Dacia


Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians, its core in Transylvania, stretching to the Danube in the south, the Black Sea in the east, and the Tisza in the west. The Carpathian Mountains were located in the middle of Dacia. It thus roughly corresponds to present-day Romania, as well as parts of Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine.
A Dacian kingdom that united the Dacians and the Getae was formed under the rule of Burebista in 82 BC and lasted until the Roman conquest in AD 106. As a result of the wars with the Roman Empire, after the conquest of Dacia, the population was dispersed, and the capital city, Sarmizegetusa Regia, was destroyed by the Romans. However, the Romans built a settlement bearing the same name, Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetuza, 40 km away, to serve as the capital of the newly established Roman province of Dacia. A group of "Free Dacians" may have remained outside the Roman Empire in the territory of modern-day Northern Romania until the start of the Migration Period.

Nomenclature

The Dacians are first mentioned in the writings of the Ancient Greeks, in Herodotus and Thucydides.

Geographical history

The extent and location of Dacia varied in its three distinct historical periods :

1st century BC

The Dacia of King Burebista stretched from the Black Sea to the river Tisza. During that period, the Getae and Dacians conquered a wider territory and Dacia extended from the Middle Danube to the Black Sea littoral and from the Northern Carpathians to the Balkan Mountains. After Burebista's death in 44 BC, Dacia plunged into internal strife, resembling a civil war, as his unified kingdom split into several rival states. The constant power struggle weakened Dacia, but the Dacians remained a significant force, frequently making incursions into Roman territory. Stability was only restored when Duras and later Decebalus managed to reunite the kingdom.

1st century AD

Strabo, in his Geography written around AD 20, says:
As for the southern part of Germany beyond the Albis, the portion which is just contiguous to that river is occupied by the Suevi; then immediately adjoining this is the land of the Getae, which, though narrow at first, stretching as it does along the Ister on its southern side and on the opposite side along the mountain-side of the Hercynian Forest, afterwards broadens out towards the north as far as the Tyregetae; but I cannot tell the precise boundaries

On this basis, Lengyel and Radan, Hoddinott and Mountain consider that the Geto-Dacians inhabited both sides of the Tisza river prior to the rise of the Celtic Boii. The hold of the Dacians between the Danube and the Tisza was tenuous. However, the archaeologist Parducz argued for a Dacian presence west of the Tisa dating from the time of Burebista. According to Tacitus Dacians bordered Germania in the south-east, while Sarmatians bordered it in the east.Although Strabo and Caesar notes that the Dacians reached the Hercynian Forest, Germania and beyond, Strabo still indicates their borders as the middle Danube and the northwestern Carpathians. This suggests that, while they exerted influence over more distant regions, they did not formally annex them. This also helps explain why some maps depict regions such as Bohemia or Pannonia as falling under Dacian territory or influence. However, most academic maps concentrate on formally annexed areas, as regions of temporary control or mere influence are inherently imprecise and difficult to define.
In the 1st century AD, the Iazyges settled west of Dacia, on the plain between the Danube and the Tisza rivers, according to scholars’ interpretation of Pliny text: “The higher parts between the Danube and the Hercynian Forest, as far as the winter quarters of Pannonia at Carnuntum, and the plains and level country of the German frontiers, are occupied by the Sarmatian Iazyges, while the Dacians whom they have driven out hold the mountains and forests as far as the river Tisza.”

2nd century AD

Starting with AD 85, Dacia was once again reunified under King Decebalus. Following an incursion into Roman Moesia, which resulted in the death of its governor, Gaius Oppius Sabinus, a series of conflicts between the Romans and Dacians ensued. Although the Romans gained a major strategic victory at Tapae in AD 88, Emperor Domitian offered the Dacians favourable terms, in exchange for which Roman suzerainty was recognised. However, Emperor Trajan restarted the conflicts in AD 101-102 and then again in AD 105–106, which ended with the annexation of most of Dacia and its reorganisation as a Roman Province, Dacia Felix.
Written a few decades after Emperor Trajan's Roman conquest of parts of Dacia in AD 105–106, Ptolemy's Geographia included the boundaries of Dacia. According to the scholars' interpretation of Ptolemy Dacia was the region between the rivers Tisza, Danube, upper Dniester, and Siret. Mainstream historians accept this interpretation: Avery Berenger Fol Mountain, Waldman Mason.
Ptolemy also provided a couple of Dacian toponyms in south Poland in the Upper Vistula river basin: Susudava and Setidava. This could have been an "echo" of Burebista's expansion. It seems that this northern expansion of the Dacian language, as far as the Vistula river, lasted until AD 170–180 when the migration of the Vandal Hasdingi pushed out this northern Dacian group. This Dacian group, possibly the Costoboci/Lipița culture, is associated by Gudmund Schütte with towns having the specific Dacian language ending "dava" i.e. Setidava.
After the Marcomannic Wars, Dacian groups from outside Roman Dacia had been set in motion. So too were the 12,000 Dacians "from the neighbourhood of Roman Dacia sent away from their own country". Their native country could have been the Upper Tisa region, but other places cannot be excluded.
The later Roman province Dacia Aureliana, was organized inside former Moesia Superior after the retreat of the Roman army from Dacia, during the reign of emperor Aurelian during AD 271–275. It was reorganized as Dacia Ripensis and Dacia Mediterranea.

Cities

Ptolemy gives a list of 43 names of towns in Dacia, out of which arguably 33 were of Dacian origin. Most of the latter included the added suffix "dava". But, other Dacian names from his list lack the suffix. In addition, nine other names of Dacian origin seem to have been Latinised.
The cities of the Dacians were known as -dava, -deva, -δαυα, -δεβα or -δαβα, etc..
  1. In Dacia: Acidava, Argedava, Buridava, Dokidava, Carsidava, Clepidava, Cumidava, Marcodava, Netindava, Patridava, Pelendava, *Perburidava, Petrodaua, Piroboridaua, Rhamidaua, Rusidava, Sacidava, Sangidava, Setidava, Singidava, Tamasidava, Utidava, Zargidava, Ziridava, Sucidava26 names altogether.
  2. In Lower Moesia and Scythia minor : Aedeba, *Buteridava, *Giridava, Dausadava, Kapidaua, Murideba, Sacidava, Scaidava, Sagadava, Sukidaua 10 names in total.
  3. In Upper Moesia : Aiadaba, Bregedaba, Danedebai, Desudaba, Itadeba, Kuimedaba, Zisnudebaseven names in total.
Gil-doba, a village in Thracia, of unknown location.
Thermi-daua, a town in Dalmatia. Probably a Grecized form of *Germidava.
Pulpu-deva, today Plovdiv in Bulgaria.

Political entities

Rubobostes

Geto-Dacians inhabited both sides of the Tisa river prior to the rise of the Celtic Boii and again after the latter were defeated by the Dacians under the king Burebista. It seems likely that the Dacian state arose as a tribal confederacy, which was united only by charismatic leadership in military-political and ideological-religious domains. At the beginning of the 2nd century BC, under the rule of Rubobostes, a Dacian king in modern Transylvania, Dacian power in the Carpathian basin increased after they defeated the Celts, who previously held power in the region.

Oroles

A kingdom of Dacia also existed as early as the first half of the 2nd century BC under King Oroles. Conflicts with the Bastarnae and the Romans, against whom they had assisted the Scordisci and Dardani, greatly weakened the resources of the Dacians.

Burebista

, a contemporary of Julius Caesar, ruled Geto-Dacian tribes between 82 BC and 44 BC. He thoroughly reorganised the army and attempted to raise the moral standard and obedience of the people by persuading them to cut their vines and give up drinking wine. During his reign, the Dacian Kingdom expanded to its maximum extent. The Bastarnae and Boii were conquered, and even the Greek towns of Olbia and Apollonia on the Black Sea recognized Burebista's authority. In 53 BC, Caesar stated that the Dacian territory was on the eastern border of the Hercynian Forest.
Burebista suppressed the indigenous minting of coinages by four major tribal groups, adopting imported or copied Roman denarii as a monetary standard. During his reign, Burebista transferred Geto-Dacians capital from Argedava to Sarmizegetusa Regia. For at least one and a half centuries, Sarmizegetusa was the Dacians' capital and reached its peak under King Decebalus. The Dacians appeared so formidable that Caesar contemplated an expedition against them, which his death in 44 BC prevented. In the same year, Burebista was murdered, and the kingdom was divided into four parts under separate rulers.

Cotiso

One of these entities was Cotiso's state, to whom Augustus betrothed his own five-year-old daughter Julia. He is well known from the line in Horace.
The Dacians are often mentioned under Augustus, according to whom they were compelled to recognize Roman supremacy. However they were by no means subdued, and in later times to maintain their independence they seized every opportunity to cross the frozen Danube during the winter and ravaging the Roman cities in the province of Moesia, which was under Roman occupation.
Strabo testified: "although the Getae and Daci once attained to very great power, so that they actually could send forth an expedition of two hundred thousand men, they now find themselves reduced to as few as forty thousand, and they have come close to the point of yielding obedience to the Romans, though as yet they are not absolutely submissive, because of the hopes which they base on the Germans, who are enemies to the Romans."
In fact, this occurred because Burebista's empire split after his death into four and later five smaller states, as Strabo explains, "only recently, when Augustus Caesar sent an expedition against them, the number of parts into which the empire had been divided was five, though at the time of the insurrection it had been four. Such divisions, to be sure, are only temporary and vary with the times".