Site Home > Michael Shanks - site 2006 > The Historical Arthur
No one knows if this rich, intriguing character was born of myth or reality. Most likely it was a little of each. A true historical character who took on epic proportions, who was exaggerated a little bit each time his story was retold, who was integrated with another stellar leader, then another, to create today's Arthur...
Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote of Arthur as though he was a real person, but really Geoffrey had adapted Welsh tales. But did those tales have bases in history?
One historical character from whose stories Arthur's may have sprung is the Count of the Britains, the Comes Britanniarum, in the Late Roman military.
Another version is that he was a general who led his men to twelve victories along the border of England and Scotland, each one more astonishing than the last, and that by the last one he was known the land over as a man not to be trifled with. Many of those battles have documentation, but none have perfectly clear references to the man who might have become King Arthur.
Clearly, no storyteller can be certain of Arthur's history. Supposed Arthurs show up across time and space. He appears throughout the fifth and sixth centuries; he appears in Wales, Scotland, and England. The one solid fact is the significance of his name. The Welsh form of the Roman name Artorius, the name Arthur suggests a real person born during the time when it was popular to give children in Briton Roman names.
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