SOURCE: “A Possible Source of Geoffrey's Roman War?” in The Arthurian Tradition: Essays in Convergence, edited by Mary Flowers Braswell and John Bugge, The University of Alabama Press, 1988, pp. 43-53.

In the following essay, Thompson presents evidence that Geoffrey used Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic Wars as a source for his own History.

Arthur's campaigns in Gaul, here collectively termed his Roman War, make up a part of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae for which almost no historical evidence has been forthcoming and which has thus been considered exclusively fictional. After his pacification of the region and a period of nine years of peace, the king holds court at Paris; no significant amount of time appears to intervene between that court and the one held later in Caerleon at Whitsuntide. Since Geoffrey (XI, ii, 501) dates the fatal battle between Arthur and Mordred as occurring in 542, for Geoffrey...