American Arthur
How broken empires become legends
We describe our homeless encampments as “tent cities.” Tent cities are temporary. They’re a problem that will be resolved with the next election or the next economic recovery. If they become too inconvenient, they can be taken down by court order and police action.
In Brazil they call these impromptu encampments “favelas.” In other countries, they are called “slums,” “shanty towns,” or “informal settlements.” These are long-standing multigenerational communities that are shaped by generations of endemic poverty and income inequity. Their residents see them as permanent homes and are prepared to fight and die for what they consider their land. Their governments let them stay because they lack the resources and manpower to clear them out by gunfire.
If American living standards recover, our tent cities will fade away like our Hoovervilles once did. If they do not, we will see an increasing number of tent cities—and we will take for granted that those tent cities are just another neighborhood, albeit one most nonresidents avoid.
Those neighborhoods will be poor and dirty. Their residents will suffer from hunger, disease, and want. They will support themselves by charity, day labor, and crime. The wealthy will concern themselves more with “how can we get rid of them?” than “how can we better their lot?”
But those American favelas will also be cauldrons from which new myths emerge. Those myths will help residents make sense of instability, hardship, and chaos. And in time, they will become an integral part of post-American culture.
So what will those myths look like?
Let’s turn our attention to another falling empire.
In 383, Magnus Maximus, commander of the British Army, was proclaimed Caesar of the West by his troops. Maximus earned his purple the old-fashioned way—he assassinated the previous Caesar, Gratian.
Few soldiers looked forward to being posted in Britannia; it was seen as a swampy wasteland surrounded by hostiles, criminals, and bandits. The island was, however, a good place for an ambitious commander to rise in the ranks—Constantine I was also proclaimed emperor there. But, like Constantine, Maximus claimed the purple and then left Britannia immediately.
The Western Empire in 306 had enough soldiers to leave the island well-defended after Constantine departed. The Empire of 383 did not. Maximus took many of his troops with him when he moved to his new headquarters in Trier. His soldiers no longer needed to worry about British weather or British bandits. The people of Britannia were not so fortunate.
The reign of Maximus was cut short—as was his head—in 388. But few, if any, of his troops were reposted to Britannia. Those soldiers left behind remained at their posts for a time. But as the Empire lost its hold on the island, they either left or settled down and married into the general population.
There was another reason Western emperors were reluctant to reinforce Britannia. The province had a long reputation as a breeding ground for imperial usurpers. Several commanders stationed there had already claimed the purple; Maximus was only the most recent among them. Sending troops to the island carried a political risk: today’s reinforcement could become tomorrow’s rival.
In 410 the Emperor Honorius purportedly received a letter from his British subjects. They complained that Britannia was besieged by Saxons from the East, Picts from the North, and Hibernians from the West. But Honorius replied to their pleas with a firm denial. The Empire had no soldiers to spare, he told them. Going forward, Britannia could handle its own defense matters.
There are no extant copies of this “Rescript of Honorius,” and there is controversy as to whether or not there ever was an official request to Rome. But we know that Rome’s hold on the West was crumbling, and Britannia had always been on the imperial fringe.
We also have limited firsthand accounts from St. Patrick, a Romano-British Christian enslaved by Hibernian pirates. Patrick escaped his captivity, then returned to Ireland and worked tirelessly to spread Christianity. His years in bondage had introduced him to many Irish customs and legends; he incorporated those into his preaching and helped lay the groundwork for what later became known as Celtic Christianity.
Over a century after Patrick, St. Gildas described post-Roman Britain in his De Excidio Britanniae (On The Ruin of Britain). While Gildas’ Latin is notoriously bad and his discussion frequently punctuated by lengthy rambling, he provides a colorful portrait of life in post-Roman Britain.
[T]he Picts and Scots … having heard of the departure of our friends, and their resolution never to return, they seized with greater boldness than before on all the country towards the extreme north as far as the wall.
To oppose them there was placed on the heights a garrison equally slow to fight and ill adapted to run away, a useless and panic-struck company, who slumbered away days and nights on their unprofitable watch.
[T]he hooked weapons of their enemies were not idle, and our wretched countrymen were dragged from the wall and dashed against the ground. Such premature death, however, painful as it was, saved them from seeing the miserable sufferings of their brothers and children.
Gildas tells us that the tide finally turned for Britannia under the leadership of a warlord named Ambrosius Aurelianus:
a modest man, who of all the Roman nation was then alone in the confusion of this troubled period by chance left alive. His parents, who for their merit were adorned with the purple, had been slain in these same broils, and now his progeny in these our days, although shamefully degenerated from the worthiness of their ancestors, provoke to battle their cruel conquerors, and by the goodness of our Lord obtain the victory.
After many pitched battles, Ambrosius finally triumphed over his foes at the Battle of Badon (Badon Hill). Gildas tells us this battle took place “forty-four years and one month after the landing of the Saxons, and also the time of my own nativity.”
The Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) tells us that the Saxons first landed, at the invitation of Vortigern, in 449. That would put the date of the Battle of Badon, and Gildas’ birthdate, in 491. The Annals Cambriae, compiled in the 10th century, provide different dates and names.
516
The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights upon his [shield] and the Britons were the victors.
537
The battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell: and there was plague in Britain and Ireland.
At a Chedworth dig, archaeologists have uncovered a large villa that dates to Roman British times. Carbon-14 dating suggests several rooms, and at least one elaborate mosaic floor, were built between 424 and 544.
Former National Trust archaeologist Martin Papworth notes that the mid-range date for the mosaic’s construction would be AD 475-495. While this is several generations after the fall of Rome, it would place the mosaic’s construction within the lifetime of Ambrosius.
The precise location of Badon remains controversial. One of the most intriguing candidates is Badbury Hill in Dorsetshire. At Badbury Hill’s summit stand the ruins of an Iron Age fort; that fort is surrounded by concentric walls called the Badbury Rings.
To the north and east of the Badbury Rings we find early medieval Anglo-Saxon pagan burials. To the west are the graves of Christian Britons. This shows that the area marked a border between the contending forces, and one which was contested for some time. And a 2004 archaeological dig revealed charcoal dated to 480-520, suggesting it may have been occupied at the time of the Badon Hill battle.
Many Bretons (including St. Gildas) moved to Brittany, where there were still sizable communities who spoke mutually intelligible (with practice) Celtic dialects. Their descendents still speak Brezhoneg today.
Wandering Breton minstrels spread their stories and songs throughout Europe. Arthur and his doughty warriors squared off against gods and heroes from pre-Christian legends with assistance from a mad Welsh prophet whose name was rendered by English tongues as Merlin. As these tales spread, other artists wove Provençal and Occitan tales into the cycle. Today King Arthur and his crew continue to inspire entertainers and philosophers alike.
The Battle of Badon Hill provided only temporary respite. The Bretons remained subjects to foreign leaders, and remain so to this day. Brittany is now part of France, just as Wales is part of Britain. In both cases, local languages and cultures were discouraged for generations—excluded from schools, stigmatized in public life, and treated as obstacles to national unity.
The heart of the Arthurian legend lies in what Portuguese speakers call saudade. It is a longing for a beautiful past that may never have existed as we remember it. Those memories are idealized but that does not make them less true. They are myths of what might have been, reshaped into models for what could be. If we never reach them—if we never find the Grail—we are still better for the quest.
So what would a post-American Arthur look like?
A powerful state weakens. As it loses its ability to project power, it loses access to critical trade routes. Its institutions crumble; with them goes the expertise required to maintain our infrastructure and interpret our records.
All that remains are stories.
We frequently hear stories about AI’s enormous energy and resource demands. The internet’s broader infrastructure is less power-hungry, but no less dependent on scarce materials and shared formats. Many video memes and cartoons from the early 21st century can no longer be viewed because Adobe discontinued the Flash platform on which they ran.
Very little of the data we depend on today will survive into the coming centuries. It has always been this way. Music was an essential part of Roman life, but it was not annotated and today we can only imagine the soundtrack of imperial life. Many Victorian bestsellers are now read only by specialists; many Greek and Roman philosophers are known only through quotations preserved by their opponents.
Without the strictures of recorded fact, figures are transformed into legends. Presidents, generals, cultural icons, and tech figures take on new forms. Their names will persist even as their context fades. Our descendants may tell stories of Doctor Salk who cured polio and saved the nation from COVID and AIDS. They may believe Ben Franklin used lightning strikes to power the first computer. What remains is not a biography, but a composite.
Out of those stories comes a story not of a man as he lived, but a man as he is needed. This hero will fight enemies, restore order in a time of chaos, and defend the people. He and his followers will become the center of a story rooted in the hopes of those who tell it. Our descendants will remember their triumphs and mourn their defeat.
Our vision of Arthur is rooted in Breton oral tradition, French courtly romance, pre-Christian myths, and many other sources. A post-American Arthur will be drawn from films, memes, propaganda, and folklore. He may be counseled by the shaggy-haired wizard Einstein, who teaches him how to create a weapon of great terror. He may be a descendent of Washington, the First King.
The ruins of our cities will serve as anchors. Later scholars may argue about whether King Washington held court in Columbia District or amidst the towers of New York. They will argue about whether we ever landed on the moon and suggest our satellite networks were mere terrestrial radio stations described by peasants.
The details from their past will be reshaped into cautionary tales and hero legends. They will sing of cities that blazed with light and scare children with tales of the goblin Stalin. Events that have not yet happened will become the defining myths of ethnicities that do not yet exist. Memories will become stories; stories will become traditions; traditions will become truth.
Our reality will be colored by saudade. Our descendants will long for a time that never was, and envision their ancestors as they never were. We will become icons of a Golden Age, remembered both for our triumphs and our fall.
Many Americans see the Kennedy administration as the zenith of postwar American confidence. In the early 1960s, the United States stood at the center of a global order it had helped create. Its economy was strong, its cultural influence unmatched, and its technological goals were quite literally reaching for the moon. Things were not so bright and unified as we imagine, of course. But they rarely are.
Kennedy’s 1963 assassination marked an end to that sense of unlimited possibility. After his death clarity gave way to uncertainty. We could no longer pretend we were united in hope, no longer tell ourselves we were in a golden age.
Americans of that time felt these doubts more keenly than we do now. They looked back on their martyred President as the end of an era, and named his administration after a then-popular Broadway musical.
They called it Camelot.