Constantine, identified by Geoffrey of Monmouth as Ambrosius Aurelianus’s father and Arthur’s grandfather, must be emended to Constantius III, who sires Ambrosius Aurelianus, thus eliminating the fictional King Arthur of the fifth century and rightfully recognizing Ambrosius as the great king of the British nation whose father was Roman royalty as recorded in The Historia Brittonum. CONSTANTIUS III: KING ARTHUR’S FATHER PENDRAGON THE PENDRAGON DYNASTY Photo (1) As unusual as it may seem, Constantius III, who was a contubernalis during the rise of Stilicho, became the powerful Supreme Commander (Magister of Both Services) for Emperor Flavius Honorius in the Western Empire at the beginning of the fifth century. It was during the first two decades that events in Constantius’s life suggested an enigmatic but credible link not only to Britannia as a province, but also a distinct connection to King Arthur’s evolutionary genealogy. Very little is recorded of Constantius III in a complex jumble of Roman history prior to the first decade of the fifth century. He was a native of Niasus in Moesia, and in his early years he campaigned under Stilicho who was a major figure in both the Eastern and Western Empires. After 411 when he became Magister of Both Services for Emperor Honorius, he moved to the forefront of history in the Western Empire. Only two cogent details will be addressed in detail. One is the Empire’s attempt to reclaim Britain as a province through Constantius as the Comes Britanniarum. The second is to put to rest the erroneous conflation of genealogy between a mysterious Constantine and a King Arthur of the fifth century as given by Geoffrey of Monmouth in The History of the Kings of Britain, and in its place contend that history should replace legend and support the logistics of a genealogy linking Constantius III and the only named Briton king of that era who can be associated with King Arthur’s historicity is Ambrosius Aurelianus. Other details will be enumerated first: 410-- Constantius III represented Honorius after Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome, but because Alaric commanded such an upper hand, no negotiation was possible. Galla Placidia (Honorius’s half-sister), Aëtius (Gaudentius’s son), and Jason (Marcus’s son) were taken hostages, probably in late summer of this year. Honorius wrote a letter to the people of Britain who wanted them to return, but with all the problems in Gaul, including Alaric’s sacking of Rome, the Emperor urged the Britons to defend themselves. Alaric is killed during his attempt to commandeer Roman ships and sail to Carthago, thus seizing Rome’s “bread basket.” Ataulphus became the Visigothic leader and retained the hostages. 411--Constantine the Briton usurper, who had claimed Gaul in 407, was captured by Constantius III. The Usurper was mysteriously executed when he was being transported to Ravenna. Constantius III established his headquarters at Arles. 412--With Constantius III now in control of Gaul, Ataulphus, his tribe, and the hostages left Italy and were granted land in Gaul, but there was still no resolution of release for the hostages. 413--Ataulphus killed the traitor Sarus and Jovinus to try to appease Honorius, in return for food supplies from the Empire, but simultaneously Count Heraclian of Africa cut off supplies to Rome and rose in revolt against the Western Empire, forcing Constantius III into war with this seditious Roman compatriot, which delayed any negotiations for the hostages. 414--Of her own free will, Galla Placidia ceremoniously in Roman custom married Ataulphus. Both Constantius III and Honorius were outraged, and drove Ataulphus and his tribe from Gaul into Hispania. 415--The baby born of Ataulphus and Placidia mysteriously died, and in that same year Ataulphus was murdered by Dubius, a comrade to Sarus whom Ataulphus had killed. Singeric, who loathed both Ataulphus and the Western Empire, became king, brutalizing Galla Placidia but paying for his cruelty seven days later by being hacked to pieces. 416--Vallia, an honorable man, became the new king of the Visigoths and finally concluded a pact with the Empire. The hostages were released at the border between Hispania and Gaul, and Constantius III “with splendid courtesy saw Placidia to Ravenna.” 417--In January, Honorius and Constantius III celebrated their entry into the consulship of Rome’s government, Honorius for the eleventh time, Constantius III for the second. Following that ceremony, Galla Placidia reluctantly married Constantius. The pair have a baby, a girl named Honoria. 418--Late in 417 or early 418 Galla Placidia is impregnated again. Constantius III disappears from history, and Exuperantius becomes the Roman authority in Gaul. This is the interim when Constantius III is not recorded in Roman history. His disappearance remains unresolved, ignored by scholars and historians, and this anomaly has not been given the notice it deserves. Very few acknowledge that Constantius III drops from history and his temporary replacement is Exuperantius during this span of time. Peter Salway, in The Oxford Illustrated History of Roman Britain, very tersely mentions Exuperantius in passing: “In 417, for example, the first time we hear of Romans using force in northern Gaul since the fall of Constantine’ empire, . . . Exuperantius put down a slave revolt, ‘restoring law and liberty’, in other words bring back the normal order of things.” The name Constantine here refers to Constantine the Usurper from Britain, also known as Flavius Claudius Constantinus, who was captured in 411 by Constantius III and later executed en route to Ravenna. Stewart Oost, in a biographical essay titled Galla Placidia Augusta published in 1968,makes a fleeting comment that About 415 or 416 Roman authority appears to have been restored in Armorica by Exuperantius, probably a lieutenant of Constantius III; this revolt had either been connected with or identical with a revolt of the peasants, Bacaudae. Constantius III may even have been able to restore some measure of control over a part of Britain; if so, however, the reestablished connection soon fell in abeyance, for by 429 when we next have some relative good evidence about the state of the island, there is not the slightest hint of the presence of any of the apparatus of the central government.” Oost then cites R.G. Collingwood and J.N.L. Myres’ book Roman Britain, pages 295-301. It is Collingwood who who cogently fills in this gap of missing Roman and British history. Citing J.B. Bury and E. Stein, he gives valuable information about a new Roman military rank, Comes Britanniarum, which was established not only for the province of Britain, but also for four other provinces of the Western Empire. He first contrasts this new rank with the Count of the Saxon Shore and the Duke of Britain. The Comes Britanniarum commands a force . . . consisting not of limitanei or fixed-garrison troop, but of comitatenses: a mobile field army of six cavalry and three infantry units. No such officer and no such force are mentioned anywhere in our literary sources; and as late as 360 and again in 368 it is reasonably certain, from the narratives we possess, that nothing of the kind existed. Moreover, this silence concerning a count of Britain in the fourth century extends to the case of four others, who together form a well-defined class of officer. Like him, the counts of Italy, Strasburg, Illyricum, and Spain command small armies of comitatensis which are confined to certain localities; whereas, in general, comitatenses have no such territorial restriction, but are part of the general field-army of the empire, eastern or western as the case may be. They are peculiar, too, in their rank. Whereas other commanders of field-armies have the title of vir illustris, these five, like the commanders of frontier-armies, have the lower rank of vir spectabilis. Collingwood stresses that “None of these five counts can be shown to have existed before the fifth century,” and the initial occurrence of such an office “occurred in 409. He then conjectures that this reorganization was carried out by the Patrician Constantius III IN THE SECOND DECADE OF THE FIFTH CENTURY (caps and italics mine). That new rank, therefore, could not have existed until after the rescript of Honorius. Collingwood goes into more detail to strengthen to the veracity of this new rank by once again citing Bury and Stein and concluding that the position of Comes Britanniarum “came into existence after the supposed severance of Britain from the empire.” Bury avers that the Comes of Britain “cannot have been appointed been appointed only for the purpose of a single campaign; he must have been a permanent official.” Collingwood concludes that “the assumption is certainly probable; and until it can be discredited we must accept as probable the reoccupation of Britain, perhaps after a considerable interval, by the field-army of the Comes Britanniarum.” After adding even more support to this projection, Collingwood states that the beginning of the reoccupation of Britain “must certainly be associated with the work of the Patrician Constantius III, who re-established Roman control in Brittany about 417.” This period between 417 and 421 might very well explain the historical silence about Constantius III. If Constantius was in Gaul (not Ravenna) when his daughter Honoria was born, and Exuperantius was appointed as the interim Praefect of Gaul in 417, Constantius III might have been in Britain during the birth of his son Valentinian III and several years afterward. The pacification in Gaul was shaky at best, and when conditions worsened, Honorius would have recalled Constantius III, enticing him by offering him Co-Emperorship. The attempted reclamation of Britain would therefore have been short-lived, but not yet totally abandoned. 421--In February 8 of this year, Honorius raised his brother-in-law, Constantius III to a Co-Emperor for the pair to rule together, which declared that Placidia would now be declared as Empress until her son Valentinian III was of age. In the seventh month of his reign as Co-Emperor, on September 2, Constantius III died of pleurisy. 424--Theodosius II of the Eastern Empire finally recognizes posthumously that Constantius III was a Co-Emperor of the West along with Honorius, and therefore Galla Placidia was Empress of the West by just right, and additionally Valentinian III, her son, would inherit the throne. Because of Constantine III’s role in Roman history, some comments must be made to clarify Part Four, “The House of Constantine” of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. Some details are mentioned in the segment titled Ambrosius Aurelianus. As stated there, Monmouth's genealogy for Constantine is a convoluted segment tainting a crucial era of British history, since there was no Constantine during that era except for Constantine the Usurper who was beheaded in 411. A search of Roman history turns up only one individual of a so-called Constantinian House, and that is Constantinus III. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s genealogy about a Constantius can be modified for a more accurate historical perspective. In the following genealogical chart, the red type is extracted from Monmouth’s genealogy, and the black type is based upon five historical figures--Constantius III, Galla Placidia, their two children, and Ambrosius Aurelianus, whose name is synonymous with Aurelius Ambrosius. Constantine is phantasmagoric, especially when he is also associated with Constans; it appears as if Monmouth was trying to assign the Constantinian role to Constantine the Usurper, who had a son named Constans, both who were killed in 411. Uterpendragon (note the spelling) is the epithetic synonym for Ambrosius, uter- being a Latin prefix, signifying two siblings born of a different father but the same mother, Ambrosius’s father being Constantius III’s son, and Cador’s father being Gorlois. The epithet for Constantius III would be simply Pendragon, not Utherpendragon, Pendragon meaning the leader or head Dragon, the insignia of the Roman cavalry. In the genealogical chart below, the black print indicates verifiable history, except for the identification of Ambrosius Aurelianus’s mother. As discussed in more detail later, Gildas Badonicus does not provide the names of Ambrosius’s father or mother; they are both simply listed as royalty. In the Historia Brittonum, Ambrosius’s father is described as one of the consulibi of the Roman people. The names in red are extracted from Monmouth’s genealogy, with the exception of Aurelius Ambrosius, since it is linked to a historic Roman individual.          See the role of Pendragon in the novel section