The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (3 page)

That, in a nutshell, is how we remember Arthur.

Myth? Well, mostly. History? Well . . .

Malory took this story from earlier accounts, mostly from the so-called
Vulgate Cycle
, which drew on the work of Chrétien de Troyes. Chrétien got his stories from local
tales and legends in France and Brittany, including some of the Welsh tales later collected under the title
The Mabinogion.
It was Chrétien who invented the name Camelot and created
the character of Lancelot. In his stories we find much of the original of Malory’s Arthur, but his sources, the Welsh tales, portray a different, earlier Arthur, an Arthur of legend, far
removed from the world of Plantagenet chivalry. This Arthur’s world is still one of fantasy and magic, but beneath that surface is a sense of history. The Celtic Arthur feels as if he really
belonged in his own time, unlike Malory’s Arthur who is rooted in a contemporary Britain ravaged by plague and war.

But there is yet another Arthur of legend, the creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Three hundred years before Malory, Geoffrey set out to write (or, according to him, translate) a history of
Britain from a mysterious and ancient book. The result, the
Historia Regum Britannia
e (
The History of the Kings of Britain
), contains a huge section on the exploits of King Arthur,
which proved so popular that Geoffrey’s
History
became a medieval best-seller. It was Geoffrey who created the
fascination with Arthur and who created most of the
myth, though his story differs in certain parts from Malory’s later version and significantly from the Welsh tales. Yet both Geoffrey’s and the Welsh Arthurs have some basis in history.
Or at least a memory of history.

Geoffrey also had his sources. These included Nennius, a ninth-century collector of old documents and chronicles, and a sixth-century monk called Gildas. Both writers furnish some historical
background to the story. Nennius provides a list of Arthur’s battles whilst Gildas, without naming Arthur, refers to the most famous battle associated with him, Badon, and mentions
Arthur’s illustrious predecessor Ambrosius Aurelianus. When you dig around other ancient documents, like the Welsh Triads and the
Welsh Annals
(
Annales Cambriae
), and the
various pedigrees of the ancient British kings, you find further references to Arthur.

Now you feel that you’ve moved out of legend into history, but Arthur doesn’t quite fit into this history. A chronology proves difficult. By all accounts the original Arthur, that
is, Arthur of Badon, ought to be living in the period between 490 and 520, but he’s difficult to find there. The
Welsh Annals
place him a little later, around 510–540, but
he’s difficult to find there as well. Historical Arthurs pop up in the period 540–620, but these dates are too late for Badon. Does that mean that these later Arthurs became credited
with the exploits of an earlier hero? Or does it mean that the chronology is all wrong and that these events happened a century later? Or does it mean that these exploits were really by a number of
people spread over a much longer period of time?

That’s what we need to unravel.

2. The Historical Arthurs

You will encounter several Arthurs in this book and rather than introduce them one by one, which becomes confusing, I’ll mention them now so you’ll know who they are
when they appear and how I shall refer to them.

(1) Lucius Artorius Castus, the Roman Arthur, who lived from about 140–197
AD
.

(2) Arthwys ap Mar, sometimes called Arthur of the Pennines, who lived around 460–520.

(3) Artúir ap Pedr, known as Arthur of Dyfed, who lived around 550–620.

(4) Artúir mac Aedan, prince of Dál Riata, who lived around 560–596, but who never survived to become king.

(5) Athrwys ap Meurig, known as Arthur of Gwent, who lived around 610–680 by my calculations, but is given an earlier date by others. He may be the Arthur of the
Mabinogion.

(6) Arthfoddw of Ceredigion, or Arth the Lucky, who lived about 550–620.

(7) Artúir ap Bicor, the Arthur of Kintyre, who also lived about 550–620.

(8) Armel or Arthmael, the warrior saint, who lived about 540–600.

(9) Arzur, the Arthur of Brittany, who may or may not be the same as,

(10) Riothamus, or Rigotamus, a military leader in Brittany last heard of in 470.

These are not the only contenders, but they are the primary ones called Arthur. As we explore the many old documents and pedigrees I shall frequently refer to these names as well as, of course,
the original Arthur of Badon, who may be one, some or all of the above.

3. The name of Arthur

Much is made of Arthur’s name, one argument being that there was a sudden flush of people in the late sixth century being named Arthur after some hero of the previous
generation or two. In fact Arthur isn’t that uncommon a name and it has its origins in two primary sources.

First and foremost, it is an Irish name, Artúr, derived from the common name Art, meaning “bear”, which is well known from the Irish ruler, Art the Solitary, son of Conn of a
Hundred Battles, and his son, the more famous Cormac mac Art, High King from 254–277. There are several diminutives (Artan, Artúr, Artúir), and these names passed into Wales
with the Irish settlers during the fourth and fifth centuries. These were descendants of
Art Corb, or Artchorp, the ancestor of the Déisi, a tribe who were exiled from
Ireland and settled in Demetia, now Dyfed, in west Wales, and include the Artúir ap Pedr listed above. Other Irish, from the Dál Riatan kingdom in Ulster, settled in Kintyre and
Argyll at around the same time, and Artúir mac Aedan is descended from them.

The other source is the Roman family name Artorius. It is not certain when or from where this family originated, but it may well have been Greece. The earliest known member was Marcus Artorius
Asclepiades, physician to Octavian, the future Caesar Augustus. The Artorii lived in Campania in Italy, but also occupied southern Gaul and Spain. Apart from Lucius Artorius Castus, they seem to
have had little impact in Britain, but the memory of his name may have lingered on, becoming adopted by the Celtic tribes in Gaul and gradually leeching into Britain. The name would have evolved to
Arturius, and then to Artur, and would more likely have been used within the highly Romanised parts of southern Britain than in Wales or the North, where the name more probably came from the
Irish.

There may be other sources. One is Artaius, a minor Romano-Celtic deity rather like Mercury, whose cult may have helped popularise a form of the name. Another slightly more tortuous derivation
may be based on the Celtic for High King,
Ardd Ri.
The Brythonic
dd
is pronounced
th
, so that the title, pronounced
Arth-ri
, may later have been remembered as a
name.

There is, though, a danger in looking at any name beginning with “Art” and assuming it has some Arthurian connection. It doesn’t, and in any contemporary documents would
otherwise be ignored, just as we would not confuse Tony with Tonto or George with Geoffrey. But we can’t ignore the possibility that scribes working from inferior documents several centuries
after the event might have misread, misinterpreted or miscopied names, so that an Arthwyr – a name which means “grandson of Arth” – became Arthur. The excitement in the
press in 1998 over the discovery of a stone at Tintagel bearing the name Artognou, is a case in point. Artognou means “descendant of Art” and has no direct connection with Arthur, but
because it was found at Tintagel, there was an immediate assumption that the two had to be connected.

Our quest is to find an Arthur whose credentials fit as much of the history as we know. In order to understand the world of Arthur, we have to understand the state of Britain
from the arrival of the Romans, five hundred years before. So let us first explore Roman Britain and see what it has to tell us about the Arthurian world that followed.

2

BEFORE ARTHUR – THE ROMAN BACKGROUND

1. The First Empire

When Julius Caesar took his first tentative and rather wet steps into Britain in 55
BC
, he learned that the native British were a challenging foe. He
later wrote that there were separate tribal states in Britain between which there had been almost “continual warfare”, but in order to oppose the Roman forces most of the states had
united behind one king, the powerful Cassivelaunos, or Caswallon. Caesar eventually got the measure of the Britons, but his incursion into Britain was little more than that, and by no means a
conquest. It would be nearly a hundred years before the emperor Claudius headed a successful invasion of Britain in 43
AD
and brought the island into the Roman Empire.

Even so, Britain remained an outpost. No one from Rome wanted to go there. It had a cold and forbidding reputation even though, by the second and third centuries, it had become a prosperous part
of the empire, supplying much of the grain for Rome. Those Romans who did live in Britain attained heights of luxury, although, in truth, they were Romans only by name. They were, for the most
part, Britons, although continuing to aspire to the aristocratic lifestyle of the Romans, and remaining loyal to Rome. This siding with Rome was evident even in Caesar’s day. Mandubracius,
son of the king of the Trinovantes, promised to give Caesar inside information to help the invasion. Likewise Cogidubnus, because of the aid he had given the Romans, became a client king and
received the tribal territory
of the Regnii in Hampshire, together with a magnificent palace at what is now Fishbourne, near Chichester. Cogidubnus was a shining example of the
benefit of working with the Romans.

Other sympathetic tribal leaders included Prasutagus, ruler of the Iceni, and Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes. Both retained their power and territory in return for aiding Rome. Cartimandua
even turned over to Rome the rebel leader Caratacus, who had sustained a guerrilla-style opposition to the imperial forces for seven years.

Prasutagus may not be so well known today, but his wife certainly is. She was Boudicca (or Boadicea), who, because of her treatment by the Romans after her husband’s death, led a revolt,
catching them unawares and destroying Colchester and London. But she was unable to defeat the might of the main Roman army under Suetonius Paulinus and died, probably by her own hand, in
61
AD
.

After Boudicca’s revolt the process of Roman colonization continued but it was never simple and never straightforward. For a start, the Romans never got a firm grip on Scotland, despite
the defeat of the chieftain Calgacus of the Caledonii in 84
AD
. In 122
AD
, the emperor Hadrian commissioned the construction of a wall across northern
Britain, from the Solway Firth in the west to what is now Wallsend in the east. It contained the northern frontier, and recognized that it was not worth the effort to try and defeat the tribes to
the north – the tribes that came to be known collectively as the Picts.

Roman occupation of Wales was also rather limited, and there was not the same civic development as in England. The Roman towns were mostly in the south, and Wales was held under control by
several powerful forts. Relationships were not helped by the attempts of Suetonius Paulinus to annihilate the Druids in their retreat on the island of Anglesey, only halted by Paulinus being called
to deal with Boudicca’s revolt.

The rebellious nature of the British was one of the few facts known to the Romans at the core of the empire. Writing at the time that Claudius was planning his invasion, Pomponius Mela, who
lived in southern Spain and probably knew the British, wrote in
De Chorographia
(43
AD
):

Tacitus, writing in 98
AD
about the campaigns of his father-in-law Agricola, saw these internecine struggles as an advantage:

This inability of tribes to live in harmony will re-emerge as a major factor in the Arthurian world. The number of hill forts throughout Britain is a testimony to how often the
tribes fought each other, resulting in a need to build defences. Tacitus also recognised the impact upon the British of Roman civilization. Comparing the British to the Gauls in his
Life of
Agricola
, he wrote:

This was the first recognition of a North-South divide in Britain.

There were over twenty different tribes in Britain. The Romans used the tribal divisions as the bases for their
civitates
, mostly in what is now England, each of which had a capital town.
There were sixteen in total, mostly established within a century
of the invasion in 43
AD
. These towns remained throughout the Roman occupation and into
the early post-Roman period, and because they are relevant to the Arthurian story, it’s worth noting them here. The following table lists them in sequence, from the southern coast of Britain
rising north.