Little, if anything, of historical significance is to be deduced from the form of Arthur’s name. It appears in the Latin chronicles as _Arturus_, and is probably of Roman origin, derived from the form _Artorius_.[10] This is much more likely than that, as Rhys suggests, it was “a Celtic name belonging in the first instance to a god Arthur.” For the latter explanation, as readers of Rhys’s _Arthurian Legend_ will know, carries us into the world of mythology, and is made the foundation of an ingenious hypothesis to account for Arthur’s Celtic fame. That hypothesis, so far as it bears upon the name, is thus summarised by its author. “The Latin _Artôrius_ and the god’s name, which we have treated as early Brythonic _Artor_, genitive _Artôros_, would equally yield in Welsh the familiar form _Arthur_. In either case, the name would have to be regarded as an important factor in the identification or confusion of the man with the divinity. The latter, called Arthur by the Brythons, was called Airem by the Goidels, and he was probably the Artæan Mercury of the Allobroges of ancient Gaul. His rôle was that of Culture Hero, and his name allows one to suppose that he was once associated, in some special manner, with agriculture over the entire Celtic world of antiquity. On the one hand we have the man Arthur, whose position we have tried to define, and on the other a greater Arthur, a more colossal figure, of which we have, so to speak, but a _torso_ rescued from the wreck of the Celtic pantheon.”[11] The mythological Arthur, as he appears in Welsh literature and tradition, will claim our attention in another chapter; here, our inquiry will be confined mainly to the Latin records in which we find, or should expect to find, the earliest authentic information about “the man Arthur.”