www.carausius.org

We do not have evidence, we have facts, opinions and constructions. How do we examine and assess these? We cannot use quantitative approaches such as reliability and validity and we cannot use qualitative approaches such as authenticity, trustworthiness, transferability and reproducibility. Ideally we could triangulate different parts if we could be sure that they were not derived from a single source but this is seldom possible.

This is a particular problem when we have nearly two millennia of time between us. Making sense and drawing conclusions from scraps of ancient manuscripts such as those found in the Harleian and Jesus College collections, with conflicting dates and alternative names in different languages represents a challenge addressed by only a few researchers, particularly when attempting to create chronologically-stable pedigrees on which to build. Writers such as Gildas and Nennius in the sixth and eighth centuries are writing after events and perhaps calling on records that no longer exist and applying a personal, partisan or political agenda.

In the case of the origins of Carausius, we have two Roman historians, Aurelius Victor and Eumenius writing second hand accounts one hundred years later, the ambiguous statements of both being capable of more than one interpretation, together with the map created again by second hand reports, by Claudius Ptolemy in AD150 placing the only recorded site called Menapia in eastern Ireland at Wexford. Everything written thereafter follows these writings, and seldom question the conclusion usually drawn that Carausius came from the tribal homelands on the European mainland. Later writers such as Eutropius and Orosius do not venture to offer an opinion as to his origin. At the time that Carausius lived, in the third century, the Menapian tribe as an identity was disappearing from history seven hundred years after its first recorded appearance and four hundred years after the founding of settlements such as Wexford.  I have used in my talk the example that doctors for hundreds of years used to bleed patients who were sick or dying until someone said “Hang on a minute…..” thereby pointing out the issue of repeating the same approach without critical re-examination.

We can only fall back on the legal standards of ‘balance of probability’ and ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. For example, it is frequently claimed that Magnus Maximus (AD344-388) is the father of Antonius Donatus Gregorius, aka Anwyn Dynod, first ruler of what became known as Dyfed. However, using timelines that follow known Roman dates of the rival candidate for parent Maxentius, born AD279 and the first contemporaneous writing of the monk Gildas In Wales describing the Dyfed ruler Vortepir, born around AD 465 as an elderly tyrant, and the intervening six generations of rulers recorded in the sequence of various historical manuscripts, it is possible to say that Magnus Maximus as a candidate is beyond reasonable doubt not the father, particularly as Anwyn Dynod  was believed to have been born around AD300! Of the two, we can say that the balance of probability therefore rules in favour of Maxentius.

Looking at the claims of accounts of Carausius originating from the Menapian settlement in west Wales, we have the disappearance of the Menapian tribal homeland, the known colonisation of eastern Ireland, west Wales, Anglesey and the Isle of Man, the early Menapian line for the control of the Welsh coastal areas, (described, again second hand, by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars memoirs as ‘The maritime areas are controlled by those who had passed over from the lands of the Belgae….almost all are called by the names of those states from which they sprung….having waged war they continued there and began to cultivate the land. Book V, xii) and finally the gravemarker that is rejected on grounds which are demonstrably wrong or ignored on many historical textbooks as not fitting the prevailing narrative but actually fitting very well with the Welsh theory, as described in my ‘The Carausius stone in perspective’ paper on my website. I would therefore say that this claim also fits the ‘balance of probability’ category.