An ancient Roman town in South Wales and home to the Second Augustan Legion
Caerleon is an enormously interesting place to anyone with an interest, however small, in Roman history.

From 75AD it was home to the Second Augustan Legion, comprising a 50 acre fortress housing 5,500 elite Roman infantry.

The amphitheatre was once considered, in mythology, to be King Arthur's Round Table.
It was, of course, really a centre for more violent entertainment, seating 6000 spectators eagerly watching the spectacle of gladiatorial combat and military displays.
You can imagine what it would have been like as a gladiator waiting for combat.

The amphitheater is built on the typical oval plan, with passages dividing the earthern banks into segments contained by buttressed stone walls which supported tiers of wooden benches.
The entrance on the far side of the arena is one of two rooms where gladiators or other performers would have waited before entering the arena.

The Caerleon Roman amphitheatre - a link with King Arthur's Britain?
The old town of Caerleon (or Caerleon on Usk - i.e. on the banks of the River Usk in south Wales) has long been associated with the story of King Arthur.
Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his History of the Kings of Britain around 1140 and this became one of the most important books of the middle ages.
The book, supposed to have been based on an earlier history, is the main source of all the later Arthurian legends.
King Arthur ranges far and wide over Britain but for several years he is supposed to have held court at Caerleon.
The story of King Arthur's Round Table appeared in a work by the chronicler Wace dating from 1155.
It is tempting to see the remains of the Roman amphitheatre in Caerleon as a prototype Round Table.

Long after the withdrawal of the Roman legion (II Augusta), Caerleon would have been one of the wonders of Britain.

The amphitheatre (built to hold an audience of up to 6,000 people) would have been a very impressive ruin and a tangible link with the dimly remembered, comparative security of Roman times.

The amphitheatre was excavated in in 1926/7 with support from Britain's Daily Mail newspaper and the Loyal Knights of the Round Table of America.
Little of the structure remains above ground level but the arena and various entrances are well defined and very evocative.

The Romans in Wales
Caractacus, also known as Caradoc, was the leader of the Silures tribe who at the time of the Roman invasion of Britain, inhabited a large area of what is now Monmouthshire.

Caractacus' hostile attitude to Roman authority was a contributory factor to the invasion of Britain ordered by Emperor Claudius in AD 43.

There was a fierce battle in A.D. 50 at the hill fort at Hereford Beacon between the Silures and the Roman army.
The battle was lost and Caractacus was captured and taken to Rome where he so impressed Claudius that he was pardoned by the Emperor.

The Romans had completed their domination of South Wales by AD 90 and by that time they had erected a fort called Isca Silurum beside the River Usk.
This became the fortress of the Second Augustan Legion and is the most important Roman site in Wales.

Isca Silurum is now known as Caerleon-on-Usk and is a suburb of Newport.

Caerleon held a force of approximately 6000 men and outside its walls was erected a stone amphitheatre to hold gladiatorial combats.