Thanks for the bibliography, Iseabal! As usual I add Shippey's "The Road to Middle Earth" as a fascinating study of Tolkien's sources.

Wizards and staves in the Iliad? I don't remember this detail. It would be very interesting, I have to look it up.

About King Arthur: I do think that the Renaissance's "King Arthur" with his brave knights and wayward queen never existed; however the chronicles mention characters, maybe more than one, who *might* have been the historical counterpart of the legendary Arthur. I don't have the sources here but I seem to remember Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth... Sidonius? Some of these sources have been discredited for what pertains to Arthur, but they are worthy in that they draw, maybe in a mangled way, from older sources that are lost to us. I think it is safe to say that Arthur's legend does have a tiny kernel of truth. What that is, we cannot say now, unless some new source is discovered.

(That's why I disliked the concept of the "King Arthur" movie - as a fantasy movie it was not bad, but as a movie who claimed to "tell the truth" about Arthur it was ludicrous: there is NO truth that we know, and if they had wanted to be historical they could have put Wyrtgeorn and Ambrosius in it - hazy figures themselves, but at least they are mentioned in the chronicles.)

By the way, I have a memory gap now: do we know whether Tolkien mentioned Arthur in his comments or letters?