Dr. Miles Russell
Appearances
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But Geoffrey's presented with two rather different accounts. And rather than pushing them together, he treats them as two separate individuals. So when we look at Arthur, you can disentangle. There's at least five individuals which come together. So Arthur is a composite in Geoffrey of Monmouth. His story has already happened to other people.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And these are sort of people who are in some way significant. They've been remembered as heroes in the old psychopathic Elliside. You know, they are prominent warlords of their time. But their stories have undoubtedly been remembered and therefore they are coalescing around Arthur and Geoffrey brings them together to create this sort of composite Celtic superhero.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Yes. I mean, Ambrosius Aurelianus is one of those figures who, in post-Roman Britain, we do have some detail of. It's not much to go on, really. But Ambrosius Aurelianus appears in the writings of a man called Gildas. And Gildas is writing at some point in the mid-6th century. Gildas is not the best historian to rely on because he's not a historian. He's the man of the clergy.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And his account on the ruin of Britain, it's a polemic. It's a sermon, basically, explaining what why the Britons have suffered, because they're all diseased and sinful and corrupt. And therefore the Saxons are like a scourge from God cleansing them. So it's full of blood and fire and anger. And Gildas hasn't got a good word to say about anybody.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Everybody's corrupt and horrible, apart from one person who is Ambrosius Aurelianus. And he says that he's a man of good character. He's descended of sort of noble Roman stock. And he is responsible for this great defeat of this rascally crew, the Saxons. He defeats them at a battle or the siege of Mount Baden. And because Gildas is so complimentary about him, And he mentions this battle.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
This battle gets referred to time and time again. It becomes a key battle of King Arthur in the later sort of rewrites. But Gildas doesn't give us any information about who is besieging whom at this great affair. He doesn't tell us where Baden is, but because Gildas is writing somewhere in the West Country or possibly sort of southern Wales, we assume it's within that sort of general area.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But it's important to him and it's important to the people he's speaking to. So Ambrosius is this major character. Now, he appears a lot in other oral histories, which were later written down, like the Triads of Wales, like the Mabinogion, briefly. Nennius in Historia Ritonum, the History of the Britons, Ambrosius is in there.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And he features very heavily in Geoffrey Monmouth's work because he's treated as the immediate sort of predecessor of Arthur. But Ambrosius is somebody in Geoffrey Monmouth who, yes, he fights the Battle of Baddon, which Geoffrey places at Bath in the West Country. He is trying to establish his kingdom in the face of Saxon advances, defeats them a number of times.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And Geoffrey has him being having his coronation at Stonehenge. And of course, this becomes the archaeologists have picked up on this recently. Going back to Geoffrey, this idea that. In Geoffrey's account, Ambrosius asks his chief advisor, Merlin, to build a monument to commemorate all those British aristocrats who'd been murdered by the Saxons.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And Merlin goes off to Ireland and brings back this great stone circle, which they set up on Salisbury Plain. And that's where Ambrosius has his coronation. And of course, from an archaeological perspective, that seems utterly ludicrous. Yeah. You know, because we know the history of Stonehenge and it's not post-Roman in essence.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Although it's possible, you know, there's debate whether the blue stones have come from West Wales, which might be sort of remembered. But the key thing in Geoffrey's text is he's talking about the monument being restructured. And we know that archaeologically, you know, I've excavated inside Stonehenge entirely legally, by the way, it was part of a bigger project.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But a lot of the blue stones that we see in Stonehenge today were reshaped and modified in the post-Roman period. So there is some kind of structural modification going on in there at the time that Ambrosius is supposed to have existed. And because you've got Amesbury, the town nearby, Ambrosius's burr, his name is resonant in the landscape.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So it's possible Geoffrey is remembering or writing down an event involving the reshaping of Stonehenge. and the coronation of this king, whom Gildas has mentioned before. But he's there, and he's the only post-Roman warlord for whom we've got anything vaguely complimentary written about. So in that sense, he's in the right space at the right time.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
for the arthur character and when we look at ambrosius in jeffrey's text aspects about his childhood aspects about his kingship and of course the battle of baden get absorbed into the arthur story so they're repeated without comment later on so we can see there's about 16 percent of the king arthur story as it appears in jeffrey monmouth is taken from ambrosius's life
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It is, yes. It's the battle narrative and it's the sort of aspects about his kingship and his position in his power. And it is actually interesting that later writers take other aspects of Ambrosius because in Geoffrey of Monmouth, although Merlin is there... He and Arthur never meet. They occupy different timelines, as it were.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But later writers have Merlin becoming Arthur's advisor and his wizard. So it's interesting that it's Ambrosius and Merlin in the original text. But later, when Ambrosius is written out, Merlin gets absorbed into the Arthur story.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Yeah, I mean, Magnus Maximus, I guess, is one of those individuals who doesn't resonate so much today. We don't hear a lot about him, but he was a significant character in later 4th century Roman Empire, because we know that there's not a lot about his life story that has been recorded, but it is known that he is of Spanish ethnicity.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He's serving in Britain, possibly as a commander of the Northern Armies, the Dux Britanniorum, But in 383 AD, his soldiers proclaim him as emperor. So he is illegally created as leader of the Roman world. And lots of people are doing this around the Roman Empire. Throughout the third and fourth centuries, the empire is tearing itself apart with multiple leaders and claims and civil wars.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So in that respect... Magnus Maximus is not that different. But he seems to have the support of the troops in Britain. There seems to be a lot of disaffection with the government in Britain with Rome, feeling that they're not perhaps being looked after. They're a distant province. They're not that important. And Magnus Maximus as we know from the histories, takes troops out of Britain.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He gets support in northern Gaul, northern France, Belgium, Germany. He's minting coins with his face on and with images of victory. His army besiege the forces of the legitimate Emperor Gratian, who is killed in the retreat. So the Emperor of the West dies. The Emperor's mother and his younger brother then go over to the east. And Magnus Maximus is sitting there above the Alps,
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
about to advance down into Italy when the Eastern Emperor arrives with an army, cuts him off and he is executed and killed and the rebellion is put down. But it's a huge political and social upheaval because it's completely destabilised the West. It's involved a loss of life. It's an own goal as far as Rome's concerned because it's destroying its own army. And he saw lots of it in fighting.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It is. I mean, Arthur is such an incredible character. He's a world character, really. You know, he's famous everywhere. And I think his story is one that just keeps getting reinvented for every generation. You know, he's one of those characters from the past where it's now very difficult to disentangle the historical truth from the sort of mythology and the fantasy that's built on it.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But the fact that his story, you think, well, why is Magnus Maximus remembered? What possible relevance has he got to Britain? But he is remembered. If you look in a lot of the early Welsh genealogies, lots of the leaders of Powys and so on, they trace their ancestry back to Magnus Maximus, who's often cited as the king who killed the king of the Romans. You know, he is remembered.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And in the Mabinogion, we get the story of the dream of Maxim, who is Magnus Maximus, who in that version of the story, he's an emperor in Rome who dreams of this distant, faraway, mythical land with a castle and a beautiful princess. And he sends people out to look for her and eventually come back and say, we found her. She's in effectively North Wales.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And he travels over there and meets the woman literally of his dreams and they fall in love. And he stays there for long enough for a rival to take power in Rome. And then he has to take troops out of Britain to go and reclaim his kingdom. So it's sort of a reverse version of the story. But he's remembered in so many different accounts. You think, well, there's something about him.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Okay, yes, he was a prominent warlord. That's something that, you know, tick, you are remembered for. Undoubtedly, there were praise poems about him. I suspect he restructured Britain significantly. So he devolved authority, perhaps to individual tribes or leaders. And that's why they later treated him as their sort of progenitor, as the founder of their dynasty.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But a lot of the story, certainly the Mabinogion centres around Carnarvon in North Wales. And that's where the later sort of Plantagenet dynasty built...
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
carnarvon castle and it's supposed to be the sort of myth fulfillment that they are building a fortress that resembles the castle that magnus maximus had in this dream so sort of the later norman monarchs are building on this mythology quite literally and representing themselves as the ultimate sort of fulfillment of the magnus maximus story
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But when we look at Geoffrey Monmouth, when we look at the fact that he leaves Britain, he invades Gaul, modern day France, he defeats armies, he kills the emperor, and he's just about to go over the Alps to invade Italy when he's suddenly turned away. All this is Magnus Maximus' story that's been repackaged for Arthur.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So 39% of the King Arthur story comes from Magnus Maximus in Geoffrey of Monmouth. So he is the most significant person to contribute to the Arthur tale.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It is. I guess to our perspective it is. But given that he's portrayed as a strong leader, someone who is successful in battle, someone who galvanises the Britons and the Gauls and the Germans against Rome, this becomes a significant factor in this story. And of course, bear in mind, he doesn't come back to Britain. One of the later aspects developed with Arthur is he's gone.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He's not killed, but he might come back one day. And I guess that is something about Magnus Maximus is that he's gone abroad. Stories of his death might be treated as a bit of an over-exaggeration. But there's that sense that one day he will return and save us all. So you can see how that's in.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But because the story's been enlarged and enlarged and enlarged over time, every generation makes the Arthur that they want. So we see in the last few decades, there's been TV series, there's been films, there's been computer games. It's just building on that mythology. So probably of all characters in the past, King Arthur is probably one of the most famous, really. He's world renowned.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But yeah, from our perspective, you know, for most people's perspective, I guess Magnus Maximus, whose name translates as the great, the greatest. So he's quite a show off. He's not modest. Yeah, he's not modest in that sense. But he doesn't feature much in our history. He's just another name in that list of rebels.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But for the beginnings of the great Welsh dynasties and the princes of Wales, he's a key character from their past. and therefore he gets built into the story of Arthur.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Yeah, I mean, again, Constantine is another character who ultimately hasn't really got anything to do with Britain. You know, he's from the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Balkans. But he is serving in Britain with his father in 306 AD. And his father is Constantius. His father is the emperor.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And at that stage, there is a system called the Tetrarchy, which is by whoever's emperor chooses their successor. And it's not somebody of their bloodline. They choose the most capable leader to succeed them. And it's a way of trying to get rid of all these fighting dynasties. Now, in 306, Constantius dies in Britain at York. He's on campaign in Britain.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And Constantine, his son, effectively says, well, I'm the son of the emperor. I'm going to be emperor. And his troops proclaim him as such at York. So it's this major uprising, another sort of time when a general has illegally seized power. And Constantine does what Magnus Maximus does later, is he takes troops out of Britain.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He goes into Gaul and then he starts his campaign downwards into Italy, down towards Rome. And so, in effect, there are elements of his story which are repeated in the Arthur story of him invading. But Constantine is the first emperor who literally just before he dies, he's on his deathbed. He converts to Christianity and he allows Christianity to flourish.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And of course, for writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth, who are in that Christian tradition, he is the most important Roman of all. And we can see aspects of his story. I mean, it's very, very similar to what happens to Magnus Maximus. And to be fair, Constantine, although he's treated as a great Roman, when you actually look at his story, he's a deeply unpleasant individual.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And he murdered all his rivals and he suffocates people in baths and he poisons. He is horrific. But he fits that profile of a strong leader. And Constantine is successful. You know, unlike Magnus Maximus, who dies at the last hurdle, Constantine does become emperor of Rome. And the fact that his rebellion starts in Britain and York features a lot in Geoffrey Monmouth's texts.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So it's that side of it. I mean, Constantine is 8% of his story. So it's not a great deal, but he's there. And when you look at Constantine as he appears in Geoffrey Monmouth, there are elements of his rebellion and his war in Gaul, which feature in the story of Arthur.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
I think you're right, he does. And also bear in mind that a lot of the characters like Constantine, although his life story is remembered elsewhere, Geoffrey and other writers give him a British mother. So we see there is this, his mother Helena, who's
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Often actually treated as the patron saint of archaeology because she goes off to the east and she finds evidence of the true cross and Christ's crucifixion, all this stuff. But in various accounts, she's perhaps confused with a Helena character in North Wales. But it's as if Constantine, he's got British heritage. Therefore, he becomes a king of Britain.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But it's vital to get him in there because he's such a significant player in the story, not just of the Roman Empire, but critically of Christianity and its acceptance. So to have him as one of us. And it's another string to Geoffrey's bow to say the Britons are far more important than the Saxons. You know, yeah, the Saxons have got monasteries and they convert to Christianity.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But the Britons, we've got Constantine as one of us. And therefore, you know, that makes our royal lineage far more significant. You know, you've got Athelstan and Alfred. Yeah, great. But we've got Arthur and Constantine and these people. And they are far more important in world history than any of your lot.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Yeah, Cassivellaunus or Cassivellaun as he appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's text. He's one of those individuals who we do have an independent account of because he features in Julius Caesar's account of his invasion into Britain. And of course, Caesar, as the consummate politician, he writes everything down. He justifies all these actions as a series of dispatches from the front line.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So in his account of the wars in Gaul, he describes in detail his invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 B.C. And in 54 B.C., he comes up against a preeminent leader. He's called a preeminent war leader of the Britons called Cassivalonus. And of course, Cassivellaunus, that name form gets garbled in Geoffrey of Monmouth and becomes Cassivellaunus. It appears in other forms as well.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. I mean, it's I guess, you know, King Arthur is one of those characters who's always fascinated historians and archaeologists alike trying to get back to the actual physical truth of him. Did he? The argument is always going that there are those who believe he was a real character operating at the end of Roman Britain and those who believe his complete fantasy.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But in essence, he is the man who stands up to Caesar. Now, in Caesar's account of the war, he manages to defeat Cassivellaunus. Of course, he does. You know, it's Caesar writing and he gets tribute out of him and he leaves. Now, that particular invasion, the great thing about us, because we've got Caesar's account, we can compare it with what Geoffrey of Monmouth writes.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And Geoffrey doesn't seem to have Caesar's account to hand because there's nothing in Caesar's writings that fit Geoffrey of Monmouth's. So perhaps the Gallic Wars is not something he had in his library or accessed to. But we get the invasion of 54 BC mentioned twice, but it's two different accounts of that same action. In the first account that Geoffrey gives us, Cassivalonus is victorious.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He drives Caesar into the sea. He defeats him comprehensively and sends the Roman packing. You know, that's what the Britons want to hear. That's what probably in praise poems after that event. That's what people were saying. The Romans have gone. The Gauls were defeated by them, but we kicked him back into the sea, back to where he came from.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
The second version that appears in Jefferies, we've got the same invasion, Cassibalowne fighting Caesar. But there is another character in there, and that is a chap called Androgeus, who is a powerful British leader who's on Caesar's side, but helps Caesar. Caesar couldn't defeat Cassibalowne without Androgeus' help.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So he's presented as a great warlord who is far greater than Caesar and far greater than Cassive Alornus. So there are three different versions of the same event, one by Caesar or his supporters, one by Cassive Alornus and his lot, and one by Androgeus. Now, Caesar mentions Androgeus. He calls him Mandubrachius. and he's of the Trinovantes tribe of Essex.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So you've got this Britain on the Roman side. Now, interestingly, in Geoffrey of Monmouth, when he's describing this, Androgeus is presented as the nephew, the treacherous nephew of Cassivalonus. And when we see... Caesar landing and the description giving of the Romans arriving is replicated much, much later on when we get the Saxons invading for the same number of ships, the same battle tactics.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And Cassivalonus is betrayed by Androgeus. When Geoffrey Monmouth describes Arthur, Arthur is portrayed by his nephew, Mordred. And so you get Mandubracius becomes Mordred and Cassivalonus, that element of the story, gets morphed into Arthur's tale.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So no doubt this is a prominent British Iron Age king who is mentioned by the Romans, but becomes something very different in Geoffrey Monmouth's account, depending on Who's writing the story? So in some versions, in Geoffrey and Monmouth, Cassivellaunus is the hero. In the other versions, he is an unpleasant character who needs to be defeated. It depends who's giving you that oral tradition.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But Geoffrey looks at that completely unfiltered and doesn't realise it's from two different sources and just tries to blend it into one. So we don't understand why in one stage Cassivellaunus is the hero and then 10 pages later, he's the villain. It's never explained, but it's because it's two different accounts sort of knitted into this singular account.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And the intriguing thing is also when we look at Geoffrey Monmouth, he keeps talking about, I mean, effectively, there are two prominent royal houses in Britain. There's the House of Cornwall and there's the House of London. And it's their story that filters throughout. And when we look at Cassivellaunus, he is from the House of Cornwall.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And within that, they're trying to find some middle ground of trying to actually place him. because it's such an emotive time. You know, when you're talking about the end of Roman Britain, we're talking about the beginning of the kingdoms of what becomes England, what becomes the principality of Wales, the kingdom of Scotland.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But when we actually sort of identify these characters and their tribal affiliations, it's not Cornwall and London. It's the Cassivellaunee tribe of Hertfordshire and it's the Trinovantes of Essex. It's those two tribal accounts that seem to survive as oral traditions. And perhaps when Geoffrey was writing, the name form was garbled. He didn't understand what Catevallorni was.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So it becomes Cernow or Cornubia, becomes Cornwall. And Trinovantes, he translates as New Troy, which for him means London. So his geography becomes across the whole of Britain. But the origins are just these two tribal groups. fighting for survival in Hertfordshire and Essex. But Geoffrey transposes that across the whole of Britain.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Yes, yeah. Brittany features quite a lot, especially in Arthur's story. There's lots of later sort of myths that Magnus Maximus, when he goes to Gaul, he sort of invigorates the aristocracy of Brittany. He places his troops there and they sort of intermingle with the local population. And certainly there's a lot of sort of Breton tradition with Arthur.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Now, part of that might be because we know there are channel migrations, you know, Brittany is Little Britain and Britain itself is Great Britain. So it might be that the stories migrate across the channel in the 6th, 7th centuries AD, or it might be that Magnus Maximus, just as he was doing in North Wales, was doing something equivalent in Brittany.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And that's because the Breton connection becomes attached to Arthur. But some accounts also say that Cassive Alornus, having driven Caesar into the sea, then led raids against him in northern Gaul. So, you know, it's all tied up. There is certainly a great oral tradition of these leaders involving themselves in the most northern parts of France.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Arviragus. Again, we face that problem that a lot of what occurs, what appears in Geoffrey is Garble's name forms. And presumably they've been mistranslated or the oral tradition has in some way, like Alexander becomes Iskander and various other sort of way forms. But the story of Arviragus is important because we get Arviragus as a great British leader.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
who is negotiating with the Emperor Claudius. He, at some point, refuses to pay tribute to the Emperor, which is what Arthur does later. The Romans try and invade and Arviragus fights them. Then he becomes allied to them. And there's a key moment when Arviragus marries this great British noble called Genvissa. who is described as the great beauty of her time, and so on.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It's all these formative stories or these foundation myths all begin at that, all coalesce at that one time. So, so Arthur's there at the epicenter of all that. So they're trying to, you know, he's got great resonance today, trying to find out who he was, where he existed and what he actually did.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And this is later, almost word for word, we get Arthur marrying Ganhumara, who later becomes Guinevere in later romances. So the whole key element of Arviragus's story with Arthur Fighting Rome, then allying with Rome and marrying this great beauty gets added to the key beginning of Arthur's story.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Now, it's difficult to really place Arviragus as a historical character, but the name form seems to become a degenerate of Caratarchus, who is popularly referred to as Caraticus in other sort of anglicised forms. And Caraticus Caratarchus is...
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
One of those forgotten characters of early Roman Britain, Boudicca sort of takes up all the air of most of our sort of stories of that time, because Boudicca in AD 60 leads the great revolt of the Icani tribe of Norfolk against Rome and Colchester, London, St. Albans were all burnt to the ground. But Caratacus is there at the beginning. He is opposing Rome from day one in AD 43 when they invade.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
His capital, his centre at Colchester, is captured by the Romans. He retreats into Wales. And in 47 AD, so some years later, he re-emerges in what is now South Wales, having galvanised the tribes there to fight the Romans. And then he transfers the centre of operations into North Wales.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And then he later goes up, tries to open up another front in what is now Yorkshire with the Brigantes tribe and their queen, Cartimania. And she eventually hands him in chains over to the Romans. I don't want you. Go away. Where you go, the Romans follow. And so he's handed over. And he's taken to Roman triumph. Claudius has him in a great procession.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Caratarchus is supposed to give him this great speech saying, why do you envy us in our mud huts when you've got all this marble? I would have greeted you as a friend rather than as a rival. And he gives this great speech. And Claudius, according to the Roman writers like Tacitus, is so impressed by this speech that he lets Caratarchus go. He gives him his freedom.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He's not allowed to leave Rome, but effectively he's not executed either, which is a plus, you know, and he lives out his life in Rome. So here is this great character who appears in lots of early Welsh literature because he is actually there fighting the Romans on the ground. No doubt, lots of praise poems around him. Other elements of his story appear in much later tales.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So the relationship between Caratarchus and Cartimandua gets evolved into sort of Arthur and Guinevere. The betrayal of Guinevere developed from the betrayal of Cartimandua as she hands him over to the Romans. But we see Caradoc and Cradoc and Kurdic, all these name variant forms of Caratarchus.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
survive in lots of early Welsh literature so he is remembered and these key aspects of him I mean again he's another character who leaves Britain and never returns so it's that once and future king he's not dead but he will come back and save us and that gets built into the Arthur story as well so Arviragus Caratacus is another character it's about 24% of his story becomes absorbed into the Arthur tale as presented by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It is very, very different. Bear in mind, the Romans' sense of geography is not quite as accurate as ours. We know that in the 80s AD, so 40 years after Claudius, a Roman fleet does circumnavigate Britain. And it is actually an island. And so now that probably got to the Orkneys and so on. There is some Roman material there. on Orkney, and people tried to make a link.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
I mean, it seems unlikely if the Romans having invaded Kent and Essex, a delegation would come down from Orkney to surrender that. But then it might just be that the name has become sort of mistranslated or garbled from another different tribe. And we know that in Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Ikaini tribe of Norfolk, or Isenia as they're sometimes referred to, are described as Scythians.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And the Scythians, of course, is a name later given to the Huns. This is a tribe right the way across from the other side of the Black Sea. So Icani becomes Scythians. Boudica becomes Soderic, king of the Scythians. So it may be that we are looking at this and saying Orkneys, whereas the Romans were actually using a different tribal name. And it's not actually that far north. It would seem odd.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
that a tribe from those far distant islands would A, have heard that the Romans had invaded, and B, sent a delegation down to say, we surrender, because they're so far away, it doesn't really make any odds to them. But the conquest of the Orkneys is represented in Geoffrey Monmouth quite a lot. Arthur conquers the Orkneys with Claudius's help. Arviragus Caratacus, he invades the Orkneys.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It's a history of the kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Historia Regum Britanniae, I give it its Latin title, and it's written in around 1136 AD. So it's written a very long time after the events that it describes. It divides opinion.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Lots of other characters. It almost becomes like a generic name for taking the whole of Britain. You've conquered everything, including the Orkneys. But quite what the origins of that story are, sadly, we don't know.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Yeah, it becomes a byword for the limits of the known world.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
If you break it down in a purely mathematical way, looking at what Geoffrey Monmouth says, Magnus Maximus is 39%, Caratarchus is 24%, Ambrosius Aurelianus is 16%, Cassivalornus is 12%, Constantine is 8%. Hang on. There's one percentage missing. That's 99%. What is this 1%? Well done. That's good maths. Yeah, there's 1% in there.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And basically that just relates as an element of Arthur's story where just before he conquers Gaul and fights the Roman emperor, he conquers Norway. You know, he conquers Iceland. And these are aspects that don't actually feature in any other character story in Geoffrey and Monmouth's account. So it's an element that is not repeating something that's gone before.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But there have been a lot of invasions from Norway before. And there are later in his text as well. So it might be something just slipped in there as a sort of giving it back to the Northmen that they have invaded time and time again. But we were there first. The Britons conquered you before you conquered us. And that might be a sly dig at the Normans.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Of course, Geoffrey Monmouth is writing in the 1130s in Norman England. It's quite clear he's not a fan of the Normans, quite definitely. But the Normans like what he's writing because they like to link themselves to Arthur. You know, they are doing what Arthur does. They are subjugating the Saxons, the English.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And so they connect with Arthur and they like this idea of a grand and glorious heritage in Britain, which they want to connect to. And it might just be Geoffrey having a little sly dig that a hero of his account went and attacked Norway and attacked the land of the Norsemen, the Normans, you know, before they came to Normandy. He was there before you came to us. But that's that one percent.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Ninety nine percent belongs to someone else. If you take all these other stories of other characters out of the Arthur tale that Geoffrey gives us, there's nothing left for Arthur. He becomes a non-person. So it's quite clear he cannot have existed, effectively, as far as Geoffrey is concerned.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
I think it's fair to say in the past it was viewed as one of the most important texts relating to the history of the Britons, giving them their lost voice. But in the last 200 years, people have tended to be a bit more critical of it and say, well, actually, it appears to just be either complete fantasy. It's made up or it's some kind of misguided fantasy.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He is the composite of everyone who's gone before him, at least the five key characters who've gone before.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
No, Boudicca, she's important to us. Absolutely. And she has a key figure in the early history of Rome, Britain, and gives them a lesson about what it means to side with the Romans, you know, because Boudicca and her husband Prasutagus are on the Roman side to begin with. And it's only after his death is her people betrayed by Rome.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And we get this huge fiery vengeance raining down upon the key cities. So it's become a major part of our mythology today or British history. But bearing in mind that much of what Geoffrey's writing relates to the tribes of what is now Essex and Hertfordshire in that part of the southeast, Boudicca isn't part of that story.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And the one character who does appear at about the right time is this character, Soderich. which arguably is a garblisation of Boudicca. And Geoffrey Monmouth turns her into a man. It's King Sodrick of the Scythians rather than Queen Boudicca of the Icani. And she arrives and starts looting stuff, or he arrives and starts looting stuff in Geoffrey's account.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And it's swiftly dealt with by a British leader with Roman support. So I think she is there, but her name form has been garbled. And bearing in mind that it's only really from the time of Queen Elizabeth that the first, does Boudicca take on more resonance in Britain? Because they're looking for historical precedence of strong female characters resisting an alien sort of imperialism.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And at the time of Elizabeth I with the Spanish Armada, suddenly Boudicca becomes that model. And she's picked up again during the reign of Charles I when he's with Catherine of Braganza. She's picked up again with Victoria. And, you know, we get that great big statue that we're familiar with now at the very end of Victoria's reign of Bodicea with her chariot outside the Houses of Parliament.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So Boudicca arguably has become a far more important person in the last 500 years than she probably was at the time. And she doesn't really feature much in Geoffrey Monmouth's account rather than this garbled character at the very beginning.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Well, again, I mean, Tristan and Isolde at the court of King Mark, these are very important aspects of Cornish mythology today. And of course, it seems to be that it's their story. I was trying to argue whether or not they were real people or not, but their story is very much linked to the islands of Tintagel and North Cornwall. So you've got King Mark as this powerful leader.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
patriotic drivel, which really made sense in the 12th century, but doesn't today. The difficulty really is we don't know anything about the man who wrote it, Geoffrey of Monmouth. We know that he existed, which is good. We know that he was living in Oxford in the 1130s. We know that by his name, Geoffrey of Monmouth, he must have grown up or spent his formative years on the Welsh-English border.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He does appear in other sort of sources. And there's the Drustanus stone, a big memorial stone, parts of the sixth century in southern Cornwall, which could be a precedent for Tristan. But the story of King Mark sending Tristan over to Ireland to bring back his older and Tristan and his older fall in love. And they sort of, Mark seeks vengeance and they hide in the island.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
All these sort of things are very much linked to Tintagel. And I think when Geoffrey of Monmouth is writing his text, he's looking for places that he can anchor his story to. And Kelly in South Wales, which is near Monmouth, becomes the court of King Arthur. That's probably a site that Geoffrey knew quite well, the old Roman legionary fortress.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But Tintagel becomes the point, bearing in mind that Arthur is supposed to be descended via his father, Uther, from the House of London. But through his mother from the House of Cornwall, he needs a place for Arthur to be conceived.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And Tintagel is so resonant with mythology, the story of Tristan and his olden mark, that that is where King Gorlois, as some people call him, and Igerna, that's where they are. And that's where Agerna and Uther conceive, not to put too fine a point on it, Arthur is conceived there. But it becomes such a strong, mythical, important place in Cornish history.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It's the ideal place for Geoffrey of Monmouth to place Arthur. He doesn't say he was born there, but certainly his history begins there. And it's later versions of the Tristan and Isolde myth that get reworked into the Arthur story. And Tristan becomes Lancelot and Isolde becomes Guinevere. And we get that sort of love triangle between them and Mark becomes Arthur.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
So much later, that story does get absorbed into it. But I think it was well known at the time. And that's why Geoffrey places Tintagel as Arthur's conception. And that's why when you go to Tintagel today, everything is Arthur connected because it's that side of the story that has been placed there. It becomes one of those key points upon which the whole mythology of Arthur is grounded.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Arthur and the Kings of Britain, published by Amberley from All Good and probably some bad bookshops.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But beyond that, We know very little about him or indeed why he chose to write this book. He says in his foreword that Walter, the Archdeacon at Oxford, his ultimate boss, gave him the task of translating a very ancient book in what he calls the Celtic tongue, translating it into Latin.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But people have taken that to think, well, this is some kind of smokescreen, some kind of cover for something he's actually inventing, because there is no original Celtic text that people have found. But all the way through his book, we can see he's making reference to oral history. And other writers of the same time are like Henry of Huntingdon and William of Marsbury.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
They're talking about the stories of the Britons, which are known by heart. So there is this sort of tradition of all storytelling, of passing myths down from generation to generation, but not actually writing anything down. And it is actually the beginning of the 12th century that we start seeing things like the Mabinogion in Wales, a whole series of different texts. We see the Welsh Triads.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
We see Geoffrey of Monmouth. They're starting to write down stories which seem to have been passed around. Now, the difficulty with an oral history is obviously tracing its origins. And of course, it's the possibility that every generation is slightly modifying it or changing it. And therefore, the story becomes distorted. Names become garbled and it becomes increasingly difficult
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
to look back and think, well, what is the actual kernel of truth there? What is the actual origins of this? But Geoffrey's writing this down, and he presents a history that he describes of the Britons. He's putting this as an attempt to counter the overtly English stories, like Bede, who writes the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He's got William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and their stories are very Anglo-Saxon-centric. You know, they're based on the first English migrants setting up kingdoms. He's presenting a story that counters that and said, actually, before they arrived, there is this great heritage going back, all the kings and queens and monarchs.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And he claims they are descended ultimately from Trojans who were escaping the Trojan Wars, who were sort of refugees who landed in Britain and established this sort of series of kingdoms. And effectively, it's a polemic really sort of saying that all these people existed before the Saxons arrived and going through their history and identifying key heroes.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But the difficulty from our perspective and from a historical point of view is because these names aren't mentioned anywhere else, have they got any kind of historical truth to them? Is he making them up? Is he using some kind of oral tradition that hasn't been written down anywhere else? What is the basis of this?
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But it's important for us because Geoffrey of Monmouth is the first person to give us an entire life history of King Arthur, from his conception to his mortal wounding. So all our understanding of Arthur, the man, all the mythology that's built around him, begins with Geoffrey of Monmouth. There are scattered references to an Arthur character before that, but Geoffrey gives us everything.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Absolutely. So remembering sort of heroes from the past. Another good example is the stories that are first being written down or recorded in 19th century Afghanistan about Iskander, you know, Alexander the Great. Here you've got a Macedonian general from the third century B.C. who's being remembered thousands of years later. And the stories have multiplied.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But at its core, there is a historic or verifiable figure. So we can see that oral tradition has a very long history, that tales do survive. But because they're not being recorded, it is very difficult to see when they mutate and when they change.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And that's the tricky thing with Geoffrey of Monmouth, is we can identify some of these characters, not all of them, but we don't know when these particular tales are mutating and evolving.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
In History of the Kings of Britain, Arthur is coming towards the end. I mean, he occupies about a third of the book. So he's the most significant character. He's given the most amount of space to develop. And in a way, everything is leading up towards Arthur. I mean, there are characters after him in the story, but they're less significant and they're given sort of less time, really.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But throughout the story, Geoffrey presents a series of important men and women who are trying to defend their kingdom and trying to establish the laws of the land and all these sort of things. And
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Arthur occurs at a point when the kingdom's under its greatest threat because Geoffrey identifies the Saxons coming in from migrating across the North Sea as the biggest threat to the kingdom of the Britons. So Arthur's there at that point defending everything that's gone before.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
But it's interesting because the story that he gives of Arthur is repeating lots of key tropes, lots of key aspects of other people's story. And it's presented without comment. It's some kind of divine plan. Everything that's happened before is coalescing under Arthur and is repeated under Arthur. And he is the ultimate warrior in the story.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And his demise signifies the high point of the Britain story, but also the point which they sort of descend and the kingdom sort of crashes to a halt.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
He's a horrible character in Geoffrey of Monmouth because he's a psychopath. He is very quick to anger. He slaughters people for no apparent reason. He invades countries just because he wants power. But that is, in the post-Roman, indeed pre-Roman period, that is how heroes are remembered. They're not remembered for having a kingdom of peace and prosperity.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
They're not remembered for the laws that they pass. They are remembered for being strong individuals who don't take any prisoners. So Arthur... His story is just drenched in blood. He is not a very nice character from our point of view, but from the point of view, I guess, of a post-Roman society, he's exactly the kind of individual you want on your side.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
You've got these descriptions of him in a battle, almost going into berserker mode and slaughtering hundreds of individuals just with his sword. He is there. He's doing all the killing. And I think in a way that is important to understand because the Arthur that Geoffrey presents us is completely unlike the medieval Arthur that we get.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
All the later romances built around him from the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries. really make him more human. They bring in the romance cycle of Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere. They bring in the quest for the Holy Grail. They bring in other characters like Bedivere and Percival and Galahad and all these other individuals. So they make Arthur a more human individual.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
They emphasise his humanity, whereas Geoffrey just presents us with the warlord. And it's interesting to see how little of the original story that Geoffrey gives us actually appears in the later accounts. He almost gets edited out completely and other elements come in. And therefore, there's no sword in the stone. There's no lady in the lake. There's no Lancelot Guinevere romance.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
There's no Holy Grail. None of those aspects are in Geoffrey's primary account. It's all about conquest and killing and being the strongest man, the last man standing, effectively.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
It is, it is. I mean, it's still going on today. I mean, you can think, when you look back to all the ancient Greek myths, Really, none of the characters in there are particularly nice. You think of someone like Achilles. I mean, he is a really unpleasant individual.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And yet when people are trying to dramatise the Trojan Wars today, they downplay the death and killing side and they try to bring in romance and try to make this person likeable because ultimately we want to see an element of our heroes that we empathise with, that we like. Otherwise, what's the point? So you can see a lot of more modern interpretations of Achilles.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And yeah, he's quite a nice chap. He's got compassion. It doesn't appear in the original sources. Basically, he is a murderous sociopath. And that is the same with Alexander. I mean, there's nothing about his story. He's not going eastwards in a missionary zeal to bring his brand of civilization and to benefit society. He's conquering and killing and destroying another civilization. But later on,
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
The romances are added and they're trying to make him ultimately a more likable person. And that is exactly what's happening with Arthur, because he is a deeply unlikable person when you read his accounts in Geoffrey of Monmouth.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
Exactly. I mean, the interesting thing looking through Geoffrey Monmouth, which you do read it from cover to cover, which I've done many times, it's not something I'd automatically recommend to people because it's not like reading a novel and it's played with names and dates and events. But you see that certain themes do get repeated.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And this is one of the reasons I think that Geoffrey's history, his skill is he's weaving together a series of stories and trying to put them in a chronology that makes sense to him. So we often see stories repeated. like the invasion of Julius Caesar in 54 BC in Britain as a documented event, it appears twice in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account from different perspectives.
The Ancients
Who Was the Real King Arthur?
And it's almost as if he doesn't realise it's the same event and therefore he separates it out and we get three invasions of Caesar rather than the two that we know about. And 54 BC is repeated. And he does this with individuals. We see someone whose story is very similar to somebody else and their name form is slightly different. It's garbled and it's evidently it's the same person.