MS. Variants of the Shield Device of the Seguntienses
In the main, I have an incredibly high respect for scholars. The vast majority of the time I guide my research by their pronouncements on various subjects. But sometimes, my instinct or 'gut feeling' prevails over educated opinion and I find that I must revisit a problem that seemed to have been properly resolved.
One such is the NOTITIA DIGNITATUM shield device that is assigned to the Seguntienses, a unit whose name links it to the Segontium (modern Caernarfon) Roman fort in Gwynedd, Wales. The name of the fort, in turn, derives from that of the Afon Saint, the river that runs by Caernarfon.
I had decided to not factor this shield device into my analysis of the Dinas Emrys worms/dragons, primarily based upon correspondence I received from Dr. Ingo Maier, an avowed expert on the ND. His kind and comprehensive email to me can be found in its entirety here:
Now, Dr. Maier may well be right, of course. It is possible that the 'crossed snakes' shield emblem has been wrongly attributed in the text to the Seguntienses. However, if so, it strikes me as a rather amazing coincidence that this unit should be given such a device, given the fact that Segontium is under 20 kilometers (some 12 and a half miles) from Dinas Emrys and only a dozen or so kilometers from the source of the Afon Saint at Llyn Padarn. It seems to me this is not a coincidence we can choose to ignore or summarily dismiss.
Before I take a closer look at the Seguntienses themselves and their probable relationship with the usurping Roman emperor Magnus Maximus, the Macsen Wledig of Welsh tradition, I wish to call attention to something that I had previously overlooked in my treatment of the Dinas Emrys story.
At the end of the MABINOGION tale 'Lludd and Lleuelys', we are told that as long as the dragons Lleuelys (Lleu-velys) and interred remained buried at Dinas Emrys "no plague will come to Britain."
The word plague here - W. gormes - has several meanings. The story-teller used it in its sense of 'plague.' But it is used in other contexts as well, often with the definition "oppression" or 'invasion."
From the GPC:
gormes
[< IE. *uper-m̥bh(i)-med-t- neu *uper-eks-med-t- o’r gwr. *med- ‘mesur, amgyffred, meddwl, barnu, meddu, llywodraethu, gallu’, ond cf. H. Wydd. forfess ‘cadw gwyliadwriaeth nos ar elyn’, Gwydd. C. corbais, forbas, forfess ‘gormes; gwarchae’]
eb.g. ll. gormesau, gormesoedd, gormesion.
oppression by an alien race or conqueror, tyranny, violence, burden, vexation, plague, pestilence; destruction, encroachment, intrusion, attack, invasion
Most importantly, gormes is used in the TRIADS in the sense of invasion by a foriegn oppressor, viz. the Saxons. Here are the Triads in question from Bromwich's edition:
Notice that two of the three Fortunate Concealments and Unfortunate Disclosures concern talismanic objects - a god's head and sacred bones - that serve a pronounced prophylactic function.
But what of the dragons? If, as I suspect, they, too, are meant to prevent a foreign invasion/oppression and not a plague timed to coincide with the festival of Beltane (note that Beltane was celebrated at Uisneach in Ireland, and Geoffrey of Monmouth has the Britons slaughtered by the Saxons at Stonehenge/Amesbury on May Eve), who or what - historically speaking - is the oppressor?
And this is where the Seguntienses' insignia comes into play. I have before suggested that the insignia of two crossed-snakes (or worms/dragons) of Segontium had become confused through the usual folkloristic processes with two 'dragons' or warriors/chieftains whose cinerary urns were unearthed at Dinas Emrys. This did not seem like an unworkable idea at the time. Unfortunately, I had failed to realize what was really happening with the insignia - and I neglected to do so precisely because I had forgotten about the motif of Concealment and Disclosure.
I can now relate, with some confidence, what I hold to be the true meaning of the Dinas Emrys story...
The Gwynedd coast was protected from the Irish - in this case, the obvious invader/oppressor - as long as the Segontium garrison remained at its post. This garrison was represented by their insignia of two crossed snakes (or worms; I would again remind my readers of the Irish story of the begetting of Conchobar, in which the genius loci of the Conchobar River took the form of two worms). The removal of the Dinas Emrys dragons - themselves the cremated remains of two warriors/chieftains wrongly conflated with the snakes of the insignia - is a symbolic way of describing the withdrawal of the unit itself from Segontium. In other words, as the removal of Bran's head and the failure to bury Vortimer in the right place opened Britain to invasion by the oppressing Saxons, so did the removal of the Segontium insignia (itself imbued with magical/spiritual power) open up northwestern Wales to invasion by the Irish.
The irony is that the Irish who came in were none other than Cunedda and his sons! [Ambrosius, remember, appears to at least in part be a substitution for Edern father of Cunedda; see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/dinas-emrys-cunedda-and-arthur-some.html.] And if I'm right about Dinas Emrys being a Cunedda fortress, then the identification of the Segontium insignia with the buried Irish chieftains/warriors at the fort may NOT have been an accident after all. It would instead be a metaphor for the co-opting of the Segontium standard by the Irish. The genius loci of Segontium was transferred to Dinas Emrys, and fused in popular belief with the genius paterfamilias of Cunedda's family. In all likelihood this paterfamilias was Padarn/Paternus 'the fatherly' of the Red Tunic.
And now for a little something on the Seguntienses themselves. The following passage is from https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-1132-1/dissemination/pdf/097/097_125_154.pdf:
"It seems, indeed, that we can trace in the pages of the Notitia the adventure of Maximus. The Seguntienses are found among the auxilia palatina in far-off Illyricum. Their name can hardly be derived from any site but Welsh Segontium. And this is just the name of all names that we would wish to find. Mediaeval Welsh tradition locates ' Maxen wledig ' at Segontium itself. One thinks of his own troops, his first supporters in his rebellion, promoted to be his guards and accompanying him first in his Gallic, then in his Italian campaigns, to be transferred to Illyricum after his fall. They are almost alone of the highest-ranked troops among the comitatenses, the palatini, in taking their name from a fort. The correspondence of such dissimilar sources as the Notitia and the Mabinogion could hardly be more delightful."
More on the unit can be read about in these excellent sources:
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