The Ancients - The Real King Arthur: Ambrosius Aurelianus

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

A friend of Merlin, the husband of Guinevere, and the inspiration for numerous Hollywood blockbusters - the story of King Arthur is known by many across the globe, but who is the man behind the myth?Ambrosius Aurelianus emerged from the chaos of 5th Century AD Britain in the aftermath of the Roman retreat and is believed to be the main inspiration for the Legend of King Arthur. In this episode Tristan welcome Dr Miles Russell back to the podcast to talk about who Ambrosius Aurelianus was, and the legacy that he left behind. A Celtic hero who fought valiantly against the Saxons and who was tied up in legends of his own, Ambroisus Aurelianus should be a name just as well known as the mythical King of Camelot.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program,

they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. it's the ancients on history hit i'm tristan hughes your host and in today's podcast where we're talking about this remarkable figure who emerges in the aftermath of the romans leaving britain in the 5th century a.d or c.e a figure called ambrosius Aurelianus, one of the key influences in the creation of the legendary figure that is King Arthur. I don't know if any of you have seen the 2000s movie, the King Arthur movie with Clive Owen, with Keira Knightley, with Mads Mikkelsen.

Well, the basis for that King Arthur figure evidently does seem to be Ambrosius Aurelianus, this figure who emerges in the 5th century, who battles against the Saxons in the wake of the Romans leaving this distant island. Now, to talk through what we know about Ambrosius Aurelianus and the legacy of this figure, how he evolves, how he partly contributes to the creation of this figure of King Arthur. Joining me to explain all, I was delighted to go and interview in person earlier this week, Bournemouth University's Dr. Miles Russell. Miles, he's a hell of a character. He's a great laugh. It was wonderful to get him back on the podcast. He was on the pod last year to talk all about King Arthur and how he was this Celtic superhero moulded from five particular ancient figures,

one of which is Ambrosius Aurelianus. Miles is back on the podcast, this time to explain all about this mysterious Ambrosius Aurelianus, what we know and how his legacy evolves over the following centuries. So without further ado, to talk all about Ambrosius Aurelianus and whether he was the real King Arthur, here's Miles. Miles, it's great to have you back on the podcast justin it's good to be here and doing it in person which is always a plus in your office at bournemouth university in the chaos of your office i see this is a classic archaeologist's office though isn't it i see just boxes everywhere i see finds this is the archaeologist's life isn't it it is it. I wish it wasn't quite as chaotic as this but yes, yeah, you're in the middle

of everything. A lot of things we actually found this summer, which we're processing and working on at the moment. There we go, who knows, there'll be the next huge discovery announced from this room one day, from this very room indeed. We're talking about something a bit different today though, aren't we? We're going back to post-Roman Britain. And this figure, Ambrosius Aureurelianus now the legacy of this figure from himself to clive owen in the early 2000s i can't think of many other figures from this immediate post-roman period in britain that seem to be so well known or at least have quite a bit of uh should we say fame around them than this guy there aren't many people obviously you know we still refer to that time as the dark ages there is a quite a lack of reliable written sources anyway

so Ambrosius Aurelianus is one of those figures who really stands out of course we've got Arthur and most of the oxygen from discussion at the time is arguing whether he existed or not but Ambrosius Aurelianus we know is there is there. He is fighting. He's one of a series of warlords there in the carnage of post-Roman Britain, trying to establish order and perhaps trying to survive, really. But he's one of the few that we know anything about. And that's what's really interesting, isn't it?

You mentioned Arthur, King Arthur, and it seems that Ambrosius Aurelianus plays a part in Arthur's story. But what you say there, I think, is so, so interesting is the fact that this guy he is a real historical figure in this time where as you say it's still shrouded even to this day in quite a lot of mystery it is it is and admittedly you know compared to Arthur Ambrosius is far less well known he's obviously not a huge household name but you could say he's probably got

more impact because we can trace what happens to Ambrosius afterwards you know he's got impact as far as the earliest English dynasties have got he's got an impact culturally in Wales with the origins of the Welsh flag he's even really looks as if he has got a significant impact on the creation of the Arthur story itself so arguably he's got more significant impact than Arthur, or indeed quite a lot of people from the Roman period right up into the Saxon and early medieval times. Well, let's delve into this figure then, this really interesting figure.

But let's go to the background first of all. Fifth century AD, or CE Britain, the Romans have gone. So what's the context when Ambrosius Aurelianus is living? The period immediately after the collapse of the Roman administration is, I guess you could sort of point to more modern examples like the sort of democratic deficit collapse of society in Syria or Afghanistan, where you've got a series of warlords, you've got a fairly sort of bloody civil civil war and from an outsider's perspective it's very difficult to identify sides or to really see what's going on. We know that

Rome pulls out of Britain in AD 410. Prior to that there's been a series of rebellions and Britain is one of the most difficult and problematic of all Rome's provinces. There's a huge amount of military tied up in the province. It's so far away from the the heart of the empire. It's separated by the English Channel as well. So it's a very difficult province to control and we know in the last 50 years of Roman administration in Britain they're not controlling it very well. There's a series of rebellions. Some of these so called emperors take soldiers out of Britain to attack the emperor in Rome and by 410 the emperor Honorius in Rome has had enough and basically says to the Britons sort yourselves out. We've got problems are far too pressing elsewhere

and effectively acknowledges the fact that the Britons are rebelled against Rome and they're not going to do anything about it. They're left to their own devices. Now from that point of view it's frustrating from a historical perspective because Roman writers, people in the Mediterranean, are no longer interested. We're not getting any information from Britain. So we hear lots about say the Visigoths in Italy, the Vandals in North Africa, the East and Western Empire fighting each other, but we don't hear much about what's going on in Britain so as far as contemporary sources go we're reliant on a very small number of written texts most of which aren't written anything close

to the time that they're describing all from a religious perspective so we've got an individual called Gildas who's writing in about 85-40 it's about as close to the period as we've got and he writes a religious polemic. It's a rant. It's a sermon about the corruption of his time. And he really gives us, you know, if we're trying to think of somebody who's really coloured our perspective on post-Roman Britain, it's Gildas because it's all about Saxon, vicious Saxons, angry Britons, plague, pestilence, disease, people with their togas on fire, towns burning. It's real sort of blood and thunder stuff. But he presents it from the point of view that the Britons have

strayed from the path of true Christianity. They've become corrupt. They've had orgies and parties and decadence. And he portrays the English, the Anglo-Saxons, the migrants coming into Britain as the scourge of God. They're a biblical plague sent to punish the Britons. That's his perspective. So it's difficult from his writings to really get a sense of what's going on. But he presents a world of chaos and confusion where there are multiple warlords, each as bad as the other, fighting one another, fighting the Saxons who were coming in. And that's really, from the historical text, that's's the view that we get you get the feeling that it's not a great time to be alive and it may have been it may most majority people it may have been things may have been fine if

you're on the front line of any kind of conflict obviously it's less great but there's no central authority in Britain when the Romans have gone there no capital, there's no army maintaining order, so it is pretty much everyone for themselves. So we're seeing a political picture that's fragmenting, people are in conflict and so then there probably is a lot of truth in what Gildas says about the political chaos of the times. What strikes me is that this, the time when Gildas is writing, this is still 140 years after the Romans left. That's still a sizable amount of time that we have no sources from almost, literary sources. No, exactly. And the peripheral references from the Roman world talk about Britons,

the Britons are lost to Rome, they're under the control of the Saxons, and that's pretty much it. There are no useful sources for which we can reconstruct the past. So we rely heavily on archaeology but in the last sort of situations changing more recently but throughout the 20th century we were very much coloured by Gildas's writings and there was this view that the post-Roman period was chaotic and unpleasant and difficult and so archaeology was presented as evidence for that you know archaeologists were looking for signs of violence on skeletal remains signs of settlements burning down signs of economic collapse things that that supported the narrative of this sort of religious fanatic gildas excavations more recently have focused on the

idea of there are quite a lot of settlements at the time they seem quite prosperous people are trading so there is this other massive evidence that's giving us a better picture of the times but if we're trying to find a historical text which gives us dates and a chronology and yeah a kind of political idea of what's going on there isn't one how roman from all the archaeology that's people have been doing so far what is our our best bet as to how Roman Britain is at this time? Britain is, well, if you go back to, I guess, 100 years before the Romans leave, you can say Britain isn't that Roman. It's an un-Roman province.

There are obviously a large number of wealthy villas, but it's the rich, it's the powerful who are Roman, who are integrated into Roman lifestyle. When you go out away from the villas into the rural settlements you'll see, I guess you could say peasant communities, people who are farming, subsistence levels, they haven't got a lot of access to Roman goods, they're almost excluded from that Roman lifestyle. So when we're talking about Roman culture it's tied up with the hyper wealthy and we look at Roman villas and think these are good examples of what Roman life was like but it'd be like looking at the 18th century and

focusing just on stately homes. It gives you a completely warped view of what is going on. The wealthy leave a substantial footprint but it's they who are invested in a Roman lifestyle. When you take them out of the picture, Britain is a very un-Roman province at all. So it's not a case of people defending their Roman-ness against the barbarians. It's people who, I mean, they're marked by 400 years of Roman occupation,

but there's no incentive to be Roman or to live like the Romans or to preserve or to protect a Roman lifestyle. Fair enough then. It's really interesting to highlight that with how London seems to have been abandoned after the Romans leave, all those Roman villas fall into disuse. But also, in this post-Roman period, you have the emergence of a figure called Ambrosius Aurelianus who it seems does have this Roman heritage that is highlighted. Again if we go back to Gildas you know who's writing

in the 540s after the time of Ambrosius. Gildas is damning about every single person. Every leader, every church member, anyone involved in clergy is corrupt or sinful or depraved. The only person he's got a good word for is Ambrosius Aurelianus. He describes him as the last of the Romans. Presumably somebody of a very wealthy background who's got their own private army. But whatever Ambrosius does, it's worthy of Gildas's praise. The only person in his entire narrative who does anything worthy. And he doesn't give us a lot of detail but he says that his parents, a very euphemistic phrase, he says they were of the purple. It's emperors in the first and second centuries AD, purple is such

an expensive dye that they wear purple clothes, purple toga. Senators have purple stripes so wearing the purple means that you are an emperor or a member of the imperial family and he says that ambrosius's parents were of the purple so presumably they were an usurpers or they were general they were someone high up in the infrastructure of roman britain so he's inherited that sense perhaps of destiny he's inherited that sense of having an army of having military background but that's really all we know about him apart from the fact that he fights a battle against Saxons at Mount Baden and it's portrayed as a dramatic victory the enemy almost completely annihilated it's a big sort sort of victory over this barbarian horde,

the like of which has never been seen before. So that's why Gildas gives him this sort of praise as a military genius who inflicts a crushing defeat on the enemy. If we go back to Gildas quickly before going on to the Battle of Mount Baden, because I'd love you to explain in more detail what Ambrosius' supposed role in this battle. It does sound, therefore, that with the figure of Ambrosius already on us, Gildas, is he our nearest, is he our, and I put a quote-unquote,

is he our best source for this figure? He is our only proper source. I mean, he says the other irritating thing about Gildas, he doesn't give us dates. The people he's writing for, his congregation, he doesn't need to give dates because they're aware of what he's talking about the only thing he says is the battle of Mount Baden occurred 40 years ago but given he doesn't tell us when he's writing that's a fairly pointless

useless sort of definition so we're assuming Baden's about 500 Gildas is writing about 540 but there's no he doesn't give us a list of battles, a list of events or dates. So he's our only surviving source. There may have been other sources which are since lost during the dissolution of the monasteries, where we know huge amounts of documents were burnt relating to the early religious activity in Britain, but he's the only material that's close to the period that we can rely on. So talk to me therefore about the Bast of Mount Baden in Gildas's account and the role of Ambrosius Aurelianus in it.

He cites Baden as the crowning achievement of Ambrosius's reign. He calls it the siege of Mount Baden. The annoying thing is there is we don't know who's besieging whom, but it's evidently one side is attacking the other. And we presume it's, by the sound of it, what later writers sort ofging whom but it's evidently one side is attacking the other and we presume it's by the sound of it what later writers sort of describe that it's probably the Saxons who are being besieged but it's portrayed as a stunning victory and it certainly resonates down through the generations because later writers credit Baden to King Arthur it becomes the crowning victory of

Arthur's reign so he sort of absorbs that particular campaign, that particular battle, and it becomes his crowning achievement. So it's obviously very very important but casualties we don't know. We don't really know where it was fought although most modern historians assume it's somewhere around the area of Bath and it might be Badon, Bathon. Bath is that same sort of geographical placement. So we don't know much about other than the fact it is a vital turning point in the post-Roman era but anything else is really sort of guesswork. In regards to vital turning points you also mentioned how this seems to be the climax of Ambrosius Aurelianus' achievements from what Gildas is saying. How does Gildas therefore

picture, depict the rise of Ambrosius Aurelianus? Is it very much that he is, as we let's say, we see in a recent, a rather recent film, the King Arthur film with Clive Owen, this idea that he rallies the Britons, he unites them, he brings them together and that a series of battles are fought against the Saxons, which ultimately culminates in the Battle of Mount Baden. Or do we just not have that detail available for Gildas? We just don't have that detail. Ambrosius emerges as the preeminent general and Baden is his crowning victory and then Gildas goes off to rant about other people. So it's that sort of sense that

there is a brief pause in his hatred of humanity where he describes this amazing achievement and then we're back to... So he doesn't go on to talk about what happens to ambrosius aurelianus after the battle does he no he doesn't so to look more into the life of ambrosius aurelianus because it feels that gildas is quite limited where do we have to go gildas is limited but he provides a starting point he's the keystone upon which all else is built our next really sort of major source is a difficult one it's often ascribed to Nennius. We don't actually really know if Nennius existed as a real person, but there's lots of writings called the Historia Brittonum, the History of the Britons, which is a series of genealogies, praise poems, legendary events by different people which are just lumped into one big

book. Ambrosius' story appears in a more developed form there but it's quite clear. I mean this is written at some point probably around the sort of 900s AD. This is written down so it's a long long time from the periods it's describing and it's clear we've got a series of oral traditions, so spoken accounts, which Nennius or someone like him is bringing together so a lot of stories contradict one another sometimes we get different accounts of the same people but ambrosius aurelianus appears in in there as what's been referred to by later writers as the dragon prophecy which sounds nice and dramatic but essentially it's we get an account whereby

there is a leader of britain or called Vortigern, who every source describes as a thoroughly bad hat. You know, he's somebody who's invited the Saxons in. He's been betrayed by them. He's had all his aristocrats murdered by them. And Vortigern flees to the distant part of his territory where he tries to build a castle. And this is where we get suddenly the legendary element coming in, the great sort of mythology. he tries to build a castle. This is where we get suddenly the legendary element coming in, the great mythology. Somewhere, and it's assumed to be somewhere in North Wales, he's creating

a castle to protect himself. The builders start, the next morning all the building material is gone. They start again, next morning the building material is gone and it can't actually create a defensive structure. And so he asks his advisors what can we do about this they say you need to find a boy who has no father a boy who's been a miraculous conception bring him here cut his head off sprinkle the blood on the site you'll be fine and eventually to cut a long story short his advisors find this young boy and his mother claims she's never met him you know she hasn't been in contact with anyone so it's a miraculous birth they bring him to the site and just before they kill him he says what you need to do is to dig down into below the foundations and you'll find a pool basically a large sort of area and they do that and they find a tent in each corner of this subterranean pool there's a white dragon or a white serpent and a

red one the two are fighting the red one looks like it's going to win, but then the white one sort of backs the red one into a corner. And then finally, the red one is eventually triumphant. And they sort of go, what the hell is this? What is going on? And the boy announces that he's called Ambrosius Aurelianus. He does actually have a father. His father is a Roman consul. So there's two variant forms of that story. But he says effectively what you're seeing is the white dragon is the Saxons, the English, the red dragon are the Britons or the Welsh. And although the Saxons look like they're triumphant now, the red dragon will eventually defeat the white. And this becomes a major element in lots of Welsh mythologies. It becomes a major element that a lot of the princely dynasties of medieval Wales take on board. Llywelyn the Great takes on board as quite a major motif and we see the development of the Welsh flag

and the symbol of the red dragon coming from that story. Now of course we have no idea where this story originates from but the fact we've got Ambrosius Aurelianus as a young man, this is his earliest, it's not like his origin story, motivating the Britons, giving them something to fight for and giving this sense of destiny. Later accounts rewrite that and it becomes Ambrosius Merlin and then it becomes Merlin. So the story of Merlin comes out of Ambrosius but Nennius first credits this to Ambrosius. So Vortigern the bad king is replaced by Ambrosius the good king and at the end of the story we've got Ambrosius attacking Vortigern the bad king is replaced by Ambrosius the good king and at the end of the story we've got Ambrosius attacking Vortigern in his castle the castle gets destroyed the bad guy gets burnt

with his entire army and Ambrosius takes power and so in that version is there no is there a comparative version to Mount Badon battle therefore or is it very much this clash against Vortigern in Nennius we get this is the first time we see the name Arthur really emerging because we get a list of Arthur's 12 great battles. Now some of these battles are obviously repeated so it's probably more like six great battles of which the other six have been repeated but Baden is in there and it's the first time that Baden has been taken from Ambrosius and given to Arthur. Arthur's not credited as a king, he's the Duke of battles, but it's the first time that we've seen Arthur as an individual being named. Now the problem with Arthur, as we've

been aware for generations, is that Gildas doesn't mention him. Earlier source doesn't describe King Arthur and there's an absence in his writings which is either because Gildas hates Arthur, but I think he would have mentioned him and said what an awful person he is because he does that to everyone or Arthur's been created from other great characters and Ambrosius because we know it's Ambrosius that fights Baden and later Arthur is given that battle that I think the Arthur story is a composite character large part of which is created from the the real life character of Ambrosius Aurelianus, who does fight bad and who does get the Britons together and who is seen as a great rallying force. Hi there, I'm Kate Lister, sex historian and author, and I am the host of Betwixt the Sheets,

the history of sex, scandal and society, a new podcast from History Hit. Join me as I root around the topics which have been skipped over in your school history lessons. Everything from the history of swearing to pubic hair, satanic panic, cults, there is nothing off limits. We'll be bed hopping around different time periods from ancient civilizations to the middle ages to rena Renaissance and early modern right up to now. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. and it is interesting isn't it if you've mentioned that nennius writing the 10th century yes 10th century and if gildas was close as we can get as close as we can guess and if gildas is in the 6th century and gildas mentions ambrosius aurelianus then even though the mentions of

ambrosius you don't hear in the centuries between evidently the legacy of that figure does live on so it's really interesting to try and piece together how his legacy has developed, has evolved by the time you get to Nennius, particularly in that Celtic, you know, the non-Saxon conquered part of Britain. It is. I mean, it's really, in a way, it's quite, it's exciting, but it's also frustrating because we know when the character Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s writes down a series of legends, he says a lot of these are all stories that people have been telling for hundreds of years.

And we know in, if we call it Celtic society, there is this oral tradition of storytelling. Stories are passed down by word of mouth. They don't write anything down. And the danger is there that we know that stories can last for hundreds, if not thousands of years, but they gradually change and they mutate and they develop into other things so the stories of ambrosius and the story later stories of arthur are written down hundreds of years after they really happened so they've mutated into something else and getting back to the origins of the story is very difficult but we can at least say when gildas writes in 540 there is no arthur appears later, and it might be that he's being created out of the story of Ambrosius Aurelianus.

When you look at a figure there for like Nennius, and we'll get on to Geoffrey of Monmouth in a bit too, I mean, how have you found it trying to see whether there is this element of truth, the basis of truth for the very much legendary figure of Arthur and also of Ambrosius Aurelianus by that time? Is there any way by looking at gildas's accounts and then looking at an account like nennius and thinking right is there any basis of truth here in which i can look at gildas's account get an idea of this figure of ambrosius aurelianus from that and then potentially learn a bit more of this figure away from the fantasy in later sources like nennius? It's very, very difficult.

I mean, the problem is when we look at Nennius and we look at some of the later writings, there's things in it that are so obviously fantastical, like the whole serpent stories, the fighting dragons. This is obviously something really fantastical, really sort of, this couldn't have happened in a sense. There's so many of these kinds of accounts that it's quite clear that when you get into the 8th,th centuries the original stories of ambrosius and what develops into arthur

have shifted completely and they are becoming more dramatic you're having giants and dragons and magic being added to it so to try and drill back down to the the original stories is extremely difficult we don't have a wealth of primary sources and so using these later versions to try and create a story, I mean it's worth doing but you're never really going to get to the actual, I guess, solid truth of the original. Incredibly difficult question, I know, I know, fair enough. Well let's go on but before we go on to Geoffrey of Monmouth that I've mentioned there, another key figure who I believe does mention Ambrosius Aurelianus well maybe it's quite a brief reference Bede so what do we hear about Ambrosius Aurelianus from Bede? Very little but I mean Bede is an interesting contrast to

Gildas because you know Bede is writing a good sort of couple hundred years later but he's writing from within the English perspective so the ecclesiastical history of the English people that Bede writes. Whereas Gildas describes the English, the Saxons, as a scourge of God, in Bede's account they are God's chosen people and they're being brought across the North Sea almost like Moses, like to the Promised Land. So Bede's outlook is very very different he mentions in passing arthur we get a brief sort of reference around ambrosius there's a sense i mean effectively when he's talking about the british leaders he plagiarizes gildas he just if there are certain sections where you can almost

word for word what gildas has said ancient writers especially religious writers they're not as bothered as plagiarism as we are today. You know, if a modern historian or writer takes wholesale sections of someone else's writing without crediting them, that's bad. We recognise that's bad and that could be the end of their career. In the medieval period that's perfectly fine. You just do that. You don't have to provide references. You don't have to say you're quoting someone else so a lot of sections Bede repeats what Gildas has said so he's not providing any secondary additional useful information he's just repeating verbatim what the earlier writer has said there you go well let's then move on therefore to Geoffrey of Monmouth

now how does Geoffrey represent Ambrosius or Arianus take it away Geoffrey of Monmouth is quite a difficult character in the sense of you know we don't know a huge amount about him but it's fair to say he divides opinion because really since the 16th century there's been the view that he's just made everything up he is some kind of pro-British pro-Welsh nationalist who creates a fantasy account of how wonderful things were here before the English arrived and provides a whole series of mythological, mythical kings going back to the time of the Trojans. You see the British race were descended from refugees from the Trojan War. He's writing from the 12th century, is he writing? He's writing in 1136. But it's clear

when you look at his writings that he's using oral tradition, he's using a whole range of accounts, most of which he doesn't actually really understand the origins of. What he's really trying to do is gather together poems, genealogies, bits of histories and tries to weave it into a grand narrative. It's true he is creating an account of the Britons, because at the time he's living in the 1130s the Normans are in charge of Anglo-Saxon England, but there's lots of Anglo-Saxon historians like William of Malmesbury, there's things like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there are things that give the idea that the English are this great race, you've come to Britain and they've had fantastic kings and monarchs, they've done all this wonderful stuff,

and he's providing a counter narrative that says hang on a minute the Britons were doing very nicely thank you before the Saxons arrived and it's quite clear I mean he describes as magical events there are giants and dragons he builds on what other writers have done before him but when you look at his accounts it is very clear there are a number of historical figures which are there and there's almost like as and there are versions that quite clearly have originated from the British perspective. So when he describes the invasion of Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC the only account we have of that invasion is from Julius Caesar's point of view. Geoffrey of Monmouth gives us the

British perspective and he uses a series of names that weren't actually known to him but which archaeology has since revealed through coinage so there are certain hints that he is using earlier accounts albeit ones which were transmitted by word of mouth rather than being written down now having said all that and with all that sort of associated baggage to say we have to be careful with Geoffrey Monmouth he does provide a detailed account of ambrosius's life which no earlier writer had done gildas just says there's this guy he won a battle um you know bead repeats that jeffrey monmouth gives us this sense of ambrosius's heritage he repeats the story of the of the dragon prophecy in there he gives us an account of ambrosius as king what he did he gives us this idea that it's thanks to

ambrosius that stonehenge exists as a monument we get the earliest account of merlin you know later writers have merlin as king arthur's wizard in jeffrey of monmouth's account merlin and arthur never meet merlin is ambrosius's wizard you know so there are things in there which are important because they create they're the beginnings of the Arthur story. There are beginnings of a whole series of other stories. But nowhere does Geoffrey say precisely where he got his information from. So although we can say there are things there that obviously have come from verbal or oral sources, it is possible that he is also making stuff up. We just can't say so i think we have to be very careful but it is

interesting in what he does say about ambrosius because one of the key events he mentions um the battles that he fought but it's intriguing that baden has now moved to being king arthur's battle arthur come arthur is ambrosius's nephew in this account it's uncle ambrosius who is king of britain who fights the saxons but not baden but he gives us this wonderful account not just the dragon prophecy but this idea that because the saxons have slaughtered a large number of british aristocrats ambrosius wants to create a monument to them and he creates it on salisbury plain and his wizard merlin says what you got to do is go to ireland there's a stone circle there which is ideal we'll go over there we'll steal it we'll bring it back to Salisbury plain we'll put it up and it will be a monument to those who've fallen fighting the Saxons and we get this really

convoluted rather bizarre account of the stones being brought over and in the middle of it Ambrosius is then crowned king so it's part of a coronation. Now although later archaeologists have said well we do know that the certainly the blue stones in Stonehenge come from Wales so there might be some evident or some sort of idea of the stones traveling some significant distance. Excavations inside Stonehenge and I was part of the dig that Professor Timothy Darvell and Jeff Wainwright did in 2008 but we excavated a series of bluestone sockets in the interior and they're full of late Roman material. It's quite a lot of evidence that the bluestones as we see them today aren't prehistoric survivals. They've been chipped at, they've been modified,

they've been moved around. And although there is no proof, it would be intriguing to think that Ambrosius Aurelianus as a character, if's you know I can't think of a better place to be crown king than in the center of Stonehenge but what we're probably seeing rather than the stones being brought there they're being modified they're being chipped they're being changed they're being altered and Ambrosius is at the center of it there's we can all say nearby you've got Amesbury which translate as Ambrosius's burr Now we don't know whether that's a survival of the memory of Ambrosius being there or it's some kind of back projection or it's an invention to try and explain the name but it's one of those key

geographic locations in Britain where the name Ambrosius survives and it's right next to Stonehenge. So there's lots of sort of intriguing evidence that links the character to the site but it's Geoffrey of Monmouth who gives us that and of course we have to be careful what he's saying but as you say we have to be careful we have to take it with a huge bucket full of sauce exactly but it is really interesting there that you have this potential archaeological evidence which seems to affirm that this site was being used in this post-Roman period you have this potential link to the name Ambrosius Aurelianus there and then you have Geoffrey of monmouth's accounts and it's almost as if it's so intriguing to kind of go down that rabbit hole isn't it and to sort the well not fact from the fiction but to

find where the elements of truth the basis of truth might be in his account as you said earlier with these britons who were fighting against Julius Caesar who we know were present in Britain at that time it's really interesting therefore to delve into a source like Geoffrey Monmouth to try and figure out what is the truth behind the myth in all of this yes it is it is I mean I say it's intriguing that Ambrose is linked with this part of the West Country and that we have got I mean we look at Stonehenge and we think of it as a fantastic survival from the Neolithic and Bronze Age and you tend to forget about every subsequent generation has also seen it and they may have changed it and there's

very clear evidence in the late Roman period in the post-Roman period someone is changing it. It would be nice if it was Ambrosius Aurelianus, that's the literary tradition but well you know short of actually finding a description there that says that. We're never really going to be able to prove it. Absolutely fair enough. I mean let's keep going on Geoffrey Monmouth for a bit longer. What does he therefore say happens to Ambrosius Aurelianus? Ambrosius Aurelianus has been given credit for unifying the kingdom. He defeats the Saxons, he chases them up to York, he defeats them. His army defeats Hengist, who's one of the great Saxon leaders at the time.

They bring peace to the kingdom. But eventually, Ambrosius Aurelianus, there is a court plot and he's poisoned and assassinated. And then his brother, Uther Pendragon, takes over. And of course, it's Uther who is the father of Arthur. So we've got this sideline of a new dynasty being created. Now I think from what we were saying earlier, Arthur is a problematic character and it's quite clear that the Battle of Mount Baden has been given to him. It's been taken from Ambrose and given to Arthur.

There are other things that also been taken from other characters and given to Arthur. I think we have to be very careful because when we look at Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth this is the first person who gives Arthur a life story from conception to death but all aspects of Arthur's story in Geoffrey has come from other people and I think what he's done he's created a an ultimate Celtic superhero at the end of his book which is drawn from all the previous characters you know so he's creating a fiction and it's arthur who lives on at the expense of ambrosius aurelianus he is the real historical character we can point to and say did exist arthur probably didn't exist but he's been generated out of the exploits of others so i mean that's well let's keep on that a bit longer then so you

mentioned and as you've said in our previous podcast about King Arthur last year, there are several figures who contribute to this creation of this Celtic superhero. So how significant is Ambrosius Aurelianus in the creation of King Arthur compared to these other figures who contribute to the figure? Ambrosius is the only one who fits the date. So the other characters, we've got Magnus Maximus in the in the fourth century we've got Arviragus or Caratarchus in the first century AD they provide dramatic battles when we read stories of Arthur there's a lot of things in there like

we've got you know Arthur's portrayed as a Celtic warrior he's a berserker he's got chariots there's this real sense that a lot of it comes from earlier periods from earlier sort of epic poems Ambrosius Aurelianus is the only warrior in the post-Roman period who's fighting the Saxons which is what Arthur does so I think when Geoffrey of Monmouth is writing his account he's got other sort of characters who he brings forward and it sticks into the Arthur story but Ambrosius is there at the right time doing the right thing and it's Ambrosius who fights at Baden Hill but Geoffrey of Monmouth wants to give Baden to Arthur his character so he takes it from Ambrosius but it's Ambrosius who is there at the right time in the 5th century AD you know he's the one who's doing the fighting he's

the one who fights the siege of Baden he's the one who arguably might be unifying the country he's the one who got a grand coronation at stone henge but it's arthur who obviously benefits from that because those elements are used to build him up but it's ambrosius who's there at the time no other character is there fighting the saxons in the aftermath in the carnage of post-roman britain so apart from that those potential links from stonehenge which you mentioned earlier is there any other archaeological evidence that can give more tantalizing clues about Ambrosius Aurelianus alongside the likes of Geoffrey of Monmouth? The interesting thing is is that when we look at things like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle just as a jump into another bit of evidence but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which we know is written at some point around about 900 AD,

it's written in the Kingdom of Wessex and it's written at the time to really create an origin story for the English because the English are fighting the Danes at that point, so they're trying to explain how the Kingdom of Wessex came into being and it also describes things like the Kingdom of Sussex and so on. It doesn't mention any or very few Britons by name because it's an overtly english perspective whereas jeffrey monmouth is writing in a very overtly british perspective but in the anglo-saxon chronicle we have a character called aella who is the king of sussex who's described as being the first brett valder the first overlord of britain and aella is described as coming across

the sea he fights what's described as the Welsh because the Saxons always call all the Britons Welsh you know it's not a geographical term it's just it's basically a pejorative term meaning foreigner which is quite insulting really but in that sort of time he lands on the coast he fights a battle and he attacks the Britons in a massive fortification and slaughters them all and that's exactly what Ambrosius Aurelianus does. He comes across from Brittany where he's in hiding. He lands on the coast, he fights a battle, he attacks Vortigern and he kills everyone inside the fortress.

And I think Aella is Ambrosius Aurelianus because we know that the Saxons do that. Again, the Kingdom of Wessex, the founders of the Kingdom of Wessex are Kurdic and Kynric and those are British names so they've hijacked British kings and turned them into Saxon kings and that's what I think Aella is in Sussex, the Kingdom of Sussex, he's actually Ambrosius Aurelianus and therefore he becomes a key figure, he becomes Arthur in British tradition, he becomes Aella in English tradition so he's got an impact, he's obviously a major figure who does important things but he's remembered by both sides you're fighting at that time but we don't recognize him today you know he's got a major impact but he's almost disappeared

because he's evolved into something else he's evolved into something else which we've gone to now careful about saying you know calling someone welsh as an insult you know talking you're talking to someone whose surname is hughes i'm not i'm not saying it's an insult today but the english use it it really has a sense i mean they they use the term welsh meaning um foreigners or some of the even slaves but it's intriguing they land in sussex and they fight the welsh that makes sense to them but to a writer like jeffrey monmouth who's writing in the 1130s, he sees the Saxons are fighting the Welsh. To him, that has a very distinct geographical placement because Wales, to him, equates with what we see as Wales today. So a lot of stories of Saxons fighting Britons

get transposed to Wales because when people are writing it up, you can't have the Welsh in Sussex, but you can have them in the western part of Britain. It's all good, amigo. Just pulling your leg, just pulling your leg. A final thing then, let's talk about Clive Owen and the 2000 and X, whatever, whenever,

whichever year it was filmed, King Arthur. Because that King Arthur one, it almost seems as if it is, or it is, isn't it? King Arthur is the name, but it's fighting against the Saxons. You have that Roman influence there too. I don't know if there's any actual Salmation link in Ambrose's

Aurelianus' story but that seems to be a prime example of where the Ambrose's Aurelianus story has evolved into the Arthur story and is sometimes... Arthur is portrayed in that way. Yeah, Arthur tends to get portrayed more recently as a late Roman general. So as exactly as you know Gildas describes Ambrose's Aurelianus as somebody of Roman heritage so he's there in Roman armor organizing people in a very he's the last gasp of Roman Britain and I'm pleased you brought that film up because I have issues with it I mean it's a it's a great bit of sort of swords and sorcery sort of thing it's got a lot of problems in it the Saxons land in Scotland and then they march south to Hadrian's war and it has

problems but at least visually it conveys a sort of sense of the chaos after the Romans have left political stability has gone and you've got people who are probably using Roman forts as the basis of a new kingdom you know you've got private armies security forces you've got warlords and their families ensconced within the remains of Roman forts and sometimes rebuilding Iron Age hill forts. And I think visually at least that gives us a sense of politically what's going on, people fighting for survival. And it's later generations who look back at that and pick certain characters as their, you know, everyone likes an origin myth every country every society's got an idea of where they come from even if it's wrong and i think people look back to ambrosius

and to arthur and they pick and choose certain leaders and they create a mythology from that and we've got to try and sometimes take away that mythology and go back and say what actually is happening what's the reality of that situation and i think at least from the point of view of giving us a sense of what society was like the film king arthur is good from a historical point of view it's diabolically awful but don't let me stop any of your your listeners from watching it let's go back to the history very quickly then a slight tangent last thing before completely wrapping up tristan so tristan there's no parallel is there that he's actually linked to a romano british hero like arthur is there well tristan and isolda yeah oh is that the that's the yeah

i mean i mean in selfish tangent at the end you've got the uh so-called tristan stone which is a sort of sixth seventh century stone which cites somebody called drustanus and of course the story of tristan and king mark and isolda really becomes gets rewritten and becomes a story of king arthur lancelot and guinevere that sort of love triangle but it's a much much earlier element and certainly i think tristan is a cornish hero and he later gets written into the arthur myth as one of arthur's knights but he's got an origin which is much much earlier and he may well be another warlord who's existing trying to carve out a kingdom and trying to survive in 5th 6th century Cornwall. That's right that's what I thought be that Gildas but there you go Miles anyway thanks for that slight tangent at the end. Last but certainly not least

you've written a book all about Ambrosius Aurelianus King Arthur this book which is called? Arthur and the Kings of Britain by Amberley Publishing it came in 2017 but yes we're doing a new version of that and bringing new evidence into it but it's really an attempt to looking at Geoffrey of Monmouth and all these sources to try and see the historical reality within all these sort of later mythologies and trying to understand who Arthur was who Ambrosius Aurelianus ultimately was. I'm very jealous that is such a a good topic anyway miles it's been an absolute pleasure it's been wonderful to do this in person too so it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today thank you well there you go there was miles explaining all about ambrosius aurelianus

and his extraordinary legacy i love that idea for instance of how the red dragon of the Welsh flag, well, it originates from the figure, from the fictional stories, the later additions to the story of Ambrosius Aurelianus. It's such an interesting tale and I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, last thing from me, we've got a special offer ongoing at the moment

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