Gyrth wrote:

But the most important feature of these movies is that they get people involved. Like Wuffa said, now millions of people know that there was a Robert the Bruce. I am waiting for acceptance for entry into a PhD program, and one of the main reasons I decided that I would like to teach this subject at the collegiate level is because I watched "Braveheart" in high school. or in this instance, now they will know that the King Arthur of legend is not the real "historical Arthur".

I've heard this argument many times, but I can't say I find it terribly convincing. Yes, Braveheart, in the process of mangling history almost beyond recognition, did manage to inform some people of the barest rudiments of the story in question. But a movie that actually told the real story - minus the woad-painted guys in kilts, cookie-cutter English knights, silly love affair between Wallace and a small French child who was in another part of Europe at the time and completely inaccurate depiction of medieval warfare - would have done this and then some. So why do we have to settle for, or even celebrate, the weak, watered-down and inaccurate Hollywood mish-mash? The real story would not only look better and be entertaining, it would actually "get people involved" far more.

And whenever one of these mangled pieces of pseudo-history pop up I find a mini-flood of people coming onto Roman and medieval history fora I frequent, seeking to have the erroneous ideas that have picked up from these movies confirmed. In many cases, I find that they are simply not happy to learn that, for example, William Wallace wore knight's armour and rode a horse like any Anglo-Scottish aristocrat, and argue strenuously as to how he could have worn a ragged kilt, grunge hair-do and blue face paint.

As a visual medium, movies have a powerful capacity to imprint images and impressions on people and, often, tiny little boring things like mere historical evidence have no chance of dislodging them. I once had a long discussion with one Gladiator fan who simply would not believe me when I told him it was forbidden for anyone to go armed within the city of Rome. He'd seen too many movies of soldiers standing guard in the Coliseum or emperors lounging around the palace in full armour to believe the facts.

In the process of "getting (some) people involved", these movies also reinforce errors, create myths and perpetuate stereotypes and these things are always difficult to dislodge later. In some cases, they are impossible to dislodge. Try telling people that Second Century Germanic armies didn't consist of filthy, wolf-skin wearing savages with matted hair. Try telling them of Germanic war-band battle organisation and tactics, of the fact that Tacitus tells us Germanics washed daily and that elaborate hair-styles and combs were a sign of Germanic manhood and prestige. They often won't believe you - the opening scene of Gladiator is simply much more powerful.

This brings me to my point of contention. I am interested more in later Saxon England, so this is fairly murky for me. I am under the impression, before this trailer hit, that King Arthur was most likely a late Roman leader in Britannia, one of the alst ones with enough power and military capability to temporarily throw back the Germanic invaders. Is this not what is being portrayed in the new movie?

Leaving the wildly inaccurate/anachronistic/fantasy armour and costume aside, this is (more or less) what this movie is trying to portray. My issue is the way it is taking a highly unlikely theory about this late Roman leader and presenting it as fact. The theory is that Arthur was not simply a sub-Roman leader fighting the Saxon invaders, but that he was a leader of a remnant of Indo-Iranian Alanic or Sarmatian troops left behind when the Romans left. The evidence for this theory is, at best, thin and, at worst, completely contrived, but the claim is that, since the Sarmatians etc had heavy cavalry, this is the origin of the legend of Arthur's "knights".

As I said in my original post, there are massive holes in this speculative fringe theory. To begin with, the reason the medieval legends of Arthur have him commanding medieval-style knights is that these legends were told in the medieval period. In this period all kings were depicted as medieval-style kings with medieval knights, whether they were Arthur, Julius Caesar, Alexander or Achilles. And there were no earlier legends of Arthur leading heavy cavalry, so there is no way this part of the legend is some memory of Sarmatian-style heavy cavalry in sub-Roman Britain.

There are other problems with this theory, like a total lack of evidence of Sarmatian-style cavalry in Fifth Century Britain and little evidence that those had had been stationed there earlier were even heavy cavalry in the first place. But you can get your bottom dollar that, once this King Arthur thing comes out, we will see a flood of people who have not only "got involved" but will be utterly convinced that this whacko theory is The Truth and virtually nothing will dislodge this from their minds.