DacianWarsPt 1

Feature
Rome’s Dacian Wars: Domitian, Trajan, and

Strategy on the Danube, Part I*
I
Everett L. Wheeler
Abstract
Two recent major monographs, one on the Dacian wars of Domi-
tian and Trajan (Stefan) and another on ancient migrations from the
Ukraine into the eastern Balkans (Batty, Rome and the Nomads) invite
discussion and evaluation. A survey of the problematic literary and ar-
chaeological sources (not least Trajan's Column) for the history of this
area in the first and second centuries A.D. prefaces an evaluation of
new archaeological evidence on Dacian defenses and innovative top-
ographical identifications. The development of a Geto-Dacian state in
Transylvania within the context of multiple ethnicities on the Lower and
Middle Danube is discussed and use of new archaeological discover-
ies to clarify narratives of the wars of 84–89, 101–102, and 105–106
is evaluated. Interpretations of scenes on Trajan's Column and the
metopes of the Adamklissi monument remain controversial.
T he Roman conquest of Dacia (the ancient forerunner of modern Romania) has

not ceased to fascinate, as demonstrates the weighty tome here discussed—on
my bathroom scale well over six pounds of arguments, photographs, maps, and
*Part II of Everett Wheeler’s “Rome’s Dacian Wars: Domitian, Trajan, and Strategy on the
Danube” will appear in the Journal of Military History 75, no. 1 ( January 2011).
Everett L. Wheeler, scholar in residence at Duke University received his A.B. from Indiana Univer-
sity/Bloomington and a Ph.D. from Duke. He specializes in the history of military theory, ancient
history, and Armenian-Caucasian studies. His extensive publications in ancient military history in-
clude Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery (1988), translation (with Peter Krentz) of Poly-
aenus, Stratagems of War, 2 vols. (1994), and (ed.) The Armies of Classical Greece (2007). Besides regular
participation in the International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies and the Lyon Congress on
the Roman Army, he serves on the editorial board of Revue des Études Militaires Anciennes.
The Journal of Military History 74 (October 2010): 1185–1227.
Copyright © 2010 by The Society for Military History, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or trans-
mitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Editor, Journal of Military History, George C.
Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, P.O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450. Authorization to photocopy items for internal
and personal use is granted by the copyright holder for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC),
121 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA (www.copyright.com), provided the appropriate fee is paid to the CCC.
★ 1185
EVERETT L. WHEELER
bibliography: Alexandre Simon Stefan, Les guerres daciques de Domitien et de

Trajan: Architecture militaire, topographie, images et histoire, Collection de l’École
Française de Rome 353 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005). A trio of general
theses undergirds this mountain of archaeological and topographical detail: first,
the people generally called Getae in Greek and Daci in Latin were not “barbar-
ians” like their German or Sarmatian neighbors, but a strongly Hellenized state of
some sophistication; second, the Emperor Domitian (r. 81–96 A.D.), the victim of
hostile senatorial historiography and the propaganda of Trajan (r. 98–117), merits
rehabilitation: in reality, Trajan only imitated and continued Domitian’s work in
both the military and artistic spheres; third, Stefan’s massive assemblage and re-
evaluation of archaeological data on the Dacian wars, combined with innovative
use of aerial photography, permits new topographical interpretations of Roman
campaigns and a reassertion of the historical accuracy of scenes on Trajan’s Col-
umn. Proper appreciation of the author’s contentions, however, merits a prolegom-
enon on the archaeological and historiographical difficulties of treating Rome’s
Dacian wars, particularly as Stefan’s work spans the history of the Geto-Dacians
from the late sixth century B.C. to the Roman annexation in 106 A.D., and a sub-
sequent recent work has much to say on the context of these conflicts.1
1. R. Batty, Rome and the Nomads: The Pontic-Danubian Realm in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), attempts to trace the history of migrations from the Ukraine into Ro-
mania and Bulgaria (fifth century B.C.–fourth century A.D.). Although supplementing Stefan’s
tome, Batty’s disappointing work suffers inter alia, as this paper’s commentary will document,
from factual errors and out-of-date or omitted bibliography (e.g., ignorance of A. Suceveanu and
A. Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine [Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica, 1991]; and A. Alemany,
Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000]). His curious pronounce-
ments about Roman policy on the Lower Danube derive exclusively from a very limited (cherry-
picked?) knowledge of the literature on Roman strategy (discussed in Part II of this article). For
other (and less tendentious) recent surveys of Roman archaeology on the Danube, although
not comprehensive and somewhat disappointing from a military historian’s perspective, see J.
Wilkes, “Recent Work along the Middle and Lower Danube,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 11
(1998): 231–97; and Wilkes, “The Roman Danube: An Archaeological Survey,” Journal of Ro-
man Studies 95 (2005): 124–225.
Footnotes to this discussion, modestly updating Stefan’s fifty-nine double-columned pag-
es (705–63) of bibliography through 2003, alert readers to important work available in North
American and Western European libraries without attempting to be comprehensive. Stefan at-
tests the prolific production of Romanian scholars, including many works generally inaccessible
outside Romania, and often adds his own twist to other excavators’ ideas, properly cited in his
footnotes. His fuller documentation will not be reproduced. Full bibliographical citations for all
ancient sources will not be given; English translations of most are available in the Loeb Classi-
cal Library series. The following abbreviations appear: AE=L’Année épigraphique (Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1888-); ILS=H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 3 vols. in 5 (Ber-
lin: Weidmann, 1892–1916). Apologies are owed to the Editor, whose patience in awaiting this
paper and toleration of its length are exemplary.
1186 ★ THE JOURNAL OF

The Dacian Wars of Domitian and Trajan
I
The skills of siegecraft, engineering, and logistics required to penetrate the
sophisticated and extensive Dacian defenses of the Carpathians probably exceeded
those of the more famous sieges of the Jewish War (66–70 A.D.) and certainly
involved much larger forces on both sides. Although the Dacian conflicts of Domi-
tian (84–89) and Trajan (101–102, 105–106) lack a Josephus’s detailed narrative,
the spades of Romanian archaeologists, active for over a century, have compensated
for sparse literary sources by unearthing much of the Dacian fortification system
and providing clues to the campaigns. Above all (quite literally), Roman victory
required capture of the Dacian capital, Sarmizegethusa Regia (modern Gradishtea
Muchelelui)—no small feat for operations at an elevation of nearly 1,000 meters
in the heart of the southern Carpathians’ Orashtie Mountains. The capital lies on
a narrow ridge, which peaks at Muncel (elevation 1,563.5 meters) and whose sheer
slopes plunge into the Alb and Godeannul Rivers on its northern and southern
sides respectively. Built on fourteen man-made terraces with additional habitation
extending along the ridge for 2 kilometers to the west and about 1 kilometer to
the north, Sarmizegethusa’s massive fortifications, exploiting every topographical
advantage, enclosed an urban area of over three acres.2 But only half of the capital’s
urban space has even been explored, much less dug. Extensive forestation, greater
today than in Antiquity, has impeded understanding this site besides many others
of these wars. Moreover, the potholes of treasure-hunters as early as the Napole-
onic era, seeking fabled “Dacian gold,” and the discontinuity of Romanian excava-
tions, often with different working assumptions, have complicated discerning the
site’s pristine state. Not least, the Romans, true masters of wiping cities off the face
of the earth, as modern investigators of Hellenistic Corinth and Carthage (both
destroyed in 146 B.C.) can verify, left little behind. These factors render Sarmizege-
thusa Regia an archaeological nightmare.
Dacian accomplishments and Romania’s Roman heritage play a significant
role in Romanian national pride—perhaps even more so than with the popular
notions of Roman Britain or Roman Germany, spawning antiquarianism and cos-
tumed wargamers acting out their fantasies. In 1980, when Romania hosted the
International Congress of Historical Sciences in Bucharest, the regime of Nicolae
Ceaucescu simultaneously celebrated 2,050 years of a Romanian national state,
taking 70 B.C. as a firm date (the real date in the first or second quarter of the first
century B.C. is hazy) for Burebista’s creation of a Dacian empire, extending from
Ukrainian Olbia on the Black Sea south to the Bulgarian Haemus Mountains
(modern Stara Planina), and as far west as modern Slovakia.3 More recently (28
2. Stefan’s work dwarfs I. Oltean’s (Dacia: Landscape, Colonisation and Romanisation [Lon-
don: Routledge, 2007]) minimalist view of Sarmizegethusa Regia: 87, 89.
3. On the Ceaucescu regime’s control of even dissertation topics in ancient history, see V.
Lica, The Coming of Rome into the Dacian World, trans. C. Patac and M. Neagu, rev. A. R. Birley
(Konstanz: UVK Universsitätsverlag, 2000), 35 n.50; Romanian origins—whether Geto-Dacian
MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1187

EVERETT L. WHEELER
September–1 October 2006), an international conference at Cluj commemorated

Trajan’s creation of provincia Dacia (106 A.D.).4
The current mania for commemorative academic conferences, however, is not
exclusively Romanian. The 2,000th anniversary of the reign of Trajan (98–117), the
first “Spanish” emperor, prompted a conference in Spain and, as Trajan was in Ger-
many when Nerva (his predecessor) died, a German conference of 1998 has been
followed by a semi-popular book of useful essays and nice pictures.5 Nor should a
recent biography of Trajan in English (now corrected and reprinted) be ignored,
although not a replacement for Paribeni’s substantial two-volume study.6 Trajan
and the Dacian wars are currently “hot.”
Apart from any nationalistic considerations (whether Romanian, German,
or Spanish), the Dacian wars present an interesting methodological and historio-
or Roman—have been a political “football” in Romania and a source of regional antagonism

with Hungary and Bulgaria, both of which still wince at Romanian possession of parts of Tran-
sylvania and the Dobrudja (the area between the Danube’s northward bend and the Black Sea),
respectively; for post-Ceaucescu evaluations of these issues, see M. Babeş, “‘Devictis Dacis.’ La
conquête trajane vue par l’archéologie,” in Civilisation grecque et cultures antiques péripheriques.
Hommage à P. Alexandrescu, ed. A. Avram and M. Babeş, (Bucharest: Editura enciclopedica,
2000), 324 with n. 6, 325 n. 10; I. Haynes and W. Hanson, “An Introduction to Roman Dacia,”
in Roman Dacia: The Making of a Provincial Society, ed. W. Hanson and I. Haynes, Journal of Ro-
man Archaeology, Suppl. 56 (Portsmouth, R.I., 2004): 27–29; K. Locklear, “The Late Iron Age
Background to Roman Dacia,” in Hanson and Haynes, eds., Roman Dacia, 33–35; a convenient
summary (by no means definitive) on Burebista may be found in I. Cristan, Burebista and His
Time, trans. S. Mihailescu (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania, 1978),
a work unknown in C. Bruun’s bizarre paper, “The Legend of Decebalus,” in Roman Rule and
Civic Life: Local and Regional Perspectives, ed. L. De Ligt et al. (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 2004),
153–75. This reviewer, a participant in the 1980 congress, visited Sarmizegethusa Regia, at that
time undergoing conversion into a tourist attraction with dubious reconstructions (in Stalin-
ist concrete) of the monuments in the sacred area (Terraces X–XIII, featuring seven temples/
sanctuaries; cf. Stefan, 22–69 with n. 235) and damage to the scientific understanding of the site.
Ascent to the site required four-wheel drive vehicles.
4. See I. Piso, ed., Die römischen Provinzen: Begriff und Gründung (Cluj-Napoca: Editura
Mega, 2008).
5. J. Gonzáles, ed., Trajano Emperador de Roma (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000); E.
Schallmeyer, ed., Traian in Germanien, Traian im Reich (Bad Homburg: Saalburgmuseum, 1999);
A. Nünnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian: Ein Kaiser der Superlative am Beginn einer Umbruchzeit?
(Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2002); on Trajan’s somewhat peculiar position in Germany
in 98 (named Caesar, i.e., Nerva’s successor, in October 97 and thus subsequently possessing an
imperium proconsulare, but on present evidence not the provincial governor of either Germania
Superior, which he had been in 97, or Germania Inferior), see B. Pferdehirt, Militärdiplome und
Entlassungskunden in der Sammlung des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums (Mainz: Verlag
des Römisch-Germanischen Kommission, 2004), 1:26–27; cf. M. A. Speidel, “Bellicosissimus
Princeps,” in Nünnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian, 24.
6. J. Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 2d ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2001); cf. my brief (and generous) review of the first edition: Journal of Military History 62

graphical problem for military historians concerned with operations and strategy.
Detailed information is at a premium. Domitian, the victim of hostile sources
and Trajan’s propaganda, falls in the chasm of imperial biographies between
Suetonius, whose De vita Caesarum ends with Domitian, the last of the Flavians,
and that most curious assemblage of biographies and historical novellas written
in the late-fourth or early-fifth century, the Historia Augusta, which begins with
Trajan’s successor, Hadrian (r. 117–138)—a remarkable phenomenon for a ruler
hailed as “the best emperor” (optimus princeps). Narrative surveys of Trajan’s reign
survive exclusively in the summaries of epitomators of the fourth century and later.
Tacitus’s Histories, covering the Flavian dynasty and thus including Domitian’s
campaigns (84–89), survive only for events up to 70 A.D—most regrettably, as
Orosius (7.10.4) reported that Tacitus (a contemporary of Domitian and Trajan)
recounted Domitian’s Dacian war in great detail. Appian’s Dacica, written within a
generation or two of Trajan’s wars and known from brief references by Photius in
the ninth century and Zonaras in the twelfth century, has no surviving fragments.
Apparently few read it.
Literary accounts of events and motives are reduced to two sources: the Roman
History of the senator Cassius Dio, completed in the 220s and for the period of
Domitian and Trajan preserved in excerpts from John Xiphilinus’s eleventh-century
epitome, supplemented by scattered fragments in other Byzantine sources, and the
Getica of Jordanes (fl. 550), probably a Sarmatian Alan in Constantinople, whose
family had earlier assimilated with the Goths. Jordanes claimed to be epitomiz-
ing the twelve-volume De origine actibusque Getarum of the Ostrogoth bureaucrat
and scholar Cassiodorus (c. 490–c. 585), but he also cited a lost Gothic history by
Ablabius of unknown date. Jordanes’ Getica contains material from the Stoic-Cynic
orator and sophist Dio Chrysostom, whose time in Dacia in the 90s (after being
exiled from Rome by Domitian) inspired his Getica, but whether Jordanes knew
Chrysostom’s Getica directly or through another source is unknown. The archaizing
tendency of Late Roman authors like Jordanes in combining Dacians and Goths
and calling a work on Goths a Getica is clear.7 From the third century on, the
(1998): 382–83; R. Paribeni, Optimus Princeps, 2 vols. (Messina: G. Principato, 1926–27), with
some echoes of the il Duce of Paribeni’s time; note also: R. Hanslik, “Marcus Ulpius Traianus,”
Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Suppl. 10 (1964): 1032–1113; M. Fell, Op-
timus Princeps? Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der imperialen Programmatik Kaisers Traians (Munich:
Tuduv, 1992); and (more briefly) Speidel, “Bellicosissimus Princeps,” 23–40.
7. Cassius Dio’s Books 67–68 on Domitian and Trajan are available in the Loeb Classical
Library: Dio’s Roman History, trans. E. Cary, vol. 8 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1925), but the Greek text is best read in Cassii Dionis Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum Quae
Supersunt, ed. U. P. Boissevain, 4 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898–1931); Jordanes: T. Mommsen,
ed., Iordanis Romana et Getica, Monumenta Germanicae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 5 (Berlin:
Weidmann, 1882); The Gothic History of Jordanes, trans. C. C. Mierow (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1915); Jordanes’ Alan ancestry: Alemany, Sources on the Alans, 136–37; frag-
ments of Dio Chrysostom’s Getica: F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden:

EVERETT L. WHEELER
German Goths occupied some territory earlier belonging to the Thracian Geto-
Dacians (especially after Aurelian’s abandonment of Dacia, c. 270). Some Dacian
descendants, both native survivors of the Roman conquest and the so-called Free
Dacians, inhabiting territory not annexed as part of Trajan’s province, may have
assimilated with Gothic intruders, although a Geto-Dacian culture, distinct from
the Sîntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture associated with the fourth century
Goths, continued into the Middle Ages.8
Detailed contemporary accounts did exist. In the tradition of Caesar’s Gallic
War, Trajan published his own commentaries on his campaigns, a Dacica, from
E. J. Brill, 1923– ), nr. 707; Cassiodorus: B. Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes,”
Classical Philology 82 (1987): 117–34; for doubts about Ablabius as a source, see A. Gillett, “Jor-
danes and Ablabius,” in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, ed. C. Deroux, vol. 10,
Collection Latomus 254 (Brussels, 2000), 479–500; Locklear’s skepticism (“Late Iron Age Back-
ground,” 34), typical of “new” archaeologists, on the value of literary sources like Jordanes, lacks
authority, as his view seems derived from English translations and not the original Latin, nor
does he understand the archaizing tendencies of Late Roman authors.
8. On the Free Dacians, see G. Bichir, “Die freien Daker im Norden Dakien,” and I. Ionita,
“Die freien Daker an der nordöstlichen Grenze der römischen Provinz Dakiens,” in Römer und
Barbaren an den Grenzen des römischen Dakiens, ed. N. Gudea, Acta Musei Porolissensis 21 (1997):
785–800 and 879–888, respectively; Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 365–68; Lica, Coming of Rome,
256, 264, although his citation of ILS nr. 854 seems more relevant to the Costoboci than the Free
Dacians; cf. Oltean’s misunderstanding of Lica: (Dacia, 56). Batty (Rome and the Nomads, 485)
erroneously believes that Trajan’s wars depopulated Dacia; for correctives, see Babeş , “‘Devictis
Dacis,’” and literature at note 38 below. Ethnic confusion can befuddle even modern authors:
Stefan (359 n.2) corrects a gaffe (the more egregious for a book on an ancient geographer) that
the Getae were Germans: D. Dueck, Strabo of Amaseia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome
(London: Routledge, 2000), 97; Oltean (Dacia, 47) erroneously equates the German Bastarnae
of southern Moldavia with Iranian Sarmatians; evidence on the Bastarnae collected in Batty,
Rome and the Nomads, 221–24, 236–56; see also M. B. Shchukin, “Forgotten Bastarnae,” in In-
ternational Connections of the Barbarians in the Carpathian Basin in the 1st–5th Centuries A.D.,
ed. E. Istvánovits and V. Kulscár (Aszód/Nyíregyháza: Jósa András Museum; Osváth Gedeon
Museum Foundation, 2001), 57–64. On the Sîntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture, see the
convenient but largely inconclusive summary (as of 1991) in P. Heather and J. Matthews, The
Goths in the Fourth Century (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 51–101; B. V. Mago-
medev, “Die Cernjachov-Marosszentanna/Sîntana de Mures-Kultur in der Karpatenregion,” in
Istvánovits and Kulscár, eds., International Connections, 227–33; L. Ellis, “Dacians, Sarmatians,
and Goths on the Roman-Carpathian Frontier: Second-Fourth Centuries,” in Shifting Frontiers
in Late Antiquity, ed. R. Mathisen and H. Sivan (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996), 105–25;
note also the recent archaeological survey of F. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages,
500–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Batty (Rome and the Nomads, 250),
who strangely omits discussion of the Sîntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture, is skeptical of
Romanian scholars’ identification of various ethnicities (Costoboci, Carpi, Bastarnae) with spe-
cific material cultures, although his own views lack appreciation of archaic ethnic terms in late
authors for various tribes of their own day, and he uncritically accepts material in (e.g.) Pliny’s
Natural History, where earlier sources are indiscriminately mixed with contemporary ethno-
graphical descriptions.

which a single sentence survives in the grammatical work of Priscian (fl. 500),
although interpreters of Trajan’s Column (including Stefan) see that monument as
a massive illustration of the Dacica’s contents. A few Byzantine fragments of the
Getica of Trajan’s physician, Titus Statilius Crito, a participant in the campaigns,
provide valuable but limited details. Even Balbus, a civilian surveyor called into
service with Trajan, offers intriguing hints of his duties in building roads, bridges,
and siege-works but regrettably without specific geographical locations.9 Indeed
Domitian, known as a good poet, commemorated his Dacian war with an epic
poem, of which a few lines, inscribed in monumental letters on a block found in the
Lateran area of Rome, were first recorded by the humanist Petrarch.10
Archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, and papyrology strongly supplement
the sketchy literary sources. Many Dacian forts and Roman camps are known, for
which dates of construction or destruction can be discerned or approximated. Dates
for the beginning and end of hostilities besides terms of peace are clear, as are which
units of the Roman army and their commanders participated in these campaigns.11
9. Trajan’s Dacica: Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae 6.13=E. M. Smallwood, Documents Il-

lustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1966), no. 32: Traianus in I Dacicorum: “Inde Berzobim, inde Aizi processimus” [“From Berzobis,
then from Aizis we advanced.”]; Crito: Jacoby, Die Fragmente, nr. 200; cf. J. Scarborough, “Criton,
Physician to Trajan: Historian and Pharmacist,” in The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays in
Honor of Chester G. Starr, ed. J. Eadie and J. Ober (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America,
1985), 387–405; for an attempt to find more fragments, see I. I. Russu, “Getica lui Statilius
Crito,” Studii Clasice 14 (1972): 111–28 (cited in Stefan’s footnotes, but missing from his bib-
liography); Balbus: B. Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors, Journal of Roman
Studies Monograph 9 (London, 2000), xxxix–xl, 205–6 (Latin text with English translation), esp.
lines 17–30. Despite Campbell’s waffling between whether the emperor is Domitian or Trajan,
Balbus’s references to mountain warfare in Dacia speak for Trajan, as the Dacian campaigns
under Domitian (none led by Domitian himself ) reached, but did not penetrate the Dacians’
Carpathian fortifications; cf. Stefan 419 with n. 118. Like Crito and Balbus in Trajan’s entourage,
the famous architect Apollodorus of Damascus and possibly Dio Chrysostom (cf. Bennett, Tra-
jan Optimus Princeps, 67) were not soldiers but civilian comites (“companions”). For attempts to
connect Apollodorus of Damascus’s Poliorcetica [Siegecraft] to Trajan’s Dacian wars, see P. Blyth,
“Apollodorus of Damascus and the Poliorcetica,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 33 (1992):
127–58; D. Whitehead, “Apollodorus’ Poliorketika: Author, Date, Dedicatee,” in A Roman Mis-
cellany: Essays in Honour of Anthony R. Birley on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. H. Schellenberg et al.
(Gdansk: Foundation for the Development of Gdansk University, 2008), 204–11.
10. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, VI 1207; cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 10.1.91; Sil-
ius Italicus, Punica 3.616–21; Suetonius, Domitianus 2.2; further commentary in Stefan 472.
11. See K. Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1984),
now updated at K. Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dakiens—Ein Resümee zum Forschungsstand der
Dakerkriege Domitians und Traians,” Dacia 50 (2006): 105–14, and K. Strobel, Die Donaukriege
Domitians (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1989), although many of Strobel’s assertions require qualifica-
tion: see F. Lepper’s review of Strobel’s method: Classical Review 35 (1985): 333–35; see also
N. Gostar, “L’armée romaine dans les guerres daces de Trajan (101–102, 105–106),” Dacia 23
(1979): 155–22; G. Cupcea and F. Marcu, “The Size and Organization of the Roman Army and
the Case of Dacia under Trajan,” Dacia 50 (2006): 175–94; basic remains K. Patsch, Der Kampf

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Trajan's Column, scene LXV, courtesy Deutsches Archäologisches Institut,

Rome, Italy
But the visible yet impenetrably silent glue holding together the framework of
Trajan’s Dacian wars is that towering shaft (28.9 meters on a pedestal of 6.2 meters)
in the middle of Rome, with its cartoon of over 2,500 figures twisting around it
for 200 meters. Trajan’s Column, dedicated in 113, tells the story of his Dacian
wars, which his victory arch at Beneventum (dated 113–114) completes by depict-
ing his Dacian triumph. On the Column, Trajan, Decebalus (the Dacian king),
and various Roman units or hostile ethnic forces (for example, Lusius Quietus’s
Moorish cavalry, Sarmatian cataphracts of the Rhoxolani) are readily identifiable;
there is a splendid display of Roman military practices.12 Some scenes correspond
to the fragments of Cassius Dio’s account. Yes, the Column tells a story, but the
um den Donauraum unter Domitian und Trajan, 5/2, Beiträge zur Völkerkunde von Südosteuropa,
5.2 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1937); a brief survey
of Danubian legions and their bases is at J. Wilkes, “Roman Legions and their Fortresses in the
Danube Lands (First to Third Centuries),” in Roman Fortresses and their Legions, ed. R. Brewer
(London/Cardiff: Society of Antiquaries of London; National Museums & Galleries of Wales,
2000), 101–19.
12. See I. A. Richmond, “Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column,” Papers of the British School at
Rome 13 (1935): 1–40, reprinted in Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column, ed. M. Hassall (London:
British School at Rome, 1982), which also includes Richmond’s study of the Adamklissi monu-
ment (Tropaeum Traiani): “Adamklissi,” Papers of the British School at Rome 35 (1967): 29–39.

crux for operational analysis comes with topographical identifications, pinpointing

a scene with a specific site on the ground, particularly as the theater of the Dacian
wars included not only modern Romania, but also parts of Hungary, Serbia, Bul-
garia, Moldavia, and possibly extreme southwestern Ukraine, and several Roman
armies operated simultaneously.13 Hence frustration and scholarly debate flourish.
Comparison with the problems presented by the Bayeux Tapestry for William the
Conqueror’s campaign of 1066 is apropos.
Nor is study of the Column’s reliefs uncomplicated. Modern environmental
hazards, damaging this monument like many others, have obliterated or blurred
details and necessitated a cleaning and attempts at restoration (1981–88). All painted
details and likewise metal supplements (for example, spears in the figures’ hands) have
long vanished—thus the value of records of the Column in earlier, better states of
preservation. Happily, Napoleon III’s well-known interest in Julius Caesar led him to
Rome. In 1861–62 he had molds made of the Column’s entire historical scroll, from
which three complete sets of plaster casts were later produced. These now reside in
Paris (Musée des Antiquités Nationales à Saint-Germain-en-Laye), Rome (Museo
della Civiltà Romana), and London (Victoria and Albert Museum).14
Historical interpretation of the Column began at the dawn of the twentieth
century with Conrad Cichorius, a student of the revered Theodor Mommsen, who,
working from the 414 casts at Rome made from Napoleon III’s molds, produced a
multi-volume photographic archive of the casts with commentary. Cichorius’s divi-
sion of the casts into 155 “scenes” (traditionally given in Roman numerals) remains
the standard method of citing the Column, and his photographs are considered the
best ever produced. Nevertheless, Cichorius’s belief in the Column as a valid historical
account of Trajan’s wars and his identifications of Romanian sites in the Column’s
scenes (at a time when excavations of Dacian sites were still in their infancy) soon
elicited harsh reviews and alternative topographical views, such as those of G. A. T.
Davies (1920), who persisted, however, in seeing the Column as an illustration of Tra-
jan’s Dacica. Six years later the axe fell: the art historian Kurt Lehmann-Hartleben’s
assessment of the Column as a work of art demolished Cichorius’s case for the Col-
umn’s precise historical narrative and his topographical identifications.15
13. Stefan’s map (674 fig. 276) does not include all Dacian sites relevant to the 106 cam-
paign; for a supplement, see A. Diaconescu, “Dacia and the Dacian Wars,” Journal of Roman
Archaeology 21 (2008): 590.
14. A fourth set, the work of the now defunct École Roumaine de Rome in 1939–43, has
been since 1967 on display at the National Museum of History in Bucharest, where the bands
of the spiral (roughly 1–1.5 meters high) can be profitably studied at eye-level, as this writer can
attest from visits in 1980 and 1996.
15. C. Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssäule, vols. 2–3 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1896–1900; vol.
1 not published); G. A. T. Davies, “Topography and the Dacian Wars,” Journal of Roman Studies
10 (1920): 1–28; cf. his “Trajan’s First Dacian War,” Journal of Roman Studies 7 (1917): 74–97; K.
Lehmann-Hartleben, Die Trajanssäule. Ein römisches Kunstwerk zu Beginn der Spätantike, 2 vols.
(Berlin/Leipzig: W. de Gruyter & Co., 1926); a more detailed account of the Column’s history
is in R. Lepper and S. Frere, Trajan’s Column (Gloucester, U.K.; Wolfboro, N.H.: Alan Sutton
Publishing, 1988), 1–4; cf. Stefan 3–4.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Henceforth advocates of the Column as an historical source have been on the

defensive. Even the Roman army seen on the Column has become a victim of the
artist’s (or artists’) supposed inaccuracies and generalizations, although with little
appreciation of what was possible in limited space. Accordingly, individual legions
cannot be identified; the equipment of both legionaries and auxiliaries is misrep-
resented; even the legionary and Praetorian signa (standards) are wrong.16 Perhaps
the apogee of the anti-Column movement came in 1988, when Frank Lepper and
Sheppard Frere republished Cichorius’s plates (long out of print) and subjected all
aspects of Trajan’s Dacian wars to keen critical analysis. If their reproduction of
Cichorius’s folio plates in an octavo volume was a major disappointment (minis-
cule and often unclear)—an Italian volume’s reproduction of the plates the same
year is far superior—their tome represented a useful status quaestionis.17 Inter alia,
a frequent target of their criticism became the idea that Apollodorus of Damascus,
the architect behind construction of Trajan’s famous stone bridge over the Danube
at Drobeta (modern Turnu Severin) and the supposed designer of Trajan’s Forum,
was the genius (“the Maestro”) behind the Column’s reliefs, although they concede
that he might have been the architect of the Column. Indeed, as generally agreed—
whoever “the Maestro” was—the Column’s scenes (in whole or part) derive from
paintings of the wars’ events displayed in Trajan’s triumph.18 For the history of the
16. J. C. N. Coulston has led the charge against the Column: “The Value of Trajan’s Column
as a Source for Military Equipment,” in Roman Military Equipment: The Sources of Evidence, ed.
C. van Driel-Murray (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989), 31–44; “The Architecture
and Construction Scenes on Trajan’s Column,” in Architecture and Architectural Sculpture in the
Roman Empire, ed. M. Henig (Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1990),
39–50; “Three New Books on Trajan’s Column,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 3 (1990): 290–309;
cf. M. C. Bishop and J. C. N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment (London: B. T. Batsford,
1993), 21–23; M. Charles, “The Flavio-Trajanic Miles: The Appearance of Citizen Infantry on
Trajan’s Column,” Latomus 62 (2002): 666–95; C. G. Alexandrescu, “A Contribution on the
Standards of the Roman Army,” in Limes XIX: Proceedings of the XIXth International Congress of
Roman Frontier Studies Held in Pécs, Hungary, September 2003, ed. Z. Visy (Pécs: University of
Pécs, 2005), 147–56; for a more sympathetic view of the accuracy of the Column and what was
really possible, see D. Richter, Das römische Heer auf der Trajanssaüle. Propaganda und Realität:
Waffen und Ausrüstung, Marsch, Arbeit und Kampf (Mannheim: Bibliopolis, 2004), and M. Ga-
linier, “La representation iconographicque du légionnaire romain,” in Les légions de Rome sous le
Haut-Empire, ed. Y. Le Bohec and C. Wolff, 3 vols. (Paris: De Boccard, 2000–2003), 2:417–39;
a credulist’s position on the Column’s representation of the army is in L. Rossi, Trajan’s Column
and the Dacian Wars, trans. J. M. C. Toynbee (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971).
17. Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column; S. Settis et al., La Colonna Traiana (Turin: G. Ein-
audi, 1988); note also the reproduction of the plates in F. Coarelli, The Column of Traian, trans.
C. Rockwell (Rome: Colombo, 2000).
18. See J. N. C. Coulston, “Overcoming the Barbarian. Depiction of Rome’s Enemies in
Trajanic Monumental Art,” in The Representations and Perception of Roman Imperial Power, ed. L.
De Blois et al. (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 2003), 420–21, elaborating on an idea of Lehmann-
Hartleben, Die Trajanssäule); Apollodorus: Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, e.g., 18–19, 149–
50, 271; the bridge, depicted on the Column’s scenes XCVIII–XCIX (=Stefan fig. 267), was

war’s military operations, however, Lepper and Frere marched on well-trodden

paths. Despite nearly a century of faultfinding, it cannot be denied that the Col-
umn’s spiral tells a story. But what story? The book discussed here seeks in part to
revalidate some aspects of the Column’s historical worth.
II
Stefan’s massive monograph, the fruit of over thirty years of archaeological and
topographical studies of ancient Romania, appears in the distinguished series of the
École Française de Rome, often reserved for the ultimate in French dissertations, the
doctorat d’état. The work bears the characteristics of such: thickness (704 pages of text
in double columns!) and exhaustive discussions (in the sense of both depleting what
can be said and trying a reader’s patience). No one except a reviewer (or perhaps a
graduate student) would ever read this book cover to cover. Nevertheless, its bibliog-
raphy alone renders the volume an indispensable reference tool, and no serious future
work on the Dacian wars of Domitian or Trajan will be able to ignore Stefan’s gold
mine of information. The text is excellently complemented by 286 illustrations (pho-
tographs, maps, sketches)—all in the superb quality traditional in this series. Indeed
the volume contains some of the best photographs of scenes from Trajan’s Column
available. Regrettably, in the French tradition of academic publications this bulky
monument of scholarship (over 800 pages) is in paperback!19
This is not a typical monograph, but actually at least three books in one. Stefan’s
first “book” offers a detailed archaeological analysis of all known Dacian fortifica-
tions in the Carpathians, the Dacian forts (discovered so far) in southern Moldavia
(guarding passes into the Dacian heartland from the east), and Dacian forts on the
north bank of the Danube (a Dacian limes of sorts) in the area west of the Iron
Gates Gorge, where a branch of the Carpathians extends into northern Serbia and
divides the Middle from the Lower Danube. In addition, he examines most Roman
camps in Romania associated with the wars of Domitian and Trajan, with particular
attention to the controversial Roman camp at Sarmizegethusa Regia in 102 and
its successor in 106. If a complete archaeological record of the Dacian wars lies far
in the future even for the area of Sarmizegethusa Regia, Stefan presents the most
extensive record of Romanian archaeology on these wars to date. The highly tech-
completed in 105 for the start of Trajan’s second war; for the bridge’s remains and bibliography,
see Stefan 641–42, who corrects (641 n. 34) the archaeological misconceptions of S. P. Mattern
(Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate [Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1999], 149 n. 113), although he does not respond to Lepper and Frere’s claim
(Trajan’s Column, 149–50) that the Column misrepresents the superstructure of the bridge; see,
most recently, M. Serban, “Trajan’s Bridge over the Danube,” International Journal of Nautical
Archaeology 38 (2009): 331–42.
19. This non-native reader of French detected only occasional misprints in the text—too
infrequent to catalogue or distract—and two over-inked pages (485, 488) are the only produc-
tion errors. Embarrassing must be Stefan’s confusion (754 in the “Bibliography” and passim in
footnotes, e.g., 532 n. 190) of Michael P. Speidel with his nephew, Michael A. Speidel, the real
author of “Bellicosissimus Princeps,” in Nünnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian, 23–40.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Map 1: Dacia
KEY
Passes: A) Iron Gates; B) Vulcan; C) Red Tower
Geto-Dacian Sites: 1) Sarmizegethusa Regia; 2) Buridava; 3) Deva; 4) Apulum; 5) Piatra
Craivii; 6) Porolissum; 7) Piroboridava; 8) Troesmis; 9) Noviodunum; 10) Aegyssus; 11) Pope-
shti; 12) Sboryanovo; 13) Borovo; 14) Divici; 15) Berzobis; 16) Aizis
Greek Cities: 17) Tyras; 18) Histria; 19) Tomis; 20) Callatis; 21) Dionysopolis; 22) Odessus; 23)
Mesembria; 24) Apollonia; 25) Axiopolis
Roman Sites: 26) Aquincum (Budapest); 27) Lugo; 28) Szeged; 29) Singidunum (Belgrade); 30)
Viminacium; 31) Lederata; 32) Oescus; 33) Novae; 34) Nicopolis ad Istrum; 35) Serdica (Sofia);
36) Durostorum; 37) Adamklissi; 38) Colonia Sarmizegethusa; 39) Drobeta
nical discussion of construction techniques for walls, towers, and buildings may be
impenetrable for the uninitiated in this type of archaeological argument, although
one can admire Stefan’s diligence in re-examining the entire record of excavation
reports and earlier sketches of the sites (often ignored by later excavators) to deter-
mine the pristine states of sites and the excavators’ original findings. Stefan has
also pioneered use of aerial and satellite photography in Romanian archaeology,
not only to find sites but also to discern the lines of fortification walls not visible at
ground-level. This highly technical archaeological discussion (Parts I–II equal 339
pages), essentially half the book, is not well integrated, however, with Parts IV–V
(pp. 397–704), detailed discussion of the wars of Domitian and Trajan, where the

reader is expected to
recall too much from
what he/she read, say,
400 pages earlier. But
then again, this is not
a typical monograph.
Stefan’s compen-
dium of archaeologi-
cal data provides the
building blocks for
various theses. In the
case of Sarmizegeth-
usa Regia, for exam-
ple, it has been much
debated whether
Gradishtea Muchele-
lui was in fact the Dacian capital in Trajan’s time. Some once preferred the site
of Varhély (43 kilometers west-southwest of Gradishtea Muchelelui, as the crow
flies), where a Colonia Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegethusa was founded c. 107 on
the site of a Roman camp 101–105.20 The Colonia lies in a plain just east of the
famous Iron Gate Pass, but the site lacks evidence of pre-Roman occupation.
Gradishtea Muchelelui’s role as a major Dacian religious center—most probably
on the holy mountain Cogaeonum, mentioned in one of Strabo’s reports (7.3.5)
on Burebista—seems clear: the sacred area of Terraces X–XIII features seven
major sanctuaries and comprises 15 to 20 percent of the three-acre site, the only
portion so far subjected to extensive excavation. Gradishtea Muchelelui’s sanctu-
aries exceed in size and number the four at Costesti, a major fortress guarding the
northwestern approach to Gradishtea Muchelelui, and the three at Fetele Alba,
on a ridge of equal elevation opposite Gradishtea Muchelelui. Such a concentra-
tion of sanctuaries surely indicates the sacred character of the area.21
Further, Stefan now argues that Gradishtea Muchelelui was not an “open”
site or mere citadel of refuge, but the Dacian capital and a major fortified city
with curtain walls and, as he conjectures, towers at every 25 to 30 meters. More
complete study of the archaeological evidence also permits a better understanding
of the city’s water system attested on the Column as well as other architectural
20. On the problem of a precise date for foundation of the Colonia, see I. Piso, “Les débuts
de la province de Dace,” in Piso, ed., Die römischen Provinzen, 319–22; on the camp see note 27
below; the confusion of Colonia with Regia is perpetuated in Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 529,
whose fig. 41.8 (290) also incorrectly transposes the locations of the forts Blidaru and Costesti.
21. Strobel (“Die Eroberung Dakiens,” 111 n. 29) rejects without argument the identifi-
cation of Cogaeonum with Gradishtea Muchelelui, but ignores that Strabo’s Cogaeonum is a
mountain, not a specific site; for lists and discussions of Dacian sanctuaries, see Babeş, “‘Devictis
Dacis,’” 330–31; Locklear, “Late Iron Age Background,”57–63.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
features.22 Here Stefan initiates his motif of confirming the accuracy of individual
details on the Column concerning siegecraft and Dacian architecture with archaeo-
logical evidence.
In fact, he asserts (against current opinions) that all major Dacian forts, gener-
ally atop hills or mountains with difficult lines of approach, were totally enclosed
fortifications, that is, even on sides bordering cliffs or inaccessible slopes. Moreover,
he demonstrates that the sophistication of Dacian building techniques conformed
to Hellenistic Greek practices. Dacian walls, often 3 meters thick in the murus
Dacicus technique (front and back stone abutments with earth/rubble filling and
both transverse and lateral timbers as stabilizers and linkage), employed large, well-
cut, nicely faced stone blocks (some marked with Greek letters). Dacian military
architecture—far from being “barbarian”—reflected (with some local modifica-
tions) the recommendations of Philo Mechanicus (fl. 225 B.C.) for construction
of walls immune to battering rams, and likewise Philo’s view on the architectural
integrity of towers (that is, structures independent of the walls, so that a collapsing
wall did not bring a tower down with it).23
Dacians built huge towers (surface area up to 221.12 square meters) to cover
curtain walls and isolated, independent towers (up to c. 225 square meters) outside
the enceinte, often within a few hundred yards of a fort’s principal gate. Stefan
convincingly argues that these monstrous towers, even the so-called tower-palaces
generally on the highest point(s) of the interior of a Dacian fort, were artillery plat-
forms.24 Dacian artillery is known from both Cassius Dio and Trajan’s Column.25
22. E.g., Dacian use of monumental roofed streets (scene CXIV=Stefan fig. 33) is con-
firmed by finds at Sarmizegethusa Regia: Stefan 74–76; on the water system: 76–81, 98–99;
some earlier views posited no springs or water system inside the city; for Stefan (601–2) the
Column’s scenes LXXV–LXXVI (fig. 252: Decebalus’s surrender in 102) unquestionably show
Sarmizegethusa Regia, but Lepper and Frere (Trajan’s Column, 271) cite (captiously?) depiction
of polygonal rather than the ashlar walls known from the site as proof that “the Maestro” had
never seen the Dacian capital; but cf. C. D. Stoiculescu, “Trajan’s Column: Documentary Value
from a Forestry Viewpoint,” Dacia 29 (1985): 81–98: the Column’s accuracy in representing flora
found in modern Romania.
23. For a critical edition of the Greek text of Philo on siegecraft (=his Syntaxis mechanike,
Book 5) with French translation and commentary, see Y. Garlan, Recherches sur de poliorcétique
grecque (Paris: École française d’Athènes, 1974), 279–404; English translation: A. W. Lawrence,
Greek Aims in Fortification (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 69–107.
24. Three tables (274–76) feature the measurements of all known Dacian towers on the
walls, within the walls, and outside the walls. Stefan (271, caption to fig. 134) assumes a minimal
artillery range of 250 meters; cf. E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Develop-
ment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 91, 131–32: maximum effective range for both arrow-
shooters and stone-throwers was 400 yards (c. 366 meters); Oltean (Dacia, 78–80, 116) posits
these “tower-houses” as status symbols of the Dacian elite.
25. Of course Stefan’s view depends on the construction of such towers not antedating
Dacian possession of artillery, which on present evidence would not be before Decebalus re-
ceived military engineers (mechanopoioi) from Domitian in the peace terms of 89 (Dio 67.7.4;
cf. 68.9.5); ordnance captured earlier in Domitian’s war is another possibility; cf. Stefan 436,

MAP 2: Sarmizegethusa Theater SR = Sarmizegethusa Regia

(not to scale) SC = Sarmizegethusa Colonia
The limited topographical access to the Dacian forts (often only one way up the
hill) exposed attackers to a withering crossfire from the independent towers in
conjunction with fire from the curtain-wall towers and the elevated interior tow-
ers (for example, 271 fig. 134: illustration of artillery coverage at Costesti). Stefan’s
emphasis on the significance of artillery in Dacian defenses is new. His exploita-
tion of the archaeological data drives home what a grueling and onerous conflict of
siegecraft and mountain warfare the conquest of Dacia was.
The northwestern approach to Sarmizegethusa Regia from the Muresh River val-
ley (north of the central Carpathians) demonstrates the extent of the Dacian defensive
system. An army marching south toward the Dacian capital must first take Costesti,
a major religious center and perhaps Burebista’s capital before the construction of
Sarmizegethusa Regia. Located on a promontory (elevation c. 600 meters) overlooking
a narrow defile and approachable only from its southern side, Costesti’s double ring of
walls encloses about nine hectares. As the crow flies, one is only about 14 kilometers
from the Dacian capital. But 300 meters to the southeast across a valley begins the tip
of the mountain ascending to Sarmizegethusa. An earthen rampart traceable for over
300 meters guards the initial ascent; behind it are at least eighteen isolated towers,
which impede the approach to another fort, Blidaru, only 1,500 meters from Costesti
(as the crow flies) but 150 meters higher in elevation. A third major fort, Piatra Rosie
(“Red Rock”), c. 7 kilometers south of Blidaru, guarded the western and southwestern
approaches to Sarmizegethusa (c. 13 kilometers away) from the Strei River valley. On
516–17; given the sophistication of Dacian architecture, however, earlier possession of artillery
could be conjectured.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
present evidence, this northwestern approach to Sarmizegethusa Regia was the most
heavily fortified. Besides this “Costesti corridor,” Stefan’s astute bird’s-eye perspective
has discerned two “circles” of Dacian forts protecting access to the Dacian heartland of
the Carpathian interior and extending throughout this entire mountain range. This new
and more comprehensive understanding of the Dacian defense system in turn leads to
new topographical arguments for the routes of Roman armies in 88–89, 101–102, and
105–106, as passes dictated the avenues of access (discussed below). Nevertheless, many
of these hilltop forts have Hallstatt (Iron Age) origins. Stefan generally assumes rather
than proves that the Dacian fortification system was initially Burebista’s work with
some later improvements.26
Worthy of report is also Stefan’s remarkable analysis (323–55) of the Roman
camps at Sarmizegethusa Regia. According to Cassius Dio (68.9.7), Trajan left a
stratopedon (ambiguous whether: “army camp” or “legion”) at Sarmizegethusa after
Decebulus’s capitulation in 102 to ensure Dacian compliance with the terms of peace,
which included dismantling Dacian defenses. Roman garrisons also were scattered at
other sites key in the war of 101–102 south and west of the capital, including one at
the later Colonia Sarmizegethusa, besides several south and east of the Carpathians.27
Despite Dio’s explicit testimony, a Roman camp at Sarmizegethusa Regia, its gar-
rison, and even the continued presence of the Dacian king Decebalus at his capital
after 102 have been much debated—in part from disbelief that Decebalus could
function as a king and perpetrate violations of the 102 agreement with a Roman
camp at his very doorstep, and not least from the lack of archaeological evidence for
a Roman camp there in 102; further, Dio refers to the Dacian capital, but never calls
it (in extant excerpts) Sarmizegethusa. Nevertheless, the Colonia, the only alternative,
was a Roman creation without evidence of pre-Roman Dacian occupation.28 Some
26. Stefan 113–56 (Costesti), 156–200 (Blidaru), 218–29 (Piatra Rosie). New major Da-
cian fortified sites continue to be discovered: one in 2004 near Poiana Brasnov and Rîsnov,
comprising twenty-two to thirty hectares with twenty-two towers, dated to at least 14–16 A.D.,
and identified as the Cumidava of Ptolemy (Geography 3.8.8); another at Cetatea Zînelor near
Covasna with fortifications dating first century B.C.–first century A.D.; details in Strobel, “Die
Eroberung Dakiens,” 111–12.
27. A burned layer beneath the site of the later forum of the Colonia may attest a Roman
camp destroyed by the Dacians at the start of the second war in 105: see I. Piso, “Les légions dans
la province de Dacie,” in Le Bohec and Wolff, eds., Les légions de Rome, 1:209, and “Les débuts de
la province de Dace,” 320–21; Stefan 280–81 with n. 41; Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dakiens,” 108
with n. 12. The partial deconstruction of many Dacian forts in 102 (e.g., Costesti, Blidaru) and
hasty reconstructions in 105 are clear in the archaeological record: Stefan 654–57; cf. Column
scene CXXXII=Stefan fig. 272 with caption. E. Sauer’s critique of Stefan on this point (review
of Stefan, American Journal of Archaeology 112 [2008]: 196) seems captious, as Sauer cannot cite
a specific historical context (other than 105) for use of such fortifications near Blidaru for Dacian
resistance; Roman forts outside the Carpathians: Stefan 642–43.
28. Lepper and Frere (Trajan’s Column, 304–9) discuss the problem of the name Sarmizege-
thusa for both sites; Ptolemy (Geography 3.8.4), writing within a generation of two of Trajan’s
Dacian wars, lists Zarmizegethousa to Basileion, that is, “the royal residence,” but omits the Colo-
nia; cf. Piso, “Les débuts de la province de Dace,” 322.

would even have Decebalus’s kingdom after 102 reduced to the area north of the
Muresh River with a new Dacian capital established at Piatra Craivii (the Apoulon
of Ptolemy, Geography 3.8.8 [?], c. 20 kilometers north of modern Alba Iulia) and the
whole theater of the second war (105–106) transferred to extreme northern Dacia.
Piatra Craivii, a rocky protrusion (elevation 1,083 meters), fortified in the second
half of the first century B.C. (era of Burebista) and later topped by a small (67 by
36 meters) medieval citadel (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries), suffered destruction by
fire. As often for pre-Roman fortified Dacian sites, that destruction is assumed to be
Trajanic, but no evidence ties Decebalus to Piatra Craivii or attests a transfer of his
residence north of the Muresh.29
Certain is that the southern end of the curtain wall at Sarmizegethusa Regia,
enclosing Terraces IV–VI, was dismantled. Decebalus’s palace, thought to have occupied
the highest elevation within the city (Terraces I–III) was left untouched. Stefan asserts
that the rampart (vallum) of a Roman camp of 102–105, incorporating Dacian archi-
tectural fragments, can be traced on the ground and enclosed an area of six to seven
hectares. It included part of the former southern interior of the city, but also extended
100 to 200 meters south of the former defensive wall. Stefan’s aerial photograph (to this
reviewer’s eye) does not prove the case. Besides, he would have the Romans copying
Dacian construction of walls 3 meters thick—not normal Roman practice.30 Decisive
in support, however, is an argument from stratigraphy. Excavation of part of the wall of
the Roman camp of 106 along Terrace V revealed Roman renovations: the camp wall of
106 rested on two layers of filling (nearly 1 meter thick): beneath one layer the remains
of a Roman forge came to light, which had been installed over the site of a Dacian mint
at a lower level. That Roman forge buried under the level of the 106 camp must surely
belong to the camp of 102–105. Whatever its precise perimeter, the camp of 102–105
no longer seems in doubt. The camp of 106 was built on higher ground after Romans
raised the surface of the entire southern half of the former city and leveled off the area,
including obliteration of the palace complex on Terrace I.31
29. Decebalus and Piatra Craivii: C. Opreanu, “Bellum Dacicum Traiani,” Dacia 50 (2006):
118–20, reasserting his earlier views: e.g., “The Consequences of the First Dacian-Rumanian
War (101–102). A New Point of View,” in González, ed., Trajano Emperador de Roma, 396–97;
on the site, see Stefan 247–55; contra Opreanu, Piso, “Les débuts de la province de Dace,” 297 n.
2; Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dakiens,” 112 with n. 35.
30. An objection raised by I. Bogdan Cataniciu, “Dacia’s Borders under Trajan’s Rule—Re-
marks,” in Visy, ed., Limes XIX, 726 n. 24, 727 n. 31, and Cataniciu, Daci şi Romani. Aculturatie în
Dacia (Cluj-Napoca: Academia Romana, 2007), 127; Piso (“Les débuts de la province de Dace,”
304 with n. 5) and Strobel (“Die Eroberung Dakiens,” 111) also reject a 102 Roman camp;
Oltean (Dacia, 56) favors a 102 camp. Certainly 3-meter thick walls are un-Roman, but use of
Dacian architectural fragments in building the camp walls—a practice even more extensive in
construction of the Roman camp walls of 106 after the city’s destruction—as well as other evi-
dence (see below) speak against this objection. The Romans did incorporate part of the original
city wall in the northwest side of the camp of 106.
31. Stefan’s view of the 102–105 camp develops an earlier thesis espoused by A. Diacones-
cu, who (to no surprise) endorses Stefan’s position in his review: “Dacia and the Dacian Wars,”

EVERETT L. WHEELER
No such problems beset the camp of 106, for its outline in the current forest
is clearly discernible from aerial photographs (20 fig. 4, 332 fig. 168). This much
smaller camp (2.8 hectares) on Terraces I–V overlapped only partially the camp of
102–105 and incorporated the area of the former palace. Two gates, six towers, a
trace of barracks, a cistern, and (of course) a bath (outside the camp to the south
and exploiting earlier Dacian water works) are known, although the camp has not
been studied or dug in detail.
The respective garrisons of these camps remain controversial.32 Evidence from
the fill used for the camp walls of 106 attest the presence of vexillationes (detach-
ments) of the legions II Adiutrix and VI Ferrata for the garrison of 102–105, which
in Stefan’s reconstruction of events would have been wiped out or taken prisoner by
the Dacians in 105.33 Fragments used for fill between wall faces in 106 must surely
represent older discarded material. Less clear is a detachment of IV Flavia Felix at
the 102–105 camp, although a vexillatio of this legion manned the site in 106 and
later, when its chief duty was destruction of the Dacian capital. The size of both
camps indicates a Roman presence not even close to the strength of a full legion
(c. 5,000 men), but rather approximates the size of camps allotted to auxiliary units
of 1,000 or 500 men.34 How long after 106 or 107 troops remained at a city now
592; cf. his “Dacia under Trajan. Some Observations on Roman Tactics and Strategy,” in Beiträge
zur Kenntnis des römischen Heeres in den dakischen Provinzen, ed. N. Gudea, Acta Musei Napocensis
34.1 (1997): 18–22; Opreanu, “The Consequences,” 397–401; on the mint, producing Dacian
imitations of Roman denarii dated 126 B.C., 68 B.C., and 14–37 A.D., see Stefan 71.
32. Stefan 348–54; for a different view, see Piso, “Les légions dans la province de Dacie,”
211–13.
33. Stefan (349–51) persists in including I Adiutrix in the 102 garrison despite C. Opreanu,
“Legio I Adiutrix in Dacia. Military Action and its Place of Garrison during Trajan’s Reign,” in
Roman Frontier Studies. Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies,
ed. N. Gudea (Zalau: County Musuem of History and Art, 1999), 571–72, followed by Piso,
“Les débuts de la province de Dace,” 304 with n. 50. Oltean (Dacia, 56) would include the legion
IV Flavia Felix in the 102 camp. The fragmentary text attesting a vexillatio of the VI Ferrata
(AE 1983 nr. 825) suggests restoring VI Ferrata (a legion based in Syria) in a lacuna detailing
the transfer of detachments of eastern legions to the 101–102 Dacian war, noted in the career
inscription of C. Iulius Quadratus Bassus (consul 105), who later died fighting the Sarmatians
(c. 118) as Hadrian’s first Dacian governor (Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of
Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, no. 214): E. Dabrova, The Governors of Roman Syria from Augustus
to Septimius Severus (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1998), 88 with n. 889. This new text of VI Ferrata
from the 102–105 camp disproves previous reconstructions of this legion’s history, which put
it the 105–106 war: e.g., K Strobel, “Zu Fragen der frühen Geschichte der römischen Provinz
Arabia und zu einigen Problemen der Legionsdislokation im Osten des Imperium Romnum zu
Beginn des 2. Jh. n. Chr.,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 71 (1988): 252–53, followed
by Speidel (“Bellicosissimus Princeps,” 35), who erroneously thinks the whole legion went to
Dacia.
34. On the size of legionary and auxiliary camps, see Y. Le Bohec, The Roman Imperial Army
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994), 161–62.

destroyed and its population forced to migrate is unknown.35 As usual, Romans

destroyed and burned the camp of 106 when it was abandoned.
It should not be forgotten, however, that Sarmizegethusa Regia was the chief
cult site of Dacian religion and located on its holy mountain. Directly across the
Alb River valley from the capital and at the same elevation (1,800 meters away, as
the crow flies, but c. 4,500 meters for someone descending one slope and ascend-
ing the other), lay Fetela Alba, another cult site with three sanctuaries. It shared
the capital’s fate of total destruction in 106 after damage in 102.36 The rise of the
Dacian empire under Burebista in the first century B.C. had involved religious fer-
vor, in which the holy man Decenaeus had played a role.37 Romans in 106 wiped
out not only a Dacian kingdom but also native Dacian religion. A Roman garrison
at Sarmizegethusa may have lingered longer than the time needed to destroy the
city to ensure enforcement of the new prohibition of the native Dacian cults.38
35. A unit of Germaniciani exploratores, permanently stationed at Orashtioara de Sus, not

far from the entrance to the “Costesti corridor,” perhaps had among its duties surveillance of
the former sacred Dacian district: Piso, “Les débuts de la province de Dace,” 306; on the unit,
see N. Gostar, “Ein numerus Germanicianorum exploratorum im oberen Dacia,” Germania 50
(1972): 241–47, although his identification of this unit with German infantry seen on Trajan’s
Column is dubious: exploratores are generally mounted units; on this Roman camp, see Stefan
283; N. Gudea, “Der dakische Limes: Materialen zu seiner Geschichte,” Jahrbuch des römisch-
germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 44 (1997): 104–5.
36. For a “classic” example of a “new” archaeologist’s attempt to turn an event like the de-
struction of Sarmizegethusa Regia and Fetele Alba into a “process,” see Locklear, “Late Iron Age
Background,” 50–51, who also (45) claims Fetele Alba was unfortified; contra, Stefan 213–17.
37. For one view of Decenaeus, see R. Vulpe, “Décénée, conseiller intime de Burébista,”
in his Studia Thracologica (Bucharest: Editura Republicii Socialiste România, 1976), 62–68. Al-
though the accounts of Decenaeus include many Greek topoi associated with “lawgivers” and
creators of civilization (cf. A. Szegedy-Maszak, “Legends of the Greek Lawgivers,” Greek, Roman
and Byzantine Studies 19 [1978]: 199–209), it is a mistake, ignoring valid information in Strabo,
to reject Decenaeus as a myth: sic P. Heather, Goths and Romans 332–489 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1991), 36.
38. Dr. Mihai Popescu (Paris) advises me that absolutely no trace of the native Dacian
religion survived in Roman Dacia. See his La religion dans l’armée romaine de Dacie (Bucharest:
Éditions de l’Académie Roumaine, 2004); cf. Oltean, Dacia, 111, 200; Babeş, “‘Devictis Dacis,’”
331–36; Piso, “Les débuts de la province de Dace,” 316–17; D. Ruscu, “The Supposed Exter-
mination of the Dacians: The Literary Tradition,” in Hanson and Haynes, eds., Roman Dacia,
75–85. Lepper and Frere (Trajan’s Column, 307–8, 318) on a survival of Dacian religion are in
error; see also G. Florea and P. Pupeza, “Les dieux tués. La destruction du chef-lieu du Royaume
dace,” in Piso, ed., Die römischen Provinzen, 281–96. Romans did wage religious warfare on oc-
casion, and the religious and cultural contexts of Roman battles are generally not appreciated:
see my “Shock and Awe: Battles of the Gods in Roman Imperial Warfare, Part I,” in L’Armée ro-
maine et la religion sous le Haut-Empire, ed. Y. Le Bohec and C. Wolff (Paris: De Boccard, 2009):
225–67; a “Part II” is in preparation.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
III
Stefan’s second “book” (436–84, 667–93) treats the art and iconography cel-
ebrating the victories of Domitian and Trajan. A single thematic chapter might
have been preferable to chronological placement, that is, after the campaigns of
Domitian and Trajan respectively. Much here will interest art historians more than
their military counterparts.39 Nevertheless, art plays an important role in Stefan’s
continuation of attempts to rehabilitate Domitian’s reputation, a trend begun with
Stéphane Gsell (1894) and reflected in recent biographies.40 Readers of Tacitus,
Suetonius, Pliny the Younger’s Panegyric to Trajan in 100, and even Cassius Dio are
familiar with Domitian’s “bad press” from writers of the senatorial class, although
he was not disliked by the army, whose pay he had raised. The Senate decreed a
damnatio memoriae after his assassination in 96. Hence Domitian vanished from
the public record: his name was erased from all public documents and monuments.
Moreover, what Domitian had proclaimed as a Roman victory in Dacia in 89, Tra-
jan, especially after his annexation of Dacia in 106, could recast in the public eye as
a humiliating defeat now avenged. Trajan readily added Dacicus to his titulature, an
honor that Domitian had declined.
Forgetting Domitian would not have been easy for the Eternal City’s inhabi-
tiants, as the extent of Domitian’s building projects in Rome rivaled those of
Augustus. Trajan’s Forum and Market superseded Domitian’s Forum Magnum,
still under construction at the time of his assassination. Many large fragments
of sculptures from colossal victory monuments, transferred to depots of marble,
escaped destruction. The two gigantic trophies, sitting today on the balustrade of
39. Stefan’s painstaking work in assembling his material from studies of architectural and
sculptural fragments and archaeologists’ endless debates on the topography of the city of Rome
cannot be fully expounded here. Curiously, Stefan does not engage more fully with J. E. Packer’s
massive study, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments, 3 vols. (Berkeley/Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), although Packer is occasionally cited. Indeed
yet another study of Trajan’s Forum and Column has recently appeared: M. Galinier, La colonne
trajane et les forum impériaux (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007), reviewed by Packer, “The
Column of Trajan: The Topographical and Cultural Contexts,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 21
(2008): 471–78.
40. S. Gsell, Essai sur le règne de l’empereur Domitien (Paris: Bibliothèque des Écoles fran-
çaises d’Athenes et de Rome, 1894); B. W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian (London: Routledge,
1992); P. Southern, Domitian: Tragic Tyrant (London: Routledge, 1997); see also K. H. Wa-
ters, “‘Traianus Domitiani Continuator,’” American Journal of Philology 90 (1969): 385–405, and
a conference at Toulouse: J.-M. Pailler and R. Sablayrolles, eds., Les années Domitien (Toulouse:
Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1994). Stefan (699 n. 5) castigates F. M. Ahl, “The Rider and the
Horse: Politics and Power in Roman Poetry from Horace to Statius,” Aufstieg und Niedergang
der römischen Welt II.32.1 (1984): 40–110; R. Saller, “Domitian and his Successors,” American
Journal of Ancient History 15.1 (1990 [2000]): 4–18; and contributors to A. J. Boyle and J. W.
Dominik, eds., Flavian Rome (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), for perpetuating the literary tradition’s
negative views.

the Capitol at Rome and representing Germania and Dacia, are (as attested by an
inscription) Domitianic.41 Similarly, as Stefan argues (472–77 with fig. 209), the
“Dacian frieze,” re-used on the Arch of Constantine and assumed to be Trajanic,
is in reality Domitianic.
For historical reliefs Domitian had to surpass the celebrations of the Jewish
War seen on his older brother Titus’s Arch; likewise Trajan had to excel (hence the
Column) Domitian’s displays.42 Trajan’s Forum, in fact, may have included as many
as eighty-two colossal statues of Dacians, excelling in number, size, and expense
(use of the rarest high-quality marble) Augustus’s forty of Orientals commemo-
rating his so-called Parthian accord of 20 B.C., which involved the return of lost
legionary standards.43 Stefan (690) may well be correct that of all barbarians only
Parthians and Dacians (not Germans) occupied a special place in the Roman public
memory. Domitian’s artistic celebrations of his Dacian war may also be credited
with establishing in Roman iconography the female type of a personified Dacia
and the conventional portrayal of Dacians, which Trajan exploited.44 As Stefan
demonstrates (contrary to some views), Domitian did commemorate his Danubian
wars on coins, which for the first time depicted Dacian arms.45 Further, Domitian
revived the concepts both of the emperor on horseback (his colossal equestrian
statue known only from coins and poetic references) and of the emperor as a leader
at the front in major wars—a model followed by Trajan and Marcus Aurelius.46
41. Erroneously associated with Marius’s victories over the Cimbri and Teutones two cen-
turies earlier by A. Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003),
164; Stefan 456 n. 249.
42. Stefan’s thesis of Trajan’s borrowing from Domitianic projects finds support in Aurelius
Victor (De Caesaribus 13.5) and is not criticized in the two reviews (so far) of Stefan in major
Anglophone archaeological journals: Sauer (above, note 27), 195–96; Diaconescu, “Dacia and
the Dacian Wars,” 589–94; cf. Coulston, “Overcoming the Barbarian,” 416–19.
43. For Augustus’s Parthian accord as a contrivance of propaganda and one of the great
non-events of Roman history, see E. L. Wheeler, “Roman Treaties with Parthia: Völkerrecht or
Power Politics?” in Limes XVIII. Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Roman Fron-
tiers Studies Held in Amman, Jordan (September 2000), ed. Philip Freeman et al. (Oxford: Archae-
opress, 2002), 1:287–92. Stefan (535 with n. 214), like Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, 60, falls
victim to Augustus’s propaganda: the standards lost in Mark Antony’s Parthian war (36 B.C.)
had already been returned in 33 B.C.
44. An earlier personification of Dacia, labeled in Greek ethnos Dakon (“nation of Dacians”),
had appeared among the figures of “conquered peoples” (gentes captae) in the late Neronian Se-
basteion at Carian Aphrodisias in Asia Minor: see Stefan 461–62, 484. The Roman populace had
first seen Dacians in 29 B.C., when Octavian (Augustus) staged a combat of Dacians vs. German
Suebi as part of his victory celebration for the defeat of Marc Antony: Cassius Dio 51.22.6.
45. Coulston’s remarks (“Overcoming the Barbarian,” 392, 421) on the Trajanic origin of
depictions of Dacians and their weapons should now be modified.
46. On the portrayal of Trajan on his Column as the perfect general conforming to the
principles of Onasander’s Strategikos, see G. Picard, “Tactique hellénistique et tactique romaine:
le commandement,” Comptes Rendus de l‘Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1992, 178–83.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Notable, too (for Stefan), is Domitian’s concern for Roman war dead. Com-
memoration of the slain on state-sponsored monuments was not a Roman custom.
Germanicus’s recovery and proper burial (15 A.D.) of the dead from Quinctilius
Varus’s Teutoburg Forest disaster (9 A.D.) offered the only precedent.47 Atop the
hill of Adamklissi (extreme southeastern Romania), Trajan erected in 108–109 a
cylindrical Tropaeum Traiani, 44.44 meters in diameter and at c. 37 meters tall,
approximately the same height as his Column in Rome—a monument visible
north of the Danube (10 kilometers away); its attraction and location on major
north-south, east-west routes spawned a town (Municipium Tropaeum Traiani)
flourishing into the Late Roman period. The Tropaeum Traiani would be merely
an interesting detail were it not for the survival of fifty-four metopes (1.48 meters
high), which once decorated the frieze of this monument (destroyed by an earth-
quake c. 500). These remarkable examples of early second-century provincial art
illustrate, as Stefan believes, the Dacian and Rhoxolan counterattack across the
Danube in the winter of 101–102, not only supplementing Trajan’s Column’s scenes
of the same operations, but also providing a different view of Dacian and Roman
armor and weapons.48 As the metopes, however, were not found in situ, whether
they tell a story and in what sequence they should be read provoke discussion.
Yet two other enigmatic monuments share the site: on another hill 127.5 meters
north-northwest of the Tropaeum lies a Roman-style “mausoleum” with little dat-
able material and 255 meters east of the “mausoleum” stands a monumental altar
inscribed with an extremely fragmentary casualty list estimated at 3,000 to 4,000
dead, to which the titulature of either Domitian or Trajan could be restored.49 Debate
47. Tacitus, Annals 1.61–62; Suetonius, Caligula 3.2; Cassius Dio 57.18.1; on the Roman
attitude, see G. Clementoni, “Germanico e i caduti di Teutoburgo,” in “Dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori.” La morte in combattimento nel’antichità, ed. M. Sordi (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990),
197–206; J. Rüpke, “Wege zum Töten, Wege zum Ruhm: Krieg in der römischen Republik,” in
Töten im Krieg, ed. H. von Stietencron and J. Rüpke (Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1995), 233–34;
cf. M. Reuter, “Gefallen für Rom. Beobachtungen an den Grabinschriften im Kampf getöteter
römischer Soldaten,” in Visy, ed., Limes XIX, 255–63.
48. The metopes, now housed in a museum at the site, are reproduced in F. B. Florescu,
Das Siegesdenkmal von Adamklissi: Tropaeum Traiani (Bonn/Bucharest: Verlag der Akademie der
Rumänischen Volksrepublik, 1965); cf. Stefan’s republication of nine of them at fig. 233, which he
believes depict the Romans’ surprise attack by night on the Dacians and Rhoxolani at scene XXX-
VIII of the Column. A recent view that the Dacian-Rhoxolan attack occurred somewhere north of
the Danube (e.g., Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 92–93) has little to support it, particularly as
the invaders are shown on the Column (scene XXXI) swimming a major river, surely the Danube,
and the Dacians captured a slave of Laberius Maxiimus, the governor of Moesia Inferior (Pliny,
Letters 10.74.1): see Stefan 560–68, and on the Tropaeum Traiani: 693 with figs. 277–78.
49. ILS 9107; on Roman identification of battle dead and construction of such casualty
lists, see D. Peretz, “Military Burial and the Identification of the Roman Fallen Soldiers,” Klio
87 (2005): 123–38; Charles’s denial (“The Flavio-Trajanic Miles,” 669) of any Domitianic as-
sociation with the site, based in part on A. Poulter, “The Lower Moesian Limes and the Dacian
Wars of Trajan,” in Studien zu den Militärgrenzen Roms III: Acten des 13. Internationalen Lime-
skongreßes, Aalen 1983, ed. C. Unz (Stuttgart: Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg, 1986),

rages whether the “mausoleum” and the altar are originally Domitianic or the whole
site is Trajanic. In Stefan’s reconstruction, Adamklissi marks the site of a major
Roman defeat, when the Dacians initiated Domitian’s war in late 84 or early 85 by
an attack across the Danube and killed the provincial governor of Moesia, Oppius
Sabinus. Domitian (pace Stefan) later erected a victory monument (Tropaeum
Domitiani = the “mausoleum”) west of the altar (89 or 90?) to celebrate his Dacian
war, although this Tropaeum was destroyed probably in 96 as part of the damnatio
memoriae and Domitian’s name was erased from the altar.50 During Trajan’s first
war, as Stefan argues, the Dacian counteroffensive (with their Rhoxolan allies) in the
winter of 101–102, after Roman forces had gained access to the “Costesti corridor”
to Sarmizegethusa Regia, followed the same route as the attack of late 84,51 cross-
ing the lower Danube into the Dobrudja and sweeping south with the Danube on
their right past Adamklissi and west into Roman Moesia Inferior. Trajan halted the
Dacians and Rhoxolani 45 kilometers south of Novae and commemorated the victory
by founding the city of Nicopolis ad Istrum (“Victory City at the Istrus River”), of
which the construction (pace Stefan) appears in scene XXXIX of Trajan’s Column,
where (besides civilian settlers) soldiers are shown working with chisels, thus indicat-
ing building in stone (that is, a city) rather than the earth-wood construction of an
army camp. After the war Trajan built at Adamklissi his own Tropaeum, dedicated
to Mars Ultor (“the Avenger”) to obscure the earlier Domitianic monuments, just as
he obliterated Domitian’s building projects at Rome. Sic Stefan, generally following
traditional views on the 101–102 campaign.
Something happened at Adamklissi, a rather isolated site hitherto of no sig-
nificance, to occasion a rare state-sponsored war memorial; the dedication of the
519–28, is too sweeping. Poulter’s case for the legion I Minerva’s connection with Adamklissi
monuments is not convincing, as Poulter cannot establish that Durostorum (Bulgarian Silistra)
c. 60 kilometers from Adamklissi, was ever a base of the I Minerva. This legion’s participation
in Trajan’s Dacian wars is not at issue: see Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans,
86–87; Y. Le Bohec, “Legio I Minervia (1er-IIe siècles),” in Le Bohec and Wolff, eds., Les légions
de Rome, 1:83–85; cf. on the enigimatic text ILS 4795, on which Poulter’s case is partially based,
E. Wheeler, “A New Book on Ancient Georgia: A Critical Discussion,” Annual of the Society for
the Study of Caucasia 6–7 (1994–96): 70–71 with n. 76.
50. Stefan 437–38, 442–44 with fig. 191; the attack’s date of late 84 or early 85 derives
from Dacian arms, signaling military action, depicted already on Roman coins dated to January–
March 85: see 400, 402; the semi-popular work of I. M. Ferris, Enemies of Rome: Barbarians
through Roman Eyes (Stroud, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 2000), 70-71, concedes a Domitianic
origin of the “mausoleum” and the altar.
51. J. Wilkes, “Les provinces danubiennes,” in Rome et l’intégration de l’Empire 44 av. J.-C.-
260 ap. J.-C., II: Approches régionales du Haut-Empire romain, ed. C. Lepelley (Paris: Presses uni-
versitaires de France, 1998), 263, would put the Dacian inroad of late 84 west of the Iron Gates
Gorge; Strobel (Die Donaukriege Domitians, 43) locates the attack east of Novae (Bulgarian Sv-
ishtov), the base of the legion I Italica under the Flavians; on this important site, see J. Kolendo
and V. Bozilov, eds., Inscriptions grecques et latines de Novae (Mésie Inférieure) (Paris: De Boccard,
1997); M. Absil, “Legio I Italica,” in Le Bohec and Wolff, eds., Les légions de Rome, 1:227–38.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Tropaeum Traiani to Mars Ultor suggests revenge for a defeat. Geographical details
and literary narratives are lacking. Oppius Sabinus, consul with Domitian in early
84, subsequently (perhaps already later in 84) became governor of Moesia (in 86
divided into two provinces, Superior and Inferior, as a result of the Dacian war). The
Dacians plundered Moesia in 85 and were still in Moesia in 86.52 A second Roman
defeat followed (although not necessarily in Moesia and possibly in 87 rather than
86) with the loss of the Praetorian Prefect Cornelius Fuscus and a legionary or prae-
torian standard. Stefan (405) equates the severity of the situation to the Teutoburg
Forest debacle. Positing Adamklissi as the site of Oppius’s defeat goes back to Sir
Ronald Syme (1928). Likewise conjectural is Stefan’s route of the attack through
the Dobrudja in both 84–85 and 101–102, reasoning that the Dacians attacked the
less well-defended sector of Moesia, as no legions were yet stationed on the Danube
east of Novae, although scattered units of auxilia and the Moesian fleet (established
by Vespasian) surveyed the area between Novae and the Danube’s mouth.53 For the
Dacian-Rhoxolan offensive of winter 101–102 (absent in Cassius Dio’s fragments
and Jordanes) interpretative possibilities are reduced to scenes on Trajan’s Column
and the metopes of the Tropaeum Traiani. Nicopolis ad Istrum, however, as the site
of Trajan’s victory finds confirmation in two literary sources, and the capture of the
governor of Moesia Inferior’s slave would seem to attest Dacian operations south of
the Danube. Diaconescu, highly critical of Stefan’s views of the campaigns associated
with the Adamklissi monuments and an advocate of their exclusively Trajanic origin,
would derive from the scenes of the Column and the metopes a second Roman vic-
tory of Trajan at Adamklissi—not the first attempt to tie Adamklissi directly to the
events of 101–102.54 The Adamklissi monuments remain enigmatic, but on present
evidence Stefan’s views—by no means definitive and largely in accord with traditional
interpretations—make sense of what is available
52. Jordanes, Getica 76 (the fullest account); Eutropius 7.23.4; cf. Suetonius, Domitianus
6.1; Tacitus, Agricola 41.2; excavations at Novae and Viminacium (Serbian Kostolac; base of the
legion VII Claudia) show some destruction in this period possibly associated with Dacian at-
tacks; Stefan (400, 406) attributes the same destruction layer at Viminacium to Dacian attacks in
both 85 and 86. Available evidence permits various reconstructions of the chronology.
53. R. Syme, “Rhine and Danube Legions under Domitian,” Journal of Roman Studies 18
(1928): 47; Stefan 400 with n. 6, where he rejects an alternative view (above, note 51), placing the
Dacian attacks in the sector between Viminacium and the Danube’s Iron Gates Gorge; cf., most
recently, L. Petculescu, “The Roman Army as a Factor of Romanisation in the North-Eastern
Part of Moesia Inferior,” in Rome and the Black Sea Region. Domination, Romanisation, Resistance,
ed. T. Bekker-Nielsen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2006), 31–35; for a survey of previous
work on the problems of the Adamklissi monuments, see Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column,
295–304, although they offer no real solutions.
54. Victory at Nicopolis: Ammianus Marcellinus 31.5.16; Jordanes, Getica 101; Stefan 400
with additional evidence, including coin hoards; Diaconescu, “Dacia and the Dacian Wars,” 593;
cf. Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, 87; see also above, note 48, for a view that there was no
Dacian-Rhoxolan invasion of Moesia Inferior in 101–102. Scene XXXIX may indicate Trajan’s
foundation of Nicopolis ad Istrum, as Stefan believes, but it seems unlikely that Trajan devoted

.
IV
Stefan’s third “book” (359–441, 485–673) covers the entire history of the
Dacians from the sixth century B.C. to the conclusion of Trajan’s second war in A.D.
106. His extensive pre-history to the wars of Domitian and Trajan seeks to validate
his theses concerning Hellenization of the Dacians (for example, Sarmizegethus
Regia as a Dacian version of Attalid Pergamum: 109–11) and the rule of Burebista
and Decebalus over essentially Hellenistic kingdoms. These thorny questions can
only have their surface pricked here. Greek influence on Dacian architecture and
urbanism is less problematic than the character of the Dacian “state.” Some impres-
sion of these issues will precede discussion (V) of Stefan’s innovative reconstruc-
tions of the topography of Domitian’s and Trajan’s campaigns. Part II of this article
will assess Dacians and Roman strategy on the Lower Danube.
Stefan’s emphasis on Dacians marginalizes the conglomerate of other peoples
(Greeks, Iranians, Germans, Celts) sharing the Carpathian basin—an ancient ethnic
mix antedating medieval complications (for example, Magyars, Slavs). These other
major players demand acknowledgement. In the Greek Classical period Thracian
tribes, of which the Getae were a branch, dominated the area between the Strymon
River (Thrace’s border with Macedonia) and the Black Sea, and from the northern
coast of the Aegean Sea northward through the Carpathians and beyond the Siret
River, as well as westward through modern Bulgaria into Serbia. The Odrysae, the
most powerful Thracian tribe in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. south of the Hae-
mus Mountains (modern Stara Planina), figured prominently in the power politics of
Athens and Philip II of Macedon in the northern Aegean during the fourth century
B.C. An Odrysian dynasty retained varying degrees of authority over much of Thrace
into the forties B.C., when a dynasty of the Sapaean tribe emerged. Rome tolerated
Thrace as a client-kingdom as long as order was preserved, but dynastic disputes
compelled annexation in 46 A.D.55 Historically, Macedonia buffered Greece and the
Mediterranean world generally from inroads of Thracians as well as Illyrians north-
west of Macedonia. After Macedonia’s annexation in 146 B.C., it fell to the Roman
governor of Macedonia to deter threats anywhere in the Balkans, a task subsequently
incumbent on Roman commanders in Moesia (the area between the Haemus Moun-
tains and the Danube) from the time of Augustus.56
time and manpower to building and settling a city in the middle of the 101–102 campaign. If
Stefan is correct, the scene may be an anachronistic interpolation in the Column’s narrative.
55. On the Thracians, see now Z. H. Archibald, The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace: Orpheus
Unmasked (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); opinions differ on whether the Dobrudja, including
the Greek cities of the coast, was annexed as part of Thrace in 46 and when the Dobrudja became
part of the Moesian province: cf. Suceveanu and Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine, 25–28, and “De
nouveau autour de l’annexion romaine de la Dobroudja,” in Piso, ed., Die römischen Provinzen,
271–80; Petculescu, “The Roman Army,” 31, 41 n. 2; Lica, Coming of Rome, 146–47.
56. Macedonia as buffer: Livy 33.12.10–11; cf. 42.52.1; Strabo 7.3.11; note Alexander the
Great’s campaign (335 B.C.) to the Danube against the Triballi to secure Macedonia’s northern

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Decline of Odrysian power in the fourth century B.C. favored a Getic rise north
of the Haemus. Two branches can be discerned: the Getae proper, extending on both
the northern and southern banks of the Danube from the Iron Gates Gorge east to
the Black Sea coast, of which the Trizes/Terizes tribe was prominent in the Dobrudja,
and the Crozbyzes of the Carpathians—the mountain Getae, which Latin sources
called Daci. Ptolemy, however, could list fifteen Geto-Dacian tribes.57 Toponyms
ending in “-dava” distinguish Geto-Dacian sites. In the Classical Greek and Helle-
nistic eras, the Getae often allied with the Thracian Triballi, with whom they shared
the cult of Zalmoxis, the chief deity of Dacian religion. The Triballi stretched from
Oescus (modern Gigen) on the Danube southward and west into the Serbian moun-
tains. By the time of Roman occupation they were more a name than a people.58
Non-Thracians, however, also inhabited or migrated into the Carpathian basin.
From the seventh century B.C. Greek colonies dotted the west coast of the Black
Sea: (for example) in Romania, Histria, Tomis (modern Constantia), Callatis, and in
Bulgaria, Dionysopolis (modern Balcic), Odessus (modern Varna), and Mesembria
(modern Nesebur). A Greek market (emporium) even arose at some point far inland
at Axiopolis (modern Cernavoda, c. 60 kilometers due west of Tomis on the north-
ward bend of the Lower Danube), an oddity not matched by Greek ventures into the
border before his Persian expedition: Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri 1.4–6.11; cf. Strabo 7.3.8; Lica,
Coming of Rome, 38, 74. Batty’s denial of Augustus’s annexation of Moesia (Rome and the Nomads,
429; cf. 460) obscures the complex and poorly reported history of Roman military activity on the
Middle and Lower Danube; the absence of a consular governor of a province of Moesia before
Claudius (r. 41–54) does not preclude Moesia as a provincia in the sense of a military command:
on the problems, see R. Syme, “The Early History of Moesia,” in Syme, The Provincial at Rome
and Rome and the Balkans 80 BC–AD 14, ed. A. R. Birley (Exeter: University of Exeter Press,
1999), 193–220; cf. H. Wolff, “Die römische Erschliessung der Rhein- und Donauprovinzen im
Blickwinkel ihrer Zielsetzung,” in Römische Inschriften—Neufunde, Neulesungen und Neuinterpre-
tationen: Festschrift für Hans Lieb, ed. R. F. Stolba and M. A. Speidel (Basel: F. Reinhardt, 1995),
325–27; and, most recently, M. Mirkovic, “Die Anfänge der Provinz Moesia,” in Piso, ed., Die
römischen Provinzen, 249–70.
57. Strabo 7.3.12–13; Ptolemy, Geography 3.8.1–4; Stefan 359–60; cf. 376–78: a superflu-
ous commentary on ancient authors’ preferences for Getae or Daci, synonymous terms from
Burebista’s time.
58. Strabo 7.3.13; Syme, “The Early History of Moesia,” 200–201, 217–18 with n. 110;
Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 520–22; Ptolemy, Geography 3.10.5: “Oescus of the Triballians”
(Oiskos Triballon). Oescus, the northern terminus of the shortest route between Macedonia and
the Danube, was the first legionary camp downstream from the Iron Gates Gorge and became
the base of the legion V Macedonica perhaps as early as Tiberius (r. 14–38), but certainly dur-
ing Claudius’s reign (38–54): N. Gudea, “Die Nordgrenze der römischen Provinz Obermoesian.
Materialen zu ihrer Geschichte (86–275 n. Chr.),” Jahrbuch des römisch-germanischen Zentralmu-
seums Mainz 48 (2001): 11–12; cf. M. Zahariade and N. Gudea, The Fortifications of Lower Moesia
(Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1997), 72: a synopsis of the Roman fort’s history; Batty, Rome
and the Nomads (405; without sufficient evidence) would have Oescus as a permanent legionary
base from 2/3 A.D. or 11 A.D.; cf. Wilkes, “Roman Legions and their Fortresses,” 102 for the V
Macedonica at Oescus as early as 9 B.C.

interior elsewhere.59 Of equal significance, Iranian peoples from the Ukrainian steppe
were already migrating into Transylvania, the plains of Wallachia, and the Dobrudja
by the sixth century B.C. The Agathyrsi, apparently a Thracian people on the Muresh
River, had a king with an Iranian name (Spargapeithes) in the early fifth century
B.C.; burials show a mixture of Geto-Dacian and Scythian elements until the mid-
fifth century B.C.60 Intermittent Scythian migrations and raids from the Ukraine
through the fourth century B.C. later intensified, as the Scythians were pushed from
the steppe into the Crimea and the Dobrudja by the Sarmatians, another Iranian
people, whose successive waves (Iazyges, Rhoxolani, Aorsi, Alani) dominated the
steppe from the Don to the Dnieper, until the Goths arrived in the third century
and the Huns in the fourth. The Dobrudja became “Little Scythia” (in Greek, Mikra
Skythia), a term revived in the Late Empire, when the Dobrudja (detached from
Moesia Inferior) became Scythia in the Diocletianic reorganization of provinces.61
For events of the fourth and third centuries B.C., the sources often do not distinguish
Scythians from Getae. In fact, two Getic kings of the third century B.C. bear Iranian
(that is, Scythian) names: Zalmodezikos and Rhemaxos.62
Some segments of the Sarmatian Iazyges reached the Danube in the first cen-
tury B.C. and later occasioned the poet Ovid, exiled to Tomis in 8 A.D., to com-
plain of living in a Sarmatian land. Between 20 and 49 A.D. the Iazyges migrated
west into the Great Hungarian Plain and formed a not unproblematic Iranian
buffer between Dacia to the east, Roman Pannonia to the west, and the German
Quadi and Marcomanni to the north.63 The first century A.D. saw a second wave
of Sarmatians, the Rhoxolani (“White Alans”), who wandered about between
59. See Suceveanu and Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine, 52; Petculescu, “The Roman Army,”
35; the site also has a Roman history.
60. Herodotus 4.48.1, 78.2 (Spargapeithes), 104; P. Georges, “Darius in Scythia,” American
Journal of Ancient History 12 (1987 [1995]): 121–22.
61. Strabo 7.4.5, 5.12; cf. Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri 1.3.2; Periplus 24.6; V. Bylkova, “The
Lower Dnieper Region as an Area of Greek/Barbarian Interaction,” in Scythians and Greeks,
ed. D. Braund (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005), 142; pace Suceveanu and Barnea (La
Dobroudja Romaine, 37–38), the majority of the Dobrudja’s population remained Geto-Dacian
despite the influx of Scythians, who resisted assimilation.
62. Stefan 367; Lica, Coming of Rome, 241 n. 63 with bibliography.
63. Batty’s uncritical acceptance of Ovid’s writings from Tomis as accurate ethnography
(Rome and the Nomads, 320–38) partially finds correction in J. G. F. Hinds, “Ovid and the Barbar-
ians beyond the Lower Danube (Tristia 2.191–2; Strabo, Geogr. 7.3.17),” Dacia 51 (2007): 241–45.
Oltean (Dacia, 47, 53) and Lica (Coming of Rome, 157) are too certain about the Iazyges’ move
to the Hungarian Plain c. 20 A.D.; as Iazyges cavalry served in the forces of the Quadic king
Vannius, when his kingdom dissolved in 50 (or 49; for the latter date see E. Wheeler, “Legio XV
Apollinaris: From Carmuntum to Satala—and beyond,” in Le Bohec and Wolff, eds., Les légions
de Rome, 1:273–74; Tacitus, Annals 12.29.3), they were already in Hungary, but how much ear-
lier is unclear; Dr. Valeria Kulcsár (Budapest) informs me that the earliest Iazyges material in
the Hungarian Plain is undatable; cf. A. Móscy, “Die Einwanderung der Iazygen,” Acta Antiqua
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 25 (1977): 439–46. The Iazyges’ route to Hungary (south of the
Carpathians via Wallachia and the Banat? or north of Dacia?) and whether Rome encouraged their

EVERETT L. WHEELER
the Dnieper and the plains of Wallachia into the late second century. Unlike the
Iazyges, the Rhoxolani introduced on the Danubian frontier the fully armored cav-
alry with long thrusting spears (cataphracts), seen on Trajan Column and already
known to Rome from wars with the Parthians (also Iranians). Both Iazyges and the
Rhoxolani may have already been equipped with the Hunnic bow.64
migration invite speculation: see the still useful study of J. Harmatta, Studies in the History of the
Sarmatians (Budapest: Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Görög Filológiai Intézet, 1950), 45–46,
who favors the southern route and Roman involvement; Stefan (506–7, 697) and Strobel (Unter-
suchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans, 57–58, and “Die Jahre 117 bis 119 n.Chr., eine Krisenphase
der römischen Herrschaft an der mitteren und unternen Donau,” in H. Kalcyk et al., edd., Studien
zur alten Geschichte: Siegfried Lauffer zum 70. Geburtstag am 4. August 1981 dargebracht von Freun-
den, Kollegen und Schülern (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider, 1986), III, 962–66), both discounting
their presence in the Dobrudja, have them go north of Dacia. Marcus Aurelius’s concession to the
Iazyges in 179 (Cassius Dio 71.19; erroneously 72.19 at Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 440–41) for
occasional intercourse through the southern section of Roman Dacia with their Rhoxolan cousins
in Wallachia (if the Dacian governor permitted it) might speak for the southern route a century
earlier; cf. Jordanes, Getica 74: the Alutus (modern Olt) River as the border between Iazyges and
Rhoxolani. A fresh evaluation of these issues is forthcoming in the acta of a 2007 conference at
the Autonomous University of Barcelona: E. Istvánovits and V. Kulscár, “The First Sarmatians in
the Great Hungarian Plain: Some Ideas on the Jazygian Migration into the Carpathian Basin,” in
Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, ed. A. Alemany (in press).
64. An early description of the Rhoxolani (Strabo 7.3.17), involving a conflict in the Crimea
against the forces of Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus c. 107 B.C., does not depict them as cata-
phracts, in sharp contrast to Tacitus’s description (Histories 1.79; raid of 69 A.D.), but Syme may
be correct that Strabo’s probable source, the Stoic Poseidonius, attributed Scythian practices to
them, since the Rhoxolani could not have adopted use of cataphracts from European peoples they
encountered subsequently: see R. Syme, History in Ovid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 165; cf.
Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 233–34. No evidence, however, suggests that the Iazyges were ever
cataphracts (sic, erroneously, Batty, 442; Coulston, “Overcoming the Barbarian,” 412); only a single
piece of scale armor (characteristic of cataphracts) is known from the Great Hungarian Plain: E.
Istvánovits and V. Kulscár, “Sarmatians through the Eyes of Strangers: The Sarmatian Warrior,” in
Istvánovits and Kulscár, eds., International Connections, 157. On the problematic use of the Hunnic
bow in the first century A.D., see Istvánovits and Kulscár, “Sarmatians through the Eyes of Strang-
ers,” 153; and, for fragments of a possible Hunnic bow from a Sarmatian burial dated first century
B.C./first century A.D. on the upper Dniester River, M. Treister, “New Discoveries of Sarmatian
Complexes of the 1st Century A.D.: A Survey of Publications in VDI,” Ancient Civilizations from
Scythia to Siberia 4 (1997): 37. The unlikelihood of complete preservation of bows in graves and the
infrequency of weapons as grave goods in Sarmatian burials (cf. I. Lebedynsky, Armes et guerriers
barbares au temps des grandes invasions (IVe au VIe siècles après J.-C.) [Paris: Errance, 2001]): 10–12,
44, 66) negate J. N. C. Coulston’s point about their absence in Sarmatian graves: “Tacitus, Historiae
I.79 and the Impact of Sarmatian Warfare on the Roman Empire,” in Kontakt—Kooperation—
Konflikt: Germanen und Sarmaten zwischen dem 1. und dem 4. Jahrhundert nach Christus, ed. C. von
Carnap-Bornheim (Neumünster: Wachholtz Verlag, 2003), 426; cf. 427–28 for his dubious notion
that Tacitus’s descriptions of Sarmatian tactics at Histories 1.79 and Annals 6.35 are contrived from
information gleaned about Sarmatians in the Dacian wars of Domitian and Trajan; Rhoxolan
participation in Domitian’s war is unattested. Stefan (507–8) denies the presence of Sarmatians in

Essentially simultaneous with the influx of Scythians, c. 300 B.C., the Germanic
Bastarnae (in some ways precursors of the later Goths) moved southeast from north-
ern central Europe into Moldavia, and the same Celtic movements featuring inva-
sions of Greece in 279 B.C. and later Asia Minor (hence Galatia in central Anatolia)
brought these “westerners” into the Carpathian basin. The northern Carpathians
appear as the “Bastarnic Alps” on the fourth-century map, the Peutinger Table; and
Noviodunum (modern Issacea), near the Danube delta and the site of a later naval
base of the Moesian fleet, bears a Celtic name, as does Dinogetia downstream from
Noviodunum. Geto-Dacians also mingled with Celtic peoples of the Middle Danube
(for example, Scordisci, Boii, Taurisci). The Dacian fort on the Middle Danube at
Zidovar (upstream from the Iron Gates Gorge) was originally a Scordiscan site, just
as Noviodunum later became Dacian. Stefan’s emphasis on Geto-Dacian interaction
with Greeks plays down Celtic influence on Dacian civilization.65
The shadowy history of Getic relations with the Greek cities of the Black Sea
coast and Getic involvements in Classical Greek and Hellenistic wars cannot be
pursued here. As at other Greek colonies on the Black Sea (for example, Olbia at the
Bug River’s mouth), Greek settlers in the Dobrudja intermingled with the natives
and Getae formed part of the urban population at Histria and other cities. In the
fourth century B.C. the Getae, former allies or subjects of the Odyrsiae, expanded
their influence south to the Haemus Mountains and on the coast as far as Odessus.
The Getae protected the Greek cities against Macedonian imperialism (for example,
Philip II, Lysimachus) and intermarried with Macedonian dynasts. Protection, how-
ever, came with a fee, as the Getae gained wealth through tribute from the Greek
cities besides the land’s natural products (herding, agriculture, timber).66
Wallachia before the second century A.D., although they were already a problem for the governor
of Moesia c. 62 (ILS 986) and raided Moesia in 68, 69, and 70 (see Wheeler, Part II, text with notes
144, 147); their participation in the campaign of 101–102 suggests their proximity; cf. Jordanes,
Getica 74 (above, note 63).
65. Diaconescu, “Dacia and the Dacian Wars,” 592–93, noting the (predictable) emphasis
of the “Cluj school” on the Transylvanian origins of the Dacians; Stefan (512) does observe
Dacian use of the Celtic war trumpet (carnyx); Peutinger Table: K. Miller, Itineraria Romana
(Stuttgart: Strecker und Schröder, 1916), 600, 616 (Alpes Bastarnicae); Noviodunum and Dio-
getia: Suceveanu and Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine, 48–49; Taurisci: H. Graßl, “Die Taurisker.
Beiträge zur Geschichte und Lokalisierung eines antiken Ethnonyms,” Orbis Terrarum 6 (2000):
127–38; Zidovar: Stefan 380 n. 46; E. Nemeth, Die Armee im Südwesten des römischen Dacien
(Timisoara: Ed. Mirton, 2005), 125 (parallel text in German and Romanian); my sincere thanks
to Dr. Valeria Kulscár for supplying a chapter from this work.
66. Stefan 361–67; the Getae thwarted Philip II’s attack on Odessus in 342 B.C., and
Philip married a Getic princess, whose ashes (pace Stefan 365 with n. 64) are preserved in the
now famous tomb of Philip II at Vergina; similarly, Lysimachus, defeated and captured by the
Getae in 292 B.C., sealed with his daughter’s hand his release and an alliance with the Getic
king Dromichaetes; Stefan overlooked (366) J. G. Vindogradov, “Eine neue Quelle zum Zo-
phyrion-Zug,” in Vindogradov, Pontische Studien: Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte und Epigraphik
des Schwarzmeerraumes, ed. H. Heinen (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1997): 323–35 on

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Wealthy Getic kings who intermarried with Macedonian monarchs needed to

display their prosperity. For his Hellenistic Sarmizegethusa Regia, Stefan finds a
precursor c. 40 kilometers south of the Danube on the north slope of the Haemus
Mountains at Bulgarian Sboryanovo, a major fortified and religious center, flour-
ishing c. 350 to c. 250 B.C. At ten hectares, twice the size of the Odyrsian capital
of Seuthopolis, the site features Greek statuary (one inscribed in Greek by the
sculptor), mosaics, and an extensive necropolis with a supposed royal tumulus (11.5
meters high, diameter 70 meters) enclosing a burial chamber rimmed with cary-
atides. Other Greek aspects could be detailed, including manufacture of iron and
bronze tools and weapons; jewelry in bronze, silver, and gold; and a mint producing
imitations of the coins of Histria and Alexander the Great. Stefan identifies the site
with Helis, the capital of Dromichaetes mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (21.2.2),
where the Macedonian king Lysimachus was held captive (292 B.C.).67 After an
earthquake destroyed Sboryanovo/Helis c. 250 B.C., the site was abandoned for
another fortified center c. 100 kilometers west-southwest at Borovo (ancient name
unknown) on the Iatrus River. Stefan speculates that a Getic capital had existed
at Borovo (site of a “treasure” found in the 1990s) before Sboryanovo’s foundation,
and that Borovo must be the Argedava, the possible residence of Burebista’s father,
mentioned in the decree of Dionysopolis honoring Acornion, an ambassador of
Burebista to Pompey in 48 B.C. during the civil war with Julius Caesar. Yet other
fortified Getic royal residences of the Hellenistic period are known at Cotofenii din
Dos in Oltenia (Little Wallachia, the plain north of the Danube, south of the Car-
pathians, west of the Olt River), Popeshti (25 kilometers southwest of Bucharest),
and Poiana (ancient Piroboridava) in Moldavia.68
The spectacular site of Sboryanovo, ably demonstrating the wealth and Hel-
lenic tastes of fourth- and third-century B.C. Getic kings, would anticipate the
Greek building techniques and urban amenities three centuries later at Sarmizege-
thusa Regia. Manufacturing at both sites suggests another parallel, as Sarmizege-
thusa Regia c. 100 A.D. was perhaps the largest European center for iron working
the Getic (Scythian?) defeat in 331(?) of Alexander the Great’s governor of Thrace, Zopyrion,
somewhere between the Danube and the Dniester; another Getic (?) king, Dromichaetes (II?),
participated in the siege of Thracian Cypsela in 254 B.C. as the ally of the Seleucid Antiochus II
Theos, not the Antigonid Antigonus II, as in Stefan 374, 376 n. 8, who also erroneously cites the
source: Polyaenus, Strategika 4.16 is correct.
67. Stefan 367–72; for updates on the site, see T. Stoyanov, “The Getic Capital at Sbory-
anovo: New Excavations, Issues and Research Developments,” Thracia 15 (2003): 413–23, and
T. Stoyanov et al., The Getic Capital in Sboryanovo (Sofia: n.p., 2006); Sboryanovo is unknown to
Batty, Rome and the Nomads, and Oltean, Dacia.
68. Stefan 372–73, 375; Acornion decree: Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria repertae (here-
after IGBulg) I2 13=(in English translation) R. Sherk, Rome and the Greek East to the Death of
Augustus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), no. 78; the inscription dates between
7 June and 9 August: Lica, Coming of Rome, 74 with bibliography; Popeshti and Poiana: Locklear,
“Late Iron Age Background,” 41, who claims Popeshti is comparable to Sarmizegethusa Regia.

outside the Roman Empire.69 Yet a valley of obscurity separates these two peaks of
splendor three centuries apart. Identification of Borovo with Argedava, the alleged
residence of Burebista’s father, is speculative.70 The number of major fortified sites
corresponds to the multiple Geto-Dacian rulers popping in and out of the sources
c. 250–100 B.C., a poorly known period, in which the center of Geto-Dacian
power passed from south of the Danube north into Transylvania.71 For Stefan
(109–11), Burebista in the first half of the first century B.C. consolidated power
over numerous other Geto-Dacian kings and their neighbors, initially established a
capital at Costesti, and planned a defensive ring of forts throughout the Carpathi-
ans centered on the holy mountain of Cogaeonum, where he constructed a palace
(basileion) atop a city formed from multiple man-made terraces on the model of
Attalid Pergamum in Asia Minor or Panticapaeum (modern Kerch), the capital
of the Bosporan Kingdom (eastern Crimea). Dacian wealth and sophistication are
not at issue: the monumental works speak for themselves. Direct Dacian contacts,
however, with major cities like Pergamum or Panticapaeum cannot be proved and,
except for Greek architectural techniques, confirmation of a strong influx of Greek
ideas into Transylvania via Greek cities of the Dobrudja remains illusive—perhaps
testimony to the thoroughness of Roman destruction at Sarmizegethusa Regia. Yet
for Stefan, Getic philhellenism manifest at Sboryanovo went north of the Danube
with the shift of power to Transylvania.72
Despite Dacian wealth and architectural sophistication, formal state organi-
zation remains problematic. Stefan wishes to infer Geto-Dacian imitation of the
Macedonian and Hellenistic royal courts, specifically the title of philos (“friend”) of
the king, from only two pieces of evidence: Diodorus Siculus’s account (21.12) of
Lysimachus’s detention at Helis and the Dionysopolis decree for Acornion. In liter-
ary sources, however, use of “friends” (whether a court title or simply an indication
of familiarity) can be ambiguous. Diodorus shows the Getic king Dromichaetes’s
awareness of Macedonian court practice and Lysimachus’s “friends,” but the passage
69. Cf. above text with notes 22–23; iron working: Stefan 102–3, 511 (the high quality of
Dacian weapons).
70. Lica (Coming of Rome, 236–42) identifies Argedava with Zargidava on the Siret River
in Moldavia (Ptolemy, Geography 3.10.8); the first eight lines of the Acornion decree are too
fragmentary to determine whose father at Argedava is mentioned.
71. As Stefan notes (375), Sarmizegethusa Regia is c. 350 kilometers from Sboryanovo. An
absence of major cemeteries north of the Danube, especially for the first century A.D., impedes
understanding Geto-Dacian culture. To what extent (if any) did Hellenism penetrate below the
ruling class? Lica (Coming of Rome, 83 n. 96) raises the possibility of Geto-Dacian mercenaries
importing Greek ideas upon returning home, but cites no examples. The Dacian situation cor-
responds to a broader absence of Late La Tène (first century B.C.) burials throughout Central
Europe: see Babeş, “‘Devictis Dacis,’” 333; cf. Locklear’s self-contradiction, “Late Iron Age Back-
ground,” 63–65, 69: drawing conclusions about diverse Dacian burial customs after asserting that
too few examples exist for assessment.
72. Stefan 275; cf. 267, where he rejects the possibility that Burebista imported Greek
technicians from Greek cities.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
will not prove Geto-Dacian adaptation of such titles. In the Dionysopolis text (a
documentary source more reliable for official terminology), Acornion is characterized
as “in the best and greatest friendship” with Burebista—surely a court title is implied,
just as the same text denotes Burebista as “first and greatest of all kings in Thrace and
possessor of all land across the river [scil. Danube] and on this side of it”—typical
Hellenistic Greek. Nevertheless, the decree of Acornion derives from a Greek city
likely to frame situations in Greek institutional language.73 A document from Bureb-
ista’s chancellery (if there was one) would make a more impressive case. Indeed Strabo
(7.3.5) has Burebista issuing decrees (prostagmata), given more force through the
religious awe of the holy Decenaeus. Decrees imply literacy and writing, but although
the Helvetians defeated by Caesar (58 B.C.) maintained records in Greek (Gallic War
1.29) no one would speak of a Helvetian state. The Gallic Druids also knew Greek
(Caesar, Gallic War 6.14.3). Further, Strabo’s therapontes for Burebista’s attendants is
ambiguous, whether ministers (sic Stefan), slaves, or courtiers. For Strabo, Decenaeus
was a goes (“magician”; pejorative term), but Burebista’s accomplishment in found-
ing Sarmizegethusa Regia on the Dacians’ holy mountain and uniting four Dacian
principalities under a divine aegis should not be underestimated. Crito, recounting
Trajan’s Dacian wars, still emphasized the Dacians’ religious fervor.74
Besides uniting the Getae and Dacians, Burebista is credited with subduing
the Bastarnae, gaining control of the Greek coastal cities from Olbia to Mesembria
and Apollonia, and extending Dacian power to the March River in Slovakia, after
driving the Celtic Boii, Taurisci, and Scordisci west from the Middle Danube.
His supposed abuse of the Greek cities is misunderstood.75 A tremendous influx
73. Stefan 373, 379; IGBulg I2 13 lines 22–26; Lica, Coming of Rome, 82–83 with n. 96; cf.
Oltean, Dacia, 47, who misunderstands Lica’s argument and incorrectly imputes to him a view
similar to Stefan’s; on the Hellenistic court titles, see recently I. Savalli-Lestrade, Les philoi roy-
aux dans l’Asie hellénistique (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1998).
74. Strabo 7.3.5, 11; cf. Vulpe, “Décénée, conseiller intime de Burébista,” 63–64, 67; Crito,
in Jacoby, Die Fragmente, nr. 200 fr. 7; Stefan (279) posits a royal monopoly on salt and gold; the
Dacians’ widespread use of silver but the absence of gold jewelry would support the view: Oltean,
Dacia, 106; Locklear (“Late Iron Age Background,” 70), ignoring Burebista and the religious influ-
ence of Decenaeus, attributes the rise of Sarmizegethusa Regia to gaining control of resources (e.g.,
iron); on the salt trade, prominent at Buridava, see text with note 88 below. Salt continued to have
a role in the area’s later history: A. Madgearu, “Salt Trade and Warfare: The Rise of the Romanian-
Slavic Military Organization in Early Medieval Transylvania,” in East Central & Eastern Europe in
the Early Middle Ages, ed. F. Curta (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 103–20.
75. For rebuttal of an alleged hostility of Burebista to the Greek cities (sic Batty, Rome and
the Nomads, 507–8), see Stefan 382 with n. 66; Suceveanu and Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine,
23: only cities without traditional ties with the Getae (Olbia, Mesembria, Apollonia) suffered
from Burebista; supposed Getic destruction at Histria derives from a questionable reading of
the stratigraphy; likewise, Batty’s skepticism (427 n. 19) about Burebista’s defeat of the Scordisci
is groundless: see A. Mócsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia, trans. S. Frere (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1974), 18; R. Syme, “Macedonia and Dardania, 80–30 BC,” in Birley, ed., Provincial,
138 with n. 51; cf. above text with note 65 for Scordiscan Zidovar as a Dacian fort.

of Roman denarii throughout Dacia c. 75–c. 65 B.C., however, might point to a

western orientation rather than Stefan’s Hellenism.76 For some, Burebista’s empire
represents no more than a huge but ephemeral tribal confederation.77 But could a
tribal confederation have built Sarmizegethusa Regia? Debate on whether Burebi-
sta’s Dacia had crossed the threshold from a confederation to a Hellenistic state is
justified in the current state of the sources.
A state organization for Decebalus’s Dacia has better (although not unprob-
lematic) prospects. For Stefan (508), Decebalus’s Dacia included all territory north
of the Danube between the Pathissus (modern Tisza) River (bordering the Hun-
garian Plain) and the Black Sea; alliances stretched his influence northeast beyond
the Siret River to the Lower and Middle Dniester and westward into the Slovak
Carpathians: in total, c. 260,000 square kilometers and over 1,000,000 people,
yielding an army of c. 200,000.78 Dacian use of battle flags (vexilla) and dragon
standards (dracones), seen on Trajan’s Column, could signal organized units of the
Dacian army, which consisted of both cavalry and infantry, although only Dacian
infantry is depicted on the Column. Similarly, the Dacians were adept at both
offensive and defensive siegecraft—not primitive barbarians ignorant of siegecraft,
the typical characterizations of Germans and other barbarians in Roman sources.
Cassius Dio (67.6.1) even includes high praise of Decebalus’s skills in general-
ship.79 Further, the Dacian elite distinguished a lower class, the “long-haired”
76. See Locklear, “Late Iron Age Background,” 65–66, rejecting a view tying the coins
to a Roman desire for Dacian slaves after Spartacus’s slave revolt; similarly, Lica, Coming of
Rome, 115 with n. 98, who posits recruitment of Dacian mercenaries. Slaves as a major export
of the Carpathian basin is a motif of Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 124–25, 197, 256, 363 n. 64,
although with exaggerations. Getic coinage is attested at Sboryanovo/Helis, and Dacian coinage
north of the Danube (initially imitations of Greek tetradrachms, later Roman denarii) dates to
at least the second century B.C.: see Oltean, Dacia, 106, 113; Bogdan Cataniciu, Daci, 120–23;
yet like literacy, coinage does not define a state: the Celtic Boii also struck coins: R. Göbl, Die
Hexadrachmenprägung der Gross-Boier (Vienna: Fassbaender, 1994).
77. E.g., Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dakiens,” 105–6; Lica, Coming of Rome, 82–83 with n. 96;
Oltean, Dacia, 48; contra, Suceveanu and Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine, 23; Bogdan Cataniciu,
Daci, 121 n. 25; and J. Wilkes, “Romans, Dacians and Sarmatians in the First and Early Second
Centuries,” in Rome and her Northern Provinces: Papers Presented to Sheppard Frere, ed. B. Hartley
and J. Wacher (Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1983), 264, who all three favor Dacia
as the equivalent of an Hellenistic state; in any case, a view that the Dacians were nomads has no
credibility: D. Sim, “The Making and Testing of a Falx also Known as the Dacian Battle Scythe,”
Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 11 (2000): 37–41.
78. Stefan concedes the hypothetical character of such figures; a Dacian army of 200,000
seems to be Strabo’s number for the size of Burebista’s armed forces: 7.3.13.
79. Stefan 516–25, who gives a full description of Dacian armor and weapons: 508–16; on
Getic and Dacian horsearchers: 363, 515; note also O. Gamber, “Dakische und sarmatische Waffen
auf den Reliefs der Traiansaüle,” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 60 (=Sonderheft
192 [1964]): 7–34. Rome enlisted Dacians for cavalry alae and adopted some Dacian practices (e.g.,
Arrian, Tactica 44.1), just as Rome heavily recruited Thracian infantry and cavalry in general: see
D. Dana and F. Matei-Popescu, “Le recruitement des Daces dans l’armée romaine sous l’empereur

EVERETT L. WHEELER
(comati/capillati) from the “cap-wearers” (pileati/tarabostesei), both of which could

serve as ambassadors, although kings and priests belonged to the “cap-wearers”;
both groups appear on Trajan’s Column.80 A Vezinas, called the “second” (in power)
after Decebalus may have commanded at the first battle of Tapae (88 or 89), where
he feigned death and escaped capture. Nothing suggests him a religious leader like
Decenaeus, who (pace Jordanes) seems to have ruled for a time after Burebista,
although a later successor, Cosmosicus, united the posts of king and priest. Too
little is known to posit a Dacian form of Hellenistic ruler-cult (the king as a divine
manifestation). An hetairos (“companion”) of Decebalus, Bicilis, is also on record,
but like Strabo’s therapontes, the term is ambiguous if a court title.81 Diegis, called
Decebalus’s brother (frater), handled the peace negotiations with Domitian in 89;
again the term is ambiguous: court title or biological relationship?82 But nothing
here proves a state rather than a tribal confederation. More decisive, a fragment of
Crito’s Getica refers to officials in charge of arable lands and those responsible for
forts. Such administrative divisions of authority, in combination with social classes,
coinage, literacy, and a fixed capital with monumental architecture, suggest an
organized state.83 Dacian literacy in Latin is attested and knowledge of Greek can
probably be assumed, especially if Dacian architects had read Philo Mechancius.84
Trajan: une esquisse préliminaire,” Dacia 50 (2006): 195–206, and, most recently, M. Zahariade, The
Thracians in the Roman Imperial Army from the First to the Third Century A.D., 1: Auxilia (Cluj/Na-
poca: Mega Publishing House, 2009); cf. Batty’s feeble discussion (Rome and the Nomads, 497–98)
and perverse attempt to represent Moesian and Thracian troops as unreliable. On Dacian siegecraft,
note use of lilia (concealed sharpened stakes): scene XXV (fig. 221); cf. Caesar, Gallic War 7.73.5–8
(Alesia, 52 B.C.); Cassius Dio 75.6.4–5 (Clodius Albinus vs. Septimius Severus at Lugdunum/
Lyon, 197); scene XXXII (fig. 224) depicts the Dacian use of a battering ram against a Moesian
city during the 101–102 counteroffensive; on that most curious siege machine at scene CXIV (fig.
220), cf. Stefan 517 (a Dacian devise) and Whitehead’s ingenious interpretation making it Roman:
“Apollodorus’ Poliorketika,” 210–11; on the dracones, see J. C. N. Coulston, “The ‘Draco’ Standard,”
Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 2 (1991): 101–14.
80. Jordanes, Getica 40, 71–72; Cassius Dio 68.9.1; Petrus Patricius fr. 5=C. Müller, Frag-
menta Historicorum Graecorum (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1885), IV, 185; Stefan 666; cf. Vulpe (“Dé-
cénée, conseiller intime de Burébista,” 65–66) for suggested corrections to Jordanes; Vulpe would
compare the “cap-wearers” to a priestly caste like the Celtic Druids.
81. Cassius Dio 67.10.2 (Vezinas), 68.14.5 (Bicilis); Cosmosicus: Jordanes, Getica 73.
82. Cassius Dio 67.7.2–3; Martial 5.3.1–6; cf. ILS 986, where the Moesian governor (60–
66/67) Tiberius Plautius Silvanus Aelianus restores captured or kidnapped “brother(s) of the
Dacians” along with sons of the kings of the Bastarnae and the Rhoxolani; the text’s meaning is
unclear; cf. an alternate edition of the text in E. M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Princi-
pates of Gaius Claudius & Nero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), nr. 228.
83. Crito, in Jacoby, Die Fragmente, nr. 200 fr. 5; Stefan 525; cf. 272–73: the Dacian defen-
sive fortification scheme in the Carpathians attests long-term planning and maintenance, but this
conclusion is premised on Burebista as a grand strategist and creator of the system; cf. above text
at note 26.
84. Before the second Battle of Tapae (101), Trajan received an embassy with a message
written in Latin on a large mushroom: Cassius Dio 68.8.1, an episode illustrated on the Col-

Nevertheless, Decebalus’s sole rule of Dacia at the start of the war with
Domitian in late 84 is far from clear. Strabo (d. after 23 A.D.) claims (7.3.11) that
Burebista’s union of four kingdoms had dissolved in his own day into sometimes
five parts with no stability. As noted earlier, numerous Hellenistic Geto-Dacian
fortified residences are known and the local circulation of different local Dacian
coinages (dated second century B.C.) suggest at least four or five different Dacian
principalities, excluding the Banat (between the Carpathians and confluence of
the Tisza and Danube), originally a Celtic area, where Dacian coins did not cir-
culate.85 The names of numerous Dacian rulers floating in and out of the sources
for the period between Burebista and Domitian’s war cannot be moored to specific
territorial domains, despite valiant efforts to create a single line of kings based in
Transylvania.86 Moreover, Decebalus, missing in Jordanes’ account of Domitian’s
war, shares the stage with at least two other Dacian rulers: a Diurpaneus or Dor-
paneus led the Dacian offensive into Moesia in late 84/early 85 and commanded
Dacian operations until about 87; indeed Diurpaneus/Dorpaneus, not Decebalus,
was the victor over the Praetorian Prefect Cornelius Fuscus. Decebalus first appears
after Roman forces crossed the Danube in 86 or 87, when a less militarily adept
king Duras at Sarmizegethusa Regia abdicated rule to Decebalus, who then tried
to negotiate with Domitian. Peace came only in 89 following a Dacian defeat at
Tapae, which opened access to the Dacian heartland.87
umn (scene IX); cf. Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, 59–60, for commentary. The lip of a
large amphora found at Sarmizegethusa Regia is stamped four times: Decebalus per Scorilo (AE
1977 nr. 672), a text generally assumed to refer to the Dacian king: Locklear, “Late Iron Age
Background,” 44; Oltean, Dacia, 92; Bruun, “The Legend of Decebalus,” 160; a pottery sherd at
Buridava, inscribed in Greek, mentions an unknown basileus (king); see note 88 below.
85. Above text at note 68; Bogdan Cataniciu, “Dacia’s Borders,” 723–25, and Daci, 120–23;
cf. Locklear, “Late Iron Age Background,” 69–70, approved by Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dak-
iens,” 106 n. 4. Locklear posits from his archaeological survey of pre-Roman Dacia a competi-
tion between Dacian princes eventually won by the group of Sarmizegethusa Regia; accordingly,
the influx of Roman denarii c. 75–c. 65 B.C. (above, note 76) represented Roman support (real
or pretended) for different rulers. As this influx of Roman silver coins into Dacia corresponds
to the period of Burebista’s rise to power and the coin finds are not exclusively concentrated at
supposed power-centers, this view fails to convince.
86. See Lica, Coming of Rome, 100, 104–5, 162–63, 227; cf. 133, 139–40, 142 for a Getic
king Rholes in the Dobrudja (c. 29 B.C.–A.D. 16?), a Roman ally in Licinius Crassus’s campaign
on the Lower Danube 29–27 B.C.; Stefan 388–92, 697. Emending the problematic text of Plau-
tius Silvanus (ILS 986: above, note 82), approved by Stefan (393), to show a single Dacian mon-
arch proves nothing. It may be significant that Frontinus, three times consul (c. 73, 98, 100), part
of the senatorial clique that put Trajan in power in 97, and writing his Stratagems 84–88 during
Domitian’s Dacian war, refers to the Dacian leader Scorylo (fl. 69) as a dux (“general, leader”) and
not a rex (“king”): Stratagems 1.10.4, an anecdote faintly echoed at Tacitus, Histories 3.46.2.
87. Diurpaneus: Orosius 7.10.4, presumably following Tacitus’s Histories; Dorpaneus: Jor-
danes, Getica 76; Duras: Cassius Dio 67.6.1 with Excerpta Valesiana 284 (see Loeb edition: Cary,
trans., Dio’s Roman History, 328–29 with n. 1), 67.6.5; a Duras, advising a Dacian king, also

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Corruption of names in manuscripts may explain Diurpaneus and Dorpaneus,

but equation of all these names with Decebalus is hardly satisfactory. Stefan rel-
egates the problem to a footnote (399 n. 1). Diurpaneus/Dorpaneus, on one recon-
struction, would be the Dacian king based at Buridava (modern Ocnita), a fortified
residence from the first century B.C. and supposed capital of the Dacian tribe, the
Buridavensii. This site on the west bank of the Alutus (modern Olt) River guards
a major southern approach into the Carpathians via the Red Tower Pass; exploita-
tion of local salt mines rendered the site a major trading center with high-quality
imports.88 But, as Stefan notes, this reconstruction would have a minor Dacian king
waging war on his own resources against the might of Rome for two years, includ-
ing a year in Roman Moesia. In fact only conjecture ties Diurpaneus/Dorpaneus
to Buridava.89 Definitive solutions are elusive on present evidence. Yet Domitian’s
favorable terms to Decebalus in 89, including subsidies, technical support, and rec-
ognition as a client of Rome, may have consolidated his position in Sarmizegethusa
and extended his authority over other Dacian kingdoms with Rome’s approval.90
appears in a supposed fragment of Crito’s Getica, preserved in the tenth-century encyclopedia

called the Suda (Q 413): see Russu, “Getica lui Statilius Crito,” 126 fr. 15=A. Adler, Suidae Lexi-
con (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1928–38), II, 721, noted by Bogdan Cataniciu, “Dacia’s Borders,”
724; Russu’s commentary, summarized at Stefan 651 n.10, is far-fetched. As Trajan recovered in
102 the arms, artillery, and military standard lost in Fuscus’s defeat at another Dacian fort (Cas-
sius Dio 68.9.3; cf. Jordanes, Getica 78) and not at Sarmizegethusa, they were apparently not in
Decebalus’s possession: Bogdan Cataniciu, “Dacia’s Borders,” 724; on Decebalus’s late entry into
the war, see Strobel, Die Donaukriege Domitians, 62–63.
88. Strobel (Die Donaukriege Domitians, 40, 54–63) would make Buridava the objective of
Fuscus’s disastrous campaign; contra, Stefan 404–5; on Buridava, see Stefan 255 with figs. 126–27.
89. Stefan 404–5; Strobel (Die Donaukriege Domitians, 40), however, would make Diur-
paneus/Dorpaneus a major monarch, ruling Oltenia, Wallachia, and parts of southern Mol-
davia, i.e., the whole of Dacia south and east of the Carpathians, but see Bogdan Cataniciu’s
objections, “Dacia’s Borders,” 724, and Daci, 123–24: Oltenia and the upper Olt River were not
jointly ruled with Wallachia. A fragmentary Greek inscription on a pottery sherd mentions a
(probably post-Burebista) king (basileus), who cannot be tied to Diurpaneus/Dorpaneus. Bogdan
Cataniciu (“Dacia’s Borders,” 724 n. 15; Daci, 125 n. 45) attractively suggests that the Buri of
the “mushroom embassy” (above, note 84) are Dacian Buri of Buridava, not German Buri, living
north of the Quadi and Marcomanni: Tacitus, Germania 43.1.
90. On the peace terms, see Lica, Coming of Rome, 185, 192–93; Stefan 425–36, who (425–
29) finds a parallels in the diplomatic procedures of 89 with Nero’s Armenian settlement with
Parthia in 63; Mattern (Rome and the Enemy, 121, 159, 173) uncritically accepts the negative
view of Trajan’s propaganda. Conjectures (Lica, Coming of Rome, 188; Nemeth, Die Armee im
Südwesten des römischen Dacien, 130–31) that control of the territory between the Carpathians
and the Danube passed to Rome in 89 lack archaeological or literary support; some Dacian forts
on the Danube’s north bank (e.g., Divici west of the Iron Gates Gorge) may have still been in
Dacian hands in 101: Stefan 436, 548; on the importance of the 89 peace to Decebalus’s position,
cf. Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dakiens,” 106–7.

V
Stefan’s theme of Trajan’s imitation of Domitian continues in operational anal-
ysis of Domitian’s war (84–89) and Trajan’s two campaigns (101–102, 105–106),
which (as his Column shows) were portrayed (post eventum) as a single war. Even
Trajan’s canal at the Iron Gates Gorge to by-pass the notorious rapids, completed
by 101 and highlighted by an inscription found in 1969, continued Domitian’s
postwar efforts to improve communications between the Middle and Lower Dan-
ube.91 Similarly, Trajan’s campaign of 101 followed the same route as the decisive
Roman offensive of 88–89 under Tettius Julianus (suffect consul 83, governor of
Moesia Superior from 87), just as Stefan has the Dacian offensives south of the
Danube in late 84 and 101–102 follow identical paths. Both campaigns (88 and
101) led to a battle at Tapae, a site absent from later Roman itineraries. Trajan’s
march is illustrated, of course, on his Column (for what that is worth) and the sole
fragment of Trajan’s Dacica partially indicates the initial campaign’s route, supple-
mented by known legionary camps on the Danube, the likely bases of operations.92
Scenes IV–V, Roman forces crossing the Danube on parallel pontoon bridges,
suggest multiple armies at different locations. As Viminacium appears the chief
Roman base for Dacian operations, Trajan with the main army crossed at Lederata
(modern Ram, 10 kilometers to the northeast); other armies with different opera-
tional objectives possibly crossed farther downstream at Dierna (modern Orshova),
Drobeta (site of the later stone bridge), and Oescus—a multi-pronged offensive
unlike Tettius’s expedition in 88.93 Trajan’s Dacica refers to Berzobis and Aizis
91. Stefan 489–95 (Domitian), 540–41 (Trajan); for Stefan (495) the canal was probably
Domitian’s project initially; inscription: AE 1973 nr. 475; cf. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating
the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, nr. 413; as Opreanu (“Bellum Dacicum,” 113) notes,
scene LXXVIII shows a single goddess of Victory but two trophies; inscriptions also distinguish
expeditio Dacica prima from secunda expeditio. Much of the Iron Gates Gorge fell victim to hy-
droelectric projects in the 1960s and 1970s. The following commentary on Stefan’s views will
emphasize novelties; space precludes detailed comparison with previous views on all points.
92. See scenes IV–XXIII; the battle at scene XXIV may be at Tapae.
93. Tettius’s crossing may have been contested, as four Dacian forts west of the Iron Gates
Gorge are known: see Stefan 416–17; cf. 262–66 for descriptions of the forts. Although (on the
Column) Trajan crossed unopposed, Stefan thinks at least one Dacian fort on the north Danube
bank still functioned in 101: see above, note 90. Diaconescu (“Dacia under Trajan,” 11) and
Opreanu (“The Consequences,” 390) also posit identical routes for Tettius and Trajan, but Dia-
conescu also has Cornelius Fuscus take this route in 86 or 87 (contra, Strobel, Die Donaukriege
Domitians, see above, note 88) and Opreanu’s map (391 fig. 1) has two Roman armies crossing
the Danube west of Viminacium and none at Lederata. For Stefan (550), these other armies
aimed at protecting the flank of Trajan’s main force by blocking southern and southeastern exits
from the Carpathians; in Tettius’s campaign he conjectures (415) the army of Moesia Inferior
under its governor Cornelius Nigrinus (suffect consul 83) performing a similar task in 88, but
the argument seems circular, based exclusively on Trajan’s campaigns; on Nigrinus, a potential
rival to Trajan for the imperial purple in 97, see most recently G. Alföldy, “M. Cornelius Nigrinus
Curiatus Maternuis: Neues und Altes zum Werdegang eines römischen Generals,” Revue des

EVERETT L. WHEELER
(known from later Roman itineraries), indicating a march north from Lederata
along the Apus (modern Karash) River. Berzobis (modern Berzovia) was later the
base of the legion IV Flavia Felix, formerly at Singidunum (modern Belgrade).94
But where is Tapae?
Jordanes described a Dacia surrounded by a ring of mountains with only two
entries, Boutae and Tapae, although he ignored on the Carpathians’ southern face the
defile at Teregova, roughly midway between Dierna on the Danube and Tibiscum
(modern Caransebesh/Juba), and farther east the Vulcan Pass, where the Jiu River
emerges from the Carpathians. Boutae, a toponym otherwise unattested, is generally
identified as the Red Tower Pass north of Buridava, the gorge of the Alutus River.95
Previous reconstructions of the campaigns of Domitian and Trajan assumed that Tapae
must be somewhere near the Iron Gate Pass (near modern Bucova), because Colonia
Sarmizegethusa (See Map 2, page 1199), in a plain just east of this pass, was (errone-
ously) thought to be the site of the Dacian capital. Realization of the distinction of
Colonia from Regia has not (hitherto) changed scholars’ placement of Tapae. The Iron
Gate Pass, a narrow 15-kilometer corridor (elevation 699 meters), a significant natu-
ral obstacle, became more formidable with the Dacians’ construction of an immense
earthen rampart (recently discovered but not yet excavated). A later Roman road passed
through the Iron Gate Pass to the Colonia, an important center of Roman Dacia.
Nevertheless, as Stefan argues, the distinction of Colonia from Regia removes
the rationale behind the traditional location of Tapae. The later Roman road system
need not indicate Dacian dispositions; Sarmizegethusa Regia lay c. 43 kilometers
northeast of the Colonia; and identification of Tapae with the Iron Gate Pass
would require a direct assault on a narrow well fortified position. Rather, an ancient
topographical perspective should be preferred: the western entry into the Carpathi-
ans was the Muresh River valley north of the Orashtie Mountains and the Dacian
capital. From Herodotus on, the ancients perceived the Muresh (with the Tisza
River as a tributary) as a continuous stream from northeastern Dacia to its conflu-
ence with the Danube, whereas modern geography has the Muresh empty into the
Tisza. Stefan would situate Tapae in the Muresh valley not far west of where two
rivers empty into the Muresh from the south: first the Strei (ancient Sargentia?),
then farther east the Orashtioara (formed from the union of the Alb and Godean-
Études Militaires Anciennes 1 (2004): 23–44. A major Roman camp with room for four or five
legions at Schela Cladovci (just upstream from Drobeta), found in the seventeenth century, has
since disappeared; a date (Domitianic? Trajanic? or even later?) is impossible: Stefan 279; a col-
lection of earlier views on the two pontoon bridges and Roman strategy is in Lepper and Frere,
Trajan’s Column, 51–54.
94. Trajan’s Dacica, quoted above, note 9; IV Flavia Felix: Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den
Dakerkriegen Trajans, 88–90.
95. Jordanes, Getica 74; Patsch, Der Kampf um den Donauraum unter Domitian und Trajan,
29 n. 7, 75; Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, 92–93; Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkrie-
gen Trajans, 52–53 and 41–43 (more details on the Carpathian passes); Stefan 409 n. 78, 412
fig. 187.

nul Rivers, both flanking the mountain of Sarmizegethusa Regia). Accordingly,

Tapae lies in the vicinity of modern Deva, where the city’s expansion has obscured
Dacian defensive works except for the lofty fortress Dealul Cetatii (unexcavated),
controlling access to the eastern Muresh valley and the inner ring of Dacian forts
guarding Sarmizegethusa Regia on the Strei and Orashtioara Rivers.96 From Aizis,
Stefan’s Tapae would be essentially the same distance as the Iron Gate Pass but due
east rather than east-southeast.
Stefan’s placement of Tapae, although hypothetical, barring new evidence for an
exact location, offers an innovative perspective on the campaigns of 88 and 101 with
logistic and strategic implications. On traditional views, all action proceeds from the
south, the Danubian border of modern Romania (whence Roman armies departed,
as seen on the Column), whereas Stefan’s emphasis on the Muresh valley shifts atten-
tion to the west with the main Roman operations against Sarmizegethusa moving
south and southeast. Trajan in fact might have shortened his lines of supply through
riverine transport from the Danube up the Tisza to the Muresh instead of overland
routes from (for example) Viminacium or Drobeta. Elements of the Roman army in
Pannonia (modern Hungary west of the Danube’s southward bend) possibly crossed
the Hungarian Plain to the Muresh theater; the Iazyges, inhabitants of the Plain
and apparently Roman allies in Trajan’s war, perhaps also had a role in operations in
northwestern Dacia, although conservative inference must not be pushed too far.97
A change of Trajan’s base of operations should not, however, be inferred, as Romans
occupied by 102 the whole of southwestern Dacia with camps (for example) at Ber-
zobis, Tibiscum, the site of the later Colonia, and units scattered south and east of
the Carpathians in Oltenia, Wallachia, and even Moldavia.98
Stefan’s reconstruction of the campaign of 102 is also innovative. Only an impres-
sion of detailed topographical and archaeological arguments can be offered. After
the victory at Tapae, Trajan had the option (pace Stefan 558) to move directly on
96. Stefan 241 (Deva), 407–11, 552; cf. 419 for possible rebuilding at the fort of Blidaru
after 89—proof that Tettius Julianus probed the “Costesti corridor”; Muresh River: Herodotus
4.48; Strabo 7.3.13.
97. Stefan 642–43; riverine transport in the area in an Augustan campaign: Strabo 7.3.13;
Pannonia: Diaconescu, “Dacia under Trajan,” 14–15; Iazyges: C. Opreanu, “Dakien und Iazygen
während der Regierung Trajans,” in Gudea, ed., Römer und Barbaren, 269–90. These remarks
about the Pannonian army and the Iazyges pertain only to Trajan’s wars, as the Hungarian Plain
was not necessarily friendly territory in 89, when Domitian lost a campaign against the Marco-
manni and Quadi; he went to war with the Iazyges in 92.
98. Stefan assesses how much of Dacia the Romans occupied after the peace of 102: 636–
37, 639–40, 642–43; occupation forces came from the armies of Pannonia, Moesia Superior,
and Moesia Inferior; the papyrus preserving the daily strength report (pridianum) of the cohort
I Hispanorum veterana at Stobi (now dated to late 105: AE 1981 nr. 746) records detachments
at Buridava and Piroboridava (modern Poiana) on the Siret River in Moldavia: see Smallwood,
Documents Illustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, nr. 301 lines 25–29=R.O.
Fink, Roman Military Records on Papyrus (Cleveland, Ohio: Press of Case Western Reserve Uni-
versity, 1971): 217–27 nr. 63 (partial English translation and extensive commentary).

EVERETT L. WHEELER
Sarmizegethusa Regia or to press south down the Strei River valley to cut off the
Dacian capital from the west. He did the latter, taking the Iron Gate Pass from the rear
and linking his own forces with another segment of his army camped at Tibiscum west
of the Pass. Scenes XXVI–XXX illustrate these operations and mark the end of the 101
campaign, as the Dacian-Rhoxolan counteroffensive into Moesia Inferior (winter of
101–102) begins with scene XXXI (Dacians and Rhoxolani swimming the Danube).
With order restored south of the Danube by early 102, Trajan could now devote
the rest of the campaign season to encirclement of Sarmizegethusa and a siege of
the capital. Scenes LIII–LIV, depicting the suovetaurilia (pig-sheep-bull sacrifice), a
purification rite customary before a campaign, and Trajan’s address to the army mark
the beginning of the 102 operations.99 Pace Stefan, a strike force from the camp at
the site of the later Colonia began what he calls the “alpine campaign,” moving down
the Strei River against the fort at Banita (elevation 1,000 meters), which commanded
the upper corridor of the Strei and a southern approach to Sarmizegethusa. After
a probably long, difficult siege at Banita, a site presumably fortified with defenses
(not yet found) comparable to Costesti and Blidaru, topography dictated a split in
the Roman strike force (perhaps no more than two legions; identities unknown), as
the narrow crests prohibited collective movement of the whole body with any speed.
Remains of Roman temporary camps at Jugir (elevation 1,498 meters; 7.5 kilometers
north of Banita) and Vârful lui Petru (c. 20 kilometers northeast of Banita, as the crow
flies) indicate the two corps’ routes, reuniting at Comarnicel (elevation 1,893 meters,
10 kilometers southeast from Sarmizegethusa, as the crow flies), where three Roman
temporary camps are in evidence. From Comarnicel a march of c. 15 kilometers atop
the crests brought the force to the peak of Muncel (elevation 1,563.5 meters). The
captors of Banita were at this point on the same mountain as Sarmizegethusa, at an
elevation higher than the capital, and only 5 kilometers away. Muncel also offered
approaches to the Dacian forts at Fetele Alba and Vârful lui Hulpe, both northwest
of the Dacian capital on separate ridges. Roman capture of Banita cut off Sarmizege-
thusa’s communications with the south, just as the camp at Comarnicel blocked all
points east through the mountains. The degree of Dacian resistance to this turning
movement along the crests of the mountains from Banita to Muncel can only be
conjectured. It cannot have been a surprise and unopposed. With the capture of
Muncel and simultaneous Roman progression up the “Costesti corridor,” Decebalus
was surrounded in his capital.100
99. Stefan (571) interprets the suovetaurilia scene as a sign of the Romans about to cross a
border, which is also technically correct, as legally the territory of southwestern Dacia taken in
101 would have been now part of Roman Moesia Superior. The suovetaurilia is a rite of begin-
nings. Notably, no suovetaurilia is shown on the Column when Trajan crosses the Danube to
initiate operations in 101. Stefan’s efforts to explain away this apparent error (546 with n. 10) are
based on false assumptions, as the custom of sacrificing before crossing a river ceased to be prac-
ticed in the Imperial era: see Wheeler, “Shock and Awe: Battles of the Gods in Roman Imperial
Warfare, Part I,” 240 with n. 73.
100. Stefan 575–92; cf. on the forts and camps: 230–33 (Banita), 289–91 ( Jugir), 291–98 (Vâr-
ful lui Petru), 298–313 (Comarnicel), 313–17 (Muncel: not yet fully studied), 213–17 (Fetele Alba;

Stefan’s new reconstruction of the 102 campaign, although plausible, is based

exclusively on archaeological evidence and topographical probability. In haste to get
the siege of Banita underway, he omits Roman operations against other approaches
to Sarmizegethusa in the Strei River valley and the southwestern sector of the
Orashtie Mountains. A Roman camp is known at Cioclovina, where a Dacian
rampart runs for 1.5 kilometers across a valley with similar earthen ramparts and
two hill-forts also in the area—and Cioclovina is closer to the supposed base of the
Banita task force at the site of the later Colonia. Likewise, Roman capture of the
major fort of Piatre Rosie, not far west of Cioclovina, is left in obscurity.101 Perhaps
a different corps from the Banita task force dealt with this area.
Nevertheless, of the numerous Roman armies active throughout Dacia in 101–
102, Stefan emphasizes only the Muresh River army group, responsible for the attack
up the “Costesti corridor” (see below), and the Banita expeditionary force. His general
map of the 102 campaign against Sarmizegethusa (620–21 fig. 257a–b) shows more
army groups in action than receive discussion in the text. To be fair, Stefan is partially
constrained by available evidence. Many sites remain uninvestigated (for example,
Vârful lui Hulpe) or yet undiscovered. Traditionally, a greater role is assigned to the
army of Moesia Inferior under its governor Laberius Maximus (suffect consul 89),
probably responsible for the entire eastern theater of the war in Oltenia, Wallachia,
and Moldavia. Previous reconstructions of the first war posited a different pincer
movement: Trajan’s army group attacking through the Iron Gate Pass, while Laberius
Maximus marched from Oescus up the Alutus River to take the Red Tower Pass and
approached Sarmizegethusa from the east. Stefan’s alpine campaign of the Banita
task force usurps the role of Maximus’s army, relegated to a rather passive assignment:
blocking all exit routes south and east of the Carpathians in Oltenia and Wallachia.
Not all of them obviously were guarded by the end of 101, as the surprise Dacian-
Rhoxolan counteroffensive in Moesia Inferior demonstrates.
Cassius Dio reports (68.9.4), however, that Maximus’s seizure of a strong
position and capture of Decebalus’s sister strongly influenced Decebalus’s decision
to come to terms in 102. Decebalus’s sister is often identified among the captured
Dacian women (one is given prominence) presented to Trajan at scene XXX—
therefore an event of late 101, since the Dacian-Rhoxolan counteroffensive begins
with scene XXXI.102 In any case, Stefan marginalizes Laberius Maximus and the
army of Moesia Inferior perhaps unjustifiably.
cf. above text at note 36), 217–18 (Vârful lui Hulpe: not studied or excavated); an earlier version of
Stefan’s view of the 102 campaign at “Les Guerres daciques de Trajan: les opérations du front alpin,”
in Roman Frontier Studies 1995: Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Stud-
ies, ed. W. Groenman-van Waateringe et al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1997), 517–25.
101. Details on the Cioclovina area in Locklear, “Late Iron Age Background,” 55–56; Stro-
bel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans, 49; cf. Stefan 229–30; Piatra Rosie: above text
with note 26.
102. Stefan 572 and n. 115 with bibliography; cf. Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, 76–77,
who defend Cassius Dio’s apparent placement of the event in 102 and think “the Maestro” has
erred.

EVERETT L. WHEELER
The Column, the only real source for the chronology of events in 102, also poses
problems. After the suovetaurilia and Trajan’s address to the army (scenes LII–LIV)
mark the start of the campaign, the Column depicts Roman soldiers clearing forests,
burning forts, and building camps; Roman cavalry enters the mountains (LVII), as
does a mounted Trajan (LVIII), but Roman infantry follows only at LXII–LXIII.
Next comes the famous depiction of Lusius Quietus’s Moorish cavalry chasing
Dacians into a forest (LXIV). The following sequence shows Romans constructing a
camp (LXV, see page 1192) with mountain peaks inside the camp’s perimeter; then a
scene of Roman construction of siegeworks, while Trajan receives a Dacian embassy
(LXVI). As noted, topographical identification of scenes on the Column is the bane
of studying Trajan’s Dacian wars. Scenes LXIV–LXV with Trajan’s absence imply
operations on a different front and may correspond to Cassius Dio’s report (68.8.3)
that while Trajan approached Sarmizegethusa by capturing peak after peak, Lusius
Quietus (suffect consul 117) was killing and capturing numerous Dacians elsewhere.
For Stefan, however, scene LXV (figs. 242–43) represents the alpine campaign, for
which he adamantly denies any role of Quietus’s Moorish cavalry: the Roman camps
associated with the Banita group are clearly legionary and the mountain-top route is
unsuitable for cavalry.103 Yet scene LXIV shows the Moorish cavalry in mountainous
terrain and scene LXVI (fig. 249) on siegeworks implies a shift of the action back to
the “Costesti corridor,” where Trajan was. Much depends on “the Maestro’s” narrative
technique. Stefan would have at least three successive scenes each indicating a differ-
ent topographical location. Readers of Trajan’s Dacica might understand these jumps
in the narrative, confusing to the Column’s modern viewers.
Scenes LXVI–LXXV, tracing events in the ultimate advance to the walls of
Sarmizegethusa (the surrender scene at LXXV), permit asserting the accuracy of
Roman siege techniques on the Column in support of Stefan’s thesis that Apol-
lodorus of Dasmascus was “the Maestro.” Details of the siege depend on the Column
and archaeology, from which Stefan offers his own reconstruction (592–624). The
following archaeological details are notable. Two Roman siege ramps at Costesti are
partially preserved. After the capture of Costesti and Blidaru, the base camp for the
attack on Sarmizegethusa Regia was probably at Sub Cununi (8.5 kilometers west
of the capital), where two inscriptions of later governors of Roman Dacia have been
103. Stefan 572–75, 582–89; a different view of both the 102 campaign and interpretation
of the Column’s scenes is at Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, 100–102. The Moorish chieftain
Lusius Quietus and his native cavalry, the Mauri, so distinguished themselves in the Dacian wars
that Trajan elevated Lusius to a major command in his Parthian war (114–117), where he gained
infamy as a butcher of Jews in the Jewish revolt in Mesopotamia (116–117), before being named
a consular and governing Judaea (117). He was one of the four consulars, all with close connec-
tions to Trajan, murdered in Hadrian’s first year of rule: a summary of his later career is in A. R.
Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor (London: Routledge, 1997), 75, 78–79, 87; on the continu-
ity of Moorish cavalry practices throughout Antiquity, see C. Hamdoune, “Les armes du cavalier
africain: de la réalité à la symbolique,” in Les Armes dans l’Antiquité. De la technique à l’imaginaire,
ed. P. Sauzeau and T. Van Campernolle (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de Méditerranée,
2007): 191–211; my review of this work is in press: Antiquité tardive 17 (2009).

found; topography dictates this site as the only suitable staging area. Nothing can be
said about a Roman assault from the east, coming down the ridge from the peak at
Muncel: the area remains unexplored, although satellite photos detected a remarkable
barricade or ravine, traversing the breadth of the entire ridge, several hundred meters
beyond the excavated areas of the capital.104 In any case, no one who has visited
Sarmizegethusa Regia or the Orashtie Mountains would ever minimize the capture
of Dacian forts atop those peaks as small-scale siege operations.105
Stefan infers from the Column’s various scenes depicting construction and/or
use of siege-engines that Trajan’s Dacica included an excursus on siegecraft. Thus
scene LXVI (fig. 249) supposedly shows construction of a siege ramp and a move-
able tower (turris ambulatoria), whereas in the background of the surrender scene
(LXXV=fig. 232) an elaborate siege-tower, topped by two galleries, is seen. Stefan’s
ingenious interpretations of the devices in these scenes invite debate, although
commentators on Apollodorus of Damascus’s Poliorcetica share Stefan’s belief in the
accuracy of the Column’s details on siegecraft.106
Operational details of the second war (105–106), to which Stefan adds little
new, need not be addressed. Decebalus’s attempt to reverse the first war’s outcome
were quickly squashed, although more action, including mopping up operations,
occurred north of the Muresh River and the northeastern parts of Dacia. The whole
affair was over by July 106.107 The second capture of Sarmizegethusa largely fol-
lowed the course of the first war, although Decebalus fled the capital and commit-
ted suicide at Ranisstorum (location uncertain) in September 106.108 Setting the
Dacian wars of Domitian and Trajan within the context of Roman strategy will be
the task of Part II of this discussion.
104. Costesti siege ramps: 595–97 with fig. 246; Sub Cununi: 618; barricade: 99 with figs.
32, 35; 612; a summary of older views on the archaeological evidence at G. Florea, “Archaeo-
logical Observations concerning the Roman Conquest of the Area of the Dacian Kingdom’s
Capital,” Acta Musei Napocensis 26–30 (1989–93): 33–38.
105. Sic Blyth, “Apollodorus of Damascus and the Poliorcetica,” 149–50, followed by White-
head, “Apollodorus’ Poliorketika,” 209.
106. Stefan 601–10, 703; Blyth, “Apollodorus of Damascus and the Poliorcetica”; White-
head “Apollodorus’ Poliorketika,” esp. 210–11 (corrections to Blyth). Such views are diametri-
cally opposed to allegations of the Column’s misrepresentation of military equipment: see above,
note 16.
107. Details in Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, 242–43; Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den
Dakerkriegen Trajans, 205–19.
108. Decebalus’s flight from Sarmizegethusa: Cassius Dio 68.14.3; his suicide is seen at
scene CXLV and the public display of his severed head at CXLVII; an officer of the ala II Pan-
noniorum, Tiberius Claudius Maximus, later claimed to have captured Decebalus and illustrated
the deed (Stefan fig. 275) on his tombstone at Philippi (Greece): see M. P. Speidel, “The Captor
of Decebalus: A New Inscription from Philippi,” Journal of Roman Studies 60 (1970): 142–53;
AE 1969–70 nr. 583; details and discussion at Stefan 663–65; Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column,
176–79; there is no basis for identifying Ranisstorum with Piatra Craivii (cf. above, note 29), as
in Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 101.

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Feature

Rome’s Dacian Wars: Domitian, Trajan, and

T he Roman conquest of Dacia (the ancient forerunner of modern Romania) has

bibliography: Alexandre Simon Stefan, Les guerres daciques de Domitien et de

1186 ★ THE JOURNAL OF

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1187

September–1 October 2006), an international conference at Cluj commemorated

or Roman—have been a political “football” in Romania and a source of regional antagonism

1188 ★ THE JOURNAL OF

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1189

1190 ★ THE JOURNAL OF

9. Trajan’s Dacica: Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae 6.13=E. M. Smallwood, Documents Il-

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1191

Trajan's Column, scene LXV, courtesy Deutsches Archäologisches Institut,

1192 ★ THE JOURNAL OF

crux for operational analysis comes with topographical identifications, pinpointing

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1193

Henceforth advocates of the Column as an historical source have been on the

1194 ★ THE JOURNAL OF

war’s military operations, however, Lepper and Frere marched on well-trodden

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1195

1196 ★ THE JOURNAL OF

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MAP 2: Sarmizegethusa Theater SR = Sarmizegethusa Regia

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MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1201

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destroyed and its population forced to migrate is unknown.35 As usual, Romans

35. A unit of Germaniciani exploratores, permanently stationed at Orashtioara de Sus, not

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1203

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Wealthy Getic kings who intermarried with Macedonian monarchs needed to

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of Roman denarii throughout Dacia c. 75–c. 65 B.C., however, might point to a

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1217

(comati/capillati) from the “cap-wearers” (pileati/tarabostesei), both of which could

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Corruption of names in manuscripts may explain Diurpaneus and Dorpaneus,

appears in a supposed fragment of Crito’s Getica, preserved in the tenth-century encyclopedia

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nul Rivers, both flanking the mountain of Sarmizegethusa Regia). Accordingly,

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1223

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Stefan’s new reconstruction of the 102 campaign, although plausible, is based

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1225

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