The Pre-Roman Dacian Draco
In my last blog piece -
- I included the following footnote:
<[1]
If the Arthur name was taken by the Irish of Dalriada and Dyfed for no other reason than it had belonged to a famous British war-leader and so adopting it was seen as emphasizing their own desire to be become more British, then we might also still consider an Arthur at Birdoswald. I held to that idea for some time. I abandoned the theory only because I was no longer willing to associate Uther Pendragon with the Dacian draco at Birdoswald. In a future blog, I will take one last look at Uther and the Aelian dragon on Hadrian's Wall.>
Here I wish to make good on that promise. But, first, I have a confession to make - the kind of self-reveal I rarely share with my readers.
A few nights ago I had a remarkable dream. I was at the old family garden of my boyhood and happened upon a huge golden python. My first thought (having been very "into" herpetology as a young man) was that this poor tropical snake shouldn't be here in the Pacific Northwest. If I didn't capture and rescue him before Fall the environment would kill him. So while I was afraid of him, I snuck up behind him along the wire fence, reached out quickly and grabbed him with both hands just behind the head. Predictably, he began to thrash about and try to get his coils around me, while hissing and attempting to bite me with his recurved teeth.
There were some people about, over by the house (presumably parents and my brother). I yelled for them to help by finding some kind of container to stuff the snake into. But they couldn't find anything. I was having difficulty controlling the snake and had to squeeze extra hard to prevent it from twisting its head back to bite me.
Finally, I suggested they quickly bring me the large metal garbage can. We could wrestle the snake into the can and secure the lid by some mwchanism. But as they arrived with the can, I realized the snake had suddenly shrunk. And then, to my mortification, I realized in my struggle with the reptile I had literally torn its head off, killing it. As its headless body had continued to thrash around, I didn't realize what I'd done until my family had crammed most of the snake's body into the trash can.
I was left holding the tiny, decaying head of the once-great python I was trying so hard to save. I felt a profound wave of guilt and despondence wash over and through me.
Now, before anyone makes wise by claiming this was a Freudian dream about a phallic snake (!), let me provide you with my interpretation.
For years I had viewed my selection of Banna/Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall, with its extraordinary Dark Age hall complex, as the home of Uther Pendragon. I did this on the basis of the fort being garrisoned for centuries by the draco-venerating Dacians. Ultimately, I was forced to relinquish the theory because of the entrenched position of the Welsh Arthurian scholars regarding the Pendragon epithet.
As I've made clear in a recent piece (https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2026/02/stop-with-pendragon-and-draco-already.html?m=1), Geoffrey of Monmouth misinterpreted Pendragon as meaning "Dragon's head" when, in fact, according to Welsh poetic usage, it must mean "Chief warrior" or "Chief of warriors."
But also in that blog I wrote this:
<There might be a curious sort of middle ground for an Uther Pendragon and the draco, of course. I pointed out years ago that Pendragon, if taken more literally, matched perfectly the late Roman rank (found only in the eastern Empire, however!) of magister draconum, the head of the draconarii. And I once very tentatively hypothesized that a ruler residing at Birdoswald, where the draco-loving Dacians were long garrisoned, might have been referred to as the Chief Dragon. This was based on my identification of the Banna fort as the "Aelian dragon" of the Ilam pan, a nickname for the place where the Dacian draco was held in special reverence. This idea was considered plausible by historians, epigraphers and archaeologists. Had the Chief Dragon been a title for the ruler at Birdoswald, he may have been fancifully identified with the mil uathmar of the Irish tale.>
Now, my idea for the Aelian dragon on Hadrian's Wall was a pretty big deal:
My work on the subject had come about because Dr. Linda A. Malcor, for whom everything Arthurian is Sarmatian, had insisted that the wolf-headed standard of the Dacians was not a draco. I proved her wrong about this in several published articles. Here are a couple of the more important ones:
Now, I had already pointed towards Birdoswald as a possible Arthurian center for other reasons. Chief among these were
1) The Northern Arthwys was an eponym, "Man of the Bear(-place)", suggesting a tribal group called the *Artenses or "Bear people." I had tentatively situated these folk in the River Irthing Valley, as place-name specialist Dr. Andrew Breeze had etymologized the Irthing river-name as meaning "Little Bear." Birdoswald and Camboglanna/Castlesteads are both in the Irthing Valley.
2) The Carvoran/Magnis Roman Wall fort was just a little to the east of Birdoswald. This fort had been garrisoned in the late period by a Dalmatian unit. We have a grave stone there of a woman from Salona. L. Artorius Castus had Dalmatian connections and there were Artorii in Salona.
3) I had identified Birdoswald as the home of St. Patrick.
4) I knew the draco-bearing Dacians were at Birdoswald.
My thoughts on all those points coalesced into what seemed a neat picture for a sub-Roman Arthur. We could postulate that the Arthur name, associated by the Britons with their native word for "bear", viz. arth, came from Carvoran, perhaps via his mother. Such a name would be deemed popular among the Bear-people of the Irthing Valley. Uther would obviously be the ruler or Chief Dragon centered at Birdoswald. Arthur's deathplace at Castlesteads would represent a fatal attempt to defend the western part of the Irthing Valley, quite possibly against fellow Britons (as the Saxons were to the east).
All of that, beautiful though it seemed, was rejected by me because I felt insecure in my modified interpretation of the Pendragon epithet.
And that's where the golden python dream comes in. In my sleep, my subconscious was fighting to save this fearful (= Uther) serpent. But at the same time I was slaying it and consigning it to the dustbin. That I was left only with the head of the snake was apt, as that's the only part of the draco that has survived intact in the archaeological record.
The meaning of the dream is pretty simple: I want Uther to be at Birdoswald, but am going against what my inner voice is telling me. Yet inner voices are tricky things. There are plenty of people who confuse their own inner voices for God. We've learned that the demons or other entities that schizophrenics "hear" in their heads are actually their own inner voices.
So when my inner voice, through the medium of a dream, urges me with the strongest symbolic images possible to save the snake and not slay it, do I follow the dictates of my subconscious? Or do I accept the tragic demise of the serpent, grieve and move on?
Do I need to acknowledge that while I initially did everything in my power to save the golden python, now that I had murdered it should I let it remain dead and refrain from trying to resurrect it?
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