The Knights of the Round Table were those men awarded the highest order of Chivalry at the Court of King Arthur. The table at which they met was created to have no head or foot, representing the equality of all the members. Different stories had different numbers of knights, ranging from only 12 to 150 or more.
The first writer to describe the Round Table was Wace, whose Roman de Brut was an elaboration of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The actual table itself was round to represent that each knight was of equal value to the king and thus there was no 'head' of the table, although one understood that Arthur's place was 'the head.' In later writings, the table was said to be a gift to King Arthur from his father-in-law, King Leodogran of Cameliard, as a wedding gift upon the marriage of Arthur to Guinevere.
I read about this in my history book!
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