ARTHUR'S 'SOUTHERN BATTLES' IN LIGHT OF MY RECENT IDENTIFICATION OF BADON WITH LIDDINGTON CASTLE

Barbury Castle, Wiltshire

EXCERPTED FROM MY BOOK 'THE BEAR KING'...

Years ago I played around with trying to equate the battles of Arthur with those of Cerdic of Wessex and the Gewissei.  Alas, my knowledge of place-name development and of the languages involved was insufficient to the task.  Having once again brought up the very real possibility that Arthur could have been the "foil" of the Gewissei, it occurred to me that I should take a second look at the battles listed in the Historia Brittonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

First, those of Arthur:

Mouth of the river Glein

4 battles on the Dubglas River in the Linnuis region

River Bassas

Celyddon Wood

Castle Guinnion

City of the Legion

Tribruit river-bank

Mt. Agned/Mt. Breguoin (and other variants)

Mt. Badon c. 516

Camlann c. 537

And, secondly, those of Cerdic (interposed bat-tles by other Saxon chieftains are in brackets):

495 - Certicesora (Cerdic and Cynric arrive in Britain)

[Bieda of Bedenham, Maegla, Port of Portsmouth]

Certicesford - Natanleod or Nazanleog killed

[Stuf, Wihtgar - Certicesora]

Cerdicesford - Cerdic and Cynric take the kingdom of the West Saxons

Cerdicesford or Cerdicesleag

Wihtgarasburh

537 - Cerdic dies, Cynric takes the kingship, Isle of Wight given to Stuf (of Stubbington near Port and opposite Wight) and Wihtgar

As Celtic linguist Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson pointed out long ago, 'Glein' means 'pure, clean.'  It is Welsh glân.  However, there is also a Welsh glan, river-bank, brink, edge; shore; slope, bank.  This word would nicely match in meaning the -ora of Certicesora, which is from AS. óra, a bor-der, edge, margin, bank.  If we allow for Glein/glân being an error or substitution for glan, then the mouth of the Glein and Certiceso-ra may be one and the same place.

Ceredicesora or "Cerdic's shore" has been thought to be the Ower near Calshot.  This is a very good possibility for a landing place.  Howev-er, the Ower further north by Southampton must be considered a leading contender, as it is quite close to some of the other battles.

Natanleod or Nazanleog is Netley Marsh in Hampshire.  The parish is bounded by Bartley Water to the south and the River Blackwater to the north.  Dubglas is, of course, 'Black-stream/rivulet.'  Kenneth Jackson in his ‘Once Again Arthur’s Battles’ (Modern Philology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Aug., 1945, pp. 44-57) says of the Dubglas:

"Br. *duboglasso-, 'blue-black' which seems confused in place-names with Br. *duboglassio-, OW. *dubgleis, later OW. Dugleis, 'black stream'..."

Linnuis contains the British root for lake or pool, preserved in modern Welsh llyn.  Netley is believed now to mean 'wet wood or clearing', and this meaning combined with the 'marsh' that was present probably accounts for the Linnuis region descriptor of the Historia Brittonum. 

W. bas, believed to underlie the supposed river-name Bassas, meant a shallow, fordable place in a river.  We can associate this easily with Certi-cesford/Cerdicesford, modern Charford on the Avon. Just a little south of North and South Charford is a stretch of the river called “The Shallows” at Shallow Farm. These are also called the Breamore Shallows and can be as little as a foot deep. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery was recently uncovered at Shallow Farm:

“A Byzantine pail, datable to the sixth century AD, was discovered in 1999, in a field near the River Avon in Breamore, Hampshire. Subsequent fieldwork confirmed the presence there of an ear-ly Anglo-Saxon cemetery. In 2001, limited exca-vation located graves that were unusual, both for their accompanying goods and for the number of double and triple burials. This evidence suggests that Breamore was the location of a well-supplied ‘frontier’ community which may have had a relatively brief existence during the sixth century. It seems likely to have had strong con-nections with the Isle of Wight and Kent to the south and south-east, rather than with commu-nities up-river to the north and north-east.” [An Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery and Archaeological Survey at Breamore, Hampshire, 1999–2006, The Archaeological Journal Volume 174, 2017 - Issue 1, David A. Hinton and Sally Worrell]

Cerdicesleag contains -leag, a word which originally designated a wood or a woodland, and only later came to mean a place that had been cleared of trees and converted into a clearing or meadow. I once thought the Celidon Wood could have been substituted for this site, but that really made no sense.  Hardley, Hampshire, being the 'hard' wood (Watts, etc.), looked promising, if we could assume the Welsh knew Celidon (from Calidon-) derived from a British root similar to Welsh caled, 'hard.'  But we couldn't assume that.  

Instead, Celidon, being a great forest in Pictland, is a mistaken reference to Netley.  While the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s insistence on this being named for a British king Natan is untrue (Natan here being wrongly converted into a personal name; it is actually from a root meaning “wet”; see Watts, Mills, Ekwall, etc.), given that the Welsh knew of the famous Pictish Nechtans, in Welsh Neithon or similar (cf. Bede’s Naiton, Naitan), it is probable that the name was identified with a Pictish king and the wood thus relocated to the far North. 

Castle Guinnion is composed of the Welsh word for 'white', plus a typical locative suffix (cf. Latin -ium).  Wihtgar as a personage is an eponym for the Isle of Wight.  Wihtgarasburh is, then, the Fort of Wihtgar.  But it is quite possible Wiht- was mistaken for OE hwit, 'white', and so Castellum Guinnion would merely be a clumsy attempt at substituting the Welsh for the English.  /-gar/-garas/ may well have been linked to Welsh caer, 'fort, fortified city', although the presence of -burh, 'fort, fortified town' in the name may have been enough to generate Castellum.  Wihtgara is properly Wihtwara, 'people of Wight', the name of the tribal hidage.  Wihtgarasburh is traditionally situated at Carisbrooke.

Arthur's City of the Legion battle may well be an attempt at the ASC's Limbury of 571, whose ear-ly forms are Lygean-, Liggean- and the like.  The Waulud’s Bank earthwork is at Limbury.  Incidentally, Ceawlin’s Wibbandun of 568 is most likely a hill (dun) in the vicinity of Whipsnade, ‘Wibba’s ‘piece of land/clearing, piece of wood-land’ (see Ekwall).  Whipsnade is under 10 kilometers southwest of Limbury and is on the ancient Icknield Way next to Dunstable Downs.

According to Kenneth Jackson (_Once Again A thur's Battles_, MODERN PHILOLOGY, August,

1945), Tribruit, W. tryfrwyd, was used as an adjective, meaning "pierced through", and sometimes as a noun meaning "battle". His rendering of traeth tryfrwyd was "the Strand of the Pierced or Broken (Place)". Basing his statement on the Welsh Traeth Tryfrwyd, Jackson said that "we should not look for a river called Tryfwyd but for a beach." However, Jackson later admitted (in The Arthur of History, ARTHURIAN LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES: A COLLABORATIVE HISTORY, ed. by Roger Sher-man Loomis) that "the name (Traith) Tribruit may mean rather 'The Many-Coloured Strand' (cf. I. Williams in BBCS, xi [1943], 95).

Most recently Patrick Sims-Williams (in The Ar-thur of the Welsh, THE EARLY WELSH ARTHURIAN POEMS, 1991) has defined traeth tryfrwyd as the "very speckled shore" (try- here being the intensive prefix *tri-, cognate with L.  trans). Professor Sims-Williams mentions that 'trywruid' could also mean "bespattered [with blood]." I would only add that Latin litus does usually mean "seashore, beach, coast", but that it can also mean "river bank". Latin ripa, more often used of a river bank, can also have the meaning of "shore".

The complete listing of tryfrwyd from The Dic-tionary of Wales (information courtesy Andrew Hawke) is as follows:

tryfrwyd

2 [?_try-^2^+brwyd^2^_; dichon fod yma fwy

nag un gair [= "poss. more than one word here"]]

3 _a_. a hefyd fel _e?b_.

6 skilful, fine, adorned; ?bloodstained; battle,

conflict.

7 12g. GCBM i. 328, G\\6aew yg coryf, yn toryf,

yn _tryfrwyd_ - wryaf.

7 id. ii. 121, _Tryfrwyd_ wa\\6d y'm pria\\6d

prydir, / Trefred ua\\6r, treul ga\\6r y gelwir.

7 id. 122, Keinuyged am drefred _dryfrwyd_.

7 13g. A 19. 8, ymplymnwyt yn _tryvrwyt_

peleidyr....

7 Digwydd hefyd fel e. afon [="also occurs as

river name"] (cf.

8 Hist Brit c. 56, in litore fluminis, quod vocatur

_Tribruit_; 14 x CBT

8 C 95. 9-10, Ar traethev _trywruid_).

Tryfrwyd itself, minus the intensive prefix,

comes from:

brwyd

[H. Grn. _bruit_, gl. _varius_, gl. Gwydd. _bre@'t_

`darn']

3 _a_.

6 variegated, pied, chequered, decorated, fine;

bloodstained; broken, shattered, frail, fragile.

7 c. 1240 RWM i. 360, lladaud duyw arnam ny

am dwyn lleydwyt - _urwyt_ / llauurwyt escwyt

ar eescwyd.

7 c. 1400 R 1387. 15-16, Gnawt vot ystwyt

_vrwyt_ vriwdoll arnaw.

7 id. 1394. 5-6, rwyt _vrwyt_ vrwydyrglwyf rwyf

rwyd get.

7 15g. H 54a. 12.

The editors of GCBM (Gwaith Cynddelw

Brydydd) take _tryfrwyd_ to be a fem. noun =

'brwydr'. They refer to Ifor Williams, Canu Anei-rin

294, and A.O.H. Jarman, Aneinin: Y

Gododdin (in English) p. 194 who translates

'clash', also Jarman, Ymddiddan Myrddin a Tha-liesin,

pp. 36-7. Ifor Williams, Bulletin of the

Board of Celtic Studies xi (1941-4) pp. 94-6 sug-gests

_try+brwyd_ `variegated, decorated'.

On brwydr, the National Dictionary of Wales has

this:

1 brwydr^1^

2 [dichon ei fod o'r un tarddiad a@^

_brwyd^1^_, ond cf. H. Wydd. _bri@'athar_ `gair']

3 _eb_. ll. -_au_.

6 pitched battle, conflict, attack, campaign,

struggle; bother, dispute, controversy; host, ar-my.

7 13g. HGC 116, y lle a elwir . . . y tir gwaetlyt,

o achaus y _vrwyder_ a vu ena.

7 14g. T 39. 24.

7 14g. WML 126, yn dyd kat a _brwydyr_.

7 14g. WM 166. 32, _brwydreu_ ac ymladeu.

7 14g. YCM 33, llunyaethu _brwydyr_ a oruc

Chyarlymaen, yn eu herbyn.

7 15g. IGE 272, Yr ail gofal, dial dwys, /

_Brwydr_ Addaf o Baradwys.

7 id. 295.

7 1567 LlGG (Sall) 14a, a' chyd codei _brwydyr_

im erbyn, yn hyn yr ymddiriedaf.

7 1621 E. Prys: Ps 32a, Yno drylliodd y bwa a'r

saeth, / a'r _frwydr_ a wnaeth yn ddarnau.

7 1716 T. Evans: DPO 35, Cans _brwydr_ y

Rhufeiniaid a aethai i Si@^r Fo@^n.

7 1740 id. 336, _Brwydrau_ lawer o Filwyr arfog.

Dr. G. R. Isaac of The University of Wales, Abe ystywyth, in discussing brwyd, adds that:

"The correct Latin comparison is frio 'break up', both < Indo-European *bhreiH- 'cut, graze'. These words have many cognates, e.g. Latin fruolus 'friable, worthless', Sanskrit bhrinanti 'they damage', Old Church Slavonic britva 'razor', and others. The Old British form of brwyd would have been *breitos. It is sometimes claimed that there is a possible Gaulish root cognate in brisare 'press out', but there are difficulties with that identification.

It may be worth stressing that the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'very speckled' and the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'piercing, pierced' are the same word, and that the latter is the historically primary meaning. The meaning 'very speckled' comes through 'bloodstained' from 'pierced' ('bloodstained' because 'pierced' in battle). But I do not think this has any bearing on the arguments.

Actually, Tryfrwyd MAY mean 'very speckled', but that is conjecture, not certain knowledge. Plausible conjecture, yes, but no more certain for that."

That "pierced" or "broken" is to be preferred as the meaning of Tribruit is plainly demonstrated by lines 21-22 of the _Pa Gur_ poem:

Neus tuc manauid - "Manawyd(an) brought

Eis tull o trywruid - pierced ribs (or, metaphori-cally, "timbers", and hence arms of any kind,

probably spears or shields; ) from Tryfrwyd"

Tull, "pierced", here obviously refers to Tribruit as "through-pierced".

Tribruit is a Welsh substitute for the Latin word trajectus.  Rivet and Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain, p. 178) discuss the term, saying that in some cases "it seems to indicate a ferry or ford..." The Welsh rendered 'litore' of the Tribruit description in Nennius as 'traeth', demanding a river estuary emptying into the sea. However, in Latin litore could also mean simply a river-bank.

In the context of the Arthurian battles, the Roman period Trajectus belongs at Bitton or environs, only a short distance from Bath. 

FOR BADON, SEE

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-final-discovery-of-king-arthurs.html

FOR CAMLANN, WATCH FOR AN UPCOMING BLOG POST

THE FINAL DISCOVERY OF KING ARTHUR'S MOUNT BADON

[https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/8/644/files/2018/01/Rhonabwys-Dream-1nyq8zq.pdf]

One thing about Badon I have never doubted: the Second Battle of Badon, as mentioned in the ANNALES CAMBRIAE, was Liddington Castle at Badbury.  What follows is my original treatment of that identification:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-second-battle-of-badon.html

There is one possible clue to identifying Badon. It lies in a comparison of the Welsh Annals entry for the Second Battle of Badon and the narrative of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  The actual year entry for this Second Battle of Badon reads as follows:

665 The first celebration of Easter among the Saxons.  The second battle of Badon. Morgan dies.

The "first celebration of Easter among the Saxons" is a reference to the Synod of Whitby of c. 664.  While not directly mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, nor the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede, there is an indirect reference to this event:

664 … Colman with his companions went to his native land…

This is, of course, a reference to Colman's resigning of his see and leaving Lindisfarne with his monks for Iona.  He did so because the Roman date for Easter had been accepted at the synod over the Celtic date.  

While there is nothing in the ASC year entry 664 that helps with identifying Badon, if we go to the year entry 661, which is the entry found immediately prior to 664, an interesting passage occurs:

661 In this year, at Easter, Cenwalh [King of Wessex] fought at Posentesburh, and Wulfhere, son of Penda [King of Mercia], ravaged as far as [or "in", or "from"] Ashdown…

So, we have:

1) Easter, Badon

2) Easter, ravaging as far as or in or from Ashdown

Ashdown is here the place of that name in Berkshire. It is only a half dozen miles to the east of Badbury and Liddington Castle and about twice that distance to the south of Badbury Hill fort.  A vague reference to ravaging in the neighborhood of Ashdown may well have been taken by someone who knew Badon was in the vicinity of Ashdown as a second battle at Badon. As the Mercian king was raiding into Wessex, it is entirely conceivable that his path took him through Liddington/Badbury or at least along the Roman road that ran immediately to the east of the area.

Ashdown's Proximity to Liddington Castle/Badbury and Badbury Hill

The problem with this nice, clean and pretty near certain identification was that it did not seem to be born out by the account of Caer Faddon in the MABINOGION's "The Dream of Rhonabwy" (the relevant portion of which I have pasted above).  I have in the past theorized that Arthur's location at Cefn Digoll meant that Buxton was the Badon of the story

(see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/osla-or-ossa-big-knife-and-caer-faddon.html).  But the more time went by, the more dissatisfied I became with this attempt.

A good discussion of Rhonabwy and its claim for the location of Badon can be found here:

https://clasmerdin.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-location-of-rhonabwys-dream.html?m=1

The author's conclusion is apt:

"We are left to ponder if the author of the Dream of Rhonabwy consciously selected this location for the mustering of Arthur’s Great Army before the battle of Badon based on its historical setting for conflict between the English and Welsh; or did he hold some local knowledge of a now lost tradition of this being the site of Arthur’s greatest victory?"

In other words, the localization of Badon at/near Cefn Digoll or Long Mountain remained, for him, unresolved.

We can start with the place-name Cefn Digoll, which is not translated by the English Long Mountain. Welsh cefn is 'ridge', and digoll means in this context "unbroken", i.e. "continuous."

And it is with the Welsh meaning of the place-name that we can solve the mystery of Badon once and for all.

The Liddington Badbury hillfort is on the ancient RIDGEWAY.  Here is the listing for this track from Victor Watts:

It seems fairly obvious to me that the Welsh storyteller has sought, either intentionally or through confusion, to relocate the Badon, i.e. Baddanbyrig, of the Ridgeway to a nonexistent site adjacent to Cefn Digoll.  As there are a number of major forts in the vicinity of Cefn Digoll, as well as Offa's Dyke, this was not difficult to accomplish.  But taken in conjunction with the testimony of the ANNALES CAMBRIAE, and knowing as I do that the Welsh had a tendency to pull people and events from long-conquered British lands into the 'Celtic Fringe', and accepting the purely literary nature of Rhonabwy, I personally have no trouble with Caer Faddon = Liddington Castle.

Unclear whether we can infer any kind of relationship between the Beacon Ring hillfort on Cefn Digoll and the Ivinghoe Beacon hillfort at one end of The Ridgeway:

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/306947/

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1009544?section=official-list-entry

Beacon Hill, however, is near Trelystan, and in the latter is a Badnage place-name. While I've not been able to find an etymology for this Powys place-name, I do have this on the Badnage in Herefordshire:

Badnage (Burghill). *Badsay [in or near Madley]. ' circ. 1 2 17 Baddeshage, Chart. 1267 Baddesawe, Inq. p.m. 1 3 17 Badesawe, Min. Ace. 1327 Badeshawe, Baddeshawe, Plac. de Banco. Badda's enclosure.'

https://archive.org/download/cu31924028035693/cu31924028035693.pdf

We do have to be careful here, of course.  There was another Ridgeway, a Roman road that ran from Sea Mills, the Roman Abona, not too far west of Bath, to Gloucester.  Again from Victor Watts:

However, the Roman road from Bath to Sea Mills was some 35 miles long.  This does not sound right for a Caer Faddon just below the ridge.  

On the other hand, if we are operating anywhere near approximating relative scale (and aren't merely lost in poetic license territory), the Liddington Badbury is literally right next to the Ridgeway.  In fact, the summit of the fort is at 277 meters, and down the slope to the north and northwest stands the Ridgeway at around 200 meters.

The Ridgeway is described thusly on the National Trails site:

"The Ridgeway is Britain’s oldest ‘road’, and follows the footsteps of travellers, herdsmen and soldiers, who used to walk the path over 5,000 years ago. 

Starting in Wiltshire and ending in Buckinghamshire, the 87-mile (140 km) trail follows the chalk ridge from the North Wessex Downs, across Goring Gap and eastward over the rolling Chilterns."

If I'm right about this, i.e. that two Welsh sources identify Mount Badon as the Liddington Badbury, then we are immediately faced with two questions:

1) If Arthur was a northern chieftain, he did not fight at Liddington Castle.  His name would have been applied to the battle simply because both battle and chieftain were famous and the name of the real victor of Badon had been forgotten.

2) If Arthur was a southern chieftain, then I must look once again to St. Illtud and the series of strange "coincidences" which seem to make him out to be an Uther Pendragon with a connection to Liddington Castle.  For this, see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2023/01/illtuds-father-bicanus-and-his-llydaw.html and https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/06/a-request-to-review-st-illtuds-military.html, plus several other related blogs for details.

Finally, there is yet another possible identifier of Badon with Liddington Castle - one I discussed a very long time ago.

It is suspicious that Breguoin, a name identified by Celtic linguists with Bremenium at High Rochester, the Brewyn of the Urien poem, comes just before Badon in the HB battle list.  The meaning of Bremenium derives from a British word meaning 'to roar'.  It is preserved in modern Welsh brefu.  Liddington, of Liddington Castle, derives from the name there of the Lid Brook, found in the early genitive form of Hlydan.  The name means the 'loud (or roaring) stream.'  I've recently had confirmation from English place-name specialist Dr. Richard Coates that brefu and hlud are, essentially, semantic matches when it comes to their application to stream-names. Example:  W. breuer, breufer means 'loud, roaring', etc. 

This does leave unsettled the meaning of Agned.  That hill-name is found in the earliest MSS. of the HISTORIA BRITTONUM and scholars tend to give it precedence over Breguoin (or Bregomion or Bregion), which they tend to view as a gloss on the original name.  Agned does seem to be for agued/angwedd, and I once suggested to Dr. Graham Isaac of Galway that it may refer either to the situation an army found itself in at Breguoin.  Here is Isaac's take on that from http://www.facesofarthur.org.uk/articles/guestdan2c.htm:

“There are two places in the Hengerdd poetry, and one in the Laws, where there seems to be a word that would be written 'angwedd' today (see Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru p. 69). The difficulty is that the contexts show clearly that it does not mean 'narrows, straits' in any geographical sense, but means rather something like 'dire straits, difficulty, anxiety' perhaps 'death'. As such it is, of course, completely unsuitable as a geographical name. (The word 'anxiety' from Latin ANXIETAS, contains the same ANG-; this is good Indo-European, nothing new there).

The poetic usages of ANGWEDD you find in Canu Aneirin line 1259 'twryf en agwed' (with an extensive note on the word p. 349), and Blodeugerdd Barddas o Ganu Crefyddol Cynnar (ed. Marged Haycock), p. 166, line 18 (= BT p. 4, line 9). They leave absolutely no room for us to think that there may have been a place called 'Angwedd'.

However, the poetic lines do open up another possibility. It has long been thought that the Arthur passage in HB represents a Latin retelling of an OW heroic poem, and with good reason (you know the arguments). Such a poem could have had a line in it like 'galon in agued', 'the enemy in dire straits, great difficulty' (like the Canu Aneirin line 'twryf en agwed' 'a host in dire straits'). It is conceivable that an author responsible for the Harleian Recension of the HB (who may not have been entirely versed in the diction of OW heroic poetry) may have mistaken this 'agued' for a place-name, and mistakenly placed the battle there: instead of 'the enemy in dire straits', he understood 'the enemy at Agued', easily miscopied at some point as 'Agned' as Breeze suggests. Under this interpretation, the only location for the battle that was ever correct was Breguoin. This analysis at least solves the problem of 'Where was Agned?' with the answer, 'There never was such a place', and so no need to look for it.”

I had discovered that the revised etymology and definition for agued no longer allowed for “death” as a meaning for this word. The listings for angwedd in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru 1 and 2, respectively, are as follows (information courtesy Manon Roberts) :

1  angwedd

2  [?yr un ang- ag yn ang `cul' neu angau+gwedd]

3  eb.

5  Angau:

6  death.

7  13g. A 25. 2-3, twryf en agwed. e rac meuwed.

7  13g. LlDW 31. 18-19, ay kadarnau ohonau yr acgued edath dyun ydau. ac

emae enteu en menet.

7  14g. T 4. 8-9, yn yg yn ehag yn ygwed. yg corff yn eneit yn hagwed.

1  angwedd, hangwedd

2  [?ang2, hang+gwedd1; ansicr yw prth. agued,

8  LlI 33]

3  e.

5  ?Cyfyngder, caledi:

6  ?straits, distress.

7  13g. A 25. 2-3, twryf en agwed. e rac meuwed.

7  14g. T 4. 8-9, yn yg yn ehag yn ygwed. yg corff yn eneit yn hagwed.

If agned/agued does belong properly to Breguoin, and Breguoin is a Welsh attempt to render the English Liddington, then Mount Agned aslso represent Mount Badon/Badbury/Liddington.

And now for the fly in the ointment...

We should not forget the Tribruit battle, which comes just before the sequence of three hills - Agned, Breguoin and Badon. I long ago showed that from a linguistic standpoint this Welsh word was the exact equivalent of Roman trajectus.  While I have sought a trajectus in the North (at Queensferry, where the Welsh heroid poem PA GUR seems to place it), the only one we know of from the Roman period is the one situated at Bitton or environs.  

Yes, the Bitton which is only several kilometeres WNW of Bath.

If Tribruit is the Trajectus in Avon near Bath, then as far as the compiler of the HB battle list was concerned, Badon was Bath - not the Liddington Badbury.

But when we look at the HB list, we have to remember (as I once showed when delving into a southern Arthur)  all the battles in the list prior to Tribruit can be proven be Gewissei engagements drawn from the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE.  

My reading of this is simply that the similarly spelled Baddan- of Baddanbyrig was wrongly identified by the HB author with the 577 Bath battle of the ASC.  Arthur did not fight the Saxons at Bath, even if we allow for considerable revision of the ASC dates. He might well have fought at Liddington Castle (near Durocornovium and Barbury Castle).

For Arthur's battles in the South, see

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/03/arthurs-southern-battles-in-light-of-my.html

THE EPIGRAPHERS REACH CONSENSUS ON THE CASTUS STONE

I've had an interesting - and surprising - turn of conversation with Dr. Benet Salway, who not long ago came out with a Severan date for the L. Artorius Castus memorial inscription. 

The determining factor in what should be read for the ARM[...]S lacuna of the inscription remains the most probable foundation date and date-range for the province of Liburnia: c.170 to 180. Essentially the duration of the Marcommanic Wars. Tomlin still holds to this view:

"The Armenian War and the new province of Liburnia do seem to fit neatly into sequence, quite close together. Castus is a procurator who is promoted to virtual governor, suggesting that this was an expedient anticipating what would become a new province."

Also, Armenia is a recorded war. There is still difficulty in equating the Deserters' War with a hypothetical full-scale Armorican rebellion. This fact makes reading ARMORICOS rather unattractive, despite Roman Gaul expert Dr. John Drinkwater's belief that such a rebellion could have been sparked by Maternus' actions (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/01/armorica-rises-professor-john.html?m=1).

Basically, what has happened is that Tomlin and Salway seem to be on the same wavelength, although they came at the problem from slightly different directions. And Armenios continues to look like the winner of the emendation contest.

To begin with Benet Salway on the Castus stone date:

"Coming to the stone cold without any presuppositions and basing my opinion purely on the script, I would favour a date in the Severan period (AD 193-235) or up to a decade or so later. I base this on the high degree of ligaturing in the design."

Commenting on Dr. Abigail Graham's opinion of the stone

(https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-most-recent-date-analysis-of-l.html?m=1), which follows Salway with a Severan date, Tomlin said:

"Abigail's treatment I thought was sensitive and well-informed – I would rather not start tackling it in detail since it would involve so much looking-up and checking. Despite the ligatures, I am not happy with the idea that this inscription – one of such quality – cannot therefore be Antonine. This may only be my epigraphic pessimism and my tendency to over-generalise from RIB 1340 (https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1340), which shows Hadrian quite happy with ligatures and one letter squeezed inside another."

And from Salway on the Castus ARM[...]S lacuna:

"Your comparanda indeed show that Armoricos is possible. So both supplements are possible in the space, as you demonstrate.

But Armenios is more plausible because there is no evidence from elsewhere on this stone that this particular drafter (ordinator) employs ‘nesting’ (o within C).

Whereas there a several examples of ligaturing I by extending an upright."

Roger on that comment:

"I hadn't thought of Salway's point about O nesting within C, but it's a good one, when you consider how the stone-cutter treated the O within PROVINCIAE."

[See the conjoined RO of PROVINCIAE

in the second to the last line.]

My proposed use of ARMORICOS, with o nesting in C:

[ARMENIOS with ligatured NI.]

My question to Salway went as follows:

"If you have LAC commissioned directly into the centurionate (something Roger Tomlin has assured me is quite possible), and allow him to be in his mid-40s, rather than mid-50s, when he goes to Armenia in the early 160s, and then have him made procurator of Liburnia c. 168, he would then be around 50. Let him serve a decade or so (the Marcommanic Wars ended in 182), then retire. He may have made his stone anytime during the reign of Commodus, which is when the procurator centenarius formula first shows up (c. 190). In 180 (when Commodus started ruling on his own), LAC would be in his early 70s. In 190, his early 80s. There is nothing far-fetched or unrealistic about this - even if we allow for LAC having retired prior to the end of the Marcomannic Wars. He still could have lived in retirement for enough years to take him to the time of Commodus or even a bit beyond and to have then carved his memorial stone.  

Tomlin has pointed out to me that some soldiers' careers could be very long indeed. He cites Pflaum for Cn. Marcius Rustius Rufinus, who became centurion in the reign of Marcus, and proceeded through a series of posts like those held by LAC to become Severus' praefectus vigilum in c.207, enjoying a 30-year career.

Reasonable conclusion?"

His response:

"Yes, all perfectly plausible."

It then only remained for me to circle back to Graham to see if ARMENIOS in this context worked for her.

Her reply?

"Yes,  I think that would be plausible, too."

So, from seeming an impossibility at the outset of my discussion of ARMENIOS for Castus, we've gone to uniform acceptance.

Given that ARMATOS and ARM(ATAS) GENTES don't work for the lacuna, and neither does ARMORICOS, mere process of elimination now heavily favors ARMENIOS.