Who Was King Arthur?

A couple more hard-cover references:

E.K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain [London, 1927]

Nathan Comfort Starr, King Arthur Today [Gainseville, FL 1954]

What? No Arthurian scholars out there? Even after the mods were so kind as to 'feature' this topic?

Hey, Andy. I am no Arthur scholar, and most of what I know is contained in literature; however, I think the movie was fairly accurate, and I'm off to find it, buddy. Back later.

I don't know enough to venture an opinion.

First a look at this:

King Arthur (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

King Arthur



King Arthur is a film first released in the United States on June 28, 2004, dubbed as "The Untold True Story That Inspired The Legend" by Touchstone Pictures.

The makers of the film claim to present a historically accurate version of the Arthurian legends, supposedly inspired by new archaeological findings. The accuracy of these claims is subject to debate, but the film is unusual in representing Arthur as a Roman soldier rather than a medieval knight.

This historical approach to the Arthurian legends had already been showcased in film once - in Arthur of the Britons, a 1972-1973 British TV series, and King Arthur, The Young Warlord, a movie-length compilation of some of its episodes.

I have a tendency to believe that, Andy.

Check out John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. He based it on the Winchester manuscript of Malory's tales and not only translated, but also added to the original stories.

In the back is a 100-page appendix of correspondence between Steinbeck and his literary agent and to Chase Horton. He had a keen interest in the subject of King Arthur.

I've read the book a few times and enjoyed the tales. In the dedication, Steinbeck writes:

"When I was nine, I took seige with King Arthur's fellowship of knights most proud and worshipful as any alive. -- In those days there was a great lack of hardy and noble-hearted squires to bear shield and sword, to buckle harness, and to succor wounded knights. -- Then it chanced that squire-like duties fell to my sister of six years, who for gentle prowess had no peer living. -- It sometimes happens in sadness and pity that faithful service is not appreciated, so my fair and loyal sister remained unrecognized as a squire. -- Wherefore This day I make amends within my power and raise her to knighthood and give her praise. -- And from this our she shall be called Sir Marie Steinbeck of Salinas Valley. -- God give her worship without peril.

--John Steinbeck of Monterey
Knight"

Excerpting a few of the letters in the appendix: (I'm typing them in, so excuse any typos I miss.)

To his agent, New York, January 2, 1957

"Arthur is not a character. You are right. And here it might be well to consider that Jesus isn't either, nor is Buddha. Perhaps the large symbol figures can't be characters, for if they were, we wouldn't identify with them by substituting our own. Such a thing is worth thinking about surely."

To his agent, New York, January 3, 1957

"Remarkable things in these books. Little meanings that peek out for a monent, and a few scholars who make observations and then almost in fright withdraw or qualify what they have said. When I finish this job, if I ever do, I should like to make some observations about the Legend. Somewhere there's a piece missing in the jigsaw and it is a piece which ties the whole thing together. So many scholars have spent so much time trying to establish whether Arthur existed at all that they have lost track of the single truth that he exists over and over . Collingwood establishes that there was an Ursus or the Bear which in Celtic is Artur which he quotes Nennius as translating into Latin as Ursus horribilis. But Ursus horribilis is the grizzly bear and as far as I know has never been found outside of North America. But you see what you get into. I can see how a man, if he wanted to, could get bogged down here and spend many happy years fighting with other specialists about the word b ear and its Celtic Artur.

"Twelve was the normal number for any group of followers of a man or a principle. The symbolism was inevitable. And whether the Grail was the cup from Golgotha or the Gaelic cauldron later used by Shakespeare doesn't in the least matter since the principle of both was everlasting or rather ever-renewed life. All such things fall into place inevitably but it is the connective -- the continuing line with the piece missing in the middle--that fascinates me."

Hi, guys. Thanx for coming to the party.

Letty, thanx for the heads-up re: that movie. The idea of casting Arthur as a Roman soldier derives directly from the Venerable Bede who never actually mentions Arthur by name in his seminal History of the Anglo-Saxon People (one of various possble translations for the original title). What Bede tells us is that the major opposition to Hengist and Horsa's invasion of Britain came from a Romano-Britain named Ambrosius (I believe that's the name; I don't have the book handy, but my memory's pretty fair). There are a few points of correspondence between Bede's probably historical Romano-Briton and the semi-mythic Arthur of the later legends. It has been often pointed out that the name 'Arthur' is awfully close to an old Welsh word for 'bear' and that Ambrosius and Arthur may well have been the same person. Bede remembers him by his right name while the later chroniclers call him by his nickname. Remember, I said in my original post that Arthur may have been a nickname. At any rate, the film, too, is based largely on guesswork. It's tempting to assume that a stalwart son of a British mother and a Roman army officer led the fight against the Germanic invasion and united the disparate British traibes under him. It's also just that -- an assumption based on awfully scanty evidence. It makes for a hell of a good story, that's all. Btw, Bede never comes close to claiming that this hero was ever a 'king'.


Butrflynet, I'm familiar with Steinbeck's book. Not intimately familiar, but familiar in passing. As hitory, it's every bit as worthy as Sir Thomas Mallory's Morte d'Arthur. And that's really my point in this thread -- everything that we assume we know about Arthur is really a literary tradition, not historical at all. That Arthur was never a chivalric knight is obvious from the fact that the tradition of chivalry and/or knighthood did not exist in the 5th Century. That is a development of a much later period.

There are really two main sources from which Arthurian legends spring. One is histoical or, at least, semi-historical; the other is a popular, oral tradition, culled from the folk traditions of Welsh, Irish, British and, later, French traditions. By the time Geoffrey wrote his chronicle, the legend had already grown out of all proportion to the facts.

The chivalric tradition starts with the peudo-chronicles of Wace and Layamon. It is evident from these writings that by this time (early 12th Century) any lingering hostility between Saxon and Celt had died. In these chronicles Arthur -- according to tradition, the greatest foe that the English met in their conquest of the Britich Celts -- has now become an English king and hero. Says Maynadier: "...and ever since, all the way down to Malory, and from him to Tennyson, Arthur has remained thoroughly English."

In Tennyson's Idylls of the King [1859], Arthur has become the epitome of the Victorian gentleman. Makes it hard to remember that he probably never rode a horse into battle but, rather, a war chariot!

Edgar, welcome to the book club. You don't have to be an expert to join in the conversation.

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Those lines have stayed with me since I first read them in high school.
But don't ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday.

I read The Winter King a while back and enjoyed it.

Thanks for this thread, Merry.

Thanks for your contribution, George.

The 2004 "King Arthur" film's claim to be "The Untold True Story That Inspired The Legend" is, to put it gently, rubbish.

There is a recent and quite plausible theory that identifies the original Arthur with a Roman officer from Campania in Central Italy named Lucius Artorius Castus who commanded a body of Sarmatian cavalry. But he lived in the late 2nd century AD and led his Sarmatians into Caledonia to fight the Picts, whereas the film had him living in the late 5th century, being of Romano-British origin, and leading his Sarmatians against the Saxons! In other words, the film's scriptwriters tried to splice the "Lucius Artorius Castus" theory together with the older theory that he was a Romano-Briton based in South Central Britain who pulled his people together to resist the Saxons after the Roman army had withdrawn from Britain. The result is a complete pushmi-pullyu: either of the historical theories may be correct but the film's hybrid can't possibly be. (Quite apart from all the other historical errors in the script, which starts by getting the date of the Roman withdrawal from Britannia wrong by a couple of generations and going downhill from there.)

An academic paper outlining the "Lucius Artorius Castus" theory is online here:

Linda Malcor paper.

Very interesting link, syntinen. Thank you for posting that.

I doubt that your analysis is correct. In the two hundred years succeeding the period in which Arthur was to have lived, what records are available show that Arthur was frequently used as a name for first-born sons. Generally, among the British, this is indicative of a sort of a veneration of the name so used--i.e., that there had been someone named Arthur who was highly esteemed among British tribesmen, and hence, the name was given to first-born sons. This was long seen by scholars as evidence that someone named Arthur had been important among the British tribes in the era of the first Saxon invasions. It is certain that the Saxons were stopped for two generations in the mid-sixth century. Additionally, references are made to Arthur in lives of saints written in the late sixth century, well before Nennius wrote.

It is entirely possible that "Arthur" is derived from a nom de guerre meaning "bear man." The legends have Uther as his father, and this could be a corruption of the British nom de guerre meaning bear man, and that Arthur took the cognomen as his name. Objections that the name is rendered "Artorius" in Latin texts of the middle ages ignore that "classical Latin," or "monk's Latin" had already begun to alter the Latin language by 1000 CE, and that in the early lives of saints written (anonymously) by a Welsh monk, or by Welsh monks, the earlier Latin vulgate forms of names are used, including Arturus.

Of course, as is always possible in human affairs, if a war leader (a "dux bellorum") came forward to lead the British tribes against the Saxon invader, all the trappings of legend could have been added later, or even in the lifetime of such a leader.

What is far more important is that the cycle of stories which have attached themselves to the Arthurian legend have been the most persistent and prolific literary traditions from any secular source in European history.

King Arthur was my cat for more than 18 years.

...and the guy on the flour bag...

Oh, yeah. I forgot him.

Thanks for your post, Set. Part of my intent in starting this thread was, in fact, to show that everything we think we know about Arthur is really a literary tradition and that, realistically and objectively, we know absolutely nothing about who the historical person might have been. Even the tales told by Nennius and Bede are quite suspect. They are far removed, in time, from the actual events and undoubtedly owe much to oral folk tradition which is hardly ever reliable.

I think you've gotten your iconic English legends mixed up there, George . . .

Then how do you explain this?

..............................

and this....

I don't explain it . . . i was blissfully unaware of the existence of that product.

Will that argument hold up in King Arthur's court?