Who Was the Real King Arthur?

Was King Arthur a real historical figure or merely a mythical hero? Tristan Hughes and Dr. Miles Russell delve into the myth and mystery of King Arthur, exploring the historical figures who may have inspired this legendary character, including Magnus Maximus, Emperor Constantine and Julius Caesar's great rival Cassivellaunus. They reveal the fascinating connections and rich oral traditions that shaped Arthurian legend and ravel the myths, surrounding one of Britain's most legendary figures. Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Theme music from Motion Array, all other music from Epidemic Sound Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Hi folks, this is Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman, and I'm here to suggest that you host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are, as usual, no antibiotics ever in their meat department, so carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All of their fabulous delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Where else are you going to find that? Gourmet Thanksgiving flavours with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.

• 1:46Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:30Tristan Hughes?

  And what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days? And how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology. Plus, the tip I really needed. How to book flights without it turning into a part-time job. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:07Tristan Hughes?

  It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and Happy New Year. 2025 is here and for the ancients, well, we have some huge treats for you over the next few weeks as we kick off January in style. Watch this space. Now, it is still the holiday season and the ancients team are just wrapping up their Christmas break. So today, we're bringing back to the fore another of my favourite episodes from the back catalogue. And I had a lot of fun choosing this particular episode because it's all about King Arthur and the real-life ancient figures who inspired this legendary king of the Britons. Because there was more than one, as the brilliant Dr Miles Russell from Bournemouth University explained to me

• 3:49Tristan Hughes?

  in this interview that I did with him back in early 2021, almost four years ago. Miles has been a regular on The Ancients and on the History Hit YouTube channel since then. We filmed with him about the great Iron Age British hillfort Maiden Castle and about the mysterious Roman Ninth Legion, Legio IX Hispana. He is a lovely man and a brilliant speaker, talking Romans, Iron Age Britons and King Arthur. You name it, he knows it. What's not to love? Enjoy.

• 4:24Tristan Hughes?

  The question of who was the real King Arthur, it's kind of like what happened to the Ninth Legion. It's one of those great mystery questions of history.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  It is. I mean, Arthur is such an incredible character. He's a world character, really. You know, he's famous everywhere and I think his story is one that just keeps getting reinvented for every generation. You know, he's one of those characters from the past where it's now very difficult to disentangle the historical truth from the sort of mythology and the fantasy that's built on it. But because the story's been enlarged and enlarged and enlarged over time, you know, every generation makes the Arthur that they want. So we will see in the last few decades, there's been TV series, there's been films, there's been computer games. It's just building on that mythology. So probably of all characters in the past, King Arthur is probably one of the most famous, really. He's world renowned.

• 5:12Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely world renowned. And you are an archaeologist of ancient history. And although we sometimes think of Arthur as this medieval figure, he has these incredible links, shall we say, when you look at the research to ancient Britain.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yes, yes. I mean, it's, I guess, you know, King Arthur is one of those characters who's always fascinated historians and archaeologists alike, trying to get back to the actual physical truth of him. You know, did he, the argument is always going that there are those who believe he was a real character operating at the end of Roman Britain and those who believe he's complete fantasy. And within that, they're trying to find some middle ground of trying to actually place him because it's such an emotive time. You know, when you're talking about the end of Roman Britain, we're talking about the beginning of the kingdoms of what becomes England, what becomes the Principality of Wales, the Kingdom of Scotland. It's all these formative stories, all these foundation myths all begin at that,

• 6:07Speaker 02

  all coalesce at that one time. So, so Arthur's there at the epicentre of all that. So they're trying to, you know, he's got great resonance today, trying to find out who he was, where he existed and what he actually did.

• 6:19Tristan Hughes?

  Super interesting questions. Arthur, right at the epicentre. So Miles, to really start off this chat, the background, we are talking about the book at the heart of your research on this topic. It's not an ancient book, but this literary source, it's key to our discussion today. What is this book?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  It's a history of the kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Historia Regum Britanniae, I think it's his Latin title, and it's written in around 1136 A D. So it's written a very long time after the events that it describes. It divides opinion, I think it's fair to say, in the, in the past, it was viewed as one of the most important texts relating to the history of the Britons, giving them their lost voice. But in the last 200 years, people have trended to be a bit more critical of it and say, well, actually, it appears to just be either a complete fantasy, it's made up, or it's some kind of misguided patriotic drivel, which really made sense in the 12th century, but doesn't today. The difficulty really is, we don't know

• 7:18Speaker 02

  anything about the man who wrote it, Geoffrey of Monmouth. I mean, we know that he existed, which is good. We know that he was living in Oxford in the 1130s. We know that by his name, Geoffrey of Monmouth, he must have sort of grown up or spent his formative years on the Welsh-English border. But beyond that, we know very little about him, or indeed why he chose to write this book. He says in his foreword that Walter, the Archdeacon at Oxford, his ultimate boss, gave him the task of translating a very ancient book in, we call it the Celtic tongue, translating it into Latin. But people have taken that to think, well, this is some kind of smokescreen, some kind of cover for something he's actually inventing, because there is no

• 8:00Speaker 02

  original Celtic text that people have found. But all the way through his book, we can see he's making reference to oral history. And other writers at the same time are like Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malsbury, they're talking about the stories of the Britons which are known by heart. So there is this sort of tradition of all storytelling, of passing myths down from generation to generation, but not actually writing anything down. And it is actually the beginning of the 12th century that we start seeing things like the Mabinogion in Wales, a whole series of different texts. We see the Welsh Triads, we see Geoffrey of Monmouth. They're starting to write down stories which seem to have been passed around. Now, the difficulty with the oral history is obviously tracing its origins, and of course-

• 8:46Speaker 02

  The possibility at every generation is slightly modifying it or changing it. And therefore the story becomes distorted, names become garbled. And it becomes increasingly difficult to look back and think, well, what is the actual kernel of truth there? What is the actual origins of this? But Geoffrey is writing this down and he presents a history that he describes of the Britons. He's putting this as an attempt to counter the overtly English stories like Bede, who writes the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. He's got William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and their stories are very Anglo-Saxon centric. You know, they're based on the first English migrants setting up kingdoms. He's presenting a story that counters that and said, actually, before they arrived,

• 9:32Speaker 02

  there is this great heritage going back all the kings and queens and monarchs. And he claims they are descended ultimately from Trojans, who were escaping the Trojan Wars, who were sort of refugees who landed in Britain and established this sort of series of kingdoms. And effectively, it's a polemic really sort of saying that all these people existed before the Saxons arrived and going through their history and identifying key heroes. But the difficulty from our perspective and from a historical point of view is because these names aren't mentioned anywhere else, have they got any kind of historical truth to them? Is he making them up? Is he using some kind of old tradition that hasn't been written down anywhere else? What is the basis of this? But it's important for us because Geoffrey of Monmouth is the first person to give us

• 10:15Speaker 02

  an entire life history of King Arthur, from his conception to his mortal wounding. So all our understanding of Arthur, the man, or the mythology that's built around him, begins with Geoffrey of Monmouth. There's scattered references to an Arthur character before that, but Geoffrey gives us everything. It's a full download of his entire life history.

• 10:34Tristan Hughes?

  Miles, that is super interesting. And just before we go on to Arthur, that mentioning of like this oral tradition, as it were. Should we say pre-Saxon? Is it looking at the ancient Celtic history, as it were, in this oral tradition? Because you see so many parallels. I was immediately thinking of perhaps the Homer, the Odyssey, the Iliad, that oral tradition. But you could also then look at the Polynesians and their oral tradition before the Europeans and the interactions there. And it seems like it's quite similar here, how he is now writing down hundreds and hundreds of years later, Geoffrey of Monmouth, this tradition that may well have been passed down through many of the Celtic-speaking peoples, as said, for generations.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So remembering sort of heroes from the past. Another good sort of example is the stories that are first being written down or recorded in 19th century Afghanistan about Iskander, you know, Alexander the Great. Here you've got a Macedonian general from the 3rd century B.C. who's being remembered thousands of years later. And the stories have multiplied, but at its core, there is a historical verifiable figure. So we can see that oral tradition has a very long history, you know, that tales do survive. But because they're not being recorded, it is very difficult to see when they mutate and when they change. And that's the tricky thing with Geoffrey Monmouth, is we can identify some of these characters, not all of them, but we don't know when these particular tales are mutating and evolving.

• 11:56Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Don't you worry, Miles. We'll be going back to Alexander the Great very soon, I'm sure. But let's focus on Arthur. So Arthur in Geoffrey's book, how significant a figure is he?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  In history of the kings of Britain, Arthur is coming towards the end. I mean, he occupies about a third of the book. So he's the most significant character. He's given the most amount of space to develop. And in a way, everything is leading up towards Arthur. I mean, there are characters after him in the story, but they're less significant and they're given sort of less time, really. But throughout the story, Geoffrey presents a series of important men and women who are trying to defend their kingdom and trying to establish the laws of the land and all these sort of things. And Arthur occurs at a point when the kingdom's under its greatest threat, because Geoffrey identifies the Saxons coming in from, you know,

• 12:47Speaker 02

  migrating across the North Sea as the biggest threat to the Kingdom of the Britons. So Arthur's there at that point, defending everything that's gone before. But it's interesting, because the story that he gives of Arthur is repeating lots of key tropes, lots of key aspects of other people's story. And it's presented without comment. It's some kind of divine plan. Everything that's happened before is coalescing under Arthur and is repeated under Arthur, and he is the ultimate warrior in the story. And his demise signifies the high point of the Britain story, but also the point which they sort of descend and the kingdom sort of crashes to a halt.

• 13:25Tristan Hughes?

  The Ars Mutilla warrior portrayal, so is he very much portrayed in this book, Miles, as a warlord?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  He's a horrible character in Geoffrey of Monmouth because he's a psychopath. He is very quick to anger. He slaughters people for no apparent reason. He invades countries just because he wants power. But that is, in the post-Roman, indeed pre-Roman period, that is how heroes are remembered. They're not remembered for having a kingdom of peace and prosperity. They're not remembered for the laws that they passed. They are remembered for being strong individuals who don't take any prisoners. So Arthur, his story is just drenched in blood. He is not a very nice character from our point of view, but from the point of view,

• 14:11Speaker 02

  I guess, of a post-Roman society, he's exactly the kind of individual you want on your side. You've got these descriptions of him in a battle, almost going into berserker mode, and slaughtering hundreds of individuals just with his sword. He is there, he's doing all the killing. And I think, in a way, that is important to understand because the Arthur that Geoffrey presents us is completely unlike the medieval Arthur that we get. All the later romances built around him from the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries really make him more human. They bring in the romance cycle of Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere. They bring in the quest for the Holy Grail. They bring in other characters like Bedivere and Perceval and Galahad and all these other individuals.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  So they make Arthur a more human individual. They emphasise his humanity, whereas Geoffrey just presents us with the warlord. And it's interesting to see how little of the original story that Geoffrey gives us actually appears in the later accounts. He almost gets edited out completely and other elements come in. And therefore, there's no sword in the stone, there's no lady in the lake, there's no Lancelot-Guinevere romance, there's no Holy Grails. None of those aspects are in Geoffrey's primary account. It's all about conquest and killing and being the strongest man, the last man standing, effectively.

• 15:30Tristan Hughes?

  Miles, the parallels are so striking. We're going back to Alexander now because of that whole portrayal. With the Alexander historians, first of all, like the original sources, you mentioned how Arthur is portrayed as this sometimes psychopathic warlord. Well, I think Alexander is portrayed very similarly at times, this killing of hundreds of thousands of people, particularly in the Indus River Valley. But it's only later on, when you get the romance added with the Alexander romance stories, where you see him going to mythical lands, almost what they thought mythical lands, like in Africa, or visiting Jerusalem, et cetera, et cetera. And those are added later. So it's so interesting, you see these striking parallels between two of the most well-known warlords of history,

• 16:12Tristan Hughes?

  who have become two of the most well-known warlords in history, have these striking parallels and how their story in the literature develops over time to become, shall we say, more popular among audiences?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  It is, it is. I mean, it's still going on today. I mean, you could think, when you look back to all the ancient Greek myths, really, none of the characters in there are particularly nice. You think of someone like Achilles. I mean, he is a really unpleasant individual. And yet, when people are trying to dramatize the Trojan Wars today, they downplay the death and killing side, and they try to bring in romance and try to make this person likeable. Because ultimately, we want to see an element of our heroes that we empathize with, that we like. Otherwise, what's the point? So you can see a lot of more modern interpretations of Achilles. And yeah, he's quite a nice chap, he's got compassion. He doesn't appear in the original sources, you know, basically, he is a murderous

• 17:05Speaker 02

  sociopath. And that is, it's same with Alexander. I mean, there's nothing about his story, he's not going eastwards in a missionary zeal to bring his brand of civilization and to benefit society. He's conquering and killing and destroying another civilization. But later on, the romances are added, and they're trying to make him ultimately a more likeable person. And that is exactly what's happening with Arthur, because he is a deeply unlikable person when you read his accounts in Geoffrey Monmouth.

• 17:34Tristan Hughes?

  Back to Arthur then, thank you for that tangent though, that was very much appreciated. So, I mean, the stories of King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth, many of these stories that are given to Arthur, Miles, they happen to other individuals before him.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. I mean, the interesting thing, looking through Geoffrey of Monmouth, which you do read it from cover to cover, which I've done many times, it's not something I'd all dirty recommend to people because it's not like reading a novel. And it's plagued with names and dates and events, but you see that certain themes do get repeated. And this is one of the reasons I think that Geoffrey's history, his skill is he's weaving together a series of stories and trying to put them in a chronology that makes sense to him. So we often see stories repeated, like the invasion of Julius Caesar in fifty four B C in Britain as a documented event. It appears twice in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account from different perspectives. And it's almost if he doesn't realise it's the same event. And therefore he separates it out and we get three invasions of Caesar rather than the two that we know about.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  And fifty four B C is repeated and he does this with individuals. We see someone whose story is very similar to somebody else and their name form is slightly different. It's Garbo and it's evidently it's the same person. But Geoffrey's presented with two rather different accounts and rather than pushing them together, he treats them as two separate individuals. So when we look at Arthur, you can disentangle, there's at least five individuals which come together really. So Arthur is a composite in Geoffrey of Monmouth. His story has already happened to other people. And these are sort of people who are in some way significant. They've been remembered as heroes in the old psychopathic Elliside, you know, they are prominent warlords of their time.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  But their stories have undoubtedly been remembered and therefore they are coalescing around Arthur. And Geoffrey brings them together to create this sort of composite Celtic superhero.

• 19:26Tristan Hughes?

  Composite Celtic superhero, five key figures from ancient Britain. Miles, let's delve into these five figures now. I want you to go wild with the detail of each of these people. Let's start with the first one. This is someone who I actually think is particularly interesting, particularly because he seems to be very much an influence on Clive Owen for the King Arthur of that in the two thousands. Miles, number one, Ambrosius Aurelianus.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yes, Ambrosius Aurelianus is one of those figures who, in post-Roman Britain, we do have some detail of. It is not much to go on, really. But Ambrosius Aurelianus appears in the writings of a man called Gildas, and Gildas is writing at some point in the mid-sixth century. Gildas is not the best historian to rely on, because he's not a historian, he's a man of the clergy, and his account on the ruin of Britain, it's a polemic, it's a sermon, basically, explaining why the Britons have suffered, because they're all diseased and sinful and corrupt, and therefore the Saxons are like a scourge from God, cleansing them. So it's full of blood and fire and anger.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  And Gildas hasn't got a good word to say about anybody. Everybody's corrupt and horrible, apart from one person, who is Ambrosius Aurelianus. And he says that he's a man of good character, he's descended of sort of noble Roman stock, and he is responsible for this great defeat of this rascally crew, the Saxons. He defeats them at a battle, or the siege of Mount Badon. And because Gildas is so complimentary about him, and he mentions this battle, and this battle gets referred to time and time again, it becomes a key battle of King Arthur in the later sort of rewrites. But Gildas doesn't give us any information about who is besieging whom at this great affair. He doesn't tell us where Badon is, but because Gildas is writing somewhere

• 21:17Speaker 02

  in the West Country, or possibly sort of southern Wales, we assume it's within that sort of general area. But it's important to him, and it's important to the people he's speaking to. So, Ambrosius is this major character. Now, he appears a lot in other oral histories, which were later written down, like the Triads of Wales, like the Mabinogion briefly, Nennius in Historia Ritonum, the History of the Britons, Ambrosius is in there. And he features very heavily in Geoffrey Monmouth's work, because he's treated as the immediate sort of predecessor of Arthur. But Ambrosius is somebody in Geoffrey Monmouth who, yes, he fights the Battle of Badon, which Geoffrey places at Bath in the West Country. He is trying to establish his kingdom in the face of Saxon advances, defeats them a number of times.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  And Geoffrey has him being, having his coronation at Stonehenge. And of course, this becomes, archaeologists have picked up on this recently, going back to Geoffrey, this idea that in Geoffrey's account, Ambrosius asks his chief advisor Merlin to build a monument to commemorate all those British aristocrats who've been murdered by the Saxons. And Merlin goes off to Ireland and brings back this great stone circle, which they set up on Salisbury Plain. And that's where Ambrosius has his coronation. And of course, from an archaeological perspective, that seems utterly ludicrous. You know, because we know the history of Stonehenge and it's not post-Roman in essence. Although it's possible, you know, there's debate whether the bluestones have come from West Wales, which might be sort of remembered.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  But the key thing in Geoffrey's text is he's talking about the monument being restructured. And we know that archaeologically, you know, I've excavated inside Stonehenge entirely legally, by the way, it was part of a bigger project. But a lot of the bluestones that we see in Stonehenge today were reshaped and modified in the post-Roman period. So there is some kind of structural modification going on in there at the time that Ambrosius is supposed to have existed. And because you've got Amesbury, the town nearby, Ambrosius's borough. His name is resonant in the landscape. So it's possible Geoffrey is remembering or writing down an event involving the reshaping of Stonehenge and the coronation of this king, whom Gildas has mentioned before.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  But he's there and he's the only post-Roman warlord for whom we've got anything vaguely complimentary written about. So in that sense, he's in the right space at the right time for the Arthur character. And when we look at Ambrosius in Geoffrey's text, aspects about his childhood, aspects about his kingship. And of course, the Battle of Badon get absorbed into the Arthur story. So they're repeated without comment later on. So we can see there's about 16% of the King Arthur story, as it appears in Geoffrey Monmouth, is taken from Ambrosius's life.

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• 26:25Tristan Hughes?

  Well, you kind of read my mind, what the next question would be, which would be like, what elements of Ambrosius Aurelianus's story does Geoffrey adopt, mould into the character of Arthur? But is it really the battle narrative?

• 26:35Speaker 02

  It is, yes. It's the battle narrative and it's the sort of aspects about his kingship and his positioning and his power. And it is actually interesting that later writers take other aspects of Ambrosius, because in Geoffrey of Monmouth, although Merlin is there, he and Arthur never meet. They occupy different timelines, as it were. But later writers have Merlin becoming Arthur's advisor and his wizard. So it's interesting, but it's Ambrosius and Merlin in the original text. But later, when Ambrosius is written out, Merlin gets absorbed into the Arthur story.

• 27:08Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. I never clicked that link between Ambrosius Aurelianus and Amesbury. And Miles, if we then move on, it sounds like Ambrosius, he is a significant core of the character of Arthur in Geoffrey's Monmouth. But moving on to the next figure, he also seems very, very significant. Character number two, Magnus Maximus.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Magnus Maximus, I guess, is one of those individuals who doesn't resonate so much today. We don't hear a lot about him. But he was a significant character in later 4th century Roman Empire, because we know that there's not a lot about his life story that has been recorded. But it is known that he is of Spanish ethnicity. He's serving in Britain, possibly as a commander of the northern armies, the Dux Britanniorum. But in 383 AD, his soldiers proclaim him as emperor. So he is illegally created as leader of the Roman world. And lots of people are doing this around the Roman Empire, you know, throughout the 3rd and 4th centuries, the empire was tearing itself apart with multiple leaders

• 28:10Speaker 02

  and claims and civil wars. So in that respect, Magnus Maximus is not that different. But he seems to have the support of the troops in Britain. There seems to be a lot of disaffection with the government in Britain with Rome, feeling that they're not perhaps being looked after. They're a distant province. They're not that important. And Magnus Maximus... As we know from the histories, takes troops out of Britain, he gets support in northern Gaul, northern France, Belgium, Germany. He's minting coins with his face on and with images of victory. His army besieged the forces of the legitimate Emperor Gracian, who is killed in the retreat, so the Emperor of the West dies. The Emperor's mother and his younger brother then go over to the east. And Magnus Maximus is sitting there above the Alps,

• 28:55Speaker 02

  about to advance down into Italy, when the Eastern Emperor arrives with an army, cuts him off, and he is executed and killed, and the rebellion is put down. But it's a huge political and social upheaval, because it's completely destabilised the West. It's involved a loss of life. It's an own goal as far as Rome's concerned, because it's destroying its own army. And so lots of infighting. But the fact that his story, you think, well, why is Magnus Maximus remembered? What possible relevance has he got to Britain? But he is remembered. If you look in a lot of the early Welsh genealogies, lots of the leaders of power and so on, they trace their ancestry back to Magnus Maximus,

• 29:37Speaker 02

  who's often cited as the king who killed the king of the Romans. You know, he is remembered. And in the Mabinogion, we get the story of the dream of Maxen, who is Magnus Maximus, who, in that version of the story, he's an emperor in Rome who dreams of this distant, faraway mythical land with a castle and a beautiful princess. And he sends people out to look for her, and they eventually come back and say, we found her. She's in effectively North Wales. And he travels over there, meets the woman literally of his dreams, and they fall in love, and he stays there for long enough for a rival to take power in Rome. And then he has to take troops out of Britain to go and reclaim his kingdom. So it's sort of a reverse version of the story. But he's remembered in so many different accounts. You think, well, there's something about him.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Okay, yes, he was a prominent warlord. That's something that, you know, Tik, you are remembered for. Undoubtedly, there were praise poems about him. I suspect he restructured Britain significantly. So he devolved authority perhaps to individual tribes or leaders. And that's why they later treated him as their sort of progenitor, as their, the founder of their dynasty. But a lot of the story, certainly the Mabinogion centers around Carnarvon in North Wales, and that's where the later Plantagenet dynasty builds Carnarvon Castle. And it's supposed to be the sort of myth fulfillment that they are building a fortress that resembles the castle that Magnus Maximus had in this dream. So sort of the later Norman monarchs are building on this mythology, quite literally,

• 31:05Speaker 02

  and representing themselves as the ultimate sort of fulfillment of the Magnus Maximus story. But when we look at Geoffrey Monmouth, when we look at the fact that he leaves Britain, he invades Gaul, modern day France, he defeats armies, he kills the emperor, and he's just about to go over the Alps to invade Italy when he's suddenly turned away. All this is Magnus Maximus's story that's been repackaged for Arthur. So 39% of the King Arthur story comes from Magnus Maximus in Geoffrey Monmouth. So he is the most significant person to contribute to the Arthur tale.

• 31:42Tristan Hughes?

  Mars, it's so interesting how the most significant person for creating this Celtic superhero is this rather infamous Roman general.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  It is, I guess to our perspective it is, but given that he's portrayed as a strong leader, someone who is successful in battle, someone who galvanizes the Britons and the Gauls and the Germans against Rome, this becomes a significant factor in this story. And of course, bear in mind, he doesn't come back to Britain. One of the later aspects developed with Arthur is he's gone. He's not killed, but he might come back one day. And I guess that is something about Magnus Maximus is that he's gone abroad. Stories of his death might be treated as a bit of an overexaggeration. But there's that sense that one day he will return and save us all. So you can see how that's in. But yeah, from our perspective, you know, from most people's perspective, I guess, Magnus Maximus, whose name translates as the great, the greatest, you know, so he's,

• 32:37Speaker 02

  he's quite a show off.

• 32:38Tristan Hughes?

  He's not modest, yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  He's not modest in that sense, but he doesn't feature much in our history. He's just another name in that list of rebels. But for the sort of beginnings of the great Welsh dynasties and the princes of Wales, he's a key character from their past, and therefore he gets built into the story of Arthur.

• 32:55Tristan Hughes?

  Fair enough. Well, from Magnus Maximus, let's move on to another person. Who is definitely not modest in the slightest. Figure number three, Constantine the Great.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, again, Constantine is another character who ultimately hasn't really got anything to do with Britain. You know, he's from the eastern Mediterranean, from the Balkans, but he is serving in Britain with his father in three oh six A D and his father is Constantius, his father is the emperor. And at that stage, there is a system called the tetrarchy, which is bare by whoever's emperor chooses their successor. And it's not somebody of their bloodline. They choose the most capable leader to succeed them. And it's a way of trying to get rid of all these fighting dynasties. Now, in three oh six, Constantius dies in Britain at York. He's on campaign in Britain. And Constantine, his son, effectively says, well, I'm the son of the emperor, I'm going to be emperor.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And his troops proclaim him as such at York. So it's this major uprising, another sort of time when a general has illegally seized power. And Constantine does what Magnus Maximus does later, is he takes troops out of Britain. He goes into Gaul and then he starts his campaign downwards into Italy, down towards Rome. And so in effect, there are elements of his story which are repeated in the Arthur story of him invading. But Constantine is the first emperor who literally is just before he dies, he's on his deathbed, he converts to Christianity. And he allows Christianity to flourish. And of course, for writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth, who are in that Christian tradition, he is the most important Roman of all.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  And we can see aspects of his story. I mean, it's very, very similar to what happens to Magnus Maximus. And to be fair, Constantine, although he's treated as a great Roman, when you actually look at his story, he's a deeply unpleasant individual. And he murders all his rivals and he suffocates people in baths and he poisons, he is horrific. But he fits that profile of a strong leader and Constantine is successful, you know, unlike Magnus Maximus who dies at the last hurdle, Constantine does become Emperor of Rome. And the fact that his rebellion starts in Britain and York features a lot in Geoffrey Monmouth's texts. So it's that side of it. I mean, Constantine is eight percent of his service. It's not a great deal, but he's there. And when you look at Constantine as

• 35:16Speaker 02

  he appears in Geoffrey Monmouth, there are elements of his rebellion and his war in Gaul, which feature in the story of Arthur.

• 35:22Tristan Hughes?

  It's such a difficult question, but I'm going to ask it quickly because you mentioned how Constantine is such a significant figure when we imagine about the world Geoffrey's living in the medieval period, when looking back at ancient Rome. Do you think when Geoffrey's writing this and he knows Constantine's links to Britain and to York, and how he's such a significant figure that perhaps he thinks is that when I'm creating this Celtic superhero, I must get elements of this significant figure's history in the story, in the creation of Arthur?

• 35:51Speaker 02

  I think you're right, he does. And also bear in mind that a lot of the characters like Constantine, although his life story is remembered elsewhere, Geoffrey and other writers give him a British mother. So we see there is this, his mother Helena, who's often actually treated as the patron saint of archaeology because she goes off to the east and she finds evidence of the true cross and Christ crucifixion, all this and stuff. But in various accounts, she's perhaps confused with a Helena character in North Wales. But it's as if Constantine, he's got British heritage, therefore he becomes a king of Britain. But it's vital to get him in there because he's such a significant player in the story, not just of the Roman Empire, but critically of Christianity and its acceptance.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  So to have him as one of us, and it's another string to Geoffrey's bow to say, the Britons are far more important than the Saxons. You know, yeah, they, the Saxons have got monasteries and they convert to Christianity and all this sort of stuff. But the Britons, we've got Constantine as one of us. And therefore, you know, that makes our royal lineage far more significant. You know, you've got Athelstan and Alfred. Yeah, great. But we've got Arthur and Constantine and these people. And they are far more important in world history than any of your lot.

• 37:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, there you go. Always thinking about the Saxons as well in that whole narrative. Very, very interesting indeed. Now, figure number four, we're going further back to late Iron Age Britain and Miles, the figure of Cassivalonus.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, Cassiopeia or Cassiopeia as he appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's text. He's one of those individuals who we do have an independent account of because he features in Julius Caesar's account of his invasion into Britain. And of course Caesar, as the consummate politician, he writes everything down. He justifies all his actions as a series of dispatches from the front line. So in his account of the wars in Gaul, he describes in detail his invasions of Britain in fifty five and fifty four B.C. And in fifty four B.C., he comes up against a preeminent leader. He's called a preeminent war leader of the Britons called Cassiopeia. And of course, Cassiopeia, that name form gets garbled in Geoffrey of Monmouth and becomes Cassiopeia.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  It appears in other forms as well, but in essence, he is the man who stands up to Caesar. Now, in Caesar's account of the war, he manages to defeat Cassiopeia. Of course he does, you know, it's Caesar writing and he gets tribute out of him and he leaves. Now, that particular invasion, the great thing about us, because we've got Caesar's account, we can compare it with what Geoffrey of Monmouth writes. And Geoffrey doesn't seem to have Caesar's account to hand because there's nothing in Caesar's writings that fit Geoffrey of Monmouth's. So perhaps the Gallic Wars is not something he had in his library or accessed to. But we get the invasion of fifty four B.C. mentioned twice, but it's two different accounts of that same action.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  In the first account that Geoffrey gives us, Cassiopeia is victorious. He drives Caesar into the sea. He defeats him comprehensively and sends the Roman packing. You know, that's what the Britons want to hear. That's what probably in praise poems after that event, that's what people were saying. You know, the Romans have gone. The Gauls were defeated by them, but we kicked him back into the sea, back to where he came from. The second version that appears in Geoffrey's, we've got the same invasion, Cassiopeia fighting Caesar, but there is another character in there, and that is a chap called Androgeus, who is a powerful British leader who's on Caesar's side.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  But helps Caesar. Caesar couldn't defeat Cassiopeia without Androius's help. So he's presented as a great warlord who is far greater than Caesar and far greater than Cassiopeia. So there are three different versions of the same event, one by Caesar or his supporters, one by Cassiopeia and his lot, and one by Androius. Now Caesar mentions Androius, he calls him Man Dibracius, and he's of the Trinovantis tribe of Essex. So you've got this Britain on the Roman side. Now, interestingly, in Geoffrey Monmouth, when he's describing this, Androius is presented as the nephew, the treacherous nephew of Cassiopeia. And when we see Caesar landing and the description giving of the Romans arriving, is it replicated much, much later on?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  When we get the Saxons invading, the same number of ships, the same battle tactics, and Cassiopeia is betrayed by Androius. When Geoffrey Monmouth describes Arthur, Arthur is betrayed by his nephew Mordred. And so you get Man Dibracius becomes Mordred and Cassiopeia, that element of the story gets morphed into Arthur's tale. So no doubt, this is a prominent British Iron Age king who is mentioned by the Romans, but becomes something very different in Geoffrey Monmouth's account, depending on who's writing the story. So in some versions in Geoffrey Monmouth, Cassiopeia is the hero. In the other versions, he is an unpleasant character who needs to be defeated. It depends who's giving you that oral tradition.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  But Geoffrey looks at that completely unfiltered and doesn't realise it's from two different sources and just tries to blend it into one. So we don't understand why in one stage Cassiopeia is the hero and then 10 pages later, he's the villain. It's never explained, but it's because it's two different accounts sort of knitted into this singular account. And the intriguing thing is also when we look at Geoffrey Monmouth, he keeps talking about, I mean, effectively, there are two prominent royal houses in Britain. There's the House of Cornwall and there's the House of London. And it's their story that filters throughout. And when we look at Cassiopeia, he is from the House of Cornwall. But when we actually sort of identify these characters and their tribal affiliations, it's not Cornwall and London.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  It's the Cassiopeia tribe of Hertfordshire and it's the Trinovantis of Essex. It's those two tribal accounts that seem to survive as oral traditions. And perhaps when Geoffrey was writing, the name form was garbled. He didn't understand what Cativaloni was. So it becomes Carnow or Cornobia, it becomes Cornwall. And Trinavanti, as he translates as New Troy, which for him means London. So his geography becomes across the whole of Britain, whereas the origins are just these two tribal groups fighting for survival in Hertfordshire and Essex. But Geoffrey transposes that across the whole of Britain.

• 42:10Tristan Hughes?

  That is super interesting. Side tangent, does he talk about Brittany at all then in these links?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, Brittany features quite a lot, especially in Arthur's story. There's lots of later sort of myths that Magnus Maximus, when he goes to Gaul, he sort of invigorates the sort of aristocracy of Brittany. He places his troops there and they sort of intermingle with the local population. And certainly, there's a lot of sort of Bretton tradition with Arthur. Now, part of that might be because we know there are channel migrations, you know, Brittany is Little Britain and Britain itself is Great Britain. So it might be that the stories migrate across the channel in the sixth, seventh centuries AD. Or it might be that Magnus Maximus, just as he was doing in North Wales, was doing something equivalent in Brittany. And that's because the Bretton connection becomes attached to Arthur. But some accounts also say that Cassivalonus,

• 42:59Speaker 02

  having driven Caesar into the sea, then led raids against him in northern Gaul. So, you know, it's all tied up. There is certainly a great oral tradition of these leaders involving themselves in the most northern parts of France.

• 43:12Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. It's so, so interesting, Miles, right there. So we're going to move on to the last and final figure, a figure who I'd never even heard of before this. Figure number five.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Arviragus. Again, we face that problem that a lot of what occurs, what appears in Geoffrey is garbled name forms. And presumably, they've been mistranslated, or the oral tradition has in some way, like Alexander becomes Iscander and various other sort of way forms. But the story of Arviragus is important because we get Arviragus as a great British leader who is negotiating with the Emperor Claudius.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  He at some point refuses to pay tribute to the emperor, which is what Arthur does later. The Romans try and invade and Arviraagus fights them, then he becomes allied to them. And there's a key moment when Arviraagus marries this great British noble called Genvisa, who is described as the great beauty of her time and so on. And this is later, almost word for word, we get Arthur marrying Ganhumara, who later, you know, becomes Guinevere in later romances. So the whole key element of Arviraagus's story with fighting Rome, then allying with Rome, and marrying this great beauty gets added to the key beginning of Arthur's story. Now, it's difficult to really place Arviraagus as a historical character,

• 44:38Speaker 02

  but the name form seems to become a degenerate of Caratacus, who is properly referred to as Caraticus in other sort of anglicised forms. And Caraticus, Caratacus, is one of those forgotten characters of early Roman Britain. Boudica sort of takes up all the air of most of our sort of stories of that time, because Boudica in AD sixty leads the great revolt of the Iceni tribe of Norfolk against Rome. And Colchester, London, St Albans are all burnt to the ground. But Caratacus is there at the beginning. He is opposing Rome from day one in AD forty-three when they invade. His capital, his centre at Colchester is captured by the Romans. He retreats into Wales.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  And in forty-seven AD, so some years later, he reemerges in what is now South Wales, having galvanised the tribes there to fight the Romans. And then he transfers the centre of operations into North Wales. And then he later goes up, tries to open up another front in what is now Yorkshire with the Brigantis tribe and their queen Cartimandja. And she eventually hands him in chains over to the Romans. "I don't want you. Go away. Where you go, the Romans follow." And so he's handed over and he's taken to Rome in triumph. Claudius has him in a great procession. Caratacus is supposed to give him this great speech saying, "Why do you envy us in our mud huts when you've got all this marble? I would have greeted you as a friend rather than a rival." And he gives this great speech and Claudius, according to the Roman writers like Tacitus.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Is so impressed by this speech that he lets Carataucas go. He gives him his freedom. He's not allowed to leave Rome, but effectively he's not executed either, which is a plus, you know, and he lives out his life in Rome. So here is this great character who appears in lots of early Welsh literature because he is actually there fighting the Romans on the ground. No doubt lots of praise poems around him. Other elements of his story appear in much later tales. So the relationship between Carataucas and Cartimandja gets evolved into sort of Arthur and Guinevere, the betrayal of Guinevere developed from the betrayal of Cartimandja as she hands him over to the Romans. But we see Caradoc and Craddock and Curdick, all these name variant forms of Carataucas,

• 46:44Speaker 02

  survive in lots of early Welsh literature. So he is remembered. And these key aspects of him, I mean, again, he's another character who leaves Britain and never returns. So it's that once and future king. He's not dead. Wait, he will come back and save us. And that gets built into the Arthur story as well. So Arvio Argus Carataucas is another character. It's about 24% of his story becomes absorbed into the Arthur tale as presented by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

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• 48:44Tristan Hughes?

  There's one part of that last figure, Arveragus, that I would like to specifically ask about. And that's to do with an island off the north coast of Britain, Orkney. Because we do hear in one source, I believe, with Claudius accepting the surrenders of British chiefs, that there is one chief who comes from Orkney. Could this all be linked? I mean, what is the story here? Could there be connections between all of this?

• 49:06Speaker 02

  It is very, very different. I mean, bear in mind, the Romans' sense of geography is not quite as accurate as ours. We know that in the eighties AD, so 40 years after Claudius, a Roman fleet does circumnavigate Britain. And it is actually an island. And so now that probably got to the Orkneys and so on. There is some Roman material on Orkney and people tried to make a link. I mean, it seems unlikely if the Romans, having invaded Kent and Essex, a delegation would come down from Orkney to surrender that. But then it might just be that the name has become sort of mistranslated or garbled from another different tribe. But we know that in Geoffrey Monmouth, the Iceni tribe of Norfolk, or Iceni as they're sometimes referred to,

• 49:50Speaker 02

  are described as Scythians. And the Scythians, of course, are, you know, it's a name later given to the Huns. You know, this is a tribe right the way across from the other side of the Black Sea. So Iceni becomes Scythians, Boudica becomes Soderic, king of the Scythians. So it may be that we are looking at this and saying Orkneys, whereas the Romans were actually using a different tribal name. And it's not actually that far north. It would seem odd that a tribe from those far distant islands would A, have heard that the Romans had invaded, and B, sent a delegation down to say, we surrender. Because, you know, they're so far away, it doesn't really make any odds to. But the conquest of the Orkneys is represented in Geoffrey Monmouth quite a lot. Arthur conquers the Orkneys with Claudius's help.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Arviragus Caritarkus, he invades the Orkneys. Lots of other characters go. It almost becomes like a generic name for taking the whole of Britain. You've conquered everything, including the Orkneys. But quite what the origins of that story are, sadly, we don't know.

• 50:45Tristan Hughes?

  So actually, it's kind of similar to saying like a Sasanian ruler conquered as far as the Caspian Gates, or the Romans conquered as far as the Pillars of Hercules.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it becomes a byword for the limits of the known world.

• 50:56Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Gotcha. Now, you've mentioned them in passing as we've chatted, these percentages. So I've got to go to the maths now, Miles. To sum it all up with these five figures, what's the percentages of each of them in the story, the elements of the Arthur story?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  If you break it down in a purely mathematical way, looking at what Geoffrey Monmouth says, Magnus Maximus is thirty nine percent. Caritarkus is twenty four percent. Ambrosius Aurelianus is sixteen. Cassivalonus is twelve percent. Constantine is eight percent.

• 51:26Tristan Hughes?

  Hang on, there's one percentage missing. That's ninety nine percent. What is this one percent?

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Well done. That's good maths. Yeah, there's one percent in there. And basically that just relates, there's an element of Arthur's story where just before he conquers Gaul and fights the Roman emperor, he conquers Norway. You know, he conquers Iceland. And these are aspects that don't actually feature in any other character's story in Geoffrey Monmouth's account. So it's an element that is not repeating something that's gone before. But there have been a lot of invasions from Norway, and there are later in his text as well. So it might be something that's slipped in there as a sort of giving it back to the Northmen, that they have invaded time and time again. But we were there first. The Britons conquered you before you conquered us.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  And that might be a sly dig at the Normans. Of course, Geoffrey Monmouth's writing in the eleven thirties in Norman England, it's quite clear. He's not a fan of the Normans, quite definitely. But the Normans like what he's writing, because they like to link themselves to Arthur. You know, they are doing what Arthur does. They are subjugating the Saxons, the English. And so They connect with Arthur and they like this idea of our grand and glorious heritage in Britain, which they want to connect to. And it might just be Geoffrey having a little sly dig that a hero of his account went and attacked Norway and attacked the land of the Norsemen. The Normans, you know, before they came to Normandy and it's like, he, he was there before you came to us.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  But that's that one percent, ninety nine percent belongs to someone else. If you take all these other stories of other characters out of the Arthur tale. That Geoffrey gives us, there's nothing left for Arthur. He becomes a non-person. So it's quite clear, he cannot have existed effectively as far as Geoffrey's is concerned. He is the composite of everyone who's gone before him, or at least the five key characters who've gone before.

• 53:16Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, if the Arthur tale is made up of all of these stories from earlier in British history. We've been chatting through this and you did mention her name earlier, Boudicca. Is it surprising or do you think it's not that surprising that? Actually, of all the figures, even though Boudicca is perhaps the most well-known figure from ancient Britain today. That's, he didn't take any of Boudicca's story for the tale of King Arthur?

• 53:42Speaker 02

  No, Boudicca, she's important to us, absolutely. And she has a key figure in the early history of Roman Britain and gives them a lesson about. What it means to side with the Romans, you know, because Boudicca and her husband Prasutagus on the Roman side to begin with. And it's only after his death is her people betrayed by Rome. And we get this huge fiery vengeance raining down upon the key cities. So it's become a major part of our mythology today of British history. But bearing in mind that much of what Geoffrey's writing relates to the tribes of what is now Essex and Hertfordshire and that part of the South East. Boudicca isn't part of that story. And we have the one character who does appear at about the right time is this character Soderic.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Which arguably is a garbisation of Boudicca. And Geoffrey Monmouth turns her into a man, you know, he's King Soderic of the Skythians rather than Queen Boudicca of the Iceni. And she arrives and starts looting stuff, or he arrives and starts looting stuff in Geoffrey's account. And it's swiftly dealt with by a British leader with. Roman support. So I think she is there, but her name form has been garbled. And bearing in mind that it's only really from the time of Queen Elizabeth the first does Boudicca take on more resonance in Britain, because they're looking for historical precedence of strong female characters resisting an alien sort of imperialism. And at the time of Elizabeth the first with the Spanish Armada,

• 55:06Speaker 02

  suddenly Boudicca becomes that model. And she's picked up again during the reign of Charles the first, when he's with Catherine of Braganza. She's picked up again with Victoria. And, you know, we get that great big statue that we're familiar with now at the very end of Victoria's reign of Baudicea with her chariot outside the Houses of Parliament. So Boudicca arguably has become a far more important person in the last 500 years than she probably was at the time. And she doesn't really feature much in Geoffrey of Monmouth's account, rather than this garbled character at the very beginning.

• 55:36Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. Now, Miles, this has been an incredible chat, talking about what we know about Arthur, particularly from Geoffrey of Monmouth and looking back at ancient Britain. I must ask, before we go, Tristan and Isolde, are there any ancient links to this tale which could be similar to Arthur that you can think of?

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Well, again, I mean Tristan and Isolde at the court of King Mark, these are very important aspects of Cornish mythology today. And of course, it seems to be that it's their story, you know, we're trying to argue whether or not they were real people or not, but their story is very much linked to the islands of Tintagel and North Cornwall. So you've got King Mark as his powerful, he does appear in other sort of sources. And there's the Drustanus stone, the sort of big memorial stone, perhaps of the sixth century in southern Cornwall, which could be a precedent for Tristan. But the story of King Mark sending Tristan over to Ireland to bring back Isolde, and Tristan and Isolde fall in love, and they sort of, Mark seeks vengeance and they hide on the

• 56:37Speaker 02

  island. All these sort of things are very much linked to Tintagel. And I think when Geoffrey of Monmouth is writing his text, he's looking for places that he can anchor his story to. And Kelly in South Wales, which is near Monmouth, becomes the court of King Arthur. That's probably a site that Geoffrey knew quite well, the old Roman legionary fortress. But Tintagel becomes the point, bearing in mind that Arthur is supposed to be descended via his father, Uther, from the House of London, but through his mother from the House of Cornwall, he needs a place for Arthur to be conceived. And Tintagel is so resonant with mythology, the story of Tristan and his older Mark, that that is where King Golwa or Golloris, as some people will call him, and Ighana,

• 57:20Speaker 02

  that's where they are. And that's where Ighana and Uther conceive, not to put too fine a point on it, Arthur is conceived there. But it becomes, it's such a strong mythical, important place in Cornish history. It's the ideal place for Geoffrey of Monmouth to place Arthur. He doesn't say he was born there, but certainly his history begins there. And it's, it's later versions of the Tristan and his older myth that get reworked into the Arthur story. And Tristan becomes Lancelot and his older becomes Guinevere. And we get that sort of love triangle between them and Mark becomes Arthur. So much later, that story does get absorbed into it. But I think it was well known at the time. And that's why Geoffrey

• 58:01Speaker 02

  places Tintagel as Arthur's conception. And that's why when you go to Tintagel today, everything is Arthur connected, because it's that side of the story that's been placed there. It becomes one of those key points upon which the whole mythology of Arthur is grounded.

• 58:16Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. An absolutely incredible sights down in the southwest. Miles, this has been an incredible chat. Your book on this topic is called?

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Arthur and the Kings of Britain, published by Amberley, from all good and probably some bad bookshops.

• 58:30Tristan Hughes?

  Fantastic. Miles, it's always great to see you. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 58:43Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr. Miles Russell, talking through the figures, the real life historical figures that helped shape the legendary King of the Britons, King Arthur. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. You can also follow me on social media. I'm on both Instagram and TikTok. Follow me at @AncientsTristan, where I do even more ancient history stuff. Don't forget, you can also listen to The Ancients and all of History Hits podcasts ad free, and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. Now that's enough from me. Next episode, we're back with some new recordings kicking

• 59:26Tristan Hughes?

  off 2025 in style, and I can't wait to see you then.

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