A STRANGE "DOUBLE" COINCIDENCE?: UTHER AND CELSUS

Llyn Dinas from Dinas Emrys, Gwynedd, Wales

From time to time, I review my past works.  Why"  Partly to see if anything should be culled or revised.  But also just in case I missed something.

It may be that I have done just that when it comes to two instances of a Roman name that may point to Uther as a Welsh "translation".  In the following two articles I mention that Celsus had the same meaning as the British word underlying the name Uther:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/04/arthur-and-god-alator-of-south-shields.html

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/st-ambrose-and-exhumation-of-saints.html

For whatever reason, I neglected to put one and one together to make two!

While I personally have little doubt that the St. Ambrose story of the exhuming of Celsus went into the making of the story of Merlin's exhuming of one of the 'dragons', I remained unconvinced that Geoffrey of Monmouth's Breton chieftain Aldroenus was to be derived from that of Mars Alator.  Let us, however, step back from that for a moment.  Let us ask what it might mean if Aldroenus is to be properly associated with Alator.  Even if we allow for Breton Altroen being a substitute for the god.

Well, we would have two instances of Celsus that might well indicate that the "name" Uther should itself be viewed as a Welsh rendering of the Latin name.

Furthermore, South Shields/Arbeia, where the Alator-Celsus altar was found, is now (see https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1054) believed to have originally been called Lugudunum.  Myrddin/Merlin has strong affinities with the god Lugus/Lugh/Lleu (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/08/myrddinmerlin-conflated-version-of-past.html).

Alas, even if we know Arthur's father Uther = Celsus, the identification doesn't help us much.  Arthur, as we know, comes from the Latin Artorius, a name preserved in the North from the time of the 2nd century Roman dux and governor, Lucius Artorius Castus.  As St. Patrick's parents names have their Roman period predecessors found on Hadrian's Wall, and as all evidence I've been able to uncover places Arthur in that region,  it is certainly not unreasonable to very tentatively propose that Celsus was the original name of Arthur's father. That's all that can really said, so far as I can determine.

Alternately, the story of St. Ambrose and Celsus could have become fancifully associated with the name Uther in the process of story-telling.  In other words, while the meanings of the two names may have been identical, Uther was never a Celsus.  The Alator connection with Aldroenus remains extremely tenuous, in my opinion.