The Saxon warlord Hengist invited 460 British nobles to a peace conference near Salisbury — then slaughtered every last one of them. It was a massacre disguised as diplomacy. The bodies were buried in a mass grave on the plain, and their king, Aurelius Ambrosius, was shattered by grief. He swore he would build a monument so great that the world would never forget what happened there.
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Gods & Monsters·1/2·1′
The place
Stonehenge
Merlin and the Giants' Dance
How a wizard moved a mountain of stones across the sea
12th century literary tradition (referencing 5th century events)Stonehenge
Moral of the Story
“True wisdom and ingenuity surpass brute force — and the greatest monuments are those built to honor the memory of the fallen, not the glory of the living.”
Characters
M
MerlinK
King Aurelius AmbrosiusU
Uther PendragonA
Archbishop TremounusH
Hengist the SaxonSource
Geoffrey of Monmouth, "Historia Regum Britanniae" (c. 1136), Book VIII, Chapters 10-12; translated by Lewis Thorpe (Penguin Classics, 1966)