the evidence, we should be sceptical of
an Arthur doing any of the many things
attributed to him.
WHAT ARE THE EARLIEST
SOURCES WE HAVE FOR
KING ARTHUR, AND HOW
IS HE DESCRIBED IN
THEM?
Potentially the earliest material to name
Arthur is Y Gododdin, a collection of
Old Welsh verses in the Book of Aneirin.
Arthur appears in a verse honouring
a British hero, Gorddur, about whom it’s
written, “though he was not Arthur”.
The Book of Aneirin was written in
the second half of the 13th century but
the reference to Arthur is in the least
‘modernised’ passages, copied perhaps
from a text dating to c800–1000.
It’s not clear what kind of figure the
Y Gododdin had in mind when it referred to
Arthur – was he a man or a demi-god? – but
this poetry comes from the British Old North
and is based loosely on sixth-century events.
It is not impossible that this referred to
Artúr, a Scottish prince who died fighting
the Miathi (a people around Stirling) in c596.
Arthur is better known, though, from the
History of the Britons (Historia Brittonum),
written in 829/30 in Gwynedd. Chapter 56
portrays Arthur as a British dux bellorum
(‘general of battles’), listing 12 ‘God-given’
victories over the Saxons, which close with
the battle on the “mountain of Badon”,
where he single-handedly kills 960 of the
enemy. The History of the Britons was
written 12 generations after the time in
which the deeds were set, so it’s essential
that we explore what sources underlie it.
It’s been argued that the list of victories was
extracted from a battle-catalogue poem of
a type linked with other early Welsh leaders.
But this doesn’t seem particularly plausible
to me. Many of the 12 battles in the History
of the Britons are associated with other
leaders and appear to have been lifted
from earlier works. This implies that
the list was made up by the author.
Finally, there’s the Welsh Annals (Annales
Cambriae), a 10th-century chronicle written
at St Davids, which has two entries for
Arthur. One reference – for his c516 victory
at Badon – probably derives from the History
of the Britons. But the entry for c537
introduces new material (“The battle of
Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut
fell...”) so presumably came from a different
source. Given that the Welsh Annals are
16 generations removed from events,
there seems little reason to think
the dates bear much historical weight.
THERE SEEMS TO BE
A PAUCITY OF SOURCES
FOR ARTHUR IN THE
CENTURIES AFTER HE
IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED.
WHY IS THIS?
Assuming that we place him around AD 500,
one explanation is that there is little material
of any sort written in Wales that survives
from this period. That many works have
been lost is obvious. The majority of
surviving texts are short inscriptions
on stone, none of which name Arthur.
We are aware of narratives written
by only two British writers of the period- Patrick and Gildas. Patrick’s interests
centred on his mission to Ireland and he
was probably earlier than the conventional
dating of Arthur. Gildas wrote a ‘historical’
introduction to his sermon, urging the
Britons to return to the Lord and put aside
their evil ways. This includes a brief account
of the British/Saxon war up to the “siege
of Badon mountain”, in the year of his
own birth. The History of the Britons
described the battle of Badon as Arthur’s
finest victory but, in Gildas’s account,
Ambrosius Aurelianus was apparently
the British leader, not Arthur.
There is, of course, another explanation
for why Arthur is all but invisible in
contemporary sources – and that’s because
he was not a real person doing important
things at this time.
WHICH FIGURES ARE
MOST OFTEN PUT
FORWARD AS THE
HISTORICAL INSPIRATION
FOR KING ARTHUR?
HOW PERSUASIVE
ARE THESE CLAIMS?
The earliest historical figure to be identified
as the ‘original’ Arthur is Lucius Artorius
Castus, whose career is set out in two
inscriptions from Roman Dalmatia,
discovered at Podstrana in modern-day
Croatia. Since the 1920s, there have been
various attempts to portray him as the
individual around whom the Arthurian
legend developed.
More recently, it’s been suggested that
Castus led a group of Sarmatian warriors
moved to Britain by the Roman emperor
Marcus Aurelius in AD 175, then
commanded them in a war against
the Caledonians. But he served only as
third-in-command of the legion at York,
so is unlikely to have had experience
of leadership in war in Britain.
Those wishing to establish a link between
Castus and Arthur have interpreted the89