THE FINAL BIG REVEAL ON THE RED AND WHITE DRAGONS OF DINAS EMRYS

After writing to several leading Roman military scholars who have worked extensively on the NOTITIA DIGNITATUM, I've come to the conclusion that I must abandon my tentative association of the Dinas Emrys serpents/dragons with the shield device of the Seguntienses.  The case against such an identification was best put forward by Dr. Ingo Maier, whose response to my query I post here in its entirety:

"I was interested to read the information in your message relating to a drawing "in the Notitia dignitatum" and ending with the question: "I was just wondering if you thought it was reasonable to identify the image on the Seguntienses standard as two battling male snakes."

The short answer is: perhaps! As you mention, such an identification would be "all speculation" and, as such, does not constitute evidence.

The drawing of a disc representing a shield, under the caption "Seguntienses", exists in several manuscript and printed graphic entities that were all demonstrably derived, either directly or indirectly, from a compilation of lists and 89 pictures that began with the list item "notitia [..] orientis" and ended with the list item "ceteri [..]dalmatiae officium habent". The immediate common exemplar [ICE] of all these available copies was written in a script not used before the 8thC and existed in the book identified as (Sigma) that was in the library of the Speyer cathedral chapter at least between 1426/7 and 1550/51. I refer to this [ICE] with the acronym Cnd, denoting C(ompilation of lists and 89 pictures that, in 1426/7, began with a list item whose first two words were) n(notitia) d(ignitatum - which were not the title to the entire compilation).

Sorry about the preceding paragraph, but the name "Notitia dignitatum" is used by many writers to refer to several different entities including, mostly, the edition produced by Seeck in 1876 which is not an accurate copy of the Cnd but appears to be widely regarded as an accurate copy of some 4th-5thC compilation.

There are several problems relating to the shield drawings: including problems about the relationship between the shield drawings and their captions, because the number and sequence of the latter have been influenced (either in the Cnd or in some pre-Cnd compilation) by the list that immediately followed the pictures. It is possible, therefore, that in the pre-Cnd picture from which the drawings in the Cnd were ultimately derived there was no association between the caption "Seguntienses" and the shield containing the decoration that you speculate may have represented two snakes.

That decoration is represented in 7 primary copies of the Cnd (a primary copy is any available copy of the Cnd that was demonstrably not derived entirely from any other available copy or copies): namely, OPFBVMW (these are identified on my web-site https://www.notitiadignitatum.org/ in "Bibliography" under "1.Copies: manuscript etc" ). These seven copies exhibit only minor differences in their decorations of this particular shield drawing, so that is reasonable to conclude that a similar decoration existed in the Cnd (it may even be that one of the 7 is an exact copy but, in the absence of the Cnd, any such exact copy could not be identified).

None of the seven decorations has any representation of eyes for the two entities or any other indication that the drawings were those of living or animate entities. And both entities are facing in opposite directions, which could make "battling" difficult (and there is no indication of "male" characteristics). A decoration that would be more consistent with your speculation exists on shield #1, row #4, picture 8 under the caption "Sexta parthica" (represented in Seeck's edition, p.20 by a drawing copied from M) representing two serpents, with eyes and facing each other.

So the speculation may not even be 'reasonable.'"

What I keep coming back to, therefore, is my initial proposal that the urns containing wrapped worms or dragons at Dinas Emrys was a folklore description of the discovery there of the cremated remains of two chieftains ('dragon' being a poetic metaphor for warrior or war-leader).  However, as I demonstrated in past articles and books, these snakes became confused with either genii loci or genii paterfamiliases.

While many examples can be found to help enlighten us as to how this might have happened at Dinas Emrys, I will quote what I think is the best:

Discovery of the Relics of Zechariah the Prophet, and of Stephen the Proto-Martyr. 

Chapter XVII

The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen

https://biblehub.com/library/sozomen/the_ecclesiastical_history_of_sozomenus/index.html

"I shall first speak of the relics of the prophet. Caphar-Zechariah is a village of the territory of Eleutheropolis, a city of Palestine. The land of this district was cultivated by Calemerus, a serf; he was well disposed to the owner, but hard, discontented, and unjust towards his neighboring peasants. Although he possessed these defects of character, the prophet stood by him in a dream, and manifested himself; pointing out a particular garden, he said to him, "Go, dig in that garden at the distance of two cubits from the hedge of the garden by the road leading to the city of Bitheribis. You will there find two coffins, the inner one of wood, the other of lead. Beside the coffins you will see a glass vessel full of water, and two serpents of moderate size, but tame, and perfectly innoxious, so that they seem to be used to being handled." Calemerus followed the directions of the prophet at the designated place and zealously applied himself to the task. When the sacred depository was disclosed by the afore-mentioned signs, the divine prophet appeared to him, clad in a white stole, which makes me think that he was a priest. At his feet outside of the coffin was lying a child which had been honored with a royal burial; for on its head was a golden crown, its feet were encased in golden sandals, and it was arrayed in a costly robe. The wise men and priests of the time were greatly perplexed about this child, who and whence he might be and for what reason he had been so clothed. It is said that Zechariah, the superior of a monastic community at Gerari, found an ancient document written in Hebrew, which had not been received among the canonical books. In this document it was stated that when Zechariah the prophet had been put to death by Joash, king of Judah, the family of the monarch was soon visited by a dire calamity; for on the seventh day after the death of the prophet, one of the sons of Joash, whom he tenderly loved, suddenly expired. Judging that this affliction was a special manifestation of Divine wrath, the king ordered his son to be interred at the feet of the prophet, as a kind of atonement for the crime against him. Such are the particulars which I have ascertained on the subject."

To that account I would add my earlier piece on the remains St. Ambrose exhumes and the strange correspondence between the meaning of one of their names and that of Uther, whom Geoffrey of Monmouth has buried at Amesbury (wrongly thought to be the Fort of Ambrosius, a match to Dinas Emrys in Wales):

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

Only a short time ago I realized that Ambrosius, son of the unnamed father who wore the purple, was (at least at Dinas Emrys!) a substitution for Eternus son of Paternus or Padarn ('the fatherly') Red-Tunic. Eternus or Edern in the Welsh genealogies is the father of Cunedda.  L. aeternus has the meaning of 'immortal', as does Ambrosius. For details, please see -

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/dinas-emrys-before-vortigern-and.html

I proposed that the Red Dragon was, originally, one of these chieftains in the line of Cunedda, whose cremated remains had been wrapped in a red cloak before being deposited in the funeral urn.  The logical candidate would be Padarn.  He was confused in Welsh tradition (see the relevant entries in P.C. Bartrumn's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY) with St. Padarn, whose cloak Arthur coveted.  Padarn established churches in Ceredigion, the kingdom of Ceredig/Arthur, son of Cunedda.  The Llyn Padarn only a dozen or so miles north of Dinas Emrys is believed to have been named for the saint.

When two snakes are shown in Roman art in the context of the genius, one is male, but the other is female.  I'm here posting a selection from "The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden: Religion at the Roman Street Corner" by Harriet I. Flower, Princeton University Press, 2017:

I've discussed at some length before that Common European Adders in Britain often show white in the male of the species and red in the female.  This would be in opposition to what I've outlined above, at least from the naturalist's perspective.  See https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/red-and-white-otherworld-animals-in.html.