CHAPTER XIV
THE HEROIC MYTHS
(Continued)
III. ARTHUR
NENNIUS, writing in the ninth century, is the first to mention Arthur.1 This hero is dux bellorum, waging war against the Saxons along with kings who had twelve times chosen him as chief; and twelve successful battles were fought, the last at Mount Badon, where Arthur alone killed over nine hundred men. Gildas (sixth century), however, refers to this struggle without mentioning Arthur's name.2 In one of these conflicts Arthur carried an image of the Virgin on his shoulder, or a cross made at Jerusalem; and the Mirabilia added by a later hand to Nennius's History state that Arthur and his dog Caball (or Cavall) hunted the Porcus Troit, the dog leaving the mark of its foot on a stone near Builth. Nennius himself gives a simple, possibly semi-historical, account of Arthur; and the Annales Camhriae (tenth century) say that Arthur with his nephew and enemy Medraut (Mordred) fell at Camlan.
Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100–54), who reports the Arthurian legend as it was known in South Wales, states that Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, loved Igerna, wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall; but for safety Gorlois shut her up in Tintagel. Merlin now came to Uther's help and by "medicines" gave him Gorlois's form, and his confidant Ulfin that of the Duke's friend, while Merlin himself took another guise, so that Uther thus gained access to Igerna. News of Gorlois's death arrived, and the messengers marvelled to see him at
