Tuesday Trivia: King Arthur’s History

The 2004 film King Arthur claimed to be “the untold true story behind the legend,” and while this is an overstatement on many levels,that the filmmakers found an interesting figure in history to upon which to base their new Arthur is undeniable. While scholars have searched high and low for sufficient evidence to prove the existence of Arthur and found nothing substantial enough to confirm the myth, Jerry Bruckheimer & Co. stumbled upon some existing research about one “Lucius Artorius Castus” and had a field day with the idea.

Lucius Artorius Castus lived in the 2nd century AD, and served as the Roman commander of the Sixth Legion in Britain, stationed at Hadrian’s Wall in the north, the massive barricade that stretched from Newcastle to Carlisle; his grave in the Balkans makes that much clear. The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius defeated a group of Sarmatian warriors above the Black Sea in 175 AD, and he conscripted the remaining 8000 into the Roman army; of these 5500 were sent to Britain as reinforcements along the Great Wall. The best archeological evidence of their presence here comes from the Roman fort at Ribchester, but there is no evidence linking them with Lucius Artorius Castus. Nevertheless, some scholars have surmised that many Sarmatians did serve under Artorius and his name became a sort of honorary title for great warriors — it has even been speculated that the entire Arthurian legend can be traced back to these press-ganged Sarmatians (see “The Sarmatian Connection” by C. Scott Littleton). A curious theory indeed, and one that enabled 21st-century filmmakers to fashion a King Arthur along both modern ideals and “new” historical evidence.

This would of course mean that the film was set two centuries too late, right? Not quite; the filmmakers do at least acknowledge the difference in dates:

[The Sarmatians'] leader, Artorius Castus, is the offspring of a marriage between a Roman and a British woman. He may be either a descendant of the original Lucius Artorius Castus, prefect of the VI Vecxtrix Legion and commander of the Sarmatian warriors in exile, or simply a leader who took the name Artorius as a title. (Production Notes)

The heavy Sarmatian influences in the film (horse traditions, battle standards, armor, etc.) are the result of the filmmakers squeezing the Sarmatian theory for all it’s worth. And while the history is simply shaky at best and the film no closer to proving the existence of Britain’s most elusive national hero, King Arthur works. Perhaps if the producers had not made such fanciful claims regarding the movie’s historical validity, the critics would have found less to hate. Admire its creativity, but ignore its “facts”