Prof. Mark Horton examines a tiny carved dragon from a Roman military belt. Dragons were powerful symbols in the late Roman army, carried into battle as standards known as ‘draco.’ Could this rare artifact be linked to the legend of King Arthur?
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TRANSCRIPT
-When I first saw a photograph of it, I thought it was about twice the size but it's absolutely minute, but so intricately carved.
-A one-inch-long piece of metal shows a dragon figure coiled over itself.
It's the strap end from a military belt.
-You can see its head, its fiery tongue coming out.
Here's its eye, thats its skull, and then we've then got its body which has got these sort of scales on, going all the way 'round, twisting like it's waving in the wind.
The idea of a dragon goes back into the lat 4th century, to the Roman army that we knew ha dragon standards and those draco which they led into battle.
-The draco was a metal dragon standard carried in front of the army.
This piece of military uniform was found by the side of the Roman road leading to Badbury Rings.
Could it have been dropped by one of Arthurs soldiers?
-You can almost imagine a 5th-century army marching along this very road in which I'm standing.
Without sort of pressing the point too far, one must remember that the father of the legendary Arthur was Uther Uther Pendragon, which literally means head of the dragon.
So, head of the dragon militia.
In archaeology, we very rarely find these kind of things, but, you know, the it's circumstantial evidence, but it's really persuasive.
So close to Badbury Rings seems to me a really convincin piece of evidence that it might well have come from one of those Arthurian armies on their way to either fight the Battle of Mons Badonicus, or maybe to return back to Cirencester.