THE GETAE AND THE DACIANS

CHAPTER II

VI.

There is both linguistic and archaeological evidence for an early-settlement of Thracian peoples in Transylvania and the eastern Carpathians, and in the adjacent steppes beyond to the north of the Danube estuary and the Black Sea. By the eighth and Seventh centuries BC, it would seem, the Thracians had achieved a strong and stable political organization, as appears from the remarkable fact that only the earliest and latest stages of Illyrian Iron culture succeeded in penetrating into the lands to the east of the central Danube, where in the intervening period the traditional bronze culture continued to flourish. This significant separation from and contrast with the west, where Illyrian influence was predominant, clearly points to the existence of a unified System of government among the Thracian settlers, a system which crumbled before the onslaught of the immigrant hordes from the remote north-east. It is even possible that this first unification of northern Thrace was itself the achievement of an invading wave of pre-Scythian horse-riding shepherds—the mare-milkers of Homer. For in this district traces have been found of a horse-riding people who coalesced with the northern Thracians at a time contemporary with the later Hallstatt age, and who have been identified with the Cimmerians. The triquetrum, which combines the parts of various animals into one composition, the animal form with body twisted backwards, and the Shaman crown, from the find at Mikhalkowo, suffice to prove that the users of this type of ornamentation came from the home of the North-Asiatic animal style. The wealth in gold of the Transylvanian Agathyrsi, which Herodotus emphasizes, is pre-Scythian and dates from this early period in the land's history.

Archaeology shows that Transylvania again changed masters in the sixth century BC. A similar series of articles to the early Scythian finds from South Russia often occurs here, especially in the valley of the Marisus (Maros). The Scythian types and their ornamentation have an archaic flavour, and do not share the development which occurred in South Russia under Greek influence. The intrusion of local elements reflects the gradual absorption of the Scythian conquerors by the native Thracian population. We learn more about this process in Herodotus. The Agathyrsi of the Marisus basin, of whom he writes, had their place in the original tribal organization of the Scythians; they constituted one of the three parts into which the Scythian people was divided for military and political purposes, and which also formed the framework of their religious institutions. Moreover, the tribal name of this people and also of its original king Spargapeithes is genuinely Scythian. All that emerges from Herodotus' conflicting statements is that the Agathyrsian conquest in Transylvania dates back to the sixth century. The aloofness of the Agathyrsi during Darius' Scythian expedition is in keeping with the isolation reflected in the archaeological remains, and also with the singularity which has repeatedly characterized this country, cut off as it is by mountains on every side. As early as Herodotus the effects of Thracian influence were profound: in two generations the exogamy of the horse-riding shepherds had sufficed to bring about a large measure of assimilation between rulers and subjects. An illuminating parallel in later times is provided by the rapid germanization of the ruling aristocracy of the Huns.

We have much less information concerning the consequences of the next great invasion of the lands to the north of the Danube. We know that the Celts penetrated to Hungary at about the same time as they invaded Italy, but their arrival in Transylvania was somewhat later, if we may trust the archaeological evidence. It would seem, indeed, that intermittent advances were made as early as the fourth century, but there was no real invasion until some hundred years later, when the La Tene culture finally established itself here. The names of tribes and settlements preserved in Ptolemy attest further Celtic immigration in the Getic East, Galicia, and Bessarabia; they also throw light on the migrations of the third century.

The Celts, like the Scythians, exercised a repressive influence on the primitive inhabitants of the eastern Carpathians, but they neither destroyed them nor drove them out. Subsequently these older races became known to the neighboring Greeks, who established the fact that the complex of peoples in northern Thrace which had supplied much human material for the Athenian slave-market in the fourth century BC was composed of two main elements, Dacians and Getae. Since, however, the Greeks had more to do with the Getae, who were their immediate neighbors, they applied this name to all the peoples of northern Thrace, to the confusion both of ancient and of modern writers. In spite of this it is possible to delimit with some accuracy the territories occupied by the Dacians and the Getae. The former were not confined to Transylvania, but were distributed over an area reaching westwards as far as the central Danube, and northwards beyond the Carpathians to the Vistula. Agrippa's map of the world marked these northerly Dacians, and the place-names ending in -dava (the Dacian for settlement) which occur over an area extending as far as Podolia confirm the accuracy of his authorities. We have from various sources a considerable number of tribal names. It must have been in early times that the collection of tribes in the Carpathians, cut off as they were by their geographical environment from the other branches of their race, became differentiated as the special group of Dacian Getae, even though the name Dacian is unknown to the Greek world before the fourth century. The Getae proper had settled to the east and south of the Carpathians. The Dniester was the limit of the really populous area, but they extended far beyond, since Thracian nomenclature occurs in the personal and place-names of the Bosporan kingdom. To the south the Getic region of settlement extended along both banks of the Danube, and was bounded by the mountain barrier of the Balkan range. The Dacians and Getae spoke the same language—a Thracian dialect.

It is natural that our Greek authorities should make earlier and more frequent mention of those Getae who lived to the south of the Danube, between the lower reaches of the river and the Balkan massif, than of the others. The complexity of this mountainous area was reflected in the diversity of the tribes inhabiting it, which remained isolated units, and in spite of their common origin and great personal bravery failed to achieve national unity, and in consequence were severely handled and oppressed by their more powerful neighbors. A few words must suffice to describe their sufferings which lasted for centuries. The Scythians not only made plundering raids into their territory, but settled there permanently from the sixth century onwards, as the growing Scythian influence on these Getae shows. Subsequently Darius during his Scythian expedition devastated their country, and in the following centuries their kings were successively subjects of the Odrysians, the Scythian Atheas, Philip of Macedon, and Lysimachus. First Celtic hordes, then the Bastarnae and the Sarmatae ravaged their territory, but in the first century BC they were still strong enough to oppose the generals of Rome, after Mithridates had sought to master them. In 73 M. Lucullus defeated them, but shortly afterwards, at about the middle of the century, the southern Getae were incorporated in Burebista's great Dacian kingdom. About the time of Caesar's death, however, this dangerous unification of the northern Thracians broke down, and when M. Crassus, after 30 BC, brought order into these regions we hear of several petty kingdoms of the Getae. The territories of Roles and Dapyx were situated on the frontier district between northeastern Bulgaria and Roumania, while Zyraxes ruled to the south of the Dobrudja. Their strength was broken and their subjects were incorporated in the Roman Empire.

Still harder was the fate of the other Getae, who inhabited the plains to the north of the Danube and the Black Sea and so were exposed to the attacks of immigrant peoples. We know little of their fate under the Cimmerians and Scythians; the shift of the Scythian centre of power to the vicinity of the Danubian delta must have seriously lessened their political freedom. This change did not, however, destroy them utterly: when Alexander the Great crossed the Danube and defeated them they showed themselves to be an independent people of great bravery. Their military power is best illustrated by the defeats they shortly afterwards inflicted on Macedonian generals of repute. Zopyrion, for example, failed ignominiously against them, and Lysimachus fared no better. Lysimachus’ opponent, Dromichaetes, was supported by contingents from many tribes of Wallachia and South Russia; but the military strength of the Getae was later shattered by the mass migrations of the Sciri and Bastarnae, who by about 230 BC must have begun to make definite inroads into Getic possessions, since their territory extended at that time as far as the shores of the Black Sea. Nevertheless, Oroles, the king of the Getae, despite early defeats, contrived to hold his own in the face of these enemies. It is, however, clear from the numerous military undertakings of the Bastarnae in the Balkans, and from their attacks on the Greek cities on the north coast of the Black Sea, that the Getae in the second century BC could make little headway against such opponents, and the prominent part played by the Bastarnae in the campaigns and armies of Mithridates shows that this critical situation persisted. The Germanic Sciri were cowed by the Dacians (after 60 BC), and the Bastarnae were subdued by Crassus in 29—8 BC, but neither of these happenings was of much help to the Getae, as yet a new enemy arose to oppress them. For the break-up of the kingdoms of Mithridates and Burebista opened the way westwards to the Sarmatae. It is not improbable that the mass migration of the Bastarnae with all their belongings to Moesia in 29 BC was due to the beginning of Sarmatian pressure. Certainly from 16 BC onwards Roman generals frequently came into contact with them, and Ovid in his exile could frequently observe them in the neighborhood of Tomi. They also crossed to the right bank of the Danube. It is therefore not surprising that the Getae on the Black Sea coast vanish from the stage of history under the Empire.

While the peoples of the steppes to the east of the Black Sea had cut each other's throats, the Dacians in the rocky fastness of Transylvania grew stronger. Although they too were weakened by wars, yet even before the king who was to be the founder of their power came to the throne, a representative of the Greek city Dionysopolis on the shores of the Black Sea found it advisable to appear at the Dacian court. In the ten years 61-51 BC came the great expansion that was achieved under Burebista. The chronological order of his conquests is uncertain; they made him the dominant ruler to the north of the Danube and also in Thrace. Eastwards he succeeded in utterly crushing the Bastarnae—at a later date their fortresses were still in the hands of Dacian petty princes. The brave resistance of the Greek cities in the north-west corner of the Black Sea was in vain: most of them were plundered, many razed to the ground, and they never recovered from this terrible blow. About 55 BC, it would seem, Burebista turned against Thrace, devastating and in part subduing the country as far as Macedonia and Roman Illyria. Farther westwards he conquered the powerful Celtic tribe of the Scordisci between the Save and the Morava, and made them his allies, presumably for his next war, in the course of which he almost destroyed the Boii and Taurisci. The Boii were recent immigrants who had driven the Dacians beyond the Theiss. By their victory the Dacians recovered the Hungarian central plain, and took possession of Slovakia.

The sudden emergence of so powerful a kingdom, which could mobilize a force 200,000 strong in the rear of Macedonia and Italy, presented a challenge to the chief power of the ancient world, which must sooner or later be taken up. Although the death of Burebista and the collapse of the power he had built postponed the day of reckoning, the future of the Dacians remained dependent on their relations with Rome.

All along the borders of the civilized world there stretched a belt of turbulent peoples who were ignorant of the restraining influences of civilization but were eager to gain for themselves the riches it had produced. Wherever Rome broke the power of a Hellenistic State she destroyed at the same time a bulwark of defence against these frontier peoples. Thus when she destroyed the Macedonian State she inherited its enemies in the north. The raids of the Balkan tribes enticed their northern neighbors the Dacians into joining in the game. In 112 and 109 BC the Dacians are found in alliance with the Scordisci against Roman generals; in 75 they assist the Dardani against Scribonius Curio, who follows them along the valley of the Morava or Timok as far as the Danube, but then falls back, being unprepared for an advance into the primeval forest of the Dacian mountain ranges. But Rome's frontier defences were presently crippled by the extreme internal strain of the civil wars, and the astonishingly rapid spread of Burebista's power in every direction is largely due to Roman weakness. Burebista negotiated with Pompey before Pharsalus, but did not give him any real assistance; and this only strengthened Caesar's determination to come to a final reckoning with this opponent. His great expeditionary force had already been set in motion; the young Octavian was to leave his studies at Apollonia to join Caesar's staff. But the Ides of March intervened. The Dacian king himself lost his life at about the same time, and his empire broke up into four principalities.

Through the advance of the Empire's frontier to the Danube the problem of Dacia assumed a different aspect in Augustus' reign. From a point near Vienna to the river mouth, the Dacian and Roman frontiers marched side by side, and the Dacians had to be taught to cease their encroachments on the Roman bank. Siscia, captured in 35 BC, was to have served as Octavian's base of operations for a great Dacian campaign. The clash with Antony, however, prevented an active offensive: indeed, the initiative lay with the Dacians, for, since the decisive action in the civil wars took place in the Balkan peninsula, each of the rival opponents was constrained to attempt to draw on the military resources of the Dacians for his own uses. Antony accused Octavian of having planned to win King Cotiso's support by a matrimonial alliance; but the Dacians, after fruitless negotiations with the ruler of the West, favoured Antony. The prince Dicomes promised him numerous troops, but proved unable to keep his promise; another prince, Scorylo, wished to maintain peace—the truth was that internal rivalries prevented all from any active participation. The most powerful of these dynasts was Cotiso, the ruler of Transylvania, whose armies were still a frequent menace to the security of Moesia and Pannonia. The astonishing number of his gold staters which have been found is in itself sufficient evidence of a prosperous reign. They were probably made for him by coin-designers from Olbia. The fear of the Dacians at Rome in the years after Actium is vividly reflected in the relevant passages of Horace and Virgil, and there was a general sigh of relief when Cotiso's armies were defeated.

The solution of the Dacian question was in fact a very difficult matter for the Roman State—not because the Dacians were a match for Rome, as has been suggested, but because Transylvania, the inaccessible mountain land of the Dacians, lay outside the natural frontier line on which the Romans based their plans of conquest, namely, the line of the Danube. Incorporation in the Empire was not accordingly a part of imperial policy, but the Romans concentrated on reprisals for raids, and on various methods of isolating the Dacians from the regions bordering on the river. This could not be achieved without military activity. The reports preserved of these measures are very defective. It is quite by chance that we learn from a fragmentary inscription that some general (presumably M. Vinicius, cos. 19 BC) penetrated into Dacia in the lower Danubian region, and defeated an army of Dacians and Bastarnae, while at the same time his legate in the North-West of Dacia carried out a punitive expedition against the Osi, Cotini, Anartii, and others, perhaps in revenge for the Dacian invasion of 10 BC. A second important expedition against the Dacians was led by Cn. Cornelius Lentulus (cos. 18 BC) apparently in the later years of Augustus' reign. He succeeded in driving back the Dacians and Sarmatae from the north bank of the stream. Aelius Catus, perhaps in co-operation with him, transplanted 50,000 Dacians from the north bank to Moesia. Through this aggressive action the Romans also succeeded in splitting one of the most powerful Dacian principalities into two parts. One of these offensives was important enough in the Emperor's eyes to merit mention in his Res Gestae.

Strabo maintains that the Dacians were pacified by these measures, but this was not the case—they remained a thorn in the side of the Empire to the end. From year to year they made small raids across the Danube: the Appuli of the Marisus valley, for example, frequently penetrated as far as the Greek cities of the Black Sea in their search for booty. On two occasions, in 10 BC and AD 11, the solemn closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus was prevented by dangerous Dacian incursions. Moreover the Dacians combined with rebellious Pannonians to ravage in Moesia (AD 6) and we learn from Ovid of serious disturbances in the last years of Augustus’ reign.

Rome's hard-won victories failed, therefore, to impose tranquility. Tiberius, however, here as elsewhere, followed the policy formulated by his predecessor: he concentrated on keeping the Dacians away from the immediate vicinity of the river. Indeed he may well have been responsible for transferring the Iazyges, the westernmost tribe of the Sarmatians, from the estuary of the Danube to the Hungarian plain in order to cut off the Dacians from the Danubian border of Pannonia. Under subsequent emperors the pressure of the Roxolani, who were akin to the Iazyges and sought to follow them, stirred up the Dacians on the border of Moesia. Possibly these Roxolani initiated that incipient revolt of the Sarmatae, which Plautius Silvanus suppressed under Nero and in which the Dacians and Bastarnae were concerned on one side or the other. A hundred thousand barbarians were transplanted to the Roman side of the Danube by Silvanus; he was given absolute power in organizing the country adjoining the limes and made himself felt as far as the Crimea. But the gap thus created gave the Roxolani still more room for their restless movements. And when in the confusion that followed Nero's death the Dacians attacked Moesia, not they but the Roxolani were the most dangerous disturbers of the peace. The revival of Dacian power begins under the Flavians.

VII.

THE DACIAN CIVILIZATION


	HISTORY OF ROME-THE IMPERIAL PEACE CHAPTER II VI. THE GETAE AND THE DACIANS There is both linguistic and archaeological evidence for an early-settlement of Thracian peoples in Transylvania and the eastern Carpathians, and in the adjacent steppes beyond to the north of the Danube estuary and the Black Sea. By the eighth and Seventh centuries BC, it would seem, the Thracians had achieved a strong and stable political organization, as appears from the remarkable fact that only the earliest and latest stages of Illyrian Iron culture succeeded in penetrating into the lands to the east of the central Danube, where in the intervening period the traditional bronze culture continued to flourish. This significant separation from and contrast with the west, where Illyrian influence was predominant, clearly points to the existence of a unified System of government among the Thracian settlers, a system which crumbled before the onslaught of the immigrant hordes from the remote north-east. It is even possible that this first unification of northern Thrace was itself the achievement of an invading wave of pre-Scythian horse-riding shepherds—the mare-milkers of Homer. For in this district traces have been found of a horse-riding people who coalesced with the northern Thracians at a time contemporary with the later Hallstatt age, and who have been identified with the Cimmerians. The triquetrum, which combines the parts of various animals into one composition, the animal form with body twisted backwards, and the Shaman crown, from the find at Mikhalkowo, suffice to prove that the users of this type of ornamentation came from the home of the North-Asiatic animal style. The wealth in gold of the Transylvanian Agathyrsi, which Herodotus emphasizes, is pre-Scythian and dates from this early period in the land's history. Archaeology shows that Transylvania again changed masters in the sixth century BC. A similar series of articles to the early Scythian finds from South Russia often occurs here, especially in the valley of the Marisus (Maros). The Scythian types and their ornamentation have an archaic flavour, and do not share the development which occurred in South Russia under Greek influence. The intrusion of local elements reflects the gradual absorption of the Scythian conquerors by the native Thracian population. We learn more about this process in Herodotus. The Agathyrsi of the Marisus basin, of whom he writes, had their place in the original tribal organization of the Scythians; they constituted one of the three parts into which the Scythian people was divided for military and political purposes, and which also formed the framework of their religious institutions. Moreover, the tribal name of this people and also of its original king Spargapeithes is genuinely Scythian. All that emerges from Herodotus' conflicting statements is that the Agathyrsian conquest in Transylvania dates back to the sixth century. The aloofness of the Agathyrsi during Darius' Scythian expedition is in keeping with the isolation reflected in the archaeological remains, and also with the singularity which has repeatedly characterized this country, cut off as it is by mountains on every side. As early as Herodotus the effects of Thracian influence were profound: in two generations the exogamy of the horse-riding shepherds had sufficed to bring about a large measure of assimilation between rulers and subjects. An illuminating parallel in later times is provided by the rapid germanization of the ruling aristocracy of the Huns. We have much less information concerning the consequences of the next great invasion of the lands to the north of the Danube. We know that the Celts penetrated to Hungary at about the same time as they invaded Italy, but their arrival in Transylvania was somewhat later, if we may trust the archaeological evidence. It would seem, indeed, that intermittent advances were made as early as the fourth century, but there was no real invasion until some hundred years later, when the La Tene culture finally established itself here. The names of tribes and settlements preserved in Ptolemy attest further Celtic immigration in the Getic East, Galicia, and Bessarabia; they also throw light on the migrations of the third century. The Celts, like the Scythians, exercised a repressive influence on the primitive inhabitants of the eastern Carpathians, but they neither destroyed them nor drove them out. Subsequently these older races became known to the neighboring Greeks, who established the fact that the complex of peoples in northern Thrace which had supplied much human material for the Athenian slave-market in the fourth century BC was composed of two main elements, Dacians and Getae. Since, however, the Greeks had more to do with the Getae, who were their immediate neighbors, they applied this name to all the peoples of northern Thrace, to the confusion both of ancient and of modern writers. In spite of this it is possible to delimit with some accuracy the territories occupied by the Dacians and the Getae. The former were not confined to Transylvania, but were distributed over an area reaching westwards as far as the central Danube, and northwards beyond the Carpathians to the Vistula. Agrippa's map of the world marked these northerly Dacians, and the place-names ending in -dava (the Dacian for settlement) which occur over an area extending as far as Podolia confirm the accuracy of his authorities. We have from various sources a considerable number of tribal names. It must have been in early times that the collection of tribes in the Carpathians, cut off as they were by their geographical environment from the other branches of their race, became differentiated as the special group of Dacian Getae, even though the name Dacian is unknown to the Greek world before the fourth century. The Getae proper had settled to the east and south of the Carpathians. The Dniester was the limit of the really populous area, but they extended far beyond, since Thracian nomenclature occurs in the personal and place-names of the Bosporan kingdom. To the south the Getic region of settlement extended along both banks of the Danube, and was bounded by the mountain barrier of the Balkan range. The Dacians and Getae spoke the same language—a Thracian dialect. It is natural that our Greek authorities should make earlier and more frequent mention of those Getae who lived to the south of the Danube, between the lower reaches of the river and the Balkan massif, than of the others. The complexity of this mountainous area was reflected in the diversity of the tribes inhabiting it, which remained isolated units, and in spite of their common origin and great personal bravery failed to achieve national unity, and in consequence were severely handled and oppressed by their more powerful neighbors. A few words must suffice to describe their sufferings which lasted for centuries. The Scythians not only made plundering raids into their territory, but settled there permanently from the sixth century onwards, as the growing Scythian influence on these Getae shows. Subsequently Darius during his Scythian expedition devastated their country, and in the following centuries their kings were successively subjects of the Odrysians, the Scythian Atheas, Philip of Macedon, and Lysimachus. First Celtic hordes, then the Bastarnae and the Sarmatae ravaged their territory, but in the first century BC they were still strong enough to oppose the generals of Rome, after Mithridates had sought to master them. In 73 M. Lucullus defeated them, but shortly afterwards, at about the middle of the century, the southern Getae were incorporated in Burebista's great Dacian kingdom. About the time of Caesar's death, however, this dangerous unification of the northern Thracians broke down, and when M. Crassus, after 30 BC, brought order into these regions we hear of several petty kingdoms of the Getae. The territories of Roles and Dapyx were situated on the frontier district between northeastern Bulgaria and Roumania, while Zyraxes ruled to the south of the Dobrudja. Their strength was broken and their subjects were incorporated in the Roman Empire. Still harder was the fate of the other Getae, who inhabited the plains to the north of the Danube and the Black Sea and so were exposed to the attacks of immigrant peoples. We know little of their fate under the Cimmerians and Scythians; the shift of the Scythian centre of power to the vicinity of the Danubian delta must have seriously lessened their political freedom. This change did not, however, destroy them utterly: when Alexander the Great crossed the Danube and defeated them they showed themselves to be an independent people of great bravery. Their military power is best illustrated by the defeats they shortly afterwards inflicted on Macedonian generals of repute. Zopyrion, for example, failed ignominiously against them, and Lysimachus fared no better. Lysimachus’ opponent, Dromichaetes, was supported by contingents from many tribes of Wallachia and South Russia; but the military strength of the Getae was later shattered by the mass migrations of the Sciri and Bastarnae, who by about 230 BC must have begun to make definite inroads into Getic possessions, since their territory extended at that time as far as the shores of the Black Sea. Nevertheless, Oroles, the king of the Getae, despite early defeats, contrived to hold his own in the face of these enemies. It is, however, clear from the numerous military undertakings of the Bastarnae in the Balkans, and from their attacks on the Greek cities on the north coast of the Black Sea, that the Getae in the second century BC could make little headway against such opponents, and the prominent part played by the Bastarnae in the campaigns and armies of Mithridates shows that this critical situation persisted. The Germanic Sciri were cowed by the Dacians (after 60 BC), and the Bastarnae were subdued by Crassus in 29—8 BC, but neither of these happenings was of much help to the Getae, as yet a new enemy arose to oppress them. For the break-up of the kingdoms of Mithridates and Burebista opened the way westwards to the Sarmatae. It is not improbable that the mass migration of the Bastarnae with all their belongings to Moesia in 29 BC was due to the beginning of Sarmatian pressure. Certainly from 16 BC onwards Roman generals frequently came into contact with them, and Ovid in his exile could frequently observe them in the neighborhood of Tomi. They also crossed to the right bank of the Danube. It is therefore not surprising that the Getae on the Black Sea coast vanish from the stage of history under the Empire. While the peoples of the steppes to the east of the Black Sea had cut each other's throats, the Dacians in the rocky fastness of Transylvania grew stronger. Although they too were weakened by wars, yet even before the king who was to be the founder of their power came to the throne, a representative of the Greek city Dionysopolis on the shores of the Black Sea found it advisable to appear at the Dacian court. In the ten years 61-51 BC came the great expansion that was achieved under Burebista. The chronological order of his conquests is uncertain; they made him the dominant ruler to the north of the Danube and also in Thrace. Eastwards he succeeded in utterly crushing the Bastarnae—at a later date their fortresses were still in the hands of Dacian petty princes. The brave resistance of the Greek cities in the north-west corner of the Black Sea was in vain: most of them were plundered, many razed to the ground, and they never recovered from this terrible blow. About 55 BC, it would seem, Burebista turned against Thrace, devastating and in part subduing the country as far as Macedonia and Roman Illyria. Farther westwards he conquered the powerful Celtic tribe of the Scordisci between the Save and the Morava, and made them his allies, presumably for his next war, in the course of which he almost destroyed the Boii and Taurisci. The Boii were recent immigrants who had driven the Dacians beyond the Theiss. By their victory the Dacians recovered the Hungarian central plain, and took possession of Slovakia. The sudden emergence of so powerful a kingdom, which could mobilize a force 200,000 strong in the rear of Macedonia and Italy, presented a challenge to the chief power of the ancient world, which must sooner or later be taken up. Although the death of Burebista and the collapse of the power he had built postponed the day of reckoning, the future of the Dacians remained dependent on their relations with Rome. All along the borders of the civilized world there stretched a belt of turbulent peoples who were ignorant of the restraining influences of civilization but were eager to gain for themselves the riches it had produced. Wherever Rome broke the power of a Hellenistic State she destroyed at the same time a bulwark of defence against these frontier peoples. Thus when she destroyed the Macedonian State she inherited its enemies in the north. The raids of the Balkan tribes enticed their northern neighbors the Dacians into joining in the game. In 112 and 109 BC the Dacians are found in alliance with the Scordisci against Roman generals; in 75 they assist the Dardani against Scribonius Curio, who follows them along the valley of the Morava or Timok as far as the Danube, but then falls back, being unprepared for an advance into the primeval forest of the Dacian mountain ranges. But Rome's frontier defences were presently crippled by the extreme internal strain of the civil wars, and the astonishingly rapid spread of Burebista's power in every direction is largely due to Roman weakness. Burebista negotiated with Pompey before Pharsalus, but did not give him any real assistance; and this only strengthened Caesar's determination to come to a final reckoning with this opponent. His great expeditionary force had already been set in motion; the young Octavian was to leave his studies at Apollonia to join Caesar's staff. But the Ides of March intervened. The Dacian king himself lost his life at about the same time, and his empire broke up into four principalities. Through the advance of the Empire's frontier to the Danube the problem of Dacia assumed a different aspect in Augustus' reign. From a point near Vienna to the river mouth, the Dacian and Roman frontiers marched side by side, and the Dacians had to be taught to cease their encroachments on the Roman bank. Siscia, captured in 35 BC, was to have served as Octavian's base of operations for a great Dacian campaign. The clash with Antony, however, prevented an active offensive: indeed, the initiative lay with the Dacians, for, since the decisive action in the civil wars took place in the Balkan peninsula, each of the rival opponents was constrained to attempt to draw on the military resources of the Dacians for his own uses. Antony accused Octavian of having planned to win King Cotiso's support by a matrimonial alliance; but the Dacians, after fruitless negotiations with the ruler of the West, favoured Antony. The prince Dicomes promised him numerous troops, but proved unable to keep his promise; another prince, Scorylo, wished to maintain peace—the truth was that internal rivalries prevented all from any active participation. The most powerful of these dynasts was Cotiso, the ruler of Transylvania, whose armies were still a frequent menace to the security of Moesia and Pannonia. The astonishing number of his gold staters which have been found is in itself sufficient evidence of a prosperous reign. They were probably made for him by coin-designers from Olbia. The fear of the Dacians at Rome in the years after Actium is vividly reflected in the relevant passages of Horace and Virgil, and there was a general sigh of relief when Cotiso's armies were defeated. The solution of the Dacian question was in fact a very difficult matter for the Roman State—not because the Dacians were a match for Rome, as has been suggested, but because Transylvania, the inaccessible mountain land of the Dacians, lay outside the natural frontier line on which the Romans based their plans of conquest, namely, the line of the Danube. Incorporation in the Empire was not accordingly a part of imperial policy, but the Romans concentrated on reprisals for raids, and on various methods of isolating the Dacians from the regions bordering on the river. This could not be achieved without military activity. The reports preserved of these measures are very defective. It is quite by chance that we learn from a fragmentary inscription that some general (presumably M. Vinicius, cos. 19 BC) penetrated into Dacia in the lower Danubian region, and defeated an army of Dacians and Bastarnae, while at the same time his legate in the North-West of Dacia carried out a punitive expedition against the Osi, Cotini, Anartii, and others, perhaps in revenge for the Dacian invasion of 10 BC. A second important expedition against the Dacians was led by Cn. Cornelius Lentulus (cos. 18 BC) apparently in the later years of Augustus' reign. He succeeded in driving back the Dacians and Sarmatae from the north bank of the stream. Aelius Catus, perhaps in co-operation with him, transplanted 50,000 Dacians from the north bank to Moesia. Through this aggressive action the Romans also succeeded in splitting one of the most powerful Dacian principalities into two parts. One of these offensives was important enough in the Emperor's eyes to merit mention in his Res Gestae. Strabo maintains that the Dacians were pacified by these measures, but this was not the case—they remained a thorn in the side of the Empire to the end. From year to year they made small raids across the Danube: the Appuli of the Marisus valley, for example, frequently penetrated as far as the Greek cities of the Black Sea in their search for booty. On two occasions, in 10 BC and AD 11, the solemn closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus was prevented by dangerous Dacian incursions. Moreover the Dacians combined with rebellious Pannonians to ravage in Moesia (AD 6) and we learn from Ovid of serious disturbances in the last years of Augustus’ reign. Rome's hard-won victories failed, therefore, to impose tranquility. Tiberius, however, here as elsewhere, followed the policy formulated by his predecessor: he concentrated on keeping the Dacians away from the immediate vicinity of the river. Indeed he may well have been responsible for transferring the Iazyges, the westernmost tribe of the Sarmatians, from the estuary of the Danube to the Hungarian plain in order to cut off the Dacians from the Danubian border of Pannonia. Under subsequent emperors the pressure of the Roxolani, who were akin to the Iazyges and sought to follow them, stirred up the Dacians on the border of Moesia. Possibly these Roxolani initiated that incipient revolt of the Sarmatae, which Plautius Silvanus suppressed under Nero and in which the Dacians and Bastarnae were concerned on one side or the other. A hundred thousand barbarians were transplanted to the Roman side of the Danube by Silvanus; he was given absolute power in organizing the country adjoining the limes and made himself felt as far as the Crimea. But the gap thus created gave the Roxolani still more room for their restless movements. And when in the confusion that followed Nero's death the Dacians attacked Moesia, not they but the Roxolani were the most dangerous disturbers of the peace. The revival of Dacian power begins under the Flavians. VII. THE DACIAN CIVILIZATION