UTHER PENDRAGON AT BANNA/BIRDOSWALD: MY FINAL ARGUMENT

Dacian Draco on Trajan's Column

[The following is excerpted from an earlier blog piece.]

What it all comes down to is this: I'm convinced that Arthur belongs in the Irthing Valley, and that the most likely birthplace for him is the Banna Roman fort, where for centuries the Dacians were stationed.  The Dacians are notorious for their use of the draco.  Thus, if we opt to interpret Uther's epithet as a reference to this religio-military standard, or perhaps to the late Roman rank of magister draconum, we can safely place this man at Banna.  However, if the dragon of Pendragon is merely a typical Welsh metaphor for a warrior, then we lose our connection to Banna and are free to look elsewhere for Uther - even in the wrong time period and/or the wrong place.

I suppose it depends on how much we are willing to rely on the ever-unreliable Geoffrey of Monmouth.  Does his story about the draco standard of Uther being patterned after a comet derive from actual tradition or did he simply make it up?  I have elsewhere written about the comet of 442 A.D. (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/04/uther-pendragons-star-was-draco.html) and its possible connection with both Uther and Arthur.  This comet appeared at exactly the time we might suppose Uther to have come into power.  Its origin in Ursa Major, the Great Bear, allowed for a cosmological link to Arthur, whose name was from very early on linked with Welsh arth, 'bear.' 

It is not at all impossible that in an effort to legitimize his rule, Uther wisely decided to base it upon a claimed celestial sanction or mandate.  If he were descended from Dacians at Banna, and the members of that garrison already identified their draco with meteors or comets, it would have been an easy matter for him to have proclaimed that his own personal draco specifically stood for the comet of 442.