Caerleon

Geoffrey blended them all.

A magical sword called Califra and a Roman fortress called Caerleon appeared in his source material.

So Geoffrey's Arthur ruled from Caerleon and wielded Caliburnus, the Latin translation of Califra.

Geoffrey even added a wise counsellor named Merlin, based on the Celtic bard Murd, to Arthur's story.

If Arthur did live, he would likely have been a military leader, but a castle-bound king better fit Geoffrey's regal history.

He lived in the middle of the Crusades, and others imposed the preoccupations of the time on the Grail, casting it as a powerful relic from the crucifixion.

Numerous adaptations in French and other languages followed from Chrétien's work.

In the course of these retellings, Caerleon became Camelot, and Caliburnus was rechristened Excalibur.

Obviously, they start there in Gloucester, Lincoln.

Then they move to Caerleon in Wales, Chester on the border between England and Wales and Cheshire, and then Iberacum in York.

So those become the legionary bases, the three legionary bases, Isca, Chester, and York.

So when the – Roman garrison of Britain stabilizes in the second century, you've got those three legions.

But if you go right to the end of the first century AD, you have three legionary fortresses in operation.

You have, um, Caerleon in southeast Wales, which is II Augusta.

You have XX Valeria Victrix in Chester, and you have Ninth Hispana, which is in York.

All of them cycle legionaries onto the far northern frontier, wherever it is at the time, uh, along with the auxiliaries which are often permanently based there.

And a significant marker of this, I think, is the name that Chrétien gives to it.

So in his history, Geoffrey of Monmouth had placed Arthur's court in the Welsh town of Caerleon, so the city of the legion, thereby rooting it in the ancient history of Rome, giving Arthur the kind of-

Hmm

...

the patina of antiquity.

And Geoffrey very implausibly describes Caerleon as a match for Rome, which I think is probably overdoing it.

But Chrétien, by contrast, places Arthur's court at a place called Camelot, and this seems to be a name which again Chrétien has made up.

Because Camelot, this is the first appearance of that name in this poem, Lancelot.

Mm-hmm.

In 1109, for some year context here, the first royal castles built at Caerleon, and this is where we get these English marcher lordships that are established over southern Wales.

If you look at a map of the marcher lordships there, they kind of start where the border is between England and Wales, and they kind of curl around through south Wales so that these parts of Wales are much more firmly integrated into England.

That makes sense.

By examining every mention of the castle in the hundreds of stories that had been written about King Arthur, Alcock gradually picked out the main candidates.

[instrumental music] In the Middle Ages, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the romance writers had said that Camelot lay in Caerleon in Wales.

But that was thought to be based on the presence of a Roman amphitheater that looked like a giant round table.

Another possible candidate was found in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, published in 1485.