Arthur

King Arthur is an important figure in the mythology of Great Britain, where he appears as the ideal of kingship both in war and peace. He is the central character in the cycle of legends known as the Matter of Britain. more...

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There is disagreement about whether Arthur, or a model for him, ever actually existed, or whether he is a mythic figure who has been given a historicised setting.. His title of 'King' is moot: in the earliest mentions and in Welsh texts, he is never given the title 'King'. An early text refers to him as a dux bellorum ('war leader'), and medieval Welsh texts often call him ameraudur ("emperor" in the pre-Medieval sense of the Latin imperator, i.e. "commander".)

Historicity

The historicity of the Arthur of legend has long been debated by scholars. One school of thought believes that Arthur had no historical existence, that he originally was a half-forgotten Celtic deity that devolved into a personage, citing parallels with: a supposed change of the sea-god Lir into King Lear; with the Kentish totemic horse-gods Hengest and Horsa, who were historicised by the time of Bede's account and given an important role in the fifth-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain; with the founder-figure of Caer-fyrddin, Merlin (Welsh Myrddin); or with the Norse demigod Sigurd or Siegfried, who was historicised in Nibelungenlied by associating him with a famous historical fifth-century battle between Huns and the Burgundians. Supporters of this theory often instance the Welsh etymology of Arthur's name as derived from 'bear', proposing bear gods named Artos or Artio (Proto-Celtic artos) as the precedent for the legend; these particular deities are known to have been worshipped by the continental Celts, however, and not documented among the Britons.

The converse view holds that Arthur was an authentically historical personage, a Romano-British leader fighting against the invading Anglo-Saxons sometime in the late fifth to early sixth century. The late historian John Morris made the alleged reign of Arthur at the turn of the 5th century the organising principle of his history of sub-Roman Britain and Ireland under the rubric The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles from 350–650 (1973), even though he found little to say of an historic Arthur, save as an example of the idea of kingship, one among such contemporaries as Vortigern and Cunedda, Hengest and Coel. If he existed, his power base would probably have been in the Celtic areas of Wales, Cornwall and the West Country, or the Brythonic 'Old North' which covered modern Northern England and Southern Scotland. However, controversy over the centre of his supposed power and the extent and kind of power he would have wielded continues to this day.

Read more at Wikipedia.org