I think one indication of whether Geoffrey was using a Welsh or Latin
source is to compare it to the Welsh versions and see how easily they
find Welsh equivalents to the characters' names. Griscom, as I said,
runs a translation of the so-called Brut Tysilio alongside the Latin,
so we can compare. For example, Cassibelanus comfortably becomes
Caswallawn, and we know there were independent Welsh traditions about
Casswallawn because we can read them in the Triads and the Mabinogi, so
perhaps Geoffrey had a Welsh source for him, but Brutus becomes
Bryttys, a transparent phonetic transliteration from Latin, and as far
as I know there's no independent Welsh tradition about him, so we can
probably assume he came from a Latin source.
Utherpendragon and Arthur are very close to Welsh names already, and
they slip into Ythr Ben Dragwn and Arthyr with a minimum of fuss.
Ygerna becomes Eigr, close but obviously not a mere transliteration
from the Latin, so there were probably native traditions about her that
Geoffrey could have been drawing on. I think it's reasonable that
Geoffrey might have had a Welsh source for this part of the Historia,
or at least Welsh analogues may have existed at the time.
I have become convinced recently that Geoffrey invented a great deal
less than he's given credit for. Some of the sources for the
Cassibelanus/Caesar story are fairly obvious - Orosius, Bede, Nennius,
Latin sources all - but there are other parts that can't be put down to
any of those. Cassibelanus's nephew Androgeus derives ultimately from
Mandubracius from Caesar's De Bello Gallico (which it's fairly obvious
Geoffrey didn't have access to), and his name in the HRB comes, I
think, from Orosius or Bede - but his Welsh name, Afarwy, is completely
unrelated to Androgeus, suggesting an independent Welsh tradition. His
other nephew, Tenvantius (Teneufan), is the father of Kymbelinus, the
historical Cunobelinus - and its only through coins that we've
discovered that Cunobelinus's father was called Tasciovanus. That looks
quite close to my untrained eye, close enough that surely Geoffrey
could not have just made it up. That suggests that Tasciovanus was
remembered by the Britons, either through an unbroken tradition or via
a lost Latin history, but it's different enough to make me think that
it's been passed down orally, in Welsh, for at least part of that time,
and perhaps put into writing and miscopied (the source of the first
n?), before being Latinised by Geoffrey. Then there's Cassibelanus's
brother Nennius (Nynniaw), whose Welsh name doesn't suggest a mere
copying of the Latin, but rather, possibly, a Latinisation of the
Welsh. So I think there's at least one Welsh source underlying parts of
the Cassibelanus/Caesar story.
We go on to Kymbelinus, who has been long recognised as the historical
Cunobelinus. Geoffrey says he was brought up in Rome under Augustus,
was very friendly to Rome, and willingly paid tribute. This not only
places him spot on chronologically (he's supposed to have taken power
ca. AD 9, in the latter years of Augustus's reign), which I think is
unlikely to be a coincidence, but it's also quite plausible. We know
from Strabo that Britain in the late Augustan period wasn't considered
worth conquering because the Romans made so much money off im****t and
ex****t duties from the Britons, so a lot of British money was going to
Rome at the time Geoffrey says Kimbelinus was paying willing tribute.
The Romans were also known to take young men of the ruling families of
friendly powers as obsides or diplomatic hostages, and we know from
Cunobelinus's coins that he was pro-Roman and probably Roman-sup****ted
- his coins call him Rex and incor****ate Roman motifs. John Creighton,
in Coins and Power in Late Iron Age Britain, uses the imagery on the
coins of Tincomarus, a near-contem****ary British king, comparing them
to those of Juba II of Numidia, to argue that he was brought up in Rome
as an obses. I think it's entirely plausible that Cunobelinus could
have been too, and that Geoffrey had access to a source or tradition
that recorded this.
We know from Dio Cassius that two of Cunobelinus's sons, Togodumnus and
Caratacus, led the initial resistance to the Roman invasion, that
Togodumnus died early on, and from Tacitus that Caratacus kept up the
fight. Geoffrey preserves a tradition that two of Kymbelinus's sons,
Guiderius and Arviragus, led the initial resistance, Guiderius died
early on, and Arviragus, after an initial rapprochement with Claudius,
later went back to war against the Romans. The brothers' names are so
different that Geoffrey clearly couldn't have read Dio or Tacitus, but
the similarity of story is striking enough to suggest, again, an
independent tradition. The Welsh versions of the brothers' names are
Gwydr, obviously the same name as Guiderius, and Gweirydd - completely
different from Arviragus, which was lifted from Juvenal, perhaps
deliberately substituted for a Latinisation of Gweirydd because the two
names might otherwise look too similar. A (Welsh) tradition of the
heroic brothers Gwydr and Gweirydd (compare the brothers Brennus and
Belinus, or Ferrex and ****rex, both pairs of names that alliterate)
seems to me more likely than a (Latin) tradition of the brothers
Guiderius and Arviragus, and certainly more likely than Geoffrey making
up a story that is so similar to known history.
I've really only looked closely at the Roman invasions period, but
there's evidence there that Geoffrey had sources that reflected real
history. Whether those were unbroken traditions from the 1st century BC
to the 12th AD, or only developed after the Britons were exposed to
Latin histories during the period of Roman rule, I'm not qualified to
say, and I still wouldn't say this makes Geoffrey a reliable or
accurate historian, but for this period at least, he isn't the
fantasizer he's made out to be.
Patrick Brown
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