Germanic names

[Alanus]

Exactly.

But the search is sometimes worth the effort, if only by putting a new twist on an old genre. A legend often has a basis in reality, and the possibility that this Theodoric character was the original Arthur fascinates me, especially if his father was Germanic. It confutes all the stereotypes.

The other realization is how close the Sub-Roman cavalry in Britain was to the Imperial Model. Luckily, we have a little informantion on it from the Welsh bards. An ala was called a "gosgordd" and consisted of 300 men. Very Celtic, and Three times Three. Making the "Arthurian" horse equal 900 men all total. (We can thank W. Forbes Skene for that tid-bit. There has been a modicum of disdain for the old historians on this thread; but if not for them, we would know less than we do... and men like Skene, Rhys, Collingwood, and Morris, are wrongfully treated with disrespect.)

If we refer to the Brecon manuscript, we discover Theodoric in charge of three tribunes, Agricola, Marcellus, and Boia (who may have been a Frank and a pagan, aka "from the land of the Boii," aka Thuringia.) In two battles between Brecon and Saint David's Point, they lost 200 men; so these alas are prime candidates for the three "gosgordds." Since Theodoric was their high commander, he could very well have been the "dux bellorum" mentioned in Nennius. And I quess we know who that was.

In finality, the signum of the Bear (greater than all those dogs, as Urselius noted), plus the historicity of an actual Sub-Roman cavalry, could account for a tale that grew to the point that Alanus di Insulus exclaimed, "Who does not know of Arthur?" And his name floated through not just the Celtic, Romance, and Germanic languages, but into those of Persia and beyond. Perhaps, at least to me, the greatest tale ever told.

To a steady hand,
Alanus, A.J. Campbell