@AncientDays1 @Paracelsus1092
1. King Arthur is often put forward as a purely legendary figure or a completely composite figure these days. I do believe he is as we know it a composite figure, but there is there a single person at the core that inspired this legend?
1. King Arthur is often put forward as a purely legendary figure or a completely composite figure these days. I do believe he is as we know it a composite figure, but there is there a single person at the core that inspired this legend?
2. First we have to get a rough idea of when this figure would have lived and I think the place to start is Arthur's two most well known battles, The Battle of Badon (Baden Hill, Mons Badonicus, Badonici Montis, Mynydd Baddon) and The Battle of Camlann in which Arthur falls.
3. Using primary sources from the period is sometimes a daunting task when it come to dates. When we see a date like 500 A.D. we think of the actual year 500 A.D. as we know it, but at the time of say Gildas the year 500 may have meant 500 years from Christ's birth or 500 years
4. from Christ's baptism, which leaves us with a potential of 30 years of limbo in which to date something. Copyist's errors are also extremely daunting from this period as roman numerals can be very easily copied flat our wrong.
5. To put this in perspective, imagine if you werent sure whether the American war in Vietnam started in 1965 or 1995. This is an issue. A combination of comparing Irish Annals, Welsh Annals, the ASC and other sources and tricks (using the Easter cycle) we can account for this.
6. So with that bit aside we now turn to our broader dates for Arthur, the earliest and the latest. Arthur was suposedly operating during the period after Rome had basically told the Britons "You guys got this right? yeah sure you can handle it"
7. The Romans then pulled their administration and support out of the area. (This is a very broad and obviously lacking in nuance, take on the Roman exit from Britian but I would have to take this to a huge blog post to discuss that in depth as well)
8. This is generally attributted to 410 A.D. Arthur was either born after this period, or slightly before. This gives us a starting date, but what about an ending date. By 615 the British began being pushed back again battle by battle.
9. The battle of Deorham in 577 might be our possible latest date. So this gives us a span of 410 A.D. to 577 A.D
10. Gildas seems invaluable in getting a date for Badon at least, but Gildas himself seemed more interested in reprimanding rulers and bitching about the Germanic invasions than in recording history. However Gildas does mention that Badon happened in the year of his birth.
11. This is generally accepted as around 500. This narrows our range down quite a bit as well. making some suppositions we can set Arthur as operating around 490-520 A.D.
12. There are problems with this however. Figures with names that could be compared to Arthur like Arthwys, Artuir, Gartbuir, Arthmael, Artognu, etc. are few during this narrowed down time period.
13. Flash forward to 540-650 and there is a massive amount of Arthuir, Arthwys and Arthmaels, almost like someone was invoking a hero of their youth (as we today have so many poor young girls lamentably named Daenerys or Khaleesi). You would think that makes this easy. It doesn't
14. Our Arthur of Badon may not be named Arthur or a variation of it at all! Caradog Vreichfras, Cadell of Powys, Cadwallon Lawhir, Geraint of Dumnonia, Riocatus of Gwyrtheyrnion, Vortipor of Dyfed, are all possible commanders or at least possibly present at Badon.
15. Absolutely impressive list of commanders, but are any of them Arthur?
16. I will as I can expand upon this with a list of potential Arthurs and some background and reasoning as to why some may, or may not be arthur.
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