.
A 5th-6th century Petrianis, for example.
[1]
If the Arthur name was taken by the Irish of Dalriada and Dyfed for no other reason than it had belonged to a famous British war-leader and so adopting it was seen as emphasizing their own desire to be become more British, then we might also still consider an Arthur at Birdoswald. I held to that idea for some time. I abandoned the theory only because I was no longer willing to associate Uther Pendragon with the Dacian draco at Birdoswald. In a future blog, I will take one last look at Uther and the Aelian dragon on Hadrian's Wall.
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