THE PROBLEM OF ARTHUR'S 'CITY OF THE LEGION' BATTLE, WHICH IS NOT REALLY A PROBLEM AT ALL!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICS0cyB8bqg

In response to my friend and fellow Arthurian researcher/author Tony Sullivan's preference for seeing Arthur's City of the Legion battle as the either the Welsh Caerleon or Chester, I posted the following in the comments section of his YouTube channel:

We have a historically attested Artorius at York. We can't independently verify an Arthur at Caerleon or Chester. I suppose I would simplify this by saying "Why bother looking for an Arthur at a Welsh City of the Legion, where Saxon activity is highly doubtful in the sub-Roman period we are discussing, when we already have one at Roman York?" In other words, we don't have to prove the existence of the York Arthur. A Welsh City of the Legion Arthur is, at present, unprovable. 

I suppose a good way to look at this is thusly: as we already have a historically attested Arthur at a legionary fortress, how likely is it that we have another Arthur at another legionary fort? I'd say odds are much against such a coincidence occurring. That's looking at the problem from a purely logical standpoint, of course.

We can instead opt for allowing the city of the legion to be merely an intrusion into the Arthur battle list of the famous Chester battle fought c. 616. Nothing wrong with that, if we accept the premise that the battle list is a fictional creation, in whole or in part.

Now, that's all pretty simple and I would here like to elaborate a bit on the points I made.

First, Arthur's urbs legionis battle must be examined in the context of the other battles.  To fail to do this, to choose to instead see it as some kind of odd outlier, is not a good approach to the problem, in my opinion.

I had pointed out that there are indications in the Welsh sources that York was known to have housed a legion.  These involved the Eliffer/Eleutherius of the Great Retinue (a legion?) who seems to be situated there, based upon the fact that his son Peredur (which I think is from the Latin Praetor, and not from a Celtic *Pritorix) is later made a son of Ebrauc, the Welsh eponym for the city of York. 

But we can see from the maps above that the association of York on Dere Street with the other battles on Dere Street clearly favor "Caer Ebauc" as Arthur's legionary city.  This is common sense from the geographical standpoint. 

I will repeat my strong doubt that either of the Welsh legionary cities could have been the site of a major battle against the Saxons in Arthur's time (supposedly somewhere around 516-537).  To the best of our knowledge, Wales at the time was subjected only to Irish infiltration.  We know that several Irish kingdoms were established in Wales when the Romans withdrew. Some of these kingdoms are of common knowledge.  Not generally accepted (yet) are my findings that show even the great Cunedda came from Ireland (Drumanagh) and not from Manau Gododdin in the extreme North. 

We have absolutely no knowledge of Saxon raids upon Wales during Arthur's supposed floruit.  None. Zero. Zilch.  And until someone produces such evidence, we have no reason to subscribe to the notion that these kinds of raids actually occurred.

Could the English have made a deep, penetrative invasion of either Chester or Caerleon from the east during Arthur's time?  Well, maybe.  It's possible.  But when we look at the range maps of Saxon settlement at the time (shown by the presence of Saxon cemeteries, here from the maps in Higham, drawn from Hines), it's hard to accept as a possibility that the English would have dared to invade or even raid so far into British territory.  

What it comes down to is this: if you are going to accept that we do, in fact, have an Arthur (= Lucius Artorius Castus) at the legionary city of York, why are you trying to force an Arthur into one of the Welsh Cities of the Legions?  Are you not simply doing what Geoffrey of Monmouth did, a writer of fantastic fiction who chose Caerleon for Arthur's plenary court? Is it not more reasonable to allow for the probability that York as Artorius' City of the Legion was relocated to Wales, to either Caerleon or Chester, once York had become English?  Is is not more sensible to see in this relocation of York to a Welsh City of the Legion as one of several known examples of the relocation of places or people from regions long conquered by the enemy to the Celtic Fringe?

Thus the problem of Arthur's 'City of the Legion' battle is not really a problem at all - unless, of course, we want to make it into one.  And I don't think we are justified in doing so.