Round table. The knights of the round table was a military order said to have been instituted by Arthur, first king of the Britons, around the year 516. See Knight.

It is said that these knights, all chosen from the bravest of the nation, were twenty-four in number, and that the round table , from which they derive their name, was an invention of Arthur, who, wanting to establish between them a perfect equality, conceived this form to avoid ceremony and the disputes of rank regarding the high and low ends of the table.

Lesly assures us that he saw this round table at Winchester, if one were to believe those who display this table with such pomp and ceremony, while claiming it to be the same one which served the knights. To confirm the truth of this tradition, they point to the names of a great number of these knights etched around the round table . Larrey, and several other writers, have recounted this fable as historical fact. But in addition to the fact that Camdem finds the structure of this table to be of a much more modern taste than the works of the sixth century, King Arthur was seen as a mythical prince, and P. Papebrok demonstrated that before the tenth century no one knew what the orders of chivalry were.

It seemed, on the contrary, that the round table was not at all a military order, but a type of joust or military exercise between two men armed with lances that differed from tournaments where one fought troop against troop. This is the distinction that Matthieu Paris makes expressly. “ Non in hastiludo illo ,” he says, “ quod TORNEAMENTUM dictur, sed poitus in illo ludo military qui MENSA ROTUNDA dicitur .” And it is believed that this joust was given the name round table , because the knights who fought there came back to dine at the home of the main tenant, where they were seated at a round table . See, for more on this subject, Justiniani and Father Heylot.

Several authors say that Artus, duke of Brittany, renewed the order of the round table , which was falsely supposed to have existed. Paul Jove reports that it was only under Frederick Barbarossa’s reign that one began to speak of the knights of the round table . Others attribute the origin of these knights to factions of the Guelphes and the Gibelins. According to Walsingham, Edward III commissioned the construction of a palace that he called the round table because its courtyard measured two hundred feet in diameter.