Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (52 page)

Apollonius of Tyana continues to
fascinate people in the 21st century.
Current theories, which are really restatements of old ideas, include that
he was actually the apostle Paul, or
even Jesus of Nazareth, and that the
image on the Turin Shroud is actually
that of Apollonius. But Apollonius of
Tyana should not be remembered
merely as a magician or a miracleworker. He had a single-minded devotedness to a high and pure ideal, and it
was this sense of purpose that gave
him the courage to sit face-to-face with
the most powerful and dangerous leaders in the world, and not waver an inch
from his true beliefs.

A bronze King Arthur in plate armor, early 16th century,
from The Book of Knowledge, the Grolier Society (1911).

There is a grave for March, a grave for Gwythur,
a grave for Gwgawn Red-sword;
the world's wonder a grave for Arthur.

Englynion y Beddau (The Stanzas of the Graves)

The national hero of Britain, a figure who seemingly straddles both
myth and history with equal ease, King
Arthur is the archetypal warrior king.
For many people, he is the one point
of light in a bleak British Dark Age.
The very mention of the name King
Arthur conjures up images of knightly
duels, beautiful damsels, mysterious
wizards, and treacherous deeds performed in tumbling castles. But what
lies behind these essentially medieval
romantic ideas? There is certainly a
literary Arthur; there is, in fact, a
whole cycle of stories known as the
Arthurian Romance. A mythological
Arthur-like character can also be
traced in Celtic literature, but what
of the historical Arthur? Is there any
evidence that the stories of a great
British king who led his countrymen
in ferocious battles against the invading Saxons might have a basis in fact?

Briefly, the outline of the main
Arthur myth is this: Arthur was the
first born son of King Uther
Pendragon, born in Britain during extremely troubled and chaotic times.
The wise magician Merlin advised that
the child Arthur should be brought up
in a secret place and that no one
should know his true identity. With
the death of Uther Pendragon, Britain was without a king. Merlin had
magically set a sword in a stone, on
the sword were words written in gold,
saying that whoever managed to pull
the sword from the stone would be the
next rightful king of Britain. Many attempted the feat, but none succeeded,
until Arthur withdrew the sword and
Merlin had him crowned. After breaking this sword in a fight with King
Pellinore, Merlin took Arthur to a lake

and a mysterious hand rose out of the
waters and gave him the famed
Excalibur. With this sword (given to
him by the Lady of the Lake), Arthur
was invincible in battle.

After marrying Guinevere, whose
father (in some versions of the tale)
gave him the Round Table, Arthur
gathered an impressive group of
Knights around him, and he established his court at his castle of
Camelot. The Knights of the Round
Table, as they became known, defended
the people of Britain against dragons,
giants, and black knights. They also
searched for a lost treasure: the cup
used by Christ at the Last Supper, also
known as the Holy Grail. After numerous hard-fought battles against the
invading Saxons, Arthur led the Britons in a great victory at Mount Badon,
where the Saxon advance was finally
halted. However, all was not well at
home, as the heroic knight Lancelot
had fallen in love with Arthur's queen,
Guinevere. The couples' intrigues
eventually came to light, and
Guinevere was sentenced to death,
while Lancelot was banished. However,
Lancelot returned to rescue the queen
and took her away to his castle in
France. Arthur then undertook a military expedition to find Lancelot. While
he was away, Mordred (Arthur's son
by his half-sister, the witch Morguase,
with whom he had slept as a youth
without realizing who she was) attempted to seize power in Britain.
When Arthur returned, father and son
went into battle on opposite sides at
Camlann, where Arthur killed
Mordred but received a mortal wound
himself. The body of Arthur was
placed on a mysterious barge and floated down river to the isle of Avalon
where his wounds were healed by
three strange queens dressed in black.
Soon after hearing of the death of
Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere died
of grief. However, Arthur's body was
never found, and many say that he lies
sleeping under a hill in company with
all his knights-waiting to ride forth
once more to save Britain.

The sources for the tale of King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table come from many different ages.
The first reliable reference comes in
Historia Britonum (The History of the
Britons), attributed to a shadowy
Welsh monk known as Nennius, and
written around A.D. 825. In this work,
Arthur is described as a military commander, and Nennius lists 12 battles
in which he overcame the Saxons, culminating in his victory at Mount
Badon. Unfortunately, the placenames used by Nennius for the battles
have long since ceased to exist, and
none of the sites can now be identified
with certainty. According to the 10th
century Annales Cambriae (The Annals of Wales), Arthur and his son
Mordred were both killed at the
Battle of Camlann in A.D. 537. Again,
the site of this battle has not been identified, though two possibilities that
have been put forward are Queen
Camel in Somerset (which is close to
South Cadbury hillfort, identified by
some as Camelot), or much further
north near the Roman fort of
Birdoswald (or that at Castlesteads,
on Hadrian's Wall).

One of the major sources for Arthur
is the History of the Kings of Britain,
written by Welsh clergyman Geoffrey
of Monmouth around 1136. It is in
Geoffrey's narrative that we first

glimpse the chivalry that was later to
be associated with King Arthur and his
knights. It is here also that the rivalry
with Mordred first appears, as well as
the sword Excalibur, Merlin the magical advisor to the king, and the final
departure to the isle of Avalon. However, Sir Lancelot, the Holy Grail, and
the Round Table are not mentioned in
the History. The works of Geoffrey of
Monmouth (he also published two
books on the prophecies of Merlin)
were criticized by his contemporaries
as being nothing more than elaborate
fiction, and modern scholars are, in
general, of the same opinion. Nevertheless, as in the case of the ancient
Greek historian Herodotus, modern
archaeological findings are beginning
to bear out some of what Geoffrey
wrote. One example is the British king,
Tenvantius, whose only source until
recently was Geoffrey's History. However, modern archaeological discoveries of Iron Age coins bearing the name
Tasciovantus, who seems to be the
same person as the Tenvantius mentioned by Geoffrey, indicates that
Geoffrey's works need to be reevaluated. Perhaps other elements of the
Arthur story as related in the History
of the Kings of Britain, will one day
prove to have a basis in fact.

With Sir Thomas Malory's Le
Morte D'Arthur, first published in
1485, the story of King Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table reaches
the form in which it is recognized today. In his work, Malory, a native of
Warwickshire, drew on earlier French
sources, such as the 12th century
French poets Maistre Wace and
Chretien de Troyes, who in turn drew
partly on Celtic mythology, as well as
on the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth. However, the problem with these literary sources is that they are written
at least three centuries after the supposed existence of Arthur, which is put
somewhere around A.D. 500. How do we
bridge this huge gap in time to give
Arthur the possibility of a historical
basis? There are tantalizing glimpses
of an Arthur figure dating back probably before the sixth century A.D., in
early Celtic literature, especially
Welsh poems. The oldest of the Welsh
poems is probably The Gododdin (c. A.D.
594) attributed to the Welsh poet
Aneirin, who states "he fed black
ravens on the ramparts, although he
was no Arthur." The Black Book of
Carmarthen contains "The Stanzas of
the Graves," which includes the lines,
"There is a grave for March, a grave
for Gwythur, a grave for Gwgawn Redsword; the world's wonder a grave for
Arthur." These lines imply that although the graves of other Arthurian
heroes are known, the grave of Arthur
himself cannot be found, probably because he was rumored to be still living.

In "The Spoils of Annwn" from The
Book of Taliesin, Arthur is portrayed
as leading a band of warriors on a raid
into the Welsh otherworld (Annwn)
searching for a magical cauldron
"kindled by the breath of nine maidens." The cauldron was not only a magical object but a potent symbol in Celtic
religion, as is indicated in myths of the
chief god of Ireland, Dagda, who possessed a magic cauldron that could
bring the dead back to life. Arthur's
quest for the cauldron in the Celtic
otherworld was a disaster from which
only seven of his warriors returned.
The parallels between Arthur's mythical quest in Celtic literature and the

quest for the Holy Grail are obvious.
However, the mythical Arthur is obviously a separate character from the
warrior who halted the advance of the
Saxons in A.D. 517.

Perhaps archaeological evidence
can point us in the direction of the historical Arthur. The places most associated with King Arthur in the
literature are all in the English West
Country-Tintagel, the king's birthplace; Camelot, the site of the meetings at the Round Table; and the
alleged site of his burial at
Glastonbury. The supposed discovery
of the graves of King Arthur and
Queen Guinevere by the monks at
Glastonbury Abbey in A.D. 1190 is now
thought to have been an elaborate
hoax, contrived by the monks in order
to raise money for the Abbey, which
had recently been desecrated by fire.
However, some researchers believe
that Glastonbury itself had connections with Arthur, suggesting that the
region around Glastonbury Tor (a hill
just outside the modern town) may
well have been the isle of Avalon,
where Arthur was taken after receiving his fatal wounds at the Battle of
Camlann. Cadbury Castle, lying only
12 miles away from Glastonbury, is an
Iron Age hillfort which was reoccupied
in the Dark Ages, and is the site most
often identified with Camelot. In the
sixth century A.D. the fort was converted into a vast citadel, with huge
defensive ramparts, and it is apparent
from the finds at the site, which include wine jars imported from the
Mediterranean, that this was the seat
of an important and influential Dark
Age ruler. Could this have been the
base of Arthur's power?

An alternative site, alleged to have
been Arthur's birthplace, is Tintagel
Castle in Cornwall, a county rich in
Arthur place-names. Although the
main structure at Tintagel is medieval,
archaeological work at the site has
revealed that it was an important Dark
Age stronghold and commercial center, with finds including massive
amounts of wine and oil jars from Asia
Minor, North Africa, and the Aegean
Sea. In 1998, a small piece of slate was
found at the site inscribed in Latin:
"Artognou, father of a descendant of
Coll, has had (this) constructed."
Artognov is the Latin form of the Celtic
name Arthnou, or Arthur. But is it the
King Arthur of legend? Unfortunately,
there is no way of knowing. As with
Cadbury Castle, we have an important
fortress and commercial center, obviously the home of a powerful British
chieftain living in the sixth century
A.D., at the time of the Arthur of legend. We have the background to the
legends but, on present evidence, that
is as far as we can go.

There has been much speculation
as to whom Arthur could have been if
he was a historical person. One theory
is that Arthur was a Romano-British
leader named Ambrosius Aurelianus,
who fought against the Saxons, not in
the sixth but at the end of the fifth century, a few decades after the Roman
legions left Britain. Other researchers, including noted Arthurian scholar
Geoffrey Ashe, identify Arthur as
Riothamus, a military leader active
around the fifth century A.D., and called
the "King of the Brittones" in one
source. Fighting alongside the Romans
with a huge army at his side he took