Was King Arthur French...part two

So there we go then, we've got Roman satirist Juvenal - the Seinfeld or Connolly of his age - writing about an Arvernian king living in Ancient Britain. Most likely his point was meant to be a matter of farce or absurdity, a fact that may have been lost on Geoffrey of Monmouth - who possibly sourced the name 'Arviragus' from Juvenal's poem. But why did Juvenal joke about an Arvenian king living in Britain? And could such a king be related to someone as real as Vercingetorix?

This is where we come up against the limitations of what we can be sure is reasonably accurate recorded history. We lose track of Vercingetorix after his surrender in early October 52BC. As the declared leader of a conquered state he would have been transported to Rome, probably via ship out of Narbo (modern day Narbonne) during November and then afforded a private villa beyond Rome's city boundary - where he would have been allowed a privileged but imprisoned life - all standard practice for death-row heads of state. After Caesar's Gallic Triumph in 45BC the King of Gaul would have then been taken to the Mamertine prison for execution. But in truth, we don't really know. We don't know if Vercingetorix was shipped to Rome, we don't know if he was imprisoned in a luxurious villa, and the few ancient historians who mention his execution do so centuries after the event. Chances were he was...but that's by no means definitive.

What we do know is Julius Caesar gave immediate clemency to all Arvernian and Aeduan soldiers and aristocrats at the end of hostilities. These two states made up a large proportion of the Gallic army's heavy infantry and cavalry - and Caesar impresses on his readers he wanted to return to good terms with these two powerful tribal states who had very much proven their mettle against him. And in describing his generous terms for their surrender, he does not mention the imprisonment of Vercingetorix. So, yes, there's a chance Vercingetorix was allowed to flee to neutral Britain rather than face the music in Rome. And if he didn't, there's a good chance a hitherto unreported relative did. Remember, we don't know Vercingetorix's real name and we don't know if he had brothers or children.

So this raises two possibilities...an unlikely one that Vercingetorix lived out a life of exile in Britain...eventually becoming some age old joke - a King of Gaul who had no Gaul to rule - or a dauphin existing in his father's name, achieving the same notoriety. And this infamy is something we have evidence for. Juvenal's joke about Arviragus is exhibit A. But here's exhibit B...and one most of us have heard. It is, what researchers like to say, that wonderful second independent source.

Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three.
Every fiddler he had a fiddle,
And a very fine fiddle had he;
Oh there's none so rare, as can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three

The origins of this Romano-British poem date to the same time as Juvenal...and guess what the Welsh name 'Cole' (or Coel - say Coil) phonetically resembles and may have once meant? Try saying Gaul instead of Cole and I think you'll see where I'm coming from. Hmmm...I think there might be even more to this story.

Find out if Calvus could tell a good joke

Was King Arthur French?

There's one thing we know about King Arthur - he was English, right? Okay, maybe he was Welsh...and then there's a chance he was Romano-Briton fighting against the Saxon invasion. Or perhaps he was a native Briton who fought against the Roman invasion. Frankly, no one can really nail him down, because he's a mythical construct handed down through the ages. He might be one man, he might be a thousand. And by the time the 12th-century French writer Chretien de Troyes added the romantic elements of Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the tale, the traditional origins of the story were at least seven hundred years old...or perhaps even much older. How much older? Well, when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his King Arthur story in 1136, the king was a native Briton who fended off the Roman invasions of the Emperor Claudius in 43AD...and his name was Arviragus. Now one handy thing about Arviragus, unlike the traditional King Arthur, his name comes to us through Roman sources...Juvenal refers to him in a satirical poem - "you will capture some king or Arviragus will fall from his British Chariot-pole" - which also dates the name to the late 1st-century AD. Of course this doesn't prove Arviragus existed, but it does mean Juvenal had heard the name.

And it's this name...Arvi-ragus. This is where I'm going to have a crack at myth busting. But first a little about my research. I've spent the last decade piecing together the Gallic Wars, particularly the year 52BC, when the Celtics from central Gaul finally got their act together and became a single nation for all of 11-months. The leading tribe in this short-lived federation was the Arverni, led by a 26-old who would become the King of Gaul - Vercingetorix (not his real name by the way, but a title bestowed upon him). And this is where a little bit of geography comes in. Avalon is in France. During the time of Vercingetorix it was called Aballo, and to its south was a city called Cavillonum (now Chalon-s-Saone) which has some phonetic context with Camelot...by now you might be seeing where I'm heading. Should I add by this time the Gauls had been throwing swords into lakes and rivers for the previous 1000-years and worshipped such water goddesses as Boann. Hmmmmm...I feel a wild theory coming on.

And here it is...Arvi-ragus. Arvi is Latin shorthand for Arverni or Arvernian. So Arviragus was the 'Arvernian' or the 'Arvernian King'. And if there was one Arvernian king Juvenal was joking about, it could be Vercingetorix. But why would Juvenal be suggesting an Arvernian King was living in Britain? Well, that's going to be another blog... 

   Find out if Calvus ever met the Lady of the Lake

Going for a spin

At its height, the Roman Empire maintained 266,700-miles of roads - 53,700-miles of which were paved highways. After its conquest, Gaul saw 14,000-miles of its locally built road network improved by the Roman Army, while in Britain another 2670-miles were built or upgraded. Rome itself had 29 paved highways funnelling into the city...no wonder they said all roads led to Rome. 

So, what we can take from all those vitally important and very large statistics? Well, the average Roman traveller had a lot of roads to choose from. But just how did they use this ancient interstate system? Well, obviously the poor used a lot of shoe leather, just like the Roman legions when they transferred from one part of the Empire to another. Of course there were also horses, mules and donkeys to choose from for those who wanted saddle sores. However most importantly to the land trade of an empire...the spoked wheel had been invented some 1,700 years before the Roman highway network and the Romans were just a keen as us to ride on cushioned seats. These guys weren't building roads just to be walked on. 

So what kind of vehicles did they use?

At the most basic levels were farm carts - known as Plaustrum - with timber board or wicker sides. Sometimes with one axle, sometimes with two, these were the trucks of the age. They were very basic and could be just about be built at home by anyone who already owned a mule or an ox. Depending on their standard of construction, the cheapest had solid timber wheels, however spoked wheels were used by those travelling longer distances or making more money.

Roman Carrus - what a real Roman Chariot looked like

Around the city, many of the wealthy would have gone for the sports car of the age - the Carrus - what the Romans called a chariot, but bearing no resemblance to the Egyptian style machines we tend to imagine. It was a two seater, with a small wooden tray suspended by leather shock absorbers over a single axle and pulled by one, two, three or four horses depending on whether the driver was a rev-head or not. With racy spoked wheels and steel tyres these were the Ferrari of the day - and whether racing or commuting, these were the must have of the driving elite. And out on the highway these machines could really fly - the young Tiberius is known to have covered five hundred miles of highway in 24-hours on one occasion - albeit, with a quite a few horse changes along the way.  

The Cisium - the Roman SUV and Taxi

For those in less of a hurry and more practically minded, the Cisium was the Roman SUV. Larger than the Carrus, and usually fitted out with a roof the Cisium was the equivalent of the 19th Century gig. Again leather suspension kept the tray separate to the axle, allowing the traveller to float above the road. Steel tyres again were the standard, so these vehicles probably wouldn't sneak up on pedestrians. They were popular as taxis in their day, and cab drivers were actually known as Cisiani.

Roman Raeda  

For long distance travel, the stage coach of the Roman era was the Raeda - two axles, leather suspension, steel tyred and drawn by teams of mules or horses, these machines weren't out for a plod. Designed to carry several people and licensed (yes, the Romans had road rules) to carry 1000lbs of baggage, these vehicles could cover 200-miles a day if their horses were changed frequently enough. Journeys of 100-miles between nightly layovers were probably more common.   

Find out if Calvus ever hitchhiked

  

  

On the Road again

 

Most of us probably think that the great freeway systems built through Europe and North America just before and in the decades after World War Two as the beginning of super road history around the world. True, four-lane, six-lane and eight-lane freeways hadn't been seen before, nor had the vehicles designed to use them. But if you want to know when the world's first super highway was built, you've got to go a long way back before the internal combustion engine was invented...to 312BC to be exact.

Meet the Appian Way. Running 112-miles southeast of Rome, linking Italy's second largest city, Capua, to the capital, and then to the eastern port - and stepping off point for several invasions of Greece - Brundisium. Thirty-three feet wide, paved throughout and able to sustain a century's worth of road traffic between repairs. But this road was the just the beginning. Thousands of miles of paved two-lane highway (the Romans drove on the left) would be built across Western Europe, North Africa and the Middle East - most of which continued to be the Western World's only land transport corridors well into the 19th Century.

And no, these roads weren't built by toiling slaves slashed by whips and chains...they were built by Roman soldiers, paid professionals who used complex surveying equipment barely bettered by today's laser technology to pour concrete and build pavements as good as anything we drive on. So if the Roman's had incredible roads, then their horse drawn road vehicles must have been a bit more complicated than the archaic contrivances we see in the movies...I guess that sounds like another blog.   

Find out if Calvus suffered from road rage 

A bad day to be the Queen of Egypt

Today marks the 2,042nd anniversary of Cleopatra's death. She was just thirty-nine. The last Pharaoh of Egypt was the mother of Julius Caesar's only son - Caesarion - and mother of Mark Antony's three youngest children - Cleopatra Selene II, Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus. The latter was just three when his mother and father died - tragic enough for the orphaned siblings, but it was also the end of a tragic and tumultuous decade for Rome, not to mention the end of Egypt's 3,100-years of uninterrupted Pharonic rule. In Octavian's Triumph the following year, the three Antonian children were paraded in gold chains, reportedly upsetting the Roman public to the extent the up and coming Emperor had his sister adopt and raise them.

Cleopatra VII Philopater, 69BC-30BC

Popular myth has Cleopatra holding an asp to her breast in a last act of heroic defiance against the arrival of Octavian's forces in her capital of Alexandria. But this is only a myth. What we do know is a wound was inflicted on her arm, either by a snake or by self-injected poison (yes, syringes, hollow needles and intravenous injections were available back then). If she did indeed choose to die by snake bite, it certainly wasn't an asp. Asp bites were well known for providing a very painful and prolonged death. Cobras, on the other hand, while not only being a symbol of the Pharonic crown, were quick and relatively pain free and had been used as a method of execution in Egypt for centuries - a fact, Cleopatra, one of the greatest minds of her age, would have been well aware of. Of course, there's also the ancient conspiracy theories her suicide was more murder than self inflicted, but to give Octavian his dues, he did organise attempts to save the Queen's life when he heard what she had done. In the end, it wasn't a good day for anyone involved...and to be honest, things haven't been the same since. In her death, Cleopatra gave us the Roman Empire, and, as a result, Western Civilisation.

Find out if Calvus was a snake charmer

Read all about it

As we face the possibility of the traditional newspaper disappearing within the next decade, maybe its time to introduce the Acta Diurna to you (the Daily News or Daily Action). This was the Roman State's first official newspaper and was started by the king of spin doctors himself - Julius Caesar. It had a much better print run than most modern papers - surviving for some 500-years...and it no doubt drove the mass production of printed news - and its spread around the Empire. And just to show nothing's new...this paper read just like today, headlined with scandals and crime, plus sports results and the standard births, deaths, marriages and divorces. Initially it was hand written onto white washed walls in the Roman Forum, but was soon converted to wooden tablets (in those day post cards and notebooks were written on cardboard like wooden wafers). Paper copies were sold throughout Rome, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility the Action was block printed rather than hand copied...after all hand copying a paper for a city of a million people - many of whom could read - seems a little beyond economic reality. Stepping out on a limb here, I'm pretty sure sooner or later someone must have noticed the local fuller's press was cheaper to use than a couple thousand handcopy scribes...but maybe I'm reading too much into it...

Find out if Caluvs went straight to the cartoons

Breaking bread

Romans were famous for their bread - I'm sure everyone has heard the phrase 'Bread and Circuses' Juvenal coined in the first century AD. And like today, they ate an enormous variety of breads, with recipes and styles borrowed from dozens of Mediterranean, North African and Western European cultures. Like any good bakery you'd shop in now, there were loafs, flat breads, sourdoughs, boiled breads...some were sweet, some were cheesy, spiced or herb. And fortunately for us, some original recipes have survived to the present. Here's one for a more traditional country bread written by Cato the Elder in 160BC. This is Libum...or sacred bread - a cheese bread frequently made for household altars - and hungry teenagers who didn't mind pinching it from the altar while mother wasn't watching. Fortunately for us he wrote his recipe in metric (rather surprising since it wasn't invented for another 2000-years).


INGREDIENTS
-120g of plain flour
-250g of ricotta cheese
-1 egg, beaten
-fresh bay leaves
-60g of honey
-A pinch of pepper

METHOD
Sift the flour into a bowl, then beat the cheese until it is soft, then stir into the flour. Add the egg and mix until the mixture forms a soft dough. Divide the dough into four portions before moulding into a rounded bun shape. Place four fresh bay leaves on a greased baking tray and cover with the dough. Bake in an oven pre-heated to 220°C for 40 minutes until golden brown.When the breads are done, warm the honey and drizzle over the breads. Allow them to stand in the honey for 30 minutes, then serve.

beatus esus

Find out if Calvus was any good in the kitchen