Caernarfon had been a Roman legionary outpost called Segontium, and although by the 1280s not much remained of that far-flung imperial outpost, the memory of a Welsh connection with Roman Britannia lived on.4 Caernarfon was associated (albeit dubiously) with Constantine the Great as well as the western usurper-emperor Magnus Maximus, both of whom had been declared emperor while in various parts of Britannia* (see chapter 2). Maximus—or Maxen Wledig, in Welsh—loomed especially large in local folklore. The great national romance known as The Mabinogion told in vaunting terms of a dream vision
...more
