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Quote[/b] ]We might know very little about Arthur, but we can infer a lot from the times in which he probably lived. Fifth- and sixth- century Britain must have been a horrid place. The protective Romans left early in the fith century and the Romanized Britons were thus abandoned to a ring of fearsome enemies. For the west came the marauding Irish who were close Celtic relatives to the British, but invaders, colonizers and slavers all the same. To the northwere the strange people of the Scottish Highlands who were ever ready to come south on destructive raids, but neither of these enemies was so feared as the hated Saxons who first raided then colonized, and afterwards captured eastern Britain, and who in time, went on to capture Britain's heartland and rename it England.
The Britons who faced these enemies were far from united. Their kingoms seemed to spend as much energy fighting earch other as opposing the invaders, and they were doubtless divided ideologically as well. The Romans left a legacy of law, industry, learning and religion, but that legacy must have been opposed by many native traditions that had been violently suppressed in the long Roman occupation, but which had never entirely disappeared, and chief amongst those traditions is Druidism. The Romans crushed Druidism because of its associations with British (and thus anti-Roman) nationalism, and in its place intoduced a welter of other religions including, of course, Christianity. Scholarly opinion suggests that Christianity was widespread in post-Roman Britain (though it would be an unfamiliar Christianity to modern minds), but undoubtedly panism also existed, especially in the countryside (pagan comes from the Latin word for country people) and, as the post-Roman state crumbled, men an women must have clutched at whatever supernatural staws offered themselves.
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