DOES UTHER'S GORLASSAR TITLE COME FROM ROMAN LITERATURE?

Cadmus and the Blue Dragon

Often when we study early Welsh literature, we forget that the clerics who were preserving the native stories for us were also experts in Classical and Biblical learning.  

I was sitting here today musing over the gorlassar title Uther uses for himself in the "Marwnat Vthyr Pen" elegy poem.  I and others have come up with many origins for the word/name, and there are at least two good etymologies and meanings for it.  If we strictly adhere to language rules, gorlassar is something like 'the very blue' (or very 'azure, sky-blue, greenish blue, sea-green'; see the GPC).  Generally, Welsh scholars interpret this to mean that Uther had blue-enameled weapons or armor.  I have guessed at anything from blue woad dyed clothing or tattoos (see Caeser's "omnes se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem, atque hoc horridiores sunt in pugnā aspectu") to the greenish-blue color often observed in comets. Yet another idea I briefly flirted with is that gorlassar meant that Uther was Manannan Mac Lir, who possessed a magic cloak the color of the sea!

However, I happened to recall that in Classical sources there are references to blue serpents and dragons.  The word used for blue in the Latin contexts is usually -

caerule.us           N      2 1 NOM S M                 

caeruleus, caerulei  N  M   [XEXEO]    uncommon

epithet for river/sea deities;

caerule.us           ADJ    1 1 NOM S M POS             

caeruleus, caerulea, caeruleum  ADJ   [XXXAO]  

blue, cerulean, dark; greenish-blue, azure; of river/sea deities; of sky/sea;

[William Whitaker's Words]

Here are the two references from Ovid, along with longer English text giving their contexts:

longo caput extulit antro
caeruleus serpens horrendaque sibila misit. 

Ovid. Met. 3:38

http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/ovid/ovid3html.html

When that race of men from Tyre directed
their ill-fated footsteps into this grove
and a jar they set down in the water
made a noise, from deep within the cavern
the dark green [OR BLUE] serpent stuck its head outside
with a fearful hissing noise. The jars fall                                             
out of the men’s hands, blood leaves their bodies,
and their astonished limbs immediately                                                           
into rolling circles and with one leap
bending itself up in an enormous arc,
it raises more than half its body length
up in the air and looks at the whole grove.
Its body, viewed as a totality,
is as huge as that Serpent in the sky
which separates the Great and Little Bears.

Note that the "Serpent" that passes between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor is Draco.  Arthur's name is often linked in the early Welsh sources to the word arth, 'bear.'  

serpere caeruleum Danai videre draconem

in platanum

Ovid Met. 12:13

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After they had prepared,                                                 
in accordance with their native customs,
a sacrifice to Jove and burning fires
had made the ancient altar glow, the Greeks
observed a dark-blue serpent [draconem] slithering                                         
into a plane tree standing right beside
where they had just begun the ritual.

These are only two such examples of blue serpents/dragons in the Latin texts.  There are others.  For example, we find blue 'angues' in Virgil's Georgics (4:482) and the blue-spotted serpent of Anchises in the AENEID (2:381).  Claudian (Rufinus 118) says Megaera's dress is bound with a dark-blue snake (caeruleo angue).

In the Greek, we find that the two serpents sent to kill infant Herakles were blue (Theocritus IDYLL 24).  Hesiod's 'The Shield of Herakles' speaks of azure-colored serpents/dragons.

There may be even more examples; I have not done an exhaustive search.  But what I have found indicates that dangerous or otherworldly serpents or dragons were often depicted the Greek and Roman literature as being either wholly or partly blue.

Were Uther's dragon-nature to have been taken seriously by the Welsh poets, they may well have chosen gorlassar, the 'very blue', precisely because they imagined him as being of the same color as all the serpents and dragons in Classical myths.