THE DACIAN 'WOLF-SERPENT' STANDARD AND THE GREEK KERBEROS: MIGHT THERE BE A CONNECTION?

Cerberus, Laconian black-figure kylix C6th B.C., National Archaeological Museum of Taranto

Recently, on the Facebook Page KING ARTHUR: MAN AND MYTH, Dr. Linda A. Malcor and I engaged in a _shall we say? - lively debate about the Dacian draco.  She believes this standard was merely a wolf's head attached to a windsock (which, because of its shape, came to be thought of as the body of a serpent). All the other scholarly studies I've consulted promote the idea that the Dacian draco is a hybrid monster, part wolf and part serpent.  

I produced a 4th century account of the draco by Gregory of Nazianus, in which Roman dracones HAD WOVEN SCALES ON THEIR BODIES.  This is found in Oration 4, 66:

"Moreover he shows his audacity against the great symbol,44 which marches in procession along with the Cross, and leads the army, elevated on high, being both a solace to toil, and so named in the Roman language,45 and king (as one may express it) over all the other standards, whatever are adorned with imperial portraits, and expanded webs in divers dyes and pictures, and whatever, breathing through the fearful gaping mouths of dragons, raised on high on the tops of spears, and filled with wind throughout their hollow bodies, SPOTTED OVER WITH WOVEN SCALES, present to the eye a most agreeable and at the same time |38 terrible show. And when things about him were settled according to his mind, and he was, as he fancied, out of the reach of danger in his own vicinity, he then proceeds to what came next." (https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/gregory_nazianzen_2_oration4.htm)

But, this is the late Roman draco.  The draco had doubtless undergone a process of standardization over the centuries, and other ethnic dracos (like those of the Sarmatians and Thracians) may have contributed to its development.  So the point that Dr. Malcor raised remained a legitimate one, and she challenged me to produce a dog-serpent hybrid that could be associated with the Dacians and which may have been the model or prototype for the Dacian draco.

I've been searching through the literature on the subject without success, looking for some strand of extant tradition which may answer the question.  I pretty much failed to find anything.  Most of the people who study the famous Dacian bracelets are not comfortable saying that some examples may show wolf-heads on serpent bodies and the few that are comfortable saying that do not dare associate them with the Dacian draco standard.  They may very tentatively suggest a link, but they cannot show such, and they cannot prove definitively that the protomes on these bracelets are lupine.  

Although some earlier scholars suggested the wolf-headed snake or dragon came from China or Iran or what have you, none have been able to produce convincing arguments for the existence of such beasts or the transmission of the motif to Dacia in the pre-Roman period.

The only canine-serpent fusion I have found is the Greek Cerberus (a hound with a snake tail, and with snakes sprouting from various parts of its body).  At first he did not seem to be of much interest.  But as soon became apparent, the monster's mother Echidna ('viper') was Scythian (=  DRAKAINA SKYTHIA). Furthermore, her son Agathyrsus by Herakles is thought to be involved in the ethnogenesis of the Dacians. See https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:entry=agathyrsi-geo#:~:text=Another%20myth%20is%20repeated%20by,to%20bend%20a%20bow%20and and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agathyrsi.

Now, it will quickly be objected that many Greek monsters came from Scythia, and that this may be for no other reason than a distant, strange place was needed as the nest of such creatures.  But, in fact, we know that Echidna, identified with the Scythian Dragoness, was actually worshipped in the Balkans during the Roman period

(see https://www.academia.edu/101979538/Draco_and_the_Survival_ofthe_Serpent_Cult_in_the_Central_Balkans).

Could it be that the Dacian standard of a wolf's head with a serpent's body is a representation of a mythological canine-snake hybrid the Greeks borrowed from the pre-Roman era Dacians as Cerberus?

For some good links on the Cerberus story and the characters involved in it, see

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/cerberus.html#:~:text=Cerberus%20was%20a%20vicious%20beast,snakes%20all%20over%20his%20back

https://www.theoi.com/Ther/DrakainaSkythia.html

https://www.theoi.com/Ther/KuonKerberos.html

https://www.theoi.com/Gigante/Typhoeus.html

While there is no certain etymology for Kerberos, and many have been proposed (see https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/08/11/no-internet-kerberos-is-probably-not-spot/#:~:text=Trying%20to%20make%20sense%20of,allegorical%20interpretations%20to%20entertain%20us.&text=Kerberos%3A%20From%20%E2%80%9Ckarbaros%E2%80%9D%20which,goes%20about%20the%20dog%20Kerberos. and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerberus), I rather like (if we wish to look towards the Scythian) the following derivation:

Proto-turkic kara-boru  "Black-wolf"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Turkic/kara

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/b%C3%B6r%C3%BC

Note that Cerberus is most often portrayed as being black in ancient art.

As with everthing that I write on these kinds of subjects, what I have set down above is purely speculative - and may not bear up to any kind of serious academic scrutiny.  But it is at least an interesting idea, and I hope my readers don't mind my "tossing it out there."