Book & site list

[Boreades]

Is that the whole article do you know or are there any other links to the original document.

Still looking. Part of the confusion is depending on an overwhelmingly-English account of Welsh history, with much misinformation in between.

[TisILeclerc]

If you check the links I posted above there's a couple to the original document, one of them a photocopy.

There are also other links to the Tysilio document itself.

[Boreades]

Noted, many thanks. This will taking some teasing apart.

[Boreades]

This ought to be a useful site.

www.classis-britannica.co.uk/

But the design and layout seems like complete carp to me.

Can anyone make any sense of it? Or is it itself an ironic piece of internet archaelogy, an abandoned site with no living inhabitants?

[Mick Harper]

This is quite important. If, as you say, presently rather carp. For such a minor subject to get such treatment -- and across the board -- is rather encouraging. I say 'minor' because so little is actually known I am surprised any academics would risk their careers specialising in it.

It will be interesting to see whether they attract the weirdos (eg us) and whether they will be let in. You naval types should keep tabs.

[Boreades]

It might be professionally off-limits, because any in-depth exploration of the Classis Britannica rapidly reaches the conclusion that the "Roman" navy in Britain was in fact the Welsh Navy, based in Barry. That is, native Britons who had negotiated a peaceful settlement with the over-stretched Roman invaders.

With Claudius' invasion c.100 years after Julius Caesar's rather feeble attempt. Claudius ended the war not by conquest but by marrying his own daughter Genvissa to Arviragus, King of Siluria, in 45 AD. Siluria was a kingdom in the south of Wales. Their son was Meric (Marius), King of the Britons.

[Mick Harper]

New to me! Very new. How sure are you? None of this is mentioned in I, Claudius/Claudius the God which though fiction is usually based on sources. There's no way Graves wouldn't have used this if he knew about it.

[Boreades]

Most of my notes are at home, but for the moment from memory, the trail of breadcrumbs starts with Carausius, the Roman Emperor, and why is he buried in a remote village in Wales?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carausius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penmachno

[TisILeclerc]

Regarding the Romans' use of British sailors.

Why not?

They used soldiers from all over the empire. It's what you do when you start invading.

We did it all over the place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepoy

It makes perfectly sound military sense.

[Boreades]

What is most interesting is the taking as granted that the Anglo Saxons were coming to the islands as a matter of course before the Romans were here and forming alliances with the local tribes. That makes sense of everything that people like Gildas were wittering on about.

The stuff about Carausius, as a British Roman Emperor, seems to support that.

.. his appointment to command the Classis Britannica, a fleet based in the English Channel, with the responsibility of eliminating Frankish and Saxon pirates who had been raiding the coasts of Armorica and Belgica.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carausius

This was c.286 - so the sneaky Saxons were bothering the Brits for centuries before Vortigen. Some might say the arrival of the Romans just delayed that. Others might say it wos the Roman's wot dunnit, by weakening the Brits so much that the Saxons reached a critical mass.