The Legends of King Arthur (2001–…): Season 0, Episode 0 - King Arthur - full transcript
NARRATOR: Never has
there been a figure as
magnetically attractive
as that of King Arthur.
For many centuries, he has been
the archetypal hero, instantly
recognizable not
just in Britain, but
throughout the Western world.
In fact, the words King
Arthur are practically
a definition of
what makes a hero
in our Western civilization.
[shouting]
What is so special about
this mysterious king?
In our cynical,
world weary times,
we still hunger for
stories of Arthur.
This says as much about us
as it does about the once
and future king, but the
sad fact of the matter
is that Arthur, if he did
exist, lived in a time
when events in Britain were
so poorly documented that it
is hardly surprising
that history
and fantasy became entwined.
We all have our own idea of
who King Arthur is or was.
In the next hour, we will
explore the phenomenon
of Arthur, from his shadowy
fifth century origins
as a British war leader to the
very perfect medieval king.
There are many
gateways to Arthur--
history, legend,
myth, and romance.
They all lead to
different Arthurs,
yet they are all connected.
King Arthur is truly a
hero for all seasons.
He has a universal
appeal across cultures,
nations, and centuries.
RONALD HUTTON: Arthur stories
are really a good story.
Everything is there--
power, sex, greed,
and international relations.
There's war.
There's love.
There's sorcery, and there's a
link to the natural landscape.
MAGNUS: Everybody is
trying to claim Arthur.
The reason behind this
is Arthur is hope.
Arthur is light at
the end of the tunnel.
In the time of depression,
there is always Arthur.
Arthur will return,
make everything right.
[shouting]
The literally universal
appeal of the Arthurian legend--
I think it must really find
an echo in the human soul.
RICHARD DEMARCO: Arthur
somehow reassures us
that, despite everything that
could be thrown against us,
no matter what the task is, no
matter what the challenge might
be, you can actually face it.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON:
It's the spirit of Britain.
It's the warrior
spirit of Britain,
and then that is, in essence,
the spirit of Arthur,
and the spirit thus travels
through many different people,
many different ages.
Now!
[shouting]
NARRATOR: King Arthur-- those
two words still have the power
to evoke a strange and beautiful
world, where British history
and Celtic mythology merge.
The truth is blurred.
Reality becomes whatever
we want it to be,
and that holds true for the
5th, the 12th, the 15th,
and even the 21st century.
Strangely, even nowadays, Arthur
is probably remembered more
vividly than any number of kings
whose historical existence is
beyond doubt, and yet,
scratch beneath the surface
of the legend, and
there are clues
revealing a man, not a myth.
But the seed of the myth has
been sown in the imaginations
of the Britons who witnessed
Arthur's great deeds,
and each retelling of his
story helped it to grow
into the matter of Britain.
RONALD HUTTON: The
matter of Britain
is simply the Arthurian story.
In medieval Europe, there are
three great bodies of legends.
There's the matter of Rome,
which is the Greek and Roman
myths, including the
Trojan War, Hercules,
Jason, the rest of them.
There's the matter
of France, which
has the tales of Charlemagne
and his court, particularly
Roland, the great French hero.
And there's the matter of
Britain, which is Arthur's, and
it's interesting that it's the
story of the matter of France,
which is the most specific
to time and place,
and the most narrowly
medieval, which
has fallen through the gap.
And it's the matter of Britain
and the matter of Rome which
feeds Hollywood to this day.
NARRATOR: Unlike other
historical figures,
the truth about Arthur
has become so firmly
entangled with the
legend that the two
cannot easily be separated.
To find Arthur, we must
start with the legend
and work our way back to the
historical truth at its heart.
The legend is a treasure house
of symbolism and imagery,
rather than historical evidence.
Yet if we can learn to
recognize their hidden meanings,
those same symbols and
images can tell us so much
about Arthur and his world.
[shouting]
The story of Arthur that
most people are familiar with
is the one passed down
to us from Sir Thomas
Malory in the 15th century.
It is highly likely that Malory
was a knight who had taken part
in the Wars of the
Roses, so naturally
the Arthur he depicted is a
reflection of his own world.
It was a world where chivalry
was breathing its last.
In future, knights in armor
with swords and lances
would increasingly
find themselves up
against gunpowder.
[gunshots]
But the clash of sword on
sword and the armor plated
struggles so familiar to Malory
are forever linked in our minds
to the image of Arthur.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: The book
was one of the first books
published-- printed in
England by Caxton in 1485,
and it certainly is the basis of
the story as we all picture it,
but Malory was not original
in the sense that what he--
virtually everything
in his story
is translated from the French
romances on the continent.
Malory brought them together
and made them into this,
I think, really
the finest version
certainly in English of this
whole matter of Britain.
NARRATOR: In Malory's
story, Uther Pendragon
lusted after Igraine, the wife
of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall.
So he enlisted Merlin to
make him look like Gorlois.
He spent the night with
Igraine at Tintagel,
and Arthur was conceived.
Merlin placed the baby with
an honest knight, Sir Ector,
to be raised without
knowing his true parentage.
When Uther died, there
was no apparent successor.
To resolve the matter, Merlin
produced a sword in an anvil
on a block of stone and
proclaimed that whoever could
draw it out was rightful king.
Many tried, but only
Arthur succeeded, as Merlin
had always known he would.
As soon as he was
enthroned, Arthur
faced rebellion from his
nobles, but emerged victorious.
He received a new sword
from the Lady of the Lake,
the magical Excalibur.
He married the fair Guinevere.
He established the
round table at his court
at Camelot, attracting many
brave and good knights,
including the incomparable
Sir Lancelot, who was
appointed the queen's champion.
While Arthur was away fighting,
Guinevere and Lancelot
became lovers.
After the quest for the
Holy Grail had ended,
their adultery was exposed
by the evil Mordred.
Mordred was the result of
Arthur's unwittingly incestuous
coupling with his
sister, Morgan,
and he burned with
hatred for his father.
Arthur had no choice but to
condemn his wife to death
for her crime, but
Lancelot rescued her
just as she was to be executed.
The lovers fled.
Arthur pursued, unwisely
leaving his son as regent.
News reached Arthur that his
son had declared himself king.
Bitterly he returned to
confront the poisonous Mordred.
The two sides met in
battle on Salisbury Plain.
Mordred met his death
at Arthur's hand,
but dealt his father a
fatal blow to the head
before he fell.
Knowing he was
near death, Arthur
ordered that Excalibur should
be cast back into the waters it
had come from.
Then a barge carrying many
fair ladies sailed into view.
The sound of their weeping
came over the water.
They laid the dying
king in the barge
and took him away to the
mystical Isle of Avalon,
but some said he did not
die and had gone to Avalon
for the healing of his wounds.
Others claimed he slept, waiting
until his land had need of him.
Then he would return.
Rex quondam et futurus--
the once and future king.
RONALD HUTTON: Thomas
Malory is the end point of
the medieval Arthurian legend.
He's simply the wrap
up, which puts it
all in a set of stories
that link together and make
a nice harmonious whole.
And as the end point, he is
drawing upon what by his time
would have been maybe
800 years of literature.
So he's very well read.
He certainly got through all the
French and the English romances
of the last 300 or 400 years,
and what he's out to do
is synthesize the lot.
So Malory is somebody
who is drawing
upon a very big
body of literature
and using it really well.
Malory says that he
wrote the book in prison--
or at any rate, he
refers to himself.
He says, pray for
the night, prisoner,
which is suggesting he may
have been a rather violent
character among these Malorys.
And he certainly knows all
about combat and warfare,
and enjoys it.
MAGNUS: He was imprisoned
eight times minimum.
These charges included
attempted murder,
rape, robbing from churches,
abusing the clergy.
So we have this man who
is putting down on paper
the ideal chivalry
code, and he's himself
virtually the opposite of it.
He was no Sir Lancelot.
NARRATOR: Caxton could not
have known when he published it
in July, 1485 that barely a
month later Henry Tudor would
win the crown and end
the Wars of the Roses
when he marched into
battle at Bosworth
under a fluttering dragon
banner, the emblem of Arthur.
The matter of Britain
had become real again.
Henry was not the first
king to use Arthur.
Kings from William the Conqueror
right through to Charles
I found ways to claim
kinship with him.
In fact, when Henry Plantagenet
was crowned in 1154,
he wasted no time in
presenting himself
to the nation as the
legitimate heir of King Arthur
to win over his reluctant
British subjects.
In the legitimacy stakes,
that Tudor dynasty had
more justification than some.
With its roots deep
in Welsh earth,
it could rightly
claim to represent
the original British population
that Arthur had defended
so many centuries before.
One of the really fascinating
problems identifying Arthur
as a historical figure
is the complete failure
of any royal families to trace
a blood link back to Arthur.
The obvious people to do
it are the Welsh princes,
who, after all,
are the descendants
of the people Arthur is
supposed to have ruled.
And not a single family
tree, in a culture which
loved family trees
like title deeds,
traces a family back to Arthur.
On the other hand, there may be
some that are lost that did so.
What monarchs do later is
try and identify themselves
as the inheritors
of Arthur's land
and give themselves a spiritual
link with Arthur, which
is why Richard the Lionheart
is cock-a-hoop when
the monks of Glastonbury
claimed to have
dug Arthur up on English
soil, which, of course,
Richard rules.
That's why Edward I, before
he starts bashing the Welsh
and bashing the Scots, is
very keen indeed to identify
himself as the heir of Arthur.
And Henry VIII, the
greatest ego maniac
of the early modern period,
the King of the Reformation,
the king of the super
abundance of royal palaces,
chooses to paint himself
as Arthur on the round
table at Winchester.
So Arthur is a kind of theme
taken up by exceptionally
ambitious monarchs as a way of
putting some glitter on what
they intend to do anyway.
NARRATOR: Malory's story was
the culmination of centuries
of tales told about Arthur.
It drew on many
sources, particularly
the French romances,
which themselves sprang
from pioneering books like
Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History
of the Kings of Britain."
Published in 1138,
it was a bestseller.
Geoffrey brought Arthur
out of the Celtic twilight
into the sunlight of
popular recognition.
RONALD HUTTON:
Geoffrey of Monmouth
is one of the most amazing
characters of the Middle Ages.
At the time, he
was called a prize
liar by a lot of good scholars.
He was an appallingly bad
historian, if historian he was.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: There are
descriptions of kings who,
if they lived, were
in the seventh century
or living in the Iron Age,
or even almost Bronze Age.
And there are verbatim
accounts of conversations,
letters written at a
time long before writing
existed in Britain.
So it's clearly fiction, and
it reads like fiction to us,
and it's rather surprising
that anyone ever believed it,
but one can't dismiss Geoffrey.
On each rereading, I see
clearly that 90% or 95%
is his own cheerful invention
and very entertaining,
but behind it as a 5% which
is well worth the historians
investigating.
NARRATOR: Prior to
Geoffrey's attentions,
Arthur's name and exploits
crop up in various texts--
early church records,
well-meaning histories,
ancient genealogies, miraculous
lives of saints, Welsh poems
and stories, such as the
"Black Book of Carmarthen"
and the "Book of Taliesin."
These sources record a hazy
time in British history
where historical fact can
be interwoven with myth.
If Arthur existed, it is this
age in which we will find him.
The real Arthur belongs in
a time when the Roman Empire
withdrew from Britain after
four centuries of occupation
and integration,
leaving the inhabitants
to fend for themselves against
attack from all sides--
Saxons, Angles,
Jutes, Friesians,
Picts, Irish Raiders.
It was a time of
hardship, bloodshed,
and political turmoil.
Central government
was in meltdown,
military capability
practically non-existent,
and gradually the former
province of Britannia
split into warring
factions, reassembling
along the old Celtic
tribal lines, each
with its own chief or king.
RONALD HUTTON: The
so-called Arthurian period
fits very neatly into a gap
in the records of history.
It really is the dark ages.
What we face is a Roman Britain
in the process of meltdown.
It's literally a land ruins--
huge ruined towns, great ruined
walls, legionary fortresses,
aqueducts just melting into the
landscape as they moulder away.
And left among these ruins
where a group of people
busted down to an
impoverished subsistence
agriculture-- in
other words, peasants
farming small tracts of land.
They're people living in the
ruins of the closest thing
today being a nuclear
holocaust and trying
to pick up the pieces.
The only real contemporary
writer living at the time
of when Arthur would have
lived is the possibly monk,
certainly ecclesiastical Gildas,
who wrote about the middle
of the sixth century, and
he describes the departure
of the Romans, the
coming-- the invitation
to the Saxons to help
the Britons against
the Picts and the Scots.
How the Saxons then themselves,
having been invited in,
became a dreadful menace and
began to overrun the island.
And then he says
there arose a leader--
Ambrosius Aurelianus,
the last of the Romans--
who fought successfully.
There then came a period--
and he seems to imply that there
is a big gap of a generation--
until that famous victory at
the Battle of Badon Hill, when
the heathens were slaughtered.
And since then we
have enjoyed peace.
MAGNUS: Somebody around 416
imposed such a serious defeat
on the Anglo-Saxons and
caused such genocide upon them
it halted for 40 years
their advance into Britain,
and there is evidence to
prove in certain cases,
it caused some of them to
re-migrate back to Gaul.
NARRATOR: The
traditional view has
been that this reverse
in Saxon fortunes
was down to one man who managed
to unite his squabbling,
disorganized countrymen
and lead them to victory.
The name we have given
to that man is Arthur.
The evidence from this period
for the existence of Arthur
is, at best,
dubious, yet his name
seems to echo down the ages.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: The
earliest references
could even date from very nearly
within the lifetime of Arthur
and Merlin themselves, because
there's a very early Welsh
poem called "The Gododdin"
about an expedition of warriors
fighting the English
about towards the end
of the sixth century.
And Arthur, after all, if he
lived, was at the beginning.
And in one verse, it says of a
certain warrior who was killed.
He glutted ravens
before the rampart,
but still he was no Arthur.
In other words, Arthur was a
much more magnificent figure
probably than any more normal
warrior could hope to be,
which means that within two
generations of the real Arthur
he had become this
magnificent figure,
or was remembered as
this magnificent figure.
[chanting]
NARRATOR: Arthur
is also mentioned
in passing in some
church documents called
the Welsh, or Easter, Annals.
Written down between the
8th and 10th centuries,
they possibly draw on
earlier records going
back as far as the 6th century.
Two brief entries for
the years AD 518 and 539
refer to Arthur's victory
at the Battle of Badon
and then the strife
at Camlann, in which
Arthur and Mordred perished.
And there was plague
in Britain and Ireland.
And that is all.
Every other person
named in the annals--
and there are over 100--
is a genuine historical figure.
It is hard to see how
Arthur and Mordred could
be fictitious in that context
and tempting to conclude,
therefore, that they are not.
Another early
appearance of Arthur
is in the "History
of the Britons."
This was a ninth
century hotchpotch
of historical fact
and fable compiled
by a Welsh monk called Nennius.
He began by saying that
Arthur was not high born.
There were many
more noble than he,
and he described 12
battles, probably borrowed
from much older accounts.
Interestingly, he called him
dux bellorum, leader of battles,
or war leader.
Dux is a title for high ranking
officers within the later Roman
military command structure.
It roughly equates
to duke, or leader.
Some scholars see
in dux bellorum
a continuation of Roman
military traditions
by a commander in chief
struggling to defend
a very Roman way of life.
Others take the
view that it simply
underlines that, whatever else
he was, Arthur was not a king.
RICHARD DEMARCO: I think you've
got to place him at that time
when the Romans were
beginning to collapse
and I think he was
a Roman soldier.
Maybe he wasn't so
much a king, but he
had to end up being a king
because he was probably
the leader of all
those peoples who
lived all over the
British Isles who had
got to like living like Romans.
RONALD HUTTON: In the
very, very first sources,
it could be that he is a king.
The title he is given his
dux bellorum, famously,
which means leader of the
battles, which could mean
that he's a local
king who becomes
a paramount leading
a confederacy
of other petty rulers.
Or it could be that
he is a mercenary
or a professional who was
brought in as a leader for all
the troops.
Or it could be that he's even
a late Roman official, existing
long after the fall of
Rome, using Roman title,
which entitles him to coordinate
the various troops of Britain.
MAGNUS: When the armies went
back and the legions went back,
they left a power structure
that was already set up.
Quite a lot of their troops
would have had land here,
would have had wives here.
They would have stayed.
The power base would
have been there.
They'd have been in power
for two or three generations.
Necessarily, they
wouldn't have wanted
to go back and fight
in the Roman wars
because they had their land.
They had their power.
This is a nice system.
They'd have stayed,
and they'd have tried
to keep the Roman ideals
going, the Roman values,
the Roman civilization as they
knew it in Britain at the time.
NARRATOR: Was Arthur one person?
The defense of Britain
against the Saxon hordes
would have required
Arthur to appear
in many different
locations at once.
Some historians believe that
the only explanation for this
is that there was more than one
person resisting the invaders,
and the myth of a
British war hero
is an amalgamation of
many local memories.
Other scholars
believed that this
need for mobility
points to Arthur
having been a cavalry officer.
RICHARD DEMARCO: I
think he had to get
himself organized as
a leader of people
who were actually horsemen.
I think he was the
leader of a, if he was
a soldier, a cavalry
regiment, and he could move
quickly from place to place.
MAGNUS: The whole idea
of the Romano cavalry
was that it could move.
It was a force that
carried itself.
It had everything it
needed, and it was designed
to go to trouble spots.
And it would do
harassing attacks.
It would wear them down.
It would give them
sleepless nights.
The legend would have
been used as Arthur
is appearing everywhere.
Arthur is attacking Anglo-Saxon
invaders from all quarters.
They wouldn't have
known what would happen.
It was almost like the Jesse
James syndrome in the States.
If anybody robbed a
train, it was Jesse James.
If you got attacked, it
would have been Arthur.
NARRATOR: Nennius has
had more about Arthur
in a section of his
history entitled
"The Wonders of Britain."
The two marvels
concerning Arthur
seemed to have no basis
in fact, though both
recall his origins by naming
him Arthur the soldier.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: There's the
imprint of his gigantic hand
on a stone in South Wales.
And there's the tomb of his--
of a son of his of whom nothing
else is known, which, however
many times you
try to measure it,
the measurements will always
be different the next time.
He's become already a magical
and superhuman figure,
and that's in Nennius's
history written in 829.
That is three centuries later,
but still in very early times.
NARRATOR: Nennius also has
another interesting story
in his pile of documents
all about dragons.
The story related by
Nennius was a pure myth
and probably already
a very ancient tale
by the time he discovered it.
In it, the high king
Vortigern, having betrayed
the British people
to the Saxons,
was trying to protect
himself by having a fortress
built in the mountains.
But no matter how
much was built by day,
at night it was
swallowed up again.
Vortigern's magicians told him
a child should be sacrificed,
but one with no earthly father.
The young Merlin, known
then as Ambrosius,
was just such a child.
Brought before the
king, he challenged
the magicians to say what
lay beneath the foundations
of the castle.
Of course, they could not.
Merlin prophesied
that a deep pool
was under it, and beneath
that two hollow stones
inside which slept two worms--
one white, one red.
The pool was found and drained.
Sure enough, two
stones were revealed.
As Vortigern and his retinue
looked on in wonder and fear,
the worms were
released and began
to struggle with each other.
Vortigern demanded to know
what this battle signified.
Merlin replied that the worms
represented two dragons.
The white one was the
dragon of the Saxons,
who had been
welcomed into Britain
and had seized much of it.
The red worm represented the
dragon of the British people,
who had been driven out.
He foresaw that the
brood of the white dragon
would possess nearly all
the land from sea to sea,
but that one day
the red dragon would
rise up and throw the
English back across the sea
they had come from.
The red dragon is now
instantly recognized
as the national emblem
of Wales and its people.
But how did this
exotic and mythical
creature come to be associated
with the descendants
of the Britons?
And why red rather
than another color?
The answers could be found
by following the trail
of the dragon back to its home.
Dragons feature strongly
in the world of Arthur,
but not as monsters to be slain.
They had great importance
in their own right.
In fact, Arthur's name,
Pendragon, is a good example.
In early Welsh,
"pen" meant head,
and "dragon" had
come to mean leader.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON: Arthur
would have been a pendragon,
meaning head dragon, and the
head dragon was the battle
chieftain, rather similar
in nature to other cultures
where you'd have a
shogun, for instance.
It would be exactly the same.
Rather than Arthur as
a king or an emperor,
he was a battle
chieftain in the same way
that other cultures had battle
chieftains for that purpose.
NARRATOR: Arthur himself
was described by one bard
as the victorious
dragon and was praised
for his glorious
slaughter of the Saxons
at the Battle of Badon.
He often wore a helm
with a dragon crest
in the medieval tales.
Not to be confused
with St. George,
he was the dragon who
defeated his foes, the Saxons.
The red dragon was
his emblem and stood
for both him and his people.
But the question still remains.
How did a red dragon
come to be associated
with Arthur and the
British in the first place?
Some scholars suggest
a strange possibility
that the red dragon came
from the steppes of Russia
north of the Black Sea.
We have already seen how the
Arthur stories had made much
of his military prowess, and
in his title, dux bellorum,
we can hear the distant
echo of Rome's armies.
In order to make sense
of the Arthur puzzle,
we must remember that legends
have to grow out of substance.
It's not unreasonable to say
that the real Arthur would have
lived in a world shaped
by more than 400 years
of Roman roads and
buildings, culture
and customs, law and language.
That heritage did not
disappear overnight.
The dark ages did not
suddenly fall on Britain
like a heavy gray curtain.
On the contrary, things fell
apart gradually, imperceptibly,
and for Arthur, placed
within a generation or so
of Rome's abandonment of
Britannia, his way of life
was still worth fighting for.
He may well have been proud
of his Roman inheritance,
and that included his
Christian beliefs.
With heathen Saxons
pushing ever westward,
it was another powerful
reason to resist them.
RONALD HUTTON: If he did exist
round about 500, which is where
the stories put him, then
he was certainly a Christian
for the simple reason that we
have no evidence of surviving
paganism, particularly among
the upper classes by the end
of the fifth century.
And all of the oldest
traditions of Arthur
portray him very clearly
as a Christian monarch.
In fact, there aren't any
traditions that do otherwise
until the 20th century.
And the new desire to put Arthur
at the interface of paganism
and Christianity
tells us much more
about the religious dilemmas at
the beginning the 21st century
than it does about
the Middle Ages.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON: You've
got to realize that in Dark Age
Britain that, yes,
there was Christianity,
but you've also got to realize
that a lot of the writers who
have written up the
legends in years to come
are writing from a very
church backed monarchy,
and so they are making Arthur
out to be very Christian.
If you actually look at the
evidence to support that,
there is none.
The only evidence we see
is the Merlin figure,
which is quite obviously
going back to pagan
Britain and a druid advisor.
So the likelihood of
the original Arthur
actually being a Christian is
pretty doubtful in my mind.
NARRATOR: Part of Arthur's
heritage was a military one.
More specifically, it was
a strong cavalry tradition.
The Romans had
always made a point
of recruiting the warriors
of their conquered enemies
into regiments.
In this way, they could take
them from their homelands
and control them, using their
skills in the service of Rome.
And when the nomadic Sarmatian
warriors of the Russian steppes
were finally conquered,
the Romans already
knew that these were
the most advanced,
well-equipped, and
effective cavalry men
that they had ever come across.
They would make a
formidable addition
to the garrison at
Britannia, and it
would keep them out of trouble.
This was the reason for
the sudden influx in AD 175
of 5500 Sarmatian horsemen
and their mounts into Britain.
Transported across a continent,
Black Sea to North Sea
they were stationed at
first with the sixth legion
on Hadrian's Wall, where
some of their horse armor
has been found, and later
transferred to Ribchester,
a fort guarding the Pennines.
It must have made an incredible
impact on the locals.
To put it into proportion,
the garrison of Britain
had about 11,000 cavalry
shortly beforehand.
To ship over half as many again
in one transfer and to one area
must have been overwhelming.
[shouting]
The Sarmatians were a ferocious
nomadic people living as wagon
dwellers on the
grasslands of the steppes
of what is now Russia.
They were not averse
to robbing, raiding,
and extortion to supplement
their wandering lifestyle.
They were also superb
horsemen, fearless and hardy.
Their heavily
armored cavalry would
break through any battle line.
Wearing conical segmented iron
helms, their bodies protected
by suits of scale armor,
their principal weapon
was a six foot long
lance held double handed,
though they had great two
handed swords for close combat.
For third century
cavalry, they would
not have looked
entirely out of place
at the Battle of Hastings.
Understandably, many scholars
see in them the prototype
for the medieval knight.
MAGNUS: Basically what Arthur
inherited was a Dark Age SAS.
These people were efficient.
They were mobile.
They were self-reliant.
They would fight on horseback.
They would use a lance.
There was evidence of bow use.
They could also be
used as infantry.
They were used to
working together.
They could scout.
They could be used as
heavy shock troops.
They could go in, and
pick out you, and snipe
at you with javelins and bows.
These were highly trained
professional troops
that have been practicing
it for generations.
The skills were passed on.
The armor was adapted, used.
They would be covered in
chain mail, scale mail.
They were heavily
armed, and because
of their reflective
ability and everything,
all this armor would
glitter in the sun.
The thing about Romanization
was the Romans believed,
if you've got it, flaunt it.
And it came out in their
weapons and in their armor.
It was practical, but
it was also showy.
NARRATOR: It is quite feasible
that heraldry might have
developed from the Sarmatian
custom of attaching
pictorial flags and
banners to their lances
before they charged.
Known as tamgas, these
banners bore strange designs,
neither picture nor word.
They were like property or
tribal marks, pre-Christian
and mysterious in origin.
By far the most striking
of these banners
was the type known as the draco.
This was a hollow, open
jawed dragon's head,
usually of bronze,
joined to a long wind
sock of fine material,
usually in red
and mounted on a long pole.
MAGNUS: A standard is
necessary in cavalry.
It gives you a focus point.
It can give you directions.
You follow the standard.
The Sarmatians who came over
with the Roman army-- the Roman
army also adopted it--
was the dragon standard, the
wind sock, the hollow head,
the tail billowing out
behind with the movement
of the horses.
It would be funneled through the
mouth, and the tail would wave.
It was visible.
It was quite scary, as well.
You've seen this giant
standard waving around on top
of a load of armored horsemen.
It wouldn't be a pleasant sight.
So Arthur, if he was related
to the Roman cavalry,
the Sarmatians,
the dragon standard
would already be there.
So they would just
take it on board.
It would become
Romano-British again,
but not realizing probably
where it came from.
It was always there.
It was always used.
It was their standard.
NARRATOR: By the
fourth century, all
the legionary cohorts,
cavalry, and infantry
carried the dragon standard.
It came to represent the
might of the Roman army,
just as the eagle had done.
So it would have been the most
natural thing in the world
for the dispossessed
ex-Roman citizens of Britain
to rally to the red dragon.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON: Those
knights who patrolled Hadrian's
Wall would mix into
the Celtic culture,
and would mix into the
ancient British culture,
and post-Roman Britain, and
would fight alongside the Celts
and the natives against
any proposed invaders,
such as the Irish
raiders or the Saxons.
MAGNUS: So you could actually
end up with Sarmatian cavalry,
Asian cavalry, being
at home in England
and training Romano-British--
well, they would
become nationalized.
They would be Britons as
far as they were concerned.
Two or three generations
on, they would have
almost forgotten their roots.
They would be British, but they
would be trained in the ways
of their old country.
So they are heavily cavalry
orientated, which is what
the Romans were building up to.
NARRATOR: The horsemen
of the red dragon
became the knights
of King Arthur.
Their draco turned into
the Welsh "ddraig,"
a thing of bronze, wood, and
silk at the head of a cavalry
charge changed into the
guardian and protector
of a people's identity.
We know instinctively that
legend works like that.
A turning point in history,
significant connections
are made by eyewitnesses
to those events.
But time is a distorting lens,
and to us the connections
may no longer be visible.
This is never more true
than in the world of Arthur,
because, strangely,
there seems to be
another link between his legend
and the Sarmatian cavalry men.
The most sacred emblem
of the Sarmatians
was the image of a naked
sword thrust into the ground.
This is what Ammianus
Marcellinus, the fourth century
historian, has to say.
"In their country is neither
temple, nor shrine, nor even
thatched hut, only a naked sword
stuck into the soil, which they
worship with due reverence.
Such is the war god who
presides over the lands
on which they wander."
Blade worship is actually
quite common to an awful lot
of cultures.
The blade does represent
the ultimate justice.
It is only possessed
by the rich.
People spend months and
months making these.
It is also the
highest technology
that that civilization
is capable of,
but it has mystical qualities.
NARRATOR: Early on
in man's history,
the ability to smelt iron and
forge metal bestowed an almost
magical advantage on
the tribe or people
who possessed that
secret knowledge.
In fact, the metal
workers and alchemists
who drew out the iron
from ore or stone
often had to hide from
the society they served
to protect their secrets.
Deep in forests and mountain
refuges, their seclusion
gave rise to the tale of
dwarves and wizards of legend.
MAGNUS: The blade--
you must remember they
believed in only four elements.
There was earth,
wind, fire, and water.
All these are used in the
smelting process of iron,
and even more so in the forge
for producing the blade.
So this blade has been endowed
with all the mystical qualities
from the four elements, so
the spirits of all those four
elements are
trapped in the blade
and imposed in that blade.
So the blade has a
mystical quality.
It is magical.
So removing it from
a stone is the iron
being removed from the ore.
Moving it from an
anvil, as it is later
in some of the later
history, is just
relating how all these
mystical qualities
have been imposed into the
blade in the blacksmith's forge.
NARRATOR: That is
one way to understand
the story of the sword in the
stone, but, on another level,
perhaps the Sarmatian's
most secret image really
was just handed down through
successive Roman cavalry
regiments until
Arthur, commander
in chief of a newly forged Roman
cavalry force, inherited it.
Even as a Christian, he would
have understood the need
to clothe himself in the
traditions of the Roman cavalry
to emphasize his continuity
with that glorious past.
Like a giant golden
sun, he has always
exerted a strong gravitational
pull on myths and characters,
even from outside the legend.
The Celtic peoples of
the island of Britain
had always practiced the
ritual of sacrificing
precious offerings, like
jewelry and weapons,
by throwing them
into lakes, rivers,
and wells dedicated
to the old gods.
There is a strong echo of this
in Arthur's sword, Excalibur.
It was given to him by
the Lady of the Lake.
He made sure it was returned
to her as he lay dying.
Three times he asked the
knight Sir Bedivere to throw it
into the lake nearby, but only
on the third time of asking
could Bedivere bring
himself to obey.
As Excalibur whirled
through the air,
glittering in the moonlight, a
hand came up out of the water
and caught it,
brandishing it three times
in homage to the dying king.
Then it was drawn down
under the pale silver waters
and was gone forever.
RONALD HUTTON: If there
is anything really,
really authentic in the
entire Arthurian legend
that links to actual practice,
it's that heart stopping moment
when Sir Bedivere chucks the
sword back into the lake,
because when rivers are dredged
in many parts of England,
you find Iron Age
swords, often the most
exquisite workpersonship,
deposited there.
And since many of these
places are deep pools--
they're not river crossings--
the chances that these
things are just lost,
that somebody was boating
across and lost a sword
are virtually nil.
These are sacred offerings
put in there, probably
as gifts to deities and as part
of a great tradition of putting
hefty metalwork in
sacred water, which goes
on for another 1,000 years.
NARRATOR: There is one
final strange twist
to the story of Arthur's
sword, and, once more,
the Sarmatians are involved.
One of the tribes of this
barbarian people was the Alans.
Their only descendants,
the Ossetes,
still inhabit the steppes
of Russia to this day,
and they have a story about
one of their heroes, Batradz,
who was fatally wounded and
told two of his companions
to throw his sword
into the water.
Twice they pretended
they had done it,
but when they finally
threw in the sword,
the water turned blood
red and turbulent.
Did this story come to Britain
with the Sarmatian horsemen,
along with the red dragon
and the sword in the stone?
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY:
Personally, I don't
believe a word of this theory.
First of all, the tradition of--
the legend of throwing
a sword into a lake,
returning it to the maiden who
lives at the bottom of the lake
is certainly not confined
to the Sarmatians
and far more likely to have
existed among the Britons
already.
Secondly, there is
a common mistake
of thinking that, because
these Sarmatians happen
to be a unit of heavy cavalry,
immediately the mind leaps
to Arthur and his knights,
but there is actually
no evidence of any
sort to suggest
that the Arthur of
history was particularly
renowned for using cavalry.
So this theory to me
seems completely fanciful.
MAGNUS: The main problem with
Arthur is it is Dark Ages.
The reason why they're
called the Dark Ages is we
virtually know
nothing about them.
Our history is dark.
Arthur keeps most historians
going in their afterlife
arguing about him.
He is immortal just
through the arguments,
let alone the legends.
RICHARD DEMARCO:
History is a confusion,
and we've really got
problems, haven't
we, when we're trying
to work out who on earth
was Shakespeare?
You know, there's a rumor
that he really didn't exist.
He was someone else.
So if you've got problems with
defining who Shakespeare is,
it's the same
problem with Arthur.
NARRATOR: It seems that with
Arthur anything is possible.
It is a natural human instinct
to prefer the miraculous
to the commonplace.
If we could find comprehensive
answers to the enigma of Arthur
to pin him down for
once and for all,
we would be the poorer for it.
As things stand,
we can still choose
to believe that he
waits for the time
of his people's greatest
need, and that he
will return to help us.
Rex quondam et rex futurus.
there been a figure as
magnetically attractive
as that of King Arthur.
For many centuries, he has been
the archetypal hero, instantly
recognizable not
just in Britain, but
throughout the Western world.
In fact, the words King
Arthur are practically
a definition of
what makes a hero
in our Western civilization.
[shouting]
What is so special about
this mysterious king?
In our cynical,
world weary times,
we still hunger for
stories of Arthur.
This says as much about us
as it does about the once
and future king, but the
sad fact of the matter
is that Arthur, if he did
exist, lived in a time
when events in Britain were
so poorly documented that it
is hardly surprising
that history
and fantasy became entwined.
We all have our own idea of
who King Arthur is or was.
In the next hour, we will
explore the phenomenon
of Arthur, from his shadowy
fifth century origins
as a British war leader to the
very perfect medieval king.
There are many
gateways to Arthur--
history, legend,
myth, and romance.
They all lead to
different Arthurs,
yet they are all connected.
King Arthur is truly a
hero for all seasons.
He has a universal
appeal across cultures,
nations, and centuries.
RONALD HUTTON: Arthur stories
are really a good story.
Everything is there--
power, sex, greed,
and international relations.
There's war.
There's love.
There's sorcery, and there's a
link to the natural landscape.
MAGNUS: Everybody is
trying to claim Arthur.
The reason behind this
is Arthur is hope.
Arthur is light at
the end of the tunnel.
In the time of depression,
there is always Arthur.
Arthur will return,
make everything right.
[shouting]
The literally universal
appeal of the Arthurian legend--
I think it must really find
an echo in the human soul.
RICHARD DEMARCO: Arthur
somehow reassures us
that, despite everything that
could be thrown against us,
no matter what the task is, no
matter what the challenge might
be, you can actually face it.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON:
It's the spirit of Britain.
It's the warrior
spirit of Britain,
and then that is, in essence,
the spirit of Arthur,
and the spirit thus travels
through many different people,
many different ages.
Now!
[shouting]
NARRATOR: King Arthur-- those
two words still have the power
to evoke a strange and beautiful
world, where British history
and Celtic mythology merge.
The truth is blurred.
Reality becomes whatever
we want it to be,
and that holds true for the
5th, the 12th, the 15th,
and even the 21st century.
Strangely, even nowadays, Arthur
is probably remembered more
vividly than any number of kings
whose historical existence is
beyond doubt, and yet,
scratch beneath the surface
of the legend, and
there are clues
revealing a man, not a myth.
But the seed of the myth has
been sown in the imaginations
of the Britons who witnessed
Arthur's great deeds,
and each retelling of his
story helped it to grow
into the matter of Britain.
RONALD HUTTON: The
matter of Britain
is simply the Arthurian story.
In medieval Europe, there are
three great bodies of legends.
There's the matter of Rome,
which is the Greek and Roman
myths, including the
Trojan War, Hercules,
Jason, the rest of them.
There's the matter
of France, which
has the tales of Charlemagne
and his court, particularly
Roland, the great French hero.
And there's the matter of
Britain, which is Arthur's, and
it's interesting that it's the
story of the matter of France,
which is the most specific
to time and place,
and the most narrowly
medieval, which
has fallen through the gap.
And it's the matter of Britain
and the matter of Rome which
feeds Hollywood to this day.
NARRATOR: Unlike other
historical figures,
the truth about Arthur
has become so firmly
entangled with the
legend that the two
cannot easily be separated.
To find Arthur, we must
start with the legend
and work our way back to the
historical truth at its heart.
The legend is a treasure house
of symbolism and imagery,
rather than historical evidence.
Yet if we can learn to
recognize their hidden meanings,
those same symbols and
images can tell us so much
about Arthur and his world.
[shouting]
The story of Arthur that
most people are familiar with
is the one passed down
to us from Sir Thomas
Malory in the 15th century.
It is highly likely that Malory
was a knight who had taken part
in the Wars of the
Roses, so naturally
the Arthur he depicted is a
reflection of his own world.
It was a world where chivalry
was breathing its last.
In future, knights in armor
with swords and lances
would increasingly
find themselves up
against gunpowder.
[gunshots]
But the clash of sword on
sword and the armor plated
struggles so familiar to Malory
are forever linked in our minds
to the image of Arthur.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: The book
was one of the first books
published-- printed in
England by Caxton in 1485,
and it certainly is the basis of
the story as we all picture it,
but Malory was not original
in the sense that what he--
virtually everything
in his story
is translated from the French
romances on the continent.
Malory brought them together
and made them into this,
I think, really
the finest version
certainly in English of this
whole matter of Britain.
NARRATOR: In Malory's
story, Uther Pendragon
lusted after Igraine, the wife
of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall.
So he enlisted Merlin to
make him look like Gorlois.
He spent the night with
Igraine at Tintagel,
and Arthur was conceived.
Merlin placed the baby with
an honest knight, Sir Ector,
to be raised without
knowing his true parentage.
When Uther died, there
was no apparent successor.
To resolve the matter, Merlin
produced a sword in an anvil
on a block of stone and
proclaimed that whoever could
draw it out was rightful king.
Many tried, but only
Arthur succeeded, as Merlin
had always known he would.
As soon as he was
enthroned, Arthur
faced rebellion from his
nobles, but emerged victorious.
He received a new sword
from the Lady of the Lake,
the magical Excalibur.
He married the fair Guinevere.
He established the
round table at his court
at Camelot, attracting many
brave and good knights,
including the incomparable
Sir Lancelot, who was
appointed the queen's champion.
While Arthur was away fighting,
Guinevere and Lancelot
became lovers.
After the quest for the
Holy Grail had ended,
their adultery was exposed
by the evil Mordred.
Mordred was the result of
Arthur's unwittingly incestuous
coupling with his
sister, Morgan,
and he burned with
hatred for his father.
Arthur had no choice but to
condemn his wife to death
for her crime, but
Lancelot rescued her
just as she was to be executed.
The lovers fled.
Arthur pursued, unwisely
leaving his son as regent.
News reached Arthur that his
son had declared himself king.
Bitterly he returned to
confront the poisonous Mordred.
The two sides met in
battle on Salisbury Plain.
Mordred met his death
at Arthur's hand,
but dealt his father a
fatal blow to the head
before he fell.
Knowing he was
near death, Arthur
ordered that Excalibur should
be cast back into the waters it
had come from.
Then a barge carrying many
fair ladies sailed into view.
The sound of their weeping
came over the water.
They laid the dying
king in the barge
and took him away to the
mystical Isle of Avalon,
but some said he did not
die and had gone to Avalon
for the healing of his wounds.
Others claimed he slept, waiting
until his land had need of him.
Then he would return.
Rex quondam et futurus--
the once and future king.
RONALD HUTTON: Thomas
Malory is the end point of
the medieval Arthurian legend.
He's simply the wrap
up, which puts it
all in a set of stories
that link together and make
a nice harmonious whole.
And as the end point, he is
drawing upon what by his time
would have been maybe
800 years of literature.
So he's very well read.
He certainly got through all the
French and the English romances
of the last 300 or 400 years,
and what he's out to do
is synthesize the lot.
So Malory is somebody
who is drawing
upon a very big
body of literature
and using it really well.
Malory says that he
wrote the book in prison--
or at any rate, he
refers to himself.
He says, pray for
the night, prisoner,
which is suggesting he may
have been a rather violent
character among these Malorys.
And he certainly knows all
about combat and warfare,
and enjoys it.
MAGNUS: He was imprisoned
eight times minimum.
These charges included
attempted murder,
rape, robbing from churches,
abusing the clergy.
So we have this man who
is putting down on paper
the ideal chivalry
code, and he's himself
virtually the opposite of it.
He was no Sir Lancelot.
NARRATOR: Caxton could not
have known when he published it
in July, 1485 that barely a
month later Henry Tudor would
win the crown and end
the Wars of the Roses
when he marched into
battle at Bosworth
under a fluttering dragon
banner, the emblem of Arthur.
The matter of Britain
had become real again.
Henry was not the first
king to use Arthur.
Kings from William the Conqueror
right through to Charles
I found ways to claim
kinship with him.
In fact, when Henry Plantagenet
was crowned in 1154,
he wasted no time in
presenting himself
to the nation as the
legitimate heir of King Arthur
to win over his reluctant
British subjects.
In the legitimacy stakes,
that Tudor dynasty had
more justification than some.
With its roots deep
in Welsh earth,
it could rightly
claim to represent
the original British population
that Arthur had defended
so many centuries before.
One of the really fascinating
problems identifying Arthur
as a historical figure
is the complete failure
of any royal families to trace
a blood link back to Arthur.
The obvious people to do
it are the Welsh princes,
who, after all,
are the descendants
of the people Arthur is
supposed to have ruled.
And not a single family
tree, in a culture which
loved family trees
like title deeds,
traces a family back to Arthur.
On the other hand, there may be
some that are lost that did so.
What monarchs do later is
try and identify themselves
as the inheritors
of Arthur's land
and give themselves a spiritual
link with Arthur, which
is why Richard the Lionheart
is cock-a-hoop when
the monks of Glastonbury
claimed to have
dug Arthur up on English
soil, which, of course,
Richard rules.
That's why Edward I, before
he starts bashing the Welsh
and bashing the Scots, is
very keen indeed to identify
himself as the heir of Arthur.
And Henry VIII, the
greatest ego maniac
of the early modern period,
the King of the Reformation,
the king of the super
abundance of royal palaces,
chooses to paint himself
as Arthur on the round
table at Winchester.
So Arthur is a kind of theme
taken up by exceptionally
ambitious monarchs as a way of
putting some glitter on what
they intend to do anyway.
NARRATOR: Malory's story was
the culmination of centuries
of tales told about Arthur.
It drew on many
sources, particularly
the French romances,
which themselves sprang
from pioneering books like
Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History
of the Kings of Britain."
Published in 1138,
it was a bestseller.
Geoffrey brought Arthur
out of the Celtic twilight
into the sunlight of
popular recognition.
RONALD HUTTON:
Geoffrey of Monmouth
is one of the most amazing
characters of the Middle Ages.
At the time, he
was called a prize
liar by a lot of good scholars.
He was an appallingly bad
historian, if historian he was.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: There are
descriptions of kings who,
if they lived, were
in the seventh century
or living in the Iron Age,
or even almost Bronze Age.
And there are verbatim
accounts of conversations,
letters written at a
time long before writing
existed in Britain.
So it's clearly fiction, and
it reads like fiction to us,
and it's rather surprising
that anyone ever believed it,
but one can't dismiss Geoffrey.
On each rereading, I see
clearly that 90% or 95%
is his own cheerful invention
and very entertaining,
but behind it as a 5% which
is well worth the historians
investigating.
NARRATOR: Prior to
Geoffrey's attentions,
Arthur's name and exploits
crop up in various texts--
early church records,
well-meaning histories,
ancient genealogies, miraculous
lives of saints, Welsh poems
and stories, such as the
"Black Book of Carmarthen"
and the "Book of Taliesin."
These sources record a hazy
time in British history
where historical fact can
be interwoven with myth.
If Arthur existed, it is this
age in which we will find him.
The real Arthur belongs in
a time when the Roman Empire
withdrew from Britain after
four centuries of occupation
and integration,
leaving the inhabitants
to fend for themselves against
attack from all sides--
Saxons, Angles,
Jutes, Friesians,
Picts, Irish Raiders.
It was a time of
hardship, bloodshed,
and political turmoil.
Central government
was in meltdown,
military capability
practically non-existent,
and gradually the former
province of Britannia
split into warring
factions, reassembling
along the old Celtic
tribal lines, each
with its own chief or king.
RONALD HUTTON: The
so-called Arthurian period
fits very neatly into a gap
in the records of history.
It really is the dark ages.
What we face is a Roman Britain
in the process of meltdown.
It's literally a land ruins--
huge ruined towns, great ruined
walls, legionary fortresses,
aqueducts just melting into the
landscape as they moulder away.
And left among these ruins
where a group of people
busted down to an
impoverished subsistence
agriculture-- in
other words, peasants
farming small tracts of land.
They're people living in the
ruins of the closest thing
today being a nuclear
holocaust and trying
to pick up the pieces.
The only real contemporary
writer living at the time
of when Arthur would have
lived is the possibly monk,
certainly ecclesiastical Gildas,
who wrote about the middle
of the sixth century, and
he describes the departure
of the Romans, the
coming-- the invitation
to the Saxons to help
the Britons against
the Picts and the Scots.
How the Saxons then themselves,
having been invited in,
became a dreadful menace and
began to overrun the island.
And then he says
there arose a leader--
Ambrosius Aurelianus,
the last of the Romans--
who fought successfully.
There then came a period--
and he seems to imply that there
is a big gap of a generation--
until that famous victory at
the Battle of Badon Hill, when
the heathens were slaughtered.
And since then we
have enjoyed peace.
MAGNUS: Somebody around 416
imposed such a serious defeat
on the Anglo-Saxons and
caused such genocide upon them
it halted for 40 years
their advance into Britain,
and there is evidence to
prove in certain cases,
it caused some of them to
re-migrate back to Gaul.
NARRATOR: The
traditional view has
been that this reverse
in Saxon fortunes
was down to one man who managed
to unite his squabbling,
disorganized countrymen
and lead them to victory.
The name we have given
to that man is Arthur.
The evidence from this period
for the existence of Arthur
is, at best,
dubious, yet his name
seems to echo down the ages.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: The
earliest references
could even date from very nearly
within the lifetime of Arthur
and Merlin themselves, because
there's a very early Welsh
poem called "The Gododdin"
about an expedition of warriors
fighting the English
about towards the end
of the sixth century.
And Arthur, after all, if he
lived, was at the beginning.
And in one verse, it says of a
certain warrior who was killed.
He glutted ravens
before the rampart,
but still he was no Arthur.
In other words, Arthur was a
much more magnificent figure
probably than any more normal
warrior could hope to be,
which means that within two
generations of the real Arthur
he had become this
magnificent figure,
or was remembered as
this magnificent figure.
[chanting]
NARRATOR: Arthur
is also mentioned
in passing in some
church documents called
the Welsh, or Easter, Annals.
Written down between the
8th and 10th centuries,
they possibly draw on
earlier records going
back as far as the 6th century.
Two brief entries for
the years AD 518 and 539
refer to Arthur's victory
at the Battle of Badon
and then the strife
at Camlann, in which
Arthur and Mordred perished.
And there was plague
in Britain and Ireland.
And that is all.
Every other person
named in the annals--
and there are over 100--
is a genuine historical figure.
It is hard to see how
Arthur and Mordred could
be fictitious in that context
and tempting to conclude,
therefore, that they are not.
Another early
appearance of Arthur
is in the "History
of the Britons."
This was a ninth
century hotchpotch
of historical fact
and fable compiled
by a Welsh monk called Nennius.
He began by saying that
Arthur was not high born.
There were many
more noble than he,
and he described 12
battles, probably borrowed
from much older accounts.
Interestingly, he called him
dux bellorum, leader of battles,
or war leader.
Dux is a title for high ranking
officers within the later Roman
military command structure.
It roughly equates
to duke, or leader.
Some scholars see
in dux bellorum
a continuation of Roman
military traditions
by a commander in chief
struggling to defend
a very Roman way of life.
Others take the
view that it simply
underlines that, whatever else
he was, Arthur was not a king.
RICHARD DEMARCO: I think you've
got to place him at that time
when the Romans were
beginning to collapse
and I think he was
a Roman soldier.
Maybe he wasn't so
much a king, but he
had to end up being a king
because he was probably
the leader of all
those peoples who
lived all over the
British Isles who had
got to like living like Romans.
RONALD HUTTON: In the
very, very first sources,
it could be that he is a king.
The title he is given his
dux bellorum, famously,
which means leader of the
battles, which could mean
that he's a local
king who becomes
a paramount leading
a confederacy
of other petty rulers.
Or it could be that
he is a mercenary
or a professional who was
brought in as a leader for all
the troops.
Or it could be that he's even
a late Roman official, existing
long after the fall of
Rome, using Roman title,
which entitles him to coordinate
the various troops of Britain.
MAGNUS: When the armies went
back and the legions went back,
they left a power structure
that was already set up.
Quite a lot of their troops
would have had land here,
would have had wives here.
They would have stayed.
The power base would
have been there.
They'd have been in power
for two or three generations.
Necessarily, they
wouldn't have wanted
to go back and fight
in the Roman wars
because they had their land.
They had their power.
This is a nice system.
They'd have stayed,
and they'd have tried
to keep the Roman ideals
going, the Roman values,
the Roman civilization as they
knew it in Britain at the time.
NARRATOR: Was Arthur one person?
The defense of Britain
against the Saxon hordes
would have required
Arthur to appear
in many different
locations at once.
Some historians believe that
the only explanation for this
is that there was more than one
person resisting the invaders,
and the myth of a
British war hero
is an amalgamation of
many local memories.
Other scholars
believed that this
need for mobility
points to Arthur
having been a cavalry officer.
RICHARD DEMARCO: I
think he had to get
himself organized as
a leader of people
who were actually horsemen.
I think he was the
leader of a, if he was
a soldier, a cavalry
regiment, and he could move
quickly from place to place.
MAGNUS: The whole idea
of the Romano cavalry
was that it could move.
It was a force that
carried itself.
It had everything it
needed, and it was designed
to go to trouble spots.
And it would do
harassing attacks.
It would wear them down.
It would give them
sleepless nights.
The legend would have
been used as Arthur
is appearing everywhere.
Arthur is attacking Anglo-Saxon
invaders from all quarters.
They wouldn't have
known what would happen.
It was almost like the Jesse
James syndrome in the States.
If anybody robbed a
train, it was Jesse James.
If you got attacked, it
would have been Arthur.
NARRATOR: Nennius has
had more about Arthur
in a section of his
history entitled
"The Wonders of Britain."
The two marvels
concerning Arthur
seemed to have no basis
in fact, though both
recall his origins by naming
him Arthur the soldier.
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: There's the
imprint of his gigantic hand
on a stone in South Wales.
And there's the tomb of his--
of a son of his of whom nothing
else is known, which, however
many times you
try to measure it,
the measurements will always
be different the next time.
He's become already a magical
and superhuman figure,
and that's in Nennius's
history written in 829.
That is three centuries later,
but still in very early times.
NARRATOR: Nennius also has
another interesting story
in his pile of documents
all about dragons.
The story related by
Nennius was a pure myth
and probably already
a very ancient tale
by the time he discovered it.
In it, the high king
Vortigern, having betrayed
the British people
to the Saxons,
was trying to protect
himself by having a fortress
built in the mountains.
But no matter how
much was built by day,
at night it was
swallowed up again.
Vortigern's magicians told him
a child should be sacrificed,
but one with no earthly father.
The young Merlin, known
then as Ambrosius,
was just such a child.
Brought before the
king, he challenged
the magicians to say what
lay beneath the foundations
of the castle.
Of course, they could not.
Merlin prophesied
that a deep pool
was under it, and beneath
that two hollow stones
inside which slept two worms--
one white, one red.
The pool was found and drained.
Sure enough, two
stones were revealed.
As Vortigern and his retinue
looked on in wonder and fear,
the worms were
released and began
to struggle with each other.
Vortigern demanded to know
what this battle signified.
Merlin replied that the worms
represented two dragons.
The white one was the
dragon of the Saxons,
who had been
welcomed into Britain
and had seized much of it.
The red worm represented the
dragon of the British people,
who had been driven out.
He foresaw that the
brood of the white dragon
would possess nearly all
the land from sea to sea,
but that one day
the red dragon would
rise up and throw the
English back across the sea
they had come from.
The red dragon is now
instantly recognized
as the national emblem
of Wales and its people.
But how did this
exotic and mythical
creature come to be associated
with the descendants
of the Britons?
And why red rather
than another color?
The answers could be found
by following the trail
of the dragon back to its home.
Dragons feature strongly
in the world of Arthur,
but not as monsters to be slain.
They had great importance
in their own right.
In fact, Arthur's name,
Pendragon, is a good example.
In early Welsh,
"pen" meant head,
and "dragon" had
come to mean leader.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON: Arthur
would have been a pendragon,
meaning head dragon, and the
head dragon was the battle
chieftain, rather similar
in nature to other cultures
where you'd have a
shogun, for instance.
It would be exactly the same.
Rather than Arthur as
a king or an emperor,
he was a battle
chieftain in the same way
that other cultures had battle
chieftains for that purpose.
NARRATOR: Arthur himself
was described by one bard
as the victorious
dragon and was praised
for his glorious
slaughter of the Saxons
at the Battle of Badon.
He often wore a helm
with a dragon crest
in the medieval tales.
Not to be confused
with St. George,
he was the dragon who
defeated his foes, the Saxons.
The red dragon was
his emblem and stood
for both him and his people.
But the question still remains.
How did a red dragon
come to be associated
with Arthur and the
British in the first place?
Some scholars suggest
a strange possibility
that the red dragon came
from the steppes of Russia
north of the Black Sea.
We have already seen how the
Arthur stories had made much
of his military prowess, and
in his title, dux bellorum,
we can hear the distant
echo of Rome's armies.
In order to make sense
of the Arthur puzzle,
we must remember that legends
have to grow out of substance.
It's not unreasonable to say
that the real Arthur would have
lived in a world shaped
by more than 400 years
of Roman roads and
buildings, culture
and customs, law and language.
That heritage did not
disappear overnight.
The dark ages did not
suddenly fall on Britain
like a heavy gray curtain.
On the contrary, things fell
apart gradually, imperceptibly,
and for Arthur, placed
within a generation or so
of Rome's abandonment of
Britannia, his way of life
was still worth fighting for.
He may well have been proud
of his Roman inheritance,
and that included his
Christian beliefs.
With heathen Saxons
pushing ever westward,
it was another powerful
reason to resist them.
RONALD HUTTON: If he did exist
round about 500, which is where
the stories put him, then
he was certainly a Christian
for the simple reason that we
have no evidence of surviving
paganism, particularly among
the upper classes by the end
of the fifth century.
And all of the oldest
traditions of Arthur
portray him very clearly
as a Christian monarch.
In fact, there aren't any
traditions that do otherwise
until the 20th century.
And the new desire to put Arthur
at the interface of paganism
and Christianity
tells us much more
about the religious dilemmas at
the beginning the 21st century
than it does about
the Middle Ages.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON: You've
got to realize that in Dark Age
Britain that, yes,
there was Christianity,
but you've also got to realize
that a lot of the writers who
have written up the
legends in years to come
are writing from a very
church backed monarchy,
and so they are making Arthur
out to be very Christian.
If you actually look at the
evidence to support that,
there is none.
The only evidence we see
is the Merlin figure,
which is quite obviously
going back to pagan
Britain and a druid advisor.
So the likelihood of
the original Arthur
actually being a Christian is
pretty doubtful in my mind.
NARRATOR: Part of Arthur's
heritage was a military one.
More specifically, it was
a strong cavalry tradition.
The Romans had
always made a point
of recruiting the warriors
of their conquered enemies
into regiments.
In this way, they could take
them from their homelands
and control them, using their
skills in the service of Rome.
And when the nomadic Sarmatian
warriors of the Russian steppes
were finally conquered,
the Romans already
knew that these were
the most advanced,
well-equipped, and
effective cavalry men
that they had ever come across.
They would make a
formidable addition
to the garrison at
Britannia, and it
would keep them out of trouble.
This was the reason for
the sudden influx in AD 175
of 5500 Sarmatian horsemen
and their mounts into Britain.
Transported across a continent,
Black Sea to North Sea
they were stationed at
first with the sixth legion
on Hadrian's Wall, where
some of their horse armor
has been found, and later
transferred to Ribchester,
a fort guarding the Pennines.
It must have made an incredible
impact on the locals.
To put it into proportion,
the garrison of Britain
had about 11,000 cavalry
shortly beforehand.
To ship over half as many again
in one transfer and to one area
must have been overwhelming.
[shouting]
The Sarmatians were a ferocious
nomadic people living as wagon
dwellers on the
grasslands of the steppes
of what is now Russia.
They were not averse
to robbing, raiding,
and extortion to supplement
their wandering lifestyle.
They were also superb
horsemen, fearless and hardy.
Their heavily
armored cavalry would
break through any battle line.
Wearing conical segmented iron
helms, their bodies protected
by suits of scale armor,
their principal weapon
was a six foot long
lance held double handed,
though they had great two
handed swords for close combat.
For third century
cavalry, they would
not have looked
entirely out of place
at the Battle of Hastings.
Understandably, many scholars
see in them the prototype
for the medieval knight.
MAGNUS: Basically what Arthur
inherited was a Dark Age SAS.
These people were efficient.
They were mobile.
They were self-reliant.
They would fight on horseback.
They would use a lance.
There was evidence of bow use.
They could also be
used as infantry.
They were used to
working together.
They could scout.
They could be used as
heavy shock troops.
They could go in, and
pick out you, and snipe
at you with javelins and bows.
These were highly trained
professional troops
that have been practicing
it for generations.
The skills were passed on.
The armor was adapted, used.
They would be covered in
chain mail, scale mail.
They were heavily
armed, and because
of their reflective
ability and everything,
all this armor would
glitter in the sun.
The thing about Romanization
was the Romans believed,
if you've got it, flaunt it.
And it came out in their
weapons and in their armor.
It was practical, but
it was also showy.
NARRATOR: It is quite feasible
that heraldry might have
developed from the Sarmatian
custom of attaching
pictorial flags and
banners to their lances
before they charged.
Known as tamgas, these
banners bore strange designs,
neither picture nor word.
They were like property or
tribal marks, pre-Christian
and mysterious in origin.
By far the most striking
of these banners
was the type known as the draco.
This was a hollow, open
jawed dragon's head,
usually of bronze,
joined to a long wind
sock of fine material,
usually in red
and mounted on a long pole.
MAGNUS: A standard is
necessary in cavalry.
It gives you a focus point.
It can give you directions.
You follow the standard.
The Sarmatians who came over
with the Roman army-- the Roman
army also adopted it--
was the dragon standard, the
wind sock, the hollow head,
the tail billowing out
behind with the movement
of the horses.
It would be funneled through the
mouth, and the tail would wave.
It was visible.
It was quite scary, as well.
You've seen this giant
standard waving around on top
of a load of armored horsemen.
It wouldn't be a pleasant sight.
So Arthur, if he was related
to the Roman cavalry,
the Sarmatians,
the dragon standard
would already be there.
So they would just
take it on board.
It would become
Romano-British again,
but not realizing probably
where it came from.
It was always there.
It was always used.
It was their standard.
NARRATOR: By the
fourth century, all
the legionary cohorts,
cavalry, and infantry
carried the dragon standard.
It came to represent the
might of the Roman army,
just as the eagle had done.
So it would have been the most
natural thing in the world
for the dispossessed
ex-Roman citizens of Britain
to rally to the red dragon.
ARTHUR UTHER PENDRAGON: Those
knights who patrolled Hadrian's
Wall would mix into
the Celtic culture,
and would mix into the
ancient British culture,
and post-Roman Britain, and
would fight alongside the Celts
and the natives against
any proposed invaders,
such as the Irish
raiders or the Saxons.
MAGNUS: So you could actually
end up with Sarmatian cavalry,
Asian cavalry, being
at home in England
and training Romano-British--
well, they would
become nationalized.
They would be Britons as
far as they were concerned.
Two or three generations
on, they would have
almost forgotten their roots.
They would be British, but they
would be trained in the ways
of their old country.
So they are heavily cavalry
orientated, which is what
the Romans were building up to.
NARRATOR: The horsemen
of the red dragon
became the knights
of King Arthur.
Their draco turned into
the Welsh "ddraig,"
a thing of bronze, wood, and
silk at the head of a cavalry
charge changed into the
guardian and protector
of a people's identity.
We know instinctively that
legend works like that.
A turning point in history,
significant connections
are made by eyewitnesses
to those events.
But time is a distorting lens,
and to us the connections
may no longer be visible.
This is never more true
than in the world of Arthur,
because, strangely,
there seems to be
another link between his legend
and the Sarmatian cavalry men.
The most sacred emblem
of the Sarmatians
was the image of a naked
sword thrust into the ground.
This is what Ammianus
Marcellinus, the fourth century
historian, has to say.
"In their country is neither
temple, nor shrine, nor even
thatched hut, only a naked sword
stuck into the soil, which they
worship with due reverence.
Such is the war god who
presides over the lands
on which they wander."
Blade worship is actually
quite common to an awful lot
of cultures.
The blade does represent
the ultimate justice.
It is only possessed
by the rich.
People spend months and
months making these.
It is also the
highest technology
that that civilization
is capable of,
but it has mystical qualities.
NARRATOR: Early on
in man's history,
the ability to smelt iron and
forge metal bestowed an almost
magical advantage on
the tribe or people
who possessed that
secret knowledge.
In fact, the metal
workers and alchemists
who drew out the iron
from ore or stone
often had to hide from
the society they served
to protect their secrets.
Deep in forests and mountain
refuges, their seclusion
gave rise to the tale of
dwarves and wizards of legend.
MAGNUS: The blade--
you must remember they
believed in only four elements.
There was earth,
wind, fire, and water.
All these are used in the
smelting process of iron,
and even more so in the forge
for producing the blade.
So this blade has been endowed
with all the mystical qualities
from the four elements, so
the spirits of all those four
elements are
trapped in the blade
and imposed in that blade.
So the blade has a
mystical quality.
It is magical.
So removing it from
a stone is the iron
being removed from the ore.
Moving it from an
anvil, as it is later
in some of the later
history, is just
relating how all these
mystical qualities
have been imposed into the
blade in the blacksmith's forge.
NARRATOR: That is
one way to understand
the story of the sword in the
stone, but, on another level,
perhaps the Sarmatian's
most secret image really
was just handed down through
successive Roman cavalry
regiments until
Arthur, commander
in chief of a newly forged Roman
cavalry force, inherited it.
Even as a Christian, he would
have understood the need
to clothe himself in the
traditions of the Roman cavalry
to emphasize his continuity
with that glorious past.
Like a giant golden
sun, he has always
exerted a strong gravitational
pull on myths and characters,
even from outside the legend.
The Celtic peoples of
the island of Britain
had always practiced the
ritual of sacrificing
precious offerings, like
jewelry and weapons,
by throwing them
into lakes, rivers,
and wells dedicated
to the old gods.
There is a strong echo of this
in Arthur's sword, Excalibur.
It was given to him by
the Lady of the Lake.
He made sure it was returned
to her as he lay dying.
Three times he asked the
knight Sir Bedivere to throw it
into the lake nearby, but only
on the third time of asking
could Bedivere bring
himself to obey.
As Excalibur whirled
through the air,
glittering in the moonlight, a
hand came up out of the water
and caught it,
brandishing it three times
in homage to the dying king.
Then it was drawn down
under the pale silver waters
and was gone forever.
RONALD HUTTON: If there
is anything really,
really authentic in the
entire Arthurian legend
that links to actual practice,
it's that heart stopping moment
when Sir Bedivere chucks the
sword back into the lake,
because when rivers are dredged
in many parts of England,
you find Iron Age
swords, often the most
exquisite workpersonship,
deposited there.
And since many of these
places are deep pools--
they're not river crossings--
the chances that these
things are just lost,
that somebody was boating
across and lost a sword
are virtually nil.
These are sacred offerings
put in there, probably
as gifts to deities and as part
of a great tradition of putting
hefty metalwork in
sacred water, which goes
on for another 1,000 years.
NARRATOR: There is one
final strange twist
to the story of Arthur's
sword, and, once more,
the Sarmatians are involved.
One of the tribes of this
barbarian people was the Alans.
Their only descendants,
the Ossetes,
still inhabit the steppes
of Russia to this day,
and they have a story about
one of their heroes, Batradz,
who was fatally wounded and
told two of his companions
to throw his sword
into the water.
Twice they pretended
they had done it,
but when they finally
threw in the sword,
the water turned blood
red and turbulent.
Did this story come to Britain
with the Sarmatian horsemen,
along with the red dragon
and the sword in the stone?
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY:
Personally, I don't
believe a word of this theory.
First of all, the tradition of--
the legend of throwing
a sword into a lake,
returning it to the maiden who
lives at the bottom of the lake
is certainly not confined
to the Sarmatians
and far more likely to have
existed among the Britons
already.
Secondly, there is
a common mistake
of thinking that, because
these Sarmatians happen
to be a unit of heavy cavalry,
immediately the mind leaps
to Arthur and his knights,
but there is actually
no evidence of any
sort to suggest
that the Arthur of
history was particularly
renowned for using cavalry.
So this theory to me
seems completely fanciful.
MAGNUS: The main problem with
Arthur is it is Dark Ages.
The reason why they're
called the Dark Ages is we
virtually know
nothing about them.
Our history is dark.
Arthur keeps most historians
going in their afterlife
arguing about him.
He is immortal just
through the arguments,
let alone the legends.
RICHARD DEMARCO:
History is a confusion,
and we've really got
problems, haven't
we, when we're trying
to work out who on earth
was Shakespeare?
You know, there's a rumor
that he really didn't exist.
He was someone else.
So if you've got problems with
defining who Shakespeare is,
it's the same
problem with Arthur.
NARRATOR: It seems that with
Arthur anything is possible.
It is a natural human instinct
to prefer the miraculous
to the commonplace.
If we could find comprehensive
answers to the enigma of Arthur
to pin him down for
once and for all,
we would be the poorer for it.
As things stand,
we can still choose
to believe that he
waits for the time
of his people's greatest
need, and that he
will return to help us.
Rex quondam et rex futurus.