Authors: Paul Bannister
Carausius: The Legend of Arthur
Britain’s forgotten emperor Carausius and his triumphs may well be the true foundation of the legend of King Arthur, the mythic warrior who became a symbol of courage, chivalry and Christianity.
Late in the third century of the Common Era, the Belgic-born Mauseus Carausius was commander of Rome’s English Channel fleet and was quietly building both his treasury and his military forces. Ordered to report for court martial by superiors nervous of his power, the burly, bear-like soldier instead declared himself emperor of Britain and northern Gaul, suborned several legions and the flotilla that controlled the Narrow Sea between the two countries and began a decade of defiance against the might of Rome.
In that time, the rebel emperor quieted the quarrelsome British tribes, unified the country and, as its first ruler (286 – 293 CE) used his navy to create and sustain the nation’s independence. However, Carausius’ significance in history was forgotten for centuries despite his achievements in driving off the Romans and quieting the Picts. He may also have defeated Germanic invaders, as his Saxon Shore fortifications prove that he was more than prepared to meet them. Today, his known and acclaimed triumphs are closely echoed in the stories of King Arthur.
The life purpose and the legend of Arthur, the battle leader of the British, came together when he led his nation successfully to repel invaders. That victorious ‘lord of battles’ was described by the monk Gildas, (circa 500 - 570 CE) who created the island’s earliest written history when he penned an admonition of usurper kings, corrupt judges and foolish priests. In his sermon, Gildas described the siege of Mount Badon as the great conflict in which Anglo-Saxon invaders were routed decisively to bring peace after a long period of strife.
The north British monk’s ‘
De
Excidio
et
Conquestu
Britanniae’
(‘On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain’) speaks of an unnamed ‘outstanding ruler’ (‘
superbus
tyrannus’
) who brought the British a series of victories that culminated at Badon. That event was so celebrated that Gildas did not bother to identify the location of Badon or even to name the victor, noting only that ‘Arth’ – Celtic for ‘The Bear’ – was such a great overlord that the king of Powys, Cuneglasus The Red, humbly acted as his master’s charioteer. After that triumph, the very name ‘Arthur’ became a powerful symbol and was adopted by later rulers who wished to assume some of the glory of the legendary British champion.
Gildas’ writings are valued as the earliest known recorded history of Britain, although his calendar was muddled. He wrongly dates the construction of the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus to the late fourth century, when they actually were created two centuries earlier. By his account, the ramparts were built in the years before invaders from the west and north devastated the island. In turn, the incomers were defeated in a series of battles, of which the siege at Mount Badon was among the last, and the victor of that siege united Britain.
Gildas, who was writing a century or two after the events, might have confused the dates, but he likely got the sequence right: the walls were built, the invaders came, a leader arose to drive them away. It means that Arthur may have lived considerably earlier than generally believed, at a date contemporaneous with the late third century reign of Carausius.
The vast poverty of evidence from the time means that the other histories we have are not contemporary, some being written as long as 800 years after the events they report, but they agree to the general theme: that an ‘Arthur’ or ‘Caros’ led his country against invaders in the earliest days of the nation, bringing peace. Some accounts are not written, but come from folklore, like the strong Celtic tradition which holds that the Pict Oscar, son of Ossian, was killed when he attacked the emperor Caros while he was rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall.
The Welsh storyteller Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing his ‘
Historia
Regum
Britanniae’
(‘The History of the Kings of Britain’) circa 1136 CE, also relayed a good deal of long-established folklore and described Arthur as a Briton, although some suggest the king was actually a Celt.
Carausius, the historical ruler at the heart of the legend, may well have been Celtic. Roman panegyrists who denigrated the man who seized a throne from their patrons sneeringly described him as a ‘Menapian of the lowest birth,’ but their views were coloured. Menapia was the River Meuse region of modern Belgium, an area settled by Celts. Some sources suggest that Carausius was recorded as the son of a ranking official from the region.
What we do know is that his rise through the Roman military to become admiral of the Channel fleet attests to his abilities, and the evidence of the literary slogans on his coinage suggests he was well-educated.
His image on those coins shows a bearded, bear-like, bull-necked soldier, and all the evidence points to his being a bold and outstanding leader of men with great personal courage and charisma. Another clue to his standing is that at his life’s end he was buried in the heart of Britain as a king, and his headstone shows he was a Christian. The Carausius grave marker in Wales with its looped Chi-Ro cross is especially rare, and it and a tall milestone found in 1894 not far from Hadrian’s Wall carry the only two known inscriptions to him in the nation he once ruled, because the Romans expurgated his memorials after they recaptured Britain.
The milestone, which was found on Gallows Hill, Carlisle, was saved only by chance as it was re-used, reversed in the ground. The buried portion preserved for us the glory of the redacted emperor’s full name and title: ‘Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, Dutiful, Fortunate, the Unconquered Augustus.’ It was recorded thus:
IMP C M AVR MAVS CARAVSIO PF INVICTO AVG
Correlations between places important in the lives of Arthur and Carausius provide other links between the mythic and the historical men. The Arthur of legend has numerous claimed resting places, but some of the most persuasive tales link him to north Wales, where Carausius was buried.
This parallels the Welsh tradition that Arthur, who ‘carried the cross of Christ on his shield’ was mortally wounded at the legendary battle of Camlann. That conflict has been placed in Gwynedd, whose ruling dynasty was pre-eminent among British kings. In the 19th century an antiquarian described the discovery of a Roman grave in that exact region near the sacred mountain of Snowdon,
Yr
Wyddfa
, which legend says is the tumulus under which Arthur buried a giant he slew. The headstone, a very rare artefact, is inscribed ‘’Carausius lies here, in this cairn of stones.’ (‘
Carausius
hic
iacit
in
hoc
congeries
lapidum
.
’
) The site is of considerable significance. It is situated high on a Roman road southwest of Cwm Penmachno at the summit of a pass, and is the perfect place for a king’s long sleep, a resting place chosen to overlook a sweeping expanse of his territory.
The Carausius headstone is also distinguished as the earliest found in Wales known to carry the Chi-Ro cross of a Christian, a marking that is one of only a dozen found anywhere in Britain. The man it memorialized was important enough that his gravestone and probably his bones were moved to the nearby church of St Tudclud in Penmachno. This was an important early Christian site and is the reputed burial place of the heir to the Welsh throne, Iorweth ab Owain Gwynedd, who was father of Wales’ most famous monarch, Llywelyn the Great. The heir was also known as Iorweth Broken Nose and it is said he was refused the throne because of his misshapen face. Whether the long-ago royal was ugly or not, locals believe that two powerful rulers are interred in their ancient graveyard: the Roman admiral and emperor who united Britain and the Celtic prince whose son united Wales. The Carausian gravestone can be viewed in the church at Penmachno, which reopened in 2010 after a 15-year hiatus; the milestone bearing the lost emperor’s titles is in the Tullie House Museum, Carlisle.
There are other, tantalizing geographic links. One of them, mentioned in a 1622 history, is in Oxfordshire. It recalled memories of the long-dead emperor and spoke of the ‘entrenched sconce of Caraus’ camp,’ a fortification near the church of St Laurence at Caversfield, which may once have been called Carausiusfeld. This church was built around 800 CE, likely on an earlier edifice, and is close to where the casualties of an ancient battle were buried. In 1620, a hoard of Carausian coins was found nearby, at Steeple Clayton. Folklore holds that the usurper emperor was treacherously defeated in battle at nearby Bicester, a theme which reflects the long-held belief that Carausius was betrayed by his closest aide. This, history says, was a man known as ‘Allectus,’ a term which means simply ‘chosen’ or ‘elected,’ and which may not even be a proper name. (Another version of Carausius’ end is that he was assassinated by Allectus after the fall of Bononia.)
Equally, the site of Arthur’s greatest battle, the siege at Mount Badon, (
Mons
Badonicus
) is not known. Some scholars, associating the Germanic word ‘bath/baden’ with ‘Badon’ theorize that Buxton, Derbyshire, site of a spring whose sacred waters were adopted by the Romans as a spa, was the site of the Badon conflict and this fits neatly with the northern focus of the ‘Britannicus’ narrative. Others, arguing for Badbury or Bardon, place the siege in places as diverse as Bath, Coalville, Linlithgow, the Cotswolds, Dorset and Swindon. However, over the centuries the battles and the victorious king’s story have been recorded only in oral tradition, not in written chronicles, so the fog of myth obscures our view of the landscape of history.
The real story of Arthur, Guinevere and Merlin, reflected here in the characters of Carausius, Guinevia and Myrddin, will possibly never be known. As it is sometimes advisable to ignore the opinions of academics whose conjectures may be no more valid than those of other people, I respectfully suggest that the Carausius of history is the king whose deeds prompted the legend of Arthur.
What is certain is that in 2010, the discovery of a hoard of Carausian coins buried in a Somerset meadow brought attention again to Britain’s Forgotten Emperor and inspired this book. I hope it revives interest in the sailor who created a nation and a navy that has kept it unconquered for nearly a thousand years.
Carausius, Coinage, Modern Britain
Although these books follow the general outline of the life of Carausius, the narrative does take a few small liberties with history. Briefly, the admiral emperor may have been a humbly-born Menapian, from what is now Belgium, if his enemies’ version of history is to be believed. Or, he may have been nobly born. His later actions in referencing poetry on his coinage indicates a higher level of education than would be expected from a peasant upbringing. Some sources attribute Roman ancestry to him, which may be supported by his name, a classic Latin one (and not related to the much-later French ‘carousser’ – ‘to quaff.’) Other sources say he was a British or Irish prince.
Even by Roman historians’ disparaging accounts, he was a skilled river pilot who joined the Roman army and became a successful soldier, then admiral of Rome’s British Channel fleet, based in Boulogne/Bononia. Additionally, the evidence points to him being a charismatic leader. Around 284 CE, he was accused of diverting pirate loot to himself and was summoned for court martial and likely execution, which may have been a political move to rid the emperor of a rival. Carausius’ response was to seize power in northern Gaul and Britain, places where he commanded legions as well as a fleet. His ambition was to extend his military sway beyond the pale of Boulogne, even to Rome itself, but he was frustrated by the emperor Maximian, who was tasked with bringing the renegade to heel. The Roman’s first endeavor, in 289 CE, was a failure. The new fleet he had built was either destroyed by storms or more probably was defeated by the seasoned flotilla Carausius took with him when he defected.
Carausius reinforced his military position with the popular support he gained by tapping into the Britons’ discontent with their avaricious Roman overlords, and he skillfully used propaganda on his coinage to suggest he was a messiah returned to save the nation. The self-proclaimed emperor became the first ruler of a unified Britain, and entrenched himself behind the chain of forts he built along the southeastern coast. These Saxon Shore fortifications were intended to guard against an expected Roman attempt to retake Britain as well as to repel Saxon or Alemanni invaders.
Maximian had to wait four years after that failed invasion before he could drive Carausius out of Gaul. He retook Boulogne, besieging it and sealing the harbour against relief or escape by sea, an event this book placed in the narrative earlier than its actual chronology. In history, Boulogne fell in 293 CE, the year of Carausius’ demise. The loss of the port and the weakening of Carausius’ position probably caused a power struggle with his chief functionary Allectus, and led to the usurper emperor’s death that same year.
He had ruled a united Britain for seven years when he was either assassinated by Allectus or, more probably, betrayed by him at a battle near Bicester. Allectus, whose identity is obscure (the word itself simply means ‘chosen’ or ‘elected’) took power, announced himself as ‘consul’ and ‘Augustus arrived’ on coinage. He began work in 294 CE on a great building in London that went unfinished, as his reign lasted for only three years. A Roman expedition defeated him after a sea battle off Chichester, and a land engagement near Silchester. Constantius, now Caesar, landed in Britain after the fighting was over and signaled his triumph with a famous medal declaring himself ‘Restorer of the Eternal Light’ (‘
Redditor
lucis
aeternae’
) meaning ‘of Rome.’
The Eagle found by Carausius in the Blue John mine, one of the stately holes of Derbyshire, is a fiction, although there was a Ninth Hispana legion based at York and sent south to suppress the Boadicean uprising in 71 AD. The British queen routed that force with very great losses near the Suffolk village of Great Wratting. Later, the legion was deployed to the Danube, where its history vanished into the mists. It was not mentioned in an army list compiled around 170 CE. A search for the Eagle of the Ninth was the subject of a 1954 novel whose author said she had been inspired by the discovery of a wingless bronze eagle at Silchester. That artefact is presently on display at the Museum of Reading, and is not a legionary standard.
Also on exhibit, in the British Museum, are some of the 800 Carausian coins that were among a hoard of 52,500 Romano-British pieces of silver and gold discovered in a Somerset field in the summer of 2010. Such coins, the Penmachno headstone and a single milestone uncovered near Carlisle are the only known memorials of Britain’s lost emperor.
I should make a small apology for the use of some modernisms, too. In the interests of clarity and to prevent the need frequently to thumb back to a reference page, I opted not to use many possibly-unfamiliar Latin place names from Britain or France, making just a few exceptions that are intended to retain the flavor of the narrative. Two of those exceptions are Eboracum, which is 21st century York, and Bononia, the French seaport of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
To establish the locales: Britannicus’ tale and the series begin in the year 270 CE near Oceli Promontorium, now known as the great Yorkshire sea cliff Flamborough Head, and follows Carausius across the North Sea to Forum Hadriani, today’s Dutch town of Voorburg. Forum Hadriani (‘Hadrian’s Market’) was then the northernmost Roman settlement on the continent of Europe and was a key military post in the defences of the eastern border of the empire. Later, when the story is set in Britain’s Peak District, locations include the Roman camp at Navio, which is in the Derbyshire hamlet of Brough. The fort exists today as just a few stones and an earthwork containing traces of the underground strong room. The nearby Blue John mine where the fictional Eagle was hidden is still in operation. The Romans smelted silver from the region’s lead mines, including a major working at Lutudarense, now called Matlock Bath. This village is near the pleasant Regency spa town of Buxton which the Romans knew as Aquae Arnemetiae, or ‘the Waters of (the Celtic goddess) Arnemetia.’
Aquae Sulis is modern Bath; the Standing Stones are of course Stonehenge, Caros’ Camp is the fort at Cadbury. Candless’ church would have stood atop what we now call Trapain Law, near Dunbar, East Lothian.
To end the tutorial, Gaul is of course modern France, and Menapia, home of the real Carausius, was a region of what is now Belgium. The palace at Fishbourne, near Chichester, was destroyed in Carausius’ time, but its ruins and fine mosaics are real enough and are a major tourist attraction today. Some battles in these books are fictional, but they could well have happened, just as Carausius, the forgotten emperor of Britain, may be the lord of war whose exploits are the true source of the legend of King Arthur.