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The History Channel aired a program on King Arthur. It's a debate as to whether he lived or not. What do you think? Actual man? or fiction?I believe he and his story are probably based on someone or maybe several persons during that time. If he had actually existed I think there would be some proof beyond legend. They said that the first real bio wasnt written until about 500 years after he had lived.
I doubt that Arthur ever really lived or at least the Arthur of Sir Thomas Mallory anyway….but the closest thing England ever had to a real King Arthur was really a man named Alfred. You can read about him in Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great
There are some that believe that Arthur could have been a Roman General. The movie “King Athur” is based on that line of thought. Could be some truth if you think about it.
Arthur and Camelot were an ideal, an iconographical vision, employed to unite the peoples of the British Isles. Arthurian legend is a beautiful dream…a wonderful dream…but sadly a dream nonetheless.
Somebody clearly beat the Germans back – Britain was about the only area of the west, when all's said, where the barbarians didn't take over totally. For my money 'Arthur' was the 'Roman' General Ambrosius Aurelianus wearing a bearskin (arth = bear) on the battlefield as a 'signum', and known by his British-speaking troops as 'Bear'. The name does crop up all over the place in the generation after 'Arthur' was likely to have been about.
I suppose there was a real Beowulf too then. Perhaps Beowulf and Arthur are the same legend told by two different tribes?
There is a major difference, surely, between barbarian myth and muddled Roman recollection? There was obviously never a 'king' called Arthur anywhere, because kings were anathema to Romans. In one of the earliest poems in which he is mentioned Arthur is called, in a much more likely way, 'ameuradur', imperator – probably the very last British 'Roman' so to be hailed by victorious troops (however few). Many people fall for all this 'Celtic' guff, whereby the Romano-Britains are somehow equated with external barbarians by Germanophile racists. Twasn't so, however: the West stayed civilized for a remarkably long time.
Beowulf is arguably a Christian myth which would give it “Roman” tie-ins. Arthur is also a Christian myth or perhaps a Christianized one at a later point. I say this because there are still pagan elements in both tales, but also Christian themes/motifs as well. The blunt fact of the matter is the origins of both myths are suspect and cannot be verified from the historical record…at least for the moment.
The myth of 'King' Arthur is manifestly created long, long after the historical events concerned, whereas – as far as I know – Beowulf is not about 'real' history at all. For myself, I am interested in what is likely to have happened to cause a mercenary revolt in the eastern provinces of Britain in the fifth century and in the prolonged resistance of the west, and myths don't excite me much. We must agree to disagree, I think.
What I was arguing is the source of the ideas behind Arthur and Beowulf as I fully doubt the historicity of both.
The next step to this question becomes does it matter if King Arthur were ever true? It's fun to believe so, plus it sure generates a lot of cash for certain places in England i.e. Tintagle Castle and other places claiming to be Camelot.Next post: Paul Bunyon, fact or fiction?
The next step to this question becomes does it matter if King Arthur were ever true? It's fun to believe so, plus it sure generates a lot of cash for certain places in England i.e. Tintagle Castle and other places claiming to be Camelot.Next post: Paul Bunyon, fact or fiction?
Yes, it does matter, because we need to make sense of a prolonged resistance to the barbarians that didn't occur elsewhere. As I've said, there was never a 'king' Arthur - that would be totally anachronistic. There was obviously no such place as 'England' either, for some centuries after this resistance, and the Romans detested kings. The racist fantasy of 'Anglo-Saxon' ethnic cleansing, though, has been very powerful in helping to kill of various hunter-gatherer populations elsewhere, so it seems important to knock that drivel on the head - and the story (as far as we can now reconstruct it) of the resistance is very relevant to that. One of the German leaders in the alleged racist invasion, for instance, bore the name of the major leader of anti-Roman Britain, Caractacus/Caradoc/Cerdic. How likely is that, given the racist script, and what does it tell us about racist history in general - a question we might also ask about Paul |Bunyan, I imagine.
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