MY FINAL STATEMENT REGARDING THE IDENTITY (AND VERACITY) OF UTHER PENDRAGON, ARTHUR'S FATHER

A great many people have asked me over the years to "finally settle on your best guess for who exactly Uther Pendragon was."  While it is STILL debated whether U.P. is a true name + epithet or merely a title for some other person, my own extensive research strongly suggests the latter.  Can I prove that?  No.  And have I settled on only one possible historical candidate?  Well, yes... sort of.

I understand that such a qualifying (or equivocating?) pronouncement may automatically disqualify from being considered authoritative or definitive.  But that's okay.  All too often the person who claims to be the Sacred Guardian of the Truth is the party who is the most wrong about everything.

Ultimately, my approach to finding Uther (or someone who could conceivably have been him) was to not seek him at all.  This became necessary as a title such as  'terrible chief-dragon' could be applied to pretty much anyone.  The consequence of identifying any number of different chieftains or kings with Uther is obvious: Arthur can be placed just about anywhere in Britain.  Or in Brittany, for that matter.

As it happens, going in the opposite direction proved much more fruitful.  Ignore Uther, find Arthur, then check to see if Uther still fits into the equation.  If he does, you may be able to build a better case for the historicity of Arthur himself.  Think of it as a straight-forward, logical problem.  We might even present it as a simplified syllogism:

1) Arthur's father is said to be the Terrible Chief-dragon

2) The Terrible Chief-dragon must belong where Arthur belongs

3) Arthur belongs at X

Once all my work was done, I literally could not place Arthur anywhere other than in the Irthing Valley on Hadrian's Wall, and quite probably at the Dark Age hall at Banna/Birdoswald.  Having firmly determined that given the data available to me at this time, Arthur could not reasonably have belonged anywhere else, I was free to explore whether or not there was cause to find a notable dragon in the Irthing Valley.

Well, the rest I have written about extensively, here in my blog pages and in my revised book THE ARTHUR OF HISTORY (https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-History-Revised-August-Hunt/dp/1092772839/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+arthur+of+history+august+hunt&qid=1569607683&s=gateway&sr=8-1).  To summarize my findings regarding a dragon or a chieftain called a dragon or a man associated closely with a draco standard in the Irthing Valley (the valley of Arthwys or the 'People of the Bear'), I can only say this: the Dacians were at Banna.  And the Dacians are generally credited with introducing the draco standard into the Roman army.  A man called Aelius Draco, found on the Ilam Pan, is believed to be a Dacian from Birdoswald named for the draco standard.  This means I can make the following AUTHORITATIVE statement: if we were to choose anyplace at all in Britain to put a Terrible Chief-dragon, no better place than the Banna Roman fort could be found.  Especially given the proximity of this fort to the Camboglanna or 'Camlan' Roman fort, also in the Irthing Valley, the Aballava/Avalana or 'Avalon' Roman fort not far to the west, and the Congabata Roman fort (the prototype for the Grail Castle) just west of Aballava.  

As my placement of Arthur supports the idea that his father had something to do with a draco standard, I can with total intellectual honesty do nothing other than place his father at Banna, and suggest that his title meant either magister draconum (a late Roman army rank for the leader of the draconarii) or Chief Dragon, the latter being a symbolic title for the ruler of Birdoswald.  

Incidentally, the Arthurian battles, stretching up and down Dere Street to the north and south of the Wall, with several being fought in the vicinity of Corbridge on Dere Street, strengthen the notion that Arthur and Uther were based at the western end of the Wall in the Irthing Valley.  As I'm confident I've identified the battle sites correctly, I would find it difficult to situate Arthur and his father in a more appropriate location than the Irthing Valley (or perhaps, in the case of Arthur, at Stanwix/Uxellodunum).