The last of the Romans

 I'm delving back into Roman/Arthurian history today, with a look at a shadowy figure who might have been the inspiration for 'King Arthur'. 

Ambrosius as he may appeared

The figure in question was one Ambrosius Aurelianus, described as 'the last of the Romans' i.e. the last of the Romans to hold any sort of power in Britain after the departure of the legions in the early 5th century. He is an obscure figure, remembered only in a few garbled tales in which he gets hopelessly mixed up with Merlin the magician, and his deeds and existence have been largely crushed under the weight of The Once and Future King. Unlike Arthur, however, we can be reasonably certain that Ambrosius existed, and played a major role in the Romano-British resistance against the Saxons.

The Dark Ages are suitably named. A blank curtain lies over British history from c.400-600 AD, between the departure of the Roman legions and the rise of the Saxon kingdoms. Modern archaeology is helping us to discover more about the period, but the sheer lack of written sources remains a crippling problem in trying to piece together events.

One of the very few surviving sources is De Excidio de Conquestu Britanniae, or ‘On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain’, written by a somewhat mysterious and irritating British cleric named Gildas. Probably written in the first quarter of the sixth century, it is intended as a sermon in three parts rather than a history. Gildas doesn’t mince his words, and uses the history of Britain from the coming of the Romans as a stick to beat the British rulers of his own day, condemning them as lazy, sinful and incompetent. 

The red dragon and the white fight over Britain

In fact, Gildas doesn’t have a good word to say about almost anyone. One of the few to escape his censure is Ambrosius, who he describes as ‘the last of the Romans’ and the man who ignited the British resistance against the marauding Saxons in the mid-5^th century. 

Gildas has this to say about Ambrosius and his times:

"The poor remnants of our nation, being strengthened by God, took arms under the conduct of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a modest man, who of all the Roman nation was then alone in the confusion of this troubled period by chance left alive. His parents, who for their merit were adorned with the purple, had been slain in these same broils. Under him, our people provoked to battle their cruel conquerors, and by the goodness of our Lord obtained the victory. 

After this, sometimes our countrymen, sometimes the enemy, won the field, to the end that our Lord might in this land try after his accustomed manner these his Israelites, whether they loved him or not, until the year of the siege of Mount Badon, when took place also the last almost, though not the least slaughter of our cruel foes, which was (as I am sure) forty-four years and one month after the landing of the Saxons, and also the time of my own nativity."

The reference to Ambrosius' parents wearing the purple may indicate they enjoyed some kind of senatorial or government rank, or alternatively that they were effectively martyred during the Saxon revolt: 'clothed in scarlet' is another suggested interpretation of the phrase used to describe them, meaning their bodies were covered in blood. 

According to Gildas, following the initial shock of the Saxon revolt, the Britons fled to Ambrosius ‘as eagerly as bees to a beehive when a storm threatens’. Under his leadership, they regained their strength, and challenged the Saxons to battle. The war raged on for an uncertain length of time – Gildas is frustratingly vague on dates – with victories and defeats on either side, until the year of the ‘siege of Mons Badonicus’, where the Britons finally scored a major victory that stopped the invaders in their tracks for a generation. 

Mons Badonicus, or Mount Badon, is traditionally the career-defining victory won by Arthur, perhaps Britain’s most famous legendary hero. Strangely (or tellingly?) Gildas makes no mention of Arthur. The only British hero he names in connection with the fight against the Saxons is Ambrosius, but he stops short of also naming him the victor of Badon. The earliest feasible dating for Badon is c.482, which makes it a little late for Ambrosius, since the Saxon revolt started some thirty years earlier.

It is possible to reconcile these issues. Possibly 'Arthur' was an officer serving under Ambrosius, his Magister Equitum or similar, and assumed command of the British forces after Ambrosius died or retired. Piecing together a coherent narrative of Ambrosius' career is impossible, since the evidence is so fragmentary, but he pops up in various disparate sources. The Historia Brittonum, written by Nennius in the ninth century, talks of the High King of the Britons, Vortigern, ruling in dread of Ambrosius, and of a battle at Guoloph (Nether Wallop in Hampshire) fought between the forces of Ambrosius and one Vitalinus. 

A depiction of Merlin

The Historia also relates the tale of Ambrosius being discovered as a child by Vortigern while the latter was trying to build a fort in North Wales. The fort kept on collapsing, and the king's advisors told him the only solution was to sprinkle the foundations with the blood of a child born without a father. Ambrosius was said to be such a child, but when brought before the king, he revealed the real reason for the problem: below the foundations was a lake containing two dragons. The dragons, one red and one white, fought a battle representing the struggle between the Britons (red) and the Saxons (white), and the shockwaves of their battle was causing the fort to collapse. One day, Ambrosius prophesied, the red dragon would triumph over the white, and cast it back into the sea. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c.1136, took this tale and altered it, giving Ambrosius the name 'Merlin Ambrosius' and conflating him with tales of a 6th century bard named Myrddin Wyllt, who was said to have run mad after witnessing the horrors of battle. Thus the figure of 'Merlin' as we know him today was partially derived from the historical Ambrosius. 

Arthurian novelists have generally been keen to skim over Ambrosius in order to get to the main event, or even omit him altogether. He has a cameo in Marion Zimmer Bradlay's The Mists of Avalon, where he limps on for a few pages before quietly expiring offstage, and doesn't appear at all in Bernard Cornwell's Warlord trilogy. Rosemary Sutcliffe and Mary Stewart did him justice, allowing Ambrosius a share of the limelight before he makes way for Arthur, but he is still a supporting character.  This seems slightly unfair on one of the few definite historical personages we know anything about from this period, and one who initiated the fight-back against his country’s enemies.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

     

   

  

  

   

  

  

  

    

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

   

  

      

  

  

  

  

  

    

  

  

  

    

  

    

   

  

     

    

   

   

    

Screen Kays

Following on from my last post about Sir Kay and his development (or rather, degeneration) over centuries of Arthurian legend and storytelling, I want to post something about the various depictions of the character on film and TV. I am aware of four Screen Kays, though obviously there are many more screen versions of the story. If anyone knows of Kays I might have missed, please feel free to say.

First up is Cartoon Kay, from the 1963 Disney animated version of TH White's The Sword in the Stone. White's book and its sequels are, for me, far and away the greatest version of this very old story, full of pathos and humour and imbued with one man's righteous fury against the dreadfulness of humanity as a species. The film encompasses none of these things, but then it doesn't try to. It's an efficiently amusing cartoon for kids, in which a young Arthur - or Wart - gets turned into various creatures by Merlin, with the occasional sing-song and dancing teapot thrown in.

Arthur's older brother, Kay, is one of the most obnoxious depictions of Kay since Malory showed him slapping a woman to get Sir Percival's attention. This Kay is not only an unpleasant bully who makes Wart's life hell, but dumb as a post.

WAAAARRRRTTT!!!!

Even when Arthur draws the sword from the stone, Kay has trouble figuring out what's going on, and we last see him squinting miserably at his own feet after his father, Sir Ector, forces him to kneel before King Arthur.

Next up is Sexy Celtic Kay, from the 1970s series Arthur of the Britons. Made by HTV between 1972-3, this series was an interesting but flawed experiment, the first screen version of the legend to make an attempt at placing Arthur and his followers in a believable historical context i.e. post-Roman Britain. The warlord Arthur and his men are just a bunch of grubby Celtic warriors living in thatched halls and roundhouses, though they do have fabulous hair - none more so than Michael Gothard as Kay (Kai).

Mmmmm....Celtic

Kai is a Saxon orphan, reared as Arthur's brother by their father, Lud. Stern and loyal and perpetually unsmiling, the nastier side of the character is largely absent in this depiction. In general, Arthur of the Britons was a bold effort, but hamstrung by a tiny budget and some iffy pacing and editing. A remake might be interesting.

Screen Kay no.3 is my personal favourite. Played by Niall O'Brien, Sir Kay in John Boorman's Excalibur (1981) plays a subtle but important role in the film. Boorman clearly did his research on the character, and allows Kay his proper place as Arthur's loyal seneschal, a constant and dependable presence when all the other knights are falling to bits (quite literally, since they never take their armour off. That stuff rusts).

This Kay remains by Arthur's side when the rest of the knights ride off on the doomed Grail quest, here reinvented as an almost pagan symbol of fertility and renewal. A hint of his obnoxiousness remains, such as when he says to an aspiring young squire: "kitchen knives and greasy spits will be your weapons, boy - to the kitchens!" but otherwise he is a decent, upright sort of chap.

Me? Evil?

When the evil Mordred, played here by Robert Addie as a truly vile product of incest, rides up to Camelot and demands Arthur's castle and kingdom, it is Kay who (I'm paraphrasing) warns the horrible little jerk to back off unless he wants Kay's foot up his shiny metal ass. Kay is one of the few men to ride with Arthur to his first battle, and the few to ride with him to the last, a weird, mist-shrouded affair in which knights in shiny silver armour and knights in dirty black armour cut each other to bits. Kay is last seen hacking away at the bad guys, before a white-bearded Lancelot thunders in to save the day.

The fourth and last of my Screen Kays is sadly the worst. Played by Peter Mooney in the ill-fated Starz series Camelot - or Hack n'Shag, as it might have been called, such was the degree of naked tits and softcore humping on display - this Kay lands with a dull thud. Mooney is one of those routinely handsome actors that seem to populate all modern fantasy/sci-fi shows, and his character is as boring as his haircut. Not a whit of Kay's traditional nastiness remains. Without that, and without much natural charisma from the actor playing him, Kay is reduced to just another knight, though he keeps his role as Arthur's foster-brother.

Yawn

Kay was spared the embarrassment of appearing in the 2004 Bruckheimer-produced abomination King Arthur. This was billed as the Truth Behind the Legend, in the sense that Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves was a gritty, realistic, hard-hitting exposé of social conditions in late 12th century England.

So far as I'm aware, no more Arthurian films or televised dramas are planned for the near future, though doubtless there will be: one recent idea, apparently shelved, was a remake of Excalibur. Hopefully, the next time Sir Kay appears onscreen, he will be in his full glory as an obnoxious, sarcastic asshat capable of breathing underwater, shooting fire from his hands, killing oxen with a single blow and shooting up to the height of a tree. At least it would be good for a laugh.

The degeneration of Sir Kay

As part of my recent swerve into Arthurian legend, I wanted to post something about one of the most unfairly maligned characters in the story, namely Sir Kay, Arthur's seneschal and foster-brother. 

Anyone familiar with Chrétien de Troyes and Malory will know that Kay is a pretty undesirable character: jealous of the prowess of other knights, a buffoon and a braggart and a bully, he is frequently humiliated and beaten up, yet never loses the affection of his King, who seems to regard Kay as indispensable. After one particularly embarrassing episode, in which Kay fails to defend a noble lady, Arthur says to him:

"Seneschal, stay at court as usual, and you may be sure that I have nothing in this world I would not give you without hesitation just to keep you here. "

The hapless Sir Kay fails again

One gets the impression that the medieval writers found Kay's presence something of an irritant. Unlike the other knights, he occupies a unique place in the story, being arguably closer to Arthur than even Queen Guinevere or Sir Lancelot: he is certainly more loyal than either. His deathless loyalty remains intact throughout most versions of the legend, even though his character and ability as a warrior are ruthlessly degraded.

In fact Sir Kay (or Cei in his original form) is one of the oldest of all Arthurian characters. He and Bedwyr (later Sir Bedivere) are the first of Arthur’s named companions in the early Welsh texts and triads. From the beginning, he is a difficult and slightly ambivalent personality, ferocious in battle but inclined to be rude and quarrelsome. His own father, named as Cynyr rather than Sir Ector, prophesies that his son’s heart would be eternally cold, and his nature exceptionally stubborn.

A depiction of Cei in Welsh legend

Cei is also infused with magical powers, as the following extract from Culhwch and Olwen describes:

"Thereupon Kai rose up. Kai had this peculiarity, that his breath lasted nine nights and nine days under water, and he could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. A wound from Kai's sword no physician could heal. Very subtle was Kai. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity,--so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire."

Unlike his later incarnation, Cei is also a ferocious and terrifying warrior. The tenth century Welsh poem Pa Gur says this of him:

Prince of the plunder,

The unrelenting warrior to his enemy;

Heavy was he in his vengeance;

Terrible was his fighting.

When he would drink from a horn,

He would drink as much as four;

When into battle he came

He slew as would a hundred.

Unless God should accomplish it,

Cei's death would be unattainable.

Worthy Cei and Llachau

Used to fight battles,

Before the pain of livid spears...'

Even at this early stage, however, there is a stubborn and quarrelsome side to Cei. When Arthur makes the mistake of mocking his exploits, Cei explodes with rage and flounces off, declaring that he will have no more to do with Arthur or his court: henceforth: 'Cei had nothing to do with Arthur from then on, not when the latter was waning in strength, or when his men were being killed.' This is a rare instance of Cei showing disloyalty to Arthur, and an early warning of the dark side to his character. 

As the Middle Ages progressed, new characters were introduced into the Arthurian cycle, often at the expense of the old. Many of Arthur's oldest followers were jettisoned entirely in favour of the likes of Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad etc, but Cei (now Sir Kay) remained, albeit in a much-reduced state. His traditional role of the gatekeeper to Arthur's hall is downgraded to 'salver' i.e. a sort of glorified butler, and his chief purpose is to act as a blundering foil for the younger knights, insulting and belittling the likes of Sir Gareth and Sir Percival until they lose patience and give him a thrashing. Thus the mighty British warrior of old was robbed of his dignity and turned into a laughing stock.

Sir Kay annoys the hell out of Sir Percival

Some writers have detected a more subtle meaning behind Kay’s behaviour, and suggested that his bullying was a deliberate tactic to keep order at court. This set me on the road to thinking of Kay as a more clever and subtle character than his latter-day reputation suggests – ‘very subtle was Kai’, as an early Welsh text puts it. The idea that he played the bully to keep Arthur’s knights in line suggests a man who was rather more intelligent than most of them, and perhaps entrusted with political secrets. 

Gradually an idea for a story centred on Sir Kay took shape in my mind, but more on that later...

Siege of Rome

My third release for this month - if you include the re-release of Book One of Caesar's Sword, is the sequel, CAESAR'S SWORD (II): SIEGE OF ROME. 

Book Two of the series is set shortly after the events of The Red Death, which saw Arthur's grandson, Coel ap Amhar, rise from a lowly slave to a charioteer in The Hippodrome, to a respected soldier in the Roman army led by Flavius Belisarius, the last great general of imperial Rome.

Belisarius has re-conquered the old Roman province of North Africa, and brought the mad King of the Vandals, Gelimer, back to Constantinople as a captive, along with heaps of treasure. Encouraged by this success, the Emperor Justinian has made Belisarius a Consul, and plans to take back Italy and the lost city of Rome. Once the capital and beating heart of the Roman Empire, Rome has for over a century been in the hands of the 'barbarian' Goths and Ostrogoths. Justinian entertains grand dreams of restoring the shattered Western Empire, and ruling over East and West in the manner of his predecessors.

Emperor Justinian I

To this end, he sends Belisarius with an army of twelve thousand men, mostly mercenaries and foederatii troops, to recapture Sicily and the Italian mainland. The Goths are in turmoil, as their kings are murdering each other left and right, and Justinian hopes his golden general can take advantage of the chaos. Before long, however, a new and vigorous Gothic monarch emerges from the ruck, and the Romans find themselves stranded and hideously outnumbered in the middle of hostile territory.

Armed with just his famous grandfather's sword, Caledfwlch, and a heap of fortitude, Coel must fight to defend the walls of Rome and preserve his own life from the ever-growing numbers of deadly enemies and assassins who wish him ill...

Caesar's Sword (II): Siege of Rome