II. Read and translate the text

In an age of treachery and darkness, one king brought peace and prosperity to his land, defended it from every danger, and expanded it to an empire that would rival Rome itself. His wise counselor taught him the ways of justice and to value truth. At his command a loyal band of fearless, gentle knights protected the helpless, struggled against evil, and faced unimagined peril in the search for the holiest of relics. Though his queen and his best knight would betray him, though his own son would defeat him, though the shining kingdom he had forged would fall into ruin, still he set the standard by which all other leaders would be judged for centuries.

He was the legendary King Arthur...

Alas, that's exactly what King Arthur is: legendary. Over the centuries, an extraordinary corpus of art and literature has grown up around this mythic figure--hundreds of books, poems, films and comics have told his story. It might be reasonable to assume that these tales are based on at least a kernel of fact. But the truth is that, as yet, no one has been able to offer any conclusive proof that a real, historical, human King Arthur ever existed in any incarnation or by any name.

It wasn't always this way. For more than 500 years, King Arthur enjoyed a respected, even exalted place in history. But that place rested on the shaky foundation of The History of the Kings of Britain, an ambitious chronicle by a monk of Welsh origins, Geoffrey of Monmouth. Although not the earliest existing source that mentions Arthur, it is the first to identify him as a high king from Britain's past. In his History Geoffrey sets forth Arthur's heritage, birth, childhood, ascension to the throne, military conquests, international relations, and death. He places Arthur's life in a span of time ranging from the late fifth century to 542, when the king was mortally wounded in his last, tragic battle. He names Arthur's family and associates and relates their deeds and backgrounds. It is the story set forth in this work that became the basis of the Arthurian legend.

Geoffrey completed his History sometime in the 1130's, using earlier sources such as Gildas & Nennius. Only the work of Gildas, who did not mention Arthur by name, dates to the sixth century, and none of these chronicles provides any of the details concerning Arthur's life that Geoffrey gives us. So where did he get his facts? Geoffrey claimed to have had in his possession a "certain very ancient book written in the British language." Unfortunately, this book has never been found, and as the centuries progressed its very existence was called into question. But would Geoffrey make any of his History up? And if so, why?

Not surprisingly, Geoffrey of Monmouth did have motives for fabricating Arthur's story. Actual history had not been kind to the Britons, who had suffered wave after wave of invasions from various peoples, including the Romans, the Saxons, and most recently the Normans. As a Welshman whose culture had a rich oral tradition and an understandable measure of pride, Geoffrey may have wanted to see his people take their place among the eminent figures of the past. This is exactly what his work achieved, providing the British people not only with a heroic king to overshadow Charlemagne but also with ancient and venerable origins equal to that of Greece and Rome.

If indeed Geoffrey of Monmouth did create a glorified version of the past and call it history, it is difficult to fault him too harshly for it. Chroniclers have often had their own agendas when writing their accounts (Gildas' Ruin of Britain is primarily a tirade against a wicked world), and students in search of facts must read these works with a critical eye. And whatever else he did, Geoffrey gave us an extraordinary tale that has caught the imagination of countless creative minds.

There is also a possibility, albeit a faint one, that Geoffrey told the truth about the "certain very ancient book" he consulted for his facts. And our Welsh chronicler aside, the theory that once, somewhere, a warrior-leader of some kind lived, governed, achieved greatness and was later immortalized as the legendary Arthur has not been--and by its very nature cannot be--disproved. Yet it is important to realize that if he did exist, the "real King Arthur" and the world in which he lived would bear very little resemblance to the legend we have come to know so well.

The writers of the day--who may not have concerned themselves with the authenticity of Geoffrey's account--followed a common custom of medieval art and literature. In matters of detail such as clothing, armor, shelter and transportation, they used the trappings of their own time. If poets of the twelfth century and later had any concept of how radically different life had been six hundred years earlier, they certainly didn't bring that knowledge to bear on their literary endeavors. And why should they? Extraordinary authors wove fascinating, heartbreaking, glorious tales that their contemporaries could understand and relate to, and in so doing ensured their own immortality.

However, these epics present us with a misleading blend of anachronisms. In them, Arthur and his knights live in castles, wear plate armor, compete in tournaments, use heraldic devices, and generally conduct their lives in a way that would have been unusual, and in most cases impossible, in the sixth century. The very concept of a knight as we know it does not really apply to Europe before the eighth century at the earliest, nor to Britain until after the Norman Conquest.

Furthermore, this anachronistic depiction was not limited to one or two centuries but continued for at least five hundred years, each author setting the story in a world of his own imagination and each portraying Arthur in his own unique way. The setting revealed in Chrétien de Troyes' Lancelot, for example, has striking differences from that in Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. Although later authors often set their stories in a generic or even specific "medieval time," the legendary king and his world are ever-changing to suit the vision of whoever tells the tale. Thus, understanding the Arthur of legend is not so much a historical investigation as a literary one.

As for the "real King Arthur," if we had any idea who he really was and when he really lived, the details of his world might become more accessible. A variety of cultural groups struggled for dominance and survival in post-Roman Britain, each influenced by the remaining Roman culture in differing ways. We would have to know exactly to which group Arthur belonged and when in order to begin to understand the social and political structure of his specific society and the details of its material culture.

Moreover, those centuries after the western Roman Empire collapsed are still called a "Dark Age" for one very good reason: we know so little about them. Very little documentary evidence survives from that time, and thus the exceedingly difficult task of understanding "daily life" is largely dependent on archaeological study. The picture this gives us, while fascinating and full of promise, is sketchy at best.

But if we can't know what life was like in Arthur's time or if, indeed, there was a "real Arthur" at all, is there any value to be had in studying this elusive figure?

Absolutely.

The spectre of King Arthur haunts the Middle Ages so completely that he cannot, and should not, be ignored. For hundreds of knights and kings, for thousands of writers, artists, and troubadours, for millions of ordinary people, Arthur was--and is--what a king should be. Because that paragon changed from century to century and from country to country, by examining it closely we can see how it reflected and, at the same time, influenced the world from which it sprang. In this way Arthur becomes more than a literary figure, a myth, or the object of an impossible historical quest. He becomes our ally in the search for the past.

For the historian, this may be the most valuable truth of Arthur.