page_title: Vortiporius
section_title: Possible monument stone
hierarchical_section_title: Vortiporius / Possible monument stone
caption_attribution_description: Ogham inscription VOTECORIGAS on the Ogham stone CIIC 358 (photo), found in Castell Dwyran, County of Carmarthenshire, Wales – from about 550 AD. Detailed description of the Castell Dwyran Stone:The Ogham Stones of Wales
context_page_description: Vortiporius or Vortipor was a king of Dyfed in the early to mid-6th century. He ruled over an area approximately corresponding to modern Pembrokeshire, Wales. Records from this era are scant, and virtually nothing is known of him or his kingdom. The only contemporary information about Vortiporius comes from the Welsh ecclesiastic Gildas, in a highly allegorical condemnation from his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. At the time the work was written, Gildas says that Vortiporius was king of Dyfed, that he was grey with age, that his wife had died, and that he had at least one daughter.
  As a legendary king in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century treatment of the Matter of Britain, the Historia Regum Britanniae, Vortiporius was the successor of Aurelius Conanus and was succeeded by Malgo. He is not mentioned in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius. Vortiporius appears in the Irish genealogy given in the 8th-century work The Expulsion of the Déisi, in which his name is given as Gartbuir. The pedigree given in the Harleian MS. 5389, written c. 1100, is nearly identical, with his name given as Guortepir. In the Jesus College MS. 20, he is called Gwrdeber.
context_section_description: A c. 5th-6th century monument bearing both Latin and Irish ogham inscriptions is known from Castell Dwyran, Carmarthenshire, Wales. Its Latin inscription reads Memoria Voteporigis Protictoris (English: Monument of Voteporix Protector). The ogham inscription carries only the Goidelic form of his name in the genitive: Votecorigas. Protector (spelled here Protictoris, in the genitive) in the Latin inscription may imply a Roman-era honorific bestowed upon his ancestors, retained as a hereditary title into the 6th century. However, linguist Eric Hamp questions whether this is truly a title, suggesting that Protector may rather be a Latin translation of Uoteporix (which has essentially the same meaning as the Latin),  a "sort of onomastic explanatory gloss". The ogham inscription in Goidelic shows that the Irish language was still in use at that time, and had not yet died out in South Wales.
  The stone's original location at the church is next to a meadow known locally as Parc yr Eglwys. Local tradition carries the admonition that plowing must not be done near the church. Examination of the meadow showed evidence of large hut-circles.
  There remains a substantial question as to whether the stone refers to Vortiporius or to a similarly named individual, 'Voteporigis', as the 'r' in the first syllable would give the name different meaning. Rhys argued that the two individuals were the same person, saying that the 'r' had been added at a later date, and offering several suppositions as to how this might have happened.  However, he was working before the twentieth century advancements in the study of ancient Celtic languages, and his philological conclusions are suspect. More recently, Patrick Sims-Williams notes that the two names cannot refer to the same individual due to differences in their etymologies, adding that dating the stone to the time of Vortiporius may not be valid because it relies on the inexact dating of manuscripts and their transcriptions.
caption: The ogham inscription on the 'Monument of Voteporigis the Protector', translated by John Rhys, reading from bottom to top (image was rotated 90 degrees clockwise).
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