Historical Speculations
Being substantially a paper given by Frederick Lees at the XXth International Arthurian Congress, Bangor, Wales, 2002.
In his Secret History Procopius says of Justinian that he “never ceased pouring out great gifts of money to all the barbarians …as far as the inhabitants of Britain.” We may doubt some of the personal charges Procopius levies at the Emperor, but in other respects he was a meticulous historian. What then might lie behind his words?
Since the 1930s significant quantities of Byzantine pottery have been found at Tintagel. Some of it is red slipware of a type considered as fineware in Constantinople and rarely found elsewhere in the west. There are reasons for believing that in the late 5th to 6th centuries some of it, together with amphorae of eastern Mediterranean provenance, was brought directly from Constantinople. The amphorae would contain wine, olive oil and other items. What were the economics of this trade? The distances involved were enormous, the risks great. Procopius also states that wealth was flung not only to the barbarians but to the “raging sea.”
How did the Britons pay for these imports? When trade had crossed the narrow Channel to Gaul British exports included tin, slaves, hunting dogs, woollen cloaks, and corn for the army. In the 5th-6th centuries, tin is one possible form of payment; the Byzantines called it the ‘British metal’. But though some of the other products could still be obtained the economic foundations of the trade seem doubtful.. The likely explanation is that some of the imports from Byzantium were subsidised by the Empire.. The Secret History is in fact telling us about a farsighted policy of Justinian..
When working to restore the hegemony of Rome, Justinian made use of Byzantine merchants trading with the west as political agents. He was thus well aware that there was only one part of the Western Empire that had held out against the German Barbarians and that was Britain, or at least its western and northern parts, which still comprised the greater part of the island. There the Britons continued to regard themselves as citizens, cives, as indeed the people of Cymru, still style themselves.
Until quite recently we have not been accustomed to think of Dark Age Britain in terms of a European whole. Traditionally we saw Britain, with the departure of the legions, disappearing from view under a dark curtain from which it only emerged with the advent of St Augustine’s mission. At that point the more fertile parts of the island had apparently become inhabited by pagan Anglo-Saxons admirably ready to be weaned to Christianity while in the rugged west the remnants of the Britons dwelt in discord. In this we followed Bede, who was regarded as a paragon of scholarship. We overlooked the fact that he had little good to say about the Britons especially as they did not adhere to his Roman form of Christianity. We also perhaps overlooked the fact that when Gregory the Great sent St. Augustine to Britain, he sent him not to the people of the island as a whole but to the gens or tribe known as Angles. This perhaps should have alerted us to ask what had become of the people who were not so favoured, the Britons who lived in the parts of the island taken by the Anglo Saxons. Were they slaves or freemen? Were they pagans or Christians? How did they live?
Over the past two to three decades, answers to some of these questions, as well as answers to how the still free Britons of the west lived, have emerged, particularly as the result of archaeology, so that we can now build a more realistic view of post Roman Britain. During the same period there has also been a complete re assessment of the documentary evidence which, up to twenty five years ago, favoured the almost certain existence of a 5-6th century leader called Arthur. Successive scholars from Gibbon, through Collingwood and Myers and more latterly Leslie Alcock and John Morris were inclined to favour the probability of an historic Arthur. This conclusion represented a degree of dependence on two documents, the 9th Century Historia Brittonum, and the Cambrian Annals. However in 1977 David Dumville published his paper ‘Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend’, in which he demonstrated conclusively that these could not be relied on as reliable accounts of events in 5th-6th century Britain since they were synthesised history written three hundred years later and relate to the politics and circumstances of the 9th century. Both works contain fragments of the past but these are like those shattered bits of medieval glass, pieced together haphazardly by a later generation, to make a new window. It is extremely difficult to assign such fragments to their proper place or to judge their worth. For reliable information about Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries, apart from a few continental references, we are left with the works of Gildas and St Patrick, as far as literary sources go, and with the increasing volume of information provided by archaeology, in which must be included various memorial stones throughout the British Isles. Only on these foundations can a description of 5th-6th century Britain be based. From it, according to Dumville, Arthur, as an historical certainty, should be omitted.
In the closing years of Roman rule in Britain, its military had produced dangerous usurpers and formidable armies. Perhaps that is why Honorius did not grant autonomy to some person or entity in the Diocesan headquarters in London when, no doubt as a merely temporary measure, he charged the civitates, the states, of Britain to look to their own defence. But there is another reason to surmise that thought had been given to his decision. The imperial government had not hesitated to recruit local troops in the past. The civitates were rich enough to support a military force either native or mercenary and there was reason to believe they were up to the task ahead of them.
Despite the insecurity and the cessation of imperial administrative and military expenditure Roman civic life in Britain continued. We have only to read of St Patrick’s background or of St Germanus’ visit to St Albans to recognise this. More importantly archaeology has provided evidence of continued occupation of towns well into the 5th century and beyond. It could even be that some towns were more densely populated than before. It was once thought that the black earth which characterises many late Roman archaeological sites indicates desertion. Now it has been suggested that the layer represents the detritus of timber and mud buildings. On the continent there are instances of people crowding into cities for safety and it is possible that London, Lincoln, York and other towns experienced the same slumlike growth. Obviously some aspects of élite Roman life had changed. Even in Rome, families like the Anicii converted their mansions into religious houses and this may have happened at some villa sites in Britain. The Basilica discovered near to the Tower of London may have become the centre of a Christian public life in place of the former civic buildings. More significantly, the collapse of the monetary economy had dire consequences for trade. The construction, large scale pottery and other industries came to an end while the official and military markets for farm produce collapsed.
Unfortunately we do not know how this quasi-independent Britain was governed. Was there an authority in London performing the duties of the Diocesan Government? Or was power in the hands of the Provinces or of the civitates? What is clear is that there was no longer a strong Roman military command and this must have encouraged the depredations of raiders from Ireland, from beyond the Wall, and from across the North Sea. It seems that for a time occasional support was provided by a Roman field force from across the Channel but by the time of the appeal of the Britons to Aetius sometime after 446AD the position had become desperate.
In recruiting German warriors to deal with the problem, whoever was in charge was merely following standard Roman practice. Unfortunately the mercenaries recruited did not come from those parts of Germany that for centuries had been accustomed to Roman civilisation and more latterly to Christianity, but from the further parts of Germany where paganism was still strong. The possibility of cultural assimilation was thus inhibited from the very beginning, though not entirely so. There is abundant funerary evidence to indicate the presence of Saxons settlers from the late 4th to the mid 5th centuries, both in defensive positions as around London and as settlers. However, in contrast to the situation on the continent where the Franks, the Burgundians, the Goths came under strong tribal leaders, the Saxons had arrived by sea in disparate groups. They had not, at first, posed a threat to British authority. The increase in their numbers as mercenaries changed the situation completely.
Well into the second half of the 5th Century the harmony between the Britons and the Saxons broke down disastrously. Any one who has lived in a former colonial country where an élite is dependent on security guards will be aware that discontent over wages, jealousy, even sex, can lead to murderous revolts against the masters. The Saxon revolt caused a breakdown of ordered government and great destruction. Much of southeast Britain, but far from all of it, fell under Saxon domination. The history of the period is extremely obscure. However, there is archaeological evidence that in many places in the south east, such as London, St Albans, settlements in the Chilterns, Essex, parts of Suffolk, and the Weald, the Britons held their own though no longer under the rule of a Province or a civitas. This was different from the situation in Gaul where Frankish rule and the Roman system blended as a result of which the city names that survived were often those of the civitas, rather than the town’s individual name, as for example Paris, from the civitas of the Parisii, rather than Lutetia. Despite the civitas breakdown many British towns maintained their individual city names and some sort of life continued in them. Elsewhere, other Latin place name elements like vicus, campus, portus, fons, corte, faber survive in modified form in modern English place names as evidence of widespread continuity of settlement from Romano British times. Many Britons fled to the continent; others, probably some whole congregations under their bishops, went to Gaul. But such exiles must have constituted a minority of the British population and been composed of those who had the means as well as the will to flee. As in a Renfrew paradigm, the subjugated majority survived and in due course became part of an English population, that even now imagines itself to be mainly Anglo Saxon in origin instead of at least part Celtic and pre Celtic.
In the west and north of Britain conditions were more stable. However, out of warlike necessity, leaders had arisen who had established themselves militarily in ancient hill forts. This enabled the Britons to rally under Ambrosius Aurelianus until at length the Saxons were held at Badon towards the end of the century. Gildas seems to imply that Ambrosius was the victor. Tradition holds that the victor was Arthur. Someone must have led. We do not know the answer. After Badon though as yet it was far from clear that the Saxons were to dominate the island, one factor was already operating strongly in their favour: in the absence of war they were gradually able to consolidate their control, and assimilate the Britons, in potentially the richest part of the island.
In the west and north of Britain, during the calm that followed the struggle, the tribal units that Rome had turned into civitates, grew into strong and separate states under ‘tyrants’ to use Procopius’ term for them. Conditions in these states varied. From Gildas we know that in addition to tyrants, sometimes referred to as duces, whose families and retainers constituted an aristocracy, there were rectores or governors and there were judges and therefore law. They and the warriors and their dependents constituted an élite who still used the luxury goods to which Roman Britain had become accustomed. They seem to have lacked neither gold nor silver as ornaments or iron chains with which to fetter their enemies. Many were literate in Latin and often continued to use Latin personal names. There was also a variety of clergy. Gildas refers to them as sacerdotes, ministri and clerici. He also mentions abbots and monks, as well as churches in which there was melodious music. He tells us a great deal about that concomitant of luxury, sin. To judge by Gildas’ admonitions he lived in a pleasure loving society that had plenty of time for all sorts of wickedness: adultery, wife stealing, gluttony, drunkenness, theft, rape, bestiality, sodomy, the lot. The 6th century poem the Gododdin gives us a further vivid impression of an aristocratic society characterized by its bellicosity, its sense of honour, its inebriation and its luxury. Gildas himself, irrespective of the fascinating information he gives us, is proof that a high standard of literacy, with knowledge both of Christian and classical authors, was available. His prose is ornate, complex and replete with classical quotations, especially from Virgil. Indeed if, as some claim, the Virgilius Romanus manuscript, now in the Vatican library was produced in 5th century Britain, we even have pictures showing us the Roman fashions of the British élite at this time. In other words it was a society much the same as elsewhere in the West.
None of this gives us the impression of a defeated people. Unfortunately however, since archaeology was in the past largely concerned with brick and stone buildings, their ruination has been seen as the end of Rome in Britain. But consider the last war. How many stately homes were taken over by the military? How many would still be stately if the war had lasted not five, but fifty years? When societies are under stress they turn their energies in different directions. They build forts not houses, air raid shelters not garden patios, and when they need to put up something quickly they erect prefabs of ephemeral material. So it was with the Romanised Britons. They mobilised resources to build forts and earthworks, they constructed buildings not of stone but of wood yet still in the Roman style. Mosaic floors became scenes not of banquets but of metal working or cooking. Because of these changes of emphasis their society survived. In fact it is clear that the enormous vitality of western Britain prevented a total Saxon conquest of the islands from ever taking place. Yet though not a society on the verge of extinction it was one devoid of political coherence. The British states of the west and north were disunited because of their tribal origins, and by geography.
The vitality of British society was not confined to military effort; Charles Thomas has amply demonstrated the persistence and continuity of its Christianity. The Dobunni and the Durotriges , were already largely Christianised by the 4th century, but in the west and the north, most Britons remained pagan. During the 5th century Christianity spread to these peoples as a result of missionary efforts of which we get an echo in later lives of the saints. This is not so surprising. To the élite Britons the inheritance of Rome meant not only its language; they clung, amidst the ruination of their country, to the religion of Rome as a defining feature of their existence. Equally important were their missionary efforts in southern Scotland and Ireland. The strength of the Irish Church, Irish art and Irish scholarship in later centuries was indebted to the diffusion of Christianity and classical learning from Britain. However the fringe areas of Britain and Ireland and Scotland had never known Roman civil government but only native forms of kingship that suited them only too well for external strife.
Now anyone concerned with Arthurian literature is bound to ask this question: if Christianity and Latinity were both so strong how was it that the pre Roman pantheon of Celtic gods was transmitted to emerge in Christian guise in later ages? The answer must be that whereas the élite might affect Roman garb, most people in the British states did not. Archaeology can be misleading. The memorials, the limited writings of the time may be in Latin but this does not imply the language’s universality. If people were to dig up Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea two thousand years hence the public monuments and the graves would tell them that they had come across an English speaking Christian society. Yet among ordinary Papua New Guineans ancient beliefs persist and mean more to ordinary people than a western faith. Nor do most of them speak English. So with the ancient culture of Celic Britain: Paganism in its Mediterranean form had been obliterated by Imperial decree and the acquiescence of the Romanised élite, but the Celtic Paganism of the ordinary people lived on. This is a fundamental ingredient in our picture of the age.
Where then did Arthur fit into this picture? There seemed to be three approaches: first, that though John Morris, Geoffrey Ashe and others believed there was sufficient evidence for a firmly established historic Arthur, since Dumville’s meticulous work this seemingly rational concept had probably become no more than wishful thinking. Second, that Arthur was a mythological being, a protective demi god, at the centre of a ring of heroes with the attributes of deities, who everlastingly perform ancient religious rituals, and constitute an immemorial pantheon transmitted through folklore from pre historic times, through the Roman occupation and on to the Middle Ages. . Or, a compromising third, that Arthur was a warrior in a still half Romanised society, maybe even the victorious slayer of Badon, whose exploits were conflated over time both with other pseudo-historical material and with the legends of the Celtic pantheon. This would explain his constant duality, as historic leader and as mythological being. The idea is feasible. Popular imagination accepts a prizefighter as a hero to be sung about, more readily than a president.
So we can understand why, until recently, the truth about Arthur remained enigmatic; why for instance Professor Charles Thomas once advised that Arthur should only be a subject for the novelist. That viewpoint undoubtedly accounts for the path many writers followed. Yet all that changed with the publication of Catumandus’ life of Arthur for whom a place can now be found most realistically amidst the speculations that have for so long intrigued both the academic and the non-academic worlds. Above all else, however, Catumandus’ Epic has enriched the great river of Arthurian literature and made sure that it will never run dry.