Quite some time ago I floated an idea for Uther Pendragon being another magister militum. And, indeed, I wrote a dozen or so pieces on various aspects of this idea, all very supportive. I eventually abandoned this alternative theory because I didn't like placing the Arthurian battles in the South.
In short, the idea is this:
The late Roman British general Gerontius was awarded two titles, first magister militum and then magister utriusque militiae. As there were later Geraints in Dumnonia, either descendents of this man or named after him, I reasoned that one of them could be Uther. I could show that the Latinized form of Uther's name - Uter - precisely matched L. uter, the base of utriusque, and that Pendragon was a perfect W. rendering of magister militum. If we didn't like the folk derivative of Uther from utriusque (although scholars did not have a problen with this!), we could resort to the historical statement that Sarus was in dread of Gerontius when the latter was appointed MM.
Gerontius is conspicuously absent from Geoffrey of Monmouth's HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/06/geraint-in-geoffrey-of-monmouth.html). This continues to strike me as strange.
With an Uther firmly planted in Cornwall, we could conform to the traditional geographical placement of Arthur. Subsequent articles showed that Gorlois sites matched sites linked to both Geraint and Ygerna (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-forts-or-settlements-of-gorlois.html).
Something that I neglected to treat of properly may have a huge bearing on this possible identification of Arthur's father. A note in Nerys Ann Jones' ARTHUR IN EARLY WELSH POETRY for the poem "PA GUR" reads as follows on the Elei place-name brought into connection with Uther Pendragon. [This place-name is said to be the origin point for three heroes called 'predatory birds'. One of these is Mabon, the servant of Uther.]
"Elei appears to be a place name or possibly a personal name derived from a place-name. It may be the river name Elai (River Ely)... but cf. eryr Eli, 'the eagle of Eli' (EWSP 'Canu Heledd' 34b), referring possibly to a river in old Powys."
As it happens, I had found the Powys Eli:
The part of Powys where Eli is found was, anciently, a part of the territory of the Cornovii tribe, a tribe's whose name is echoed in the Cernyw used by the Welsh for Cornwall.
But, I had forgotten one crucial matter: Eliwlad son of Madog, placed in Cornwall at Cutmadoc in "The Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle", was a spirit in eagle's form whose name could easily have been interpreted as an element Eli + [g]wlad, with gwlad being "land" or "kingdom." As it happens, there is a Tremabyn by Cutmadoc, a Cornish place-name containing the personal name Mabon:
My memory then struggled with something else. I had to do a search through all my research materials and publications to find this tidbit in question...
I had asked Dr. Simon Rodway the following question:
"Could Eliwlad be for Elei-(g)wlad, 'Elei-prince'?"
To which he responded:
"Yes, it could."
Now, this idea is based simply on the many variant spellings for the Ely (see the listing in the Melville Richards Archive, for example). But it is also besides the point, as it is working somewhat backwards. What we need to ask is whether the Elei of the "Pa Gur" could be a mistake for the Eli- of Eliwlad, and there is no reason why that could not be so.
[I note in passing that my identification of Arthur's Kelliwic places this royal fortress next to Tremabyn and Cutmadoc: https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-location-of-kelliwic.html.]
So... if the Elei of the 'Pa Gur' is not the Elei River in Glamorgan, Wales, but instead a reference to Eliwlad in Cornwall, my identification of Uther as a Geraint who had inherited (at least in legend) the military title of the earlier, more famous Gerontius can be allowed to stand. And any connection with Illtud the leader of houselhold troops under Pawl Penychen must be discarded.
I will be considering this possibility over the next few weeks and will announce any conclusion I've reached with another blog piece.
My chief problem, once again, is the necessity of fitting Arthur's battles in the South. This simply doesn't work. His battles do fit very nicely in the North. So if Uther was a Geraint, we must question whether he was really Arthur's father.
For now, some of my musings on Uther as a Geraint of Dumnonia:
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