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.Instead, he is shown as a Dark Age Welsh king, with a similar position to the tyrants of de Excidio.He is shifted in time, to become a contemporary of Gildas, Maelgwn and Owain, son of Urien.Furthermore, he is assigned his own warband of fabulous heroes, rather than his actual colleagues, the kings of the Britons.All this is a distortion of the picture presented by the historical sources.Even Arthur’s victory over the Saxons at Badon, the touchstone of his existence, is missing.This eleventh-century legendary Arthur is distinct from everything which has gone before.This causes no problem for researchers into the real Cassivelaunus, the real Magnus Maximus, the real Gildas, who similarly became the focus of Welsh legendary material at the same time.The legendary and the historical Arthurs were blended by the artifice of Geoffrey of Monmouth, producing a fictionalised picture in which the legendary aspect predominated.This has cast doubt on the historicity of Arthur, but it is relatively easy to see where Geoffrey has built on and reinterpreted existing sources.His fictionalised Arthur has no bearing on whether the real Arthur existed or not, and it is unfair to treat a refutation of the former as reflecting on the latter.The victor of Mount Badon was a real person, and his dominating role in Britain implicit in his achievement.We have every reason to think that he is the original behind the Arthur of the Gododdin and Historia Brittonum.We have equally no reason to think that those sources are wrong in granting him the name Arthur.This man, this Arthur, commanded kings, at a time when private citizens and public officials kept to their allotted positions.In this sense, therefore, it is reasonable to say that the generation which witnessed the siege of Badon did indeed live in the ‘reign of Arthur.’AbbreviationsDEBGildas’s de Excidio BritanniaeEHBede’s The Ecclesiastical History of the English PeopleHBHistoria Brittonum (‘Nennius’)HRBGeoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum BritanniaeYGY GododdinAbrams, L.and Carley, J.P.(eds) The Archaeology and History of Glastonbury Abbey: Essays in Honour of the Ninetieth Birthday of C.A.Ralegh Radford, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1991Adams, J.dQ.‘Sidonius and Riothamus’, Arthurian Literature 12 (1993)Alcock, L.By South Cadbury is that Camelot, Thames & Hudson (1972)——, Arthur’s Britain: History and Archaeology AD 367–634, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971Anderson, W.B.(ed.and trans.) Sidonius Apollinaris: Poems and Letters, 2 vols, Cambridge, Mass: Loeb Classical Library, 1936Ashe, G.The Quest for Arthur’s Britain, Pall Mall Press, 1968——, Kings and Queens of Early Britain, Methuen, 1982——, ‘“A certain very ancient book”: traces of an Arthurian source in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History’, Speculum 56Barber, R.Arthur Hero and Legend, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1986——, The Figure of Arthur, Harlow: Longman, 1972——, ‘Was Modred buried at Glastonbury? An Arthurian tradition at Glastonbury in the Middle Ages’, Arthurian Literature 4 (1984)Barron, W.R.J.(ed.) The Arthur of the English, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999Bassett, S.(ed.) The Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989Bromwich, R.(ed.and trans.) Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961Bromwich, R.and Evans, D.S.Culhwch and Olwen: An Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Text, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992Bromwich, R., Jarman, A.O.H.and Roberts, B.F.(eds) The Arthur of the Welsh, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991Brooks, D.A.‘Gildas’ De Excidio: Its revolutionary meaning and purpose’, Studia Celtica 18 (1983–4)Bryant, N.(trans.) The High Book of the Graal, Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 1978Campbell, A.The Chronicle of Æthelweard, Nelson Medieval Series, 1959Campbell, J.(ed.) The Anglo-Saxons, Phaidon, 1982Casey, P.J.and Jones, M.J.‘The date of the Letter of the Britons to Aetius’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 37 (1990)Castleden, R.King Arthur: The Truth behind the Legend, Routledge, 2000Chadwick, H.M.and Chadwick, N.K.The Growth of Literature I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932Coe, J.B.and Young, S.The Celtic Sources for the Arthurian Legend, Felinfach, Llanerch: 1995Collingwood, W.G.‘Arthur’s battles’, Antiquity 3 (1929)Crawford, O.G.S.‘Arthur and his battles’, Antiquity 9 (1935)Cunliffe, B.Roman Bath Discovered, Routledge, 1984Dark, K.R.From Civitas to Kingdom: British Political Continuity 300–800, Leicester University Press, 1994——, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, Stroud: Tempus, 2000Davies, W.Wales in the Early Middle Ages, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982——, An Early Welsh Microcosm: Studies in the Llandaff Charters, Royal Historical Society, 1978——, The Llandaff Charters, Aberystwyth: The National Library of Wales, 1979Doel, F., Doel, G.and Lloyd, T.Worlds of Arthur: King Arthur in History, Legend and Culture, Stroud: Tempus, 1998Dumville, D.N.Histories and Pseudo-histories of the Insular Middle Ages, Aldershot: Variorum, 1990——, The Historia Brittonum: The Vatican Recension, Cambridge: Brewer, 1985Ellis, P.B.Celt and Saxon: The Struggle for Britain, A.D.410–937, Constable, 1983Fairbairn, N.A Traveller’s Guide to the Kingdoms of Arthur, Evans Brothers Ltd, 1983Faral, E.(ed.) La légende Arthurienne: Etudes et documents, les plus anciens textes, 3 vols, Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1929Field, P.J.C.‘Nennius and his History’, Studia Celtica 30 (1996)Frere, S.Britannia: A History of Roman Britain, Routledge, 1987Gantz, J.(trans.) The Mabinogion, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976Garmondsway, G.N.(trans
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