Trajan leads an invasion of Dacia to annex the kingdom, and the Dacians fight with everything they have to maintain their independence.

The map below shows the main sites of the war. The Romans launched their attack from Viminacium and Drobeta, two forts on either side of the Iron Gates. The pass at Tapae protected the way to the Dacian capital of Sarmizegetusa, while the gold deposits of the kingdom lay north of the capital. The Dacian diversionary attack came at a site called Adamclisi near the Black Sea. 

Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to A history of Romania.

Season 1, Episode 7: A fight for survival

The last episode ended with simmering tensions between the Dacians and Romans. The two sides had fought an exhausting war, whose peace treaty gave the Dacians more subsidies than before. In the following decade, Decebal did all he could to strengthen his realm, knowing the Romans were resentful and likely planning their revenge.

On January 27, 98 CE, emperor Nerva died in his Roman villa. Messengers swiftly mounted their horses and galloped north where Nerva’s designated heir, Trajan, defended the Rhine frontier. The next day, the general became emperor of the Romans.

Trajan had built a stellar military career with active battlefield experience in Syria, Hispania, and Germany. He was a soldier at heart, and would prioritize military affairs throughout his reign. In fact, after he was acclaimed emperor, he didn’t rush to Rome, but spent the next year travelling along the Rhine and Danube frontiers to inspect their troops and defenses.

When he came to the Danube, he saw that the present situation was untenable. During Domitian’s reign, the Dacians had been able to ravage Moesia, decimate Roman forces, and kill two generals; and now, with subsidies from the empire, they were becoming stronger by the day. Trajan wasn’t confident the Danube defenses would be able to stop them if they decided to invade again, especially since the state’s finances were shaky. Domitian had accrued a lot of expenses during his reign, and Nerva hadn’t been able to replenish the treasury. Meanwhile, the Dacians were being paid annual subsidies while sitting on vast gold deposits of their own.

So Trajan came up with a solution to solve both the problem of the Dacian threat and that of the struggling economy. He planned to conquer Dacia, take its royal treasury, plunder its realm for wealth and slaves, and integrate it into the empire to control its gold deposits.

This was a novel solution. All previous emperors had seen the Danube as the natural frontier of the empire and had no desire to annex lands beyond it. But Trajan had a different character. He was a career military leader who was drawn to conquest, as evidenced by his later campaign against the Parthians. In the case of Dacia, his plan would do more than secure the empire’s defense and finances; it would also wipe the humiliation of Domitian’s treaty, stun Dacian pride, and restore Roman honour. As much as there were military and economic reasons to go to war, the emotional one was just as important.

This, of course, was all from the Roman perspective. From the Dacian point of view, Decebal had cooperated with Rome in the decade following the peace treaty. He had allowed legions to march through Dacia on their way to fight Germanic tribes, and didn’t intervene in the empire’s affairs. He was using the subsidies to reform his army and defenses, true, but he was allowed to spend his coin as he wished; Rome wasn’t supposed to have a say in internal Dacian affairs. And there were no signs that Decebal wanted to invade the empire. During the war with Domitian, he had repeatedly tried to end hostilities, and now, he was working to bolster his defenses, not build an offensive army.

Yet Trajan wanted war, and Decebal couldn’t convince him not to attack. If the Dacians succeeded in the coming conflict, Dacia would coexist alongside the empire. But if the Romans succeeded, Dacian civilization would be destroyed.

To fully defeat the Dacians and grab their royal treasury, Trajan would have to conquer their capital. As you may recall, the Dacian capital of Sarmizegetusa was nestled in the southwestern Carpathian Mountains, and was surrounded by forts guarding the roads leading to it. Previous Roman commanders had marched directly towards the capital and been blocked as they advanced through the mountain passes. Trajan decided to take a methodical approach that would secure the mountains and their forts before he approached the capital itself.

Geography was crucial to planning his campaign. To help you understand what comes next, I’ve included a map in this episode’s description. For those of you who aren’t able to look at it right now, we’ll create a mental picture.

I want you to imagine the Danube as a horizontal line. Above it is a parallel line representing the Carpathian Mountains. As we move to the left, the Carpathian line turns downwards ninety degrees and intersects with the Danube. The point where the two lines intersect is a narrow gorge called the Iron Gates. You can imagine this area as a cross, with the horizontal line being the Danube, the vertical line being the Carpathians, and the middle point being the Iron Gates.

The Romans were below the horizontal line, and the Dacians, above it. Trajan’s plan was to place an army to the left of the Iron Gates, and another, to the right. This way, his armies would be located on both sides of the Carpathians. As they marched north, the Romans would enclose the mountains between their two armies, thus securing them before assaulting the defenses surrounding Sarmizegetusa.

The empire had two permanent forts on either side of the Iron Gates on the south bank of the Danube. The fort of Viminacium was west of the gorge, and the fort of Drobeta, east of it. These two locations would serve as the main bases for the invasion of Dacia, but there was a problem. The forts were isolated from each other because it was nearly impossible to navigate through the Iron Gates due to their rapid current and rocky bottom.

To ensure quick communication between Viminacium and Drobeta, Trajan ordered a road to be cut into the mountainside along the south bank of the river. The road was widened with planks to form a boardwalk, and was nearly twenty kilometres long. He also ordered a canal to be dug south of the Danube to bypass the Iron Gates altogether and allow navigation.

As these construction projects were underway, the emperor began stockpiling supplies at the forts: weapons, armour, food, tools, tents, and anything else his army would need once in enemy territory.

Trajan also began mustering units from across the empire; he assembled 13 legions and 76 auxiliary units from Britannia, Gaul, Hispania, Mauritania, Syria, Anatolia, Moesia, Illyria, Pannonia, and Germany. These forces were augmented by several symmachiarii units, which were barbarians drawn from beyond the empire that fought using their own customs. The total force numbered 150,000 soldiers, which amounted to two fifths of the entire imperial army at the time.

Trajan had started these preparations at the beginning of his reign in 98 CE while he toured the empire’s frontiers, and they had taken three years to complete. The Romans were now ready to exact revenge for Domitian’s humiliation, and this time, they had come with a much bigger army – and a much better leader.

In March of 101 CE, Trajan left Rome and headed to take command of his assembled forces. The Roman Danubian fleet deployed its warships to secure the river, and ferried advanced units into Dacia. Once the coast was secured, the army built a bridge of boats at Viminacium to the west of the Iron Gates and at Drobeta to the east.

The Dacians had of course been aware of the Roman preparations over the past few years since they were impossible to conceal. But Decebal hadn’t interfered with them in order not to provoke the Romans; he needed every day he could get to strengthen his forces.

As the Romans set foot on Dacian soil and marched on both sides of the Carpathian Mountains, the Dacians evacuated fortresses and abandoned settlements. Trajan’s strategy forced them to retreat deeper into their realm to avoid being surrounded. Families took whatever possessions they could carry and headed for safety with their flocks and herds, while warriors converged on the forts surrounding the capital. In his war with Domitian, Decebal had learned that the legions were superior to his forces in open battle, so he needed to rely on the terrain to gain an advantage.

As each side was maneuvering, the Dacians sent embassies to the neighbouring Germanic and Sarmatian tribes; they argued that the Roman empire presented a threat to all of them, one they could only resist together. The argument worked, and Germanic and Sarmatian allies marched to join the Dacians. We don’t know the size of the Dacian army, but historians estimate that it was either about the same or smaller than the Roman one.

Decebal also sent envoys to the Romans to discuss peace and see if battle could be avoided, but Trajan dismissed them; he wouldn’t hold talks before his army had achieved its goals.

The Romans marched slowly and methodically, with Trajan leading the western army. The emperor wanted to ensure that his forces wouldn’t be cut off from supplies, reinforcements, and communication, so he ordered his legionaries to build camps, roads, and bridges as they advanced to consolidate the territory they occupied. It was a clear sign that they were here to stay.

The two armies carefully entered the Carpathian Mountains from both sides and joined together before advancing on the forts surrounding Sarmizegetusa. Their route was blocked at a location called Tapae, where the Dacians had chosen to make their stand. Here, the defenders had built an earthen wall two kilometres long with a ditch in front. Beyond it, they had fixed spears into the ground to break cavalry charges and dug hidden pits filled with stakes to trap infantry. They augmented their defenses with Roman war machines like catapults and ballista, which they had built with the help of Roman artisans.

As the opposing forces approached each other, Dacian messengers once again came to Trajan asking him to make peace. But the emperor hadn’t assembled 150,000 soldiers just to renegotiate a treaty through intimidation; no, he had assembled them to defeat the Dacians and impose a new order. So Trajan dismissed the messengers and told his soldiers to advance.

Legionaries, auxiliaries, and symmachiarii attacked with the support of war machines, and the fighting was incredibly fierce. Thousands of men died on both sides, and the battle proved more difficult than Trajan had anticipated, but eventually, the Romans won the field at Tapae.

The Dacians managed to retreat with their wounded in an orderly fashion, and manned the forts immediately surrounding Sarmizegetusa. Decebal sent another embassy to Trajan; it may have been a sincere attempt at peace, or one designed to buy time. Either way, it was rejected, and the Romans continued their advance. With their superior numbers and experience in siege warfare, the invaders were able to take several forts, inside of which they found the weapons, war machines, and legionary standards lost by Fuscus fifteen years ago.

In the rear, auxiliaries pillaged homes, stole herds, and burned settlements. Civilians who had time to escape took their goods and fled deeper into the mountains. Those who were caught in the fighting submitted to the Romans, and many were enslaved.

As the winter of the year 101 began and the Romans weakened the defenses surrounding Sarmizegetusa, Decebal tried to change the course of the war. To relieve pressure on the capital, he planned to divert Roman attention to their own realm. His target was the Dobrogea region near the Black Sea far to the east of the current theatre of war. The area was part of Moesia Inferior, and Roman troops had been transferred from there to take part in the invasion, and the garrisons which were left behind didn’t expect the war to reach their gates.

The Dacian king assembled whatever warriors he could spare, along with contingents from his German and Sarmatian allies. This coalition crossed the frozen Danube and besieged Roman cities using battering rams based on Roman designs.

Trajan was quick to respond. Consciously thwarting Decebal’s plan, he left most of his forces where they were near Sarmizegetusa so as not to lose the progress they’d made. He then boarded a ship with part of his forces, sailed down the Danube, and took command of the auxiliary units in Moesia Inferior. Early in 102 CE, Trajan was able to divide the enemy and defeat first the Sarmatians and Germans, then the Dacians.

The coalition was forced to retreat back across the Danube without having captured any Roman cities. Its only success had been in plundering some outlying settlements, which allowed it to head back with cartloads of goods to help the war effort.

When Trajan returned to Dacia in the spring of 102 CE, he did so at the head of a third army. The Romans spent the remainder of the year consolidating the territory they occupied and capturing more forts in the mountains. Faced with this seemingly unstoppable advance, some Dacian nobles submitted to Trajan, hoping to maintain some of their lands, wealth, and privileges – or at least their lives. By winter, the Roman army had captured all the strongholds protecting Sarmizegetusa, and was surrounding it from the north, west, and south.

The Dacian position was critical. Decebal had failed to reframe the war with his expedition in Moesia Inferior, was bleeding support, and the Romans were now at the gates of the capital. He realized that to continue fighting meant losing all of Dacia. If he was to salvage anything from the situation, he needed to pause the fighting immediately.

At the end of 102 CE, the Dacian king sent a delegation to the Romans to surrender, and they accepted. Soon afterwards, Decebal himself came before Trajan, threw away his weapons, fell on the ground, and offered his submission.

The peace terms Trajan imposed were extremely harsh. The Dacians had to return their Roman weapons, war machines, artisans, and defectors; destroy their mountain forts and the walls of their settlements; and retreat from the territory currently occupied by the Romans. Furthermore, they had to be aligned with Roman foreign policy and couldn’t make their own alliances, nor accept Roman fugitives or employ Roman soldiers. Legionaries would remain in the fortified camps they’d built during their occupation, and a legionary garrison was even stationed inside the Dacian capital, though the natives still controlled the city.

It may seem strange that Trajan had concluded a peace when he was so close to taking Sarmizegetusa, but this wasn’t a permanent peace. He had suffered enormous losses, his army was exhausted, and a winter siege of Sarmizegetusa would’ve been gruelling; instead of besieging a city whose fall would not necessarily bring an end to the war, or of retreating to winter quarters and losing the territory he had conquered, Trajan decided to make a truce. The point was to weaken Dacia and leave the Romans in a better position than at the start of the war, so that, when he was ready, Trajan could restart hostilities and finish what he’d started.

After the negotiations, a Dacian delegation travelled to Rome to supplicate itself before the Senate and ratify the treaty; and Trajan soon returned to the imperial city as well to celebrate a triumph and take the title of Dacicus.

The next year, in 103 CE, the emperor ordered his chief architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, to begin construction of a permanent bridge over the Danube. Apollodorus chose a spot near Drobeta and used legionaries to do the work. They dug a canal to redirect water from the river and lower its level. Then, they built twenty pillars of brick and cement, and connected them with wooden arches high enough to allow ships to pass underneath. Finally, they added forts at either end of the bridge to defend its entrances. The project was completed extremely quickly in only two years. The result was a bridge 1,135 metres long, 15 metres wide, and 19 metres high. It was an amazing architectural achievement; it was the first bridge to span the Danube, and the longest arch bridge for more than a thousand years.

This permanent structure was a clear sign that the Romans would not let the Dacian kingdom survive. The bridge would not only allow more troops and supplies to reach the Carpathian Mountains, but also serve as a solid link with the rest of the empire once Trajan annexed the territory.

Like the Romans, the Dacians understood this peace to be a mere armistice, but one that was absolutely necessary. Their people had suffered heavily and needed time to recuperate. With the fighting over, Dacian families came out of hiding with whatever goods, flocks, and herds they had left. Many returned famished and destitute to their former homes and fields which had been pillaged and burned. But at least they wouldn’t be killed or enslaved, and could sow a new crop for the year, graze their animals, and begin to recover.

Yet everyone knew that this situation wouldn’t last long. The Romans hadn’t captured the gold deposits they coveted, since these they lay north of Sarmizegetusa in territory they hadn’t conquered; but with their troops stationed in the capital and its surrounding forts, they were in an overpowering position for when they decided to go for them.

Only Trajan knew when that moment would come, and time was running out for the Dacians. Decebal and his warriors had one last chance to save their people from Roman domination, and they had to use every available means to do so.

Knowing that the Romans would attack anyway, Decebal decided not to abide by the treaty and instead strengthen his army while he could. He stopped dismantling fortifications, and continued to forge weapons, welcome Roman fugitives, and coordinate with his German and Sarmatian allies.

The Romans saw that the Dacians weren’t adhering to the treaty, and news got back to Trajan. In June of 105 CE, he left Rome and headed towards the Danube to deal with them once and for all. A Dacian delegation met him on route to talk, but Trajan brushed them aside; he would now accept nothing but unconditional surrender.

With Dacia weakened, Decebal knew that he had even less of a chance of withstanding the Roman advance than during the first invasion, so he now turned to desperate means to stop the war. He sent a group of Roman fugitives to kill Trajan, but they failed, and the attempt only served to further infuriate the emperor.

The weeks it took Trajan to travel to the Danube offered the Dacians a final window of opportunity to strike the Romans before they were organized. Decebal and his army led a huge uprising in the Carpathian Mountains and expulsed the Roman garrisons from their camps, including the one at Sarmizegetusa. They then came out of the mountains and raced towards the Danube. Decebal wanted to destroy Apollodorus’ bridgehead on the north shore before the Romans had a chance to cross. His forces attacked the fort guarding the entrance to the bridge and nearly took it, but Trajan arrived with reinforcement just in time, and pushed them back. The Romans spent the rest of 105 CE fighting their way north and reached the mountains by winter, where they paused as the snows made fighting difficult.

In the meantime, a rift opened in the Dacian camp. Some nobles thought fighting was hopeless; they defected to Trajan and begged him to restore them to their estates after the war. On the other side, Decebal and his loyal nobles continued the resistance and hastily rebuilt and reinforced their fortifications.

In the spring of 106 CE, Trajan began his final push into the mountains, and Dacian civilians once again fled to safety wherever they could. The Dacian warriors resisted bitterly, and the Romans found it difficult to retake forts, but Trajan maintained pressure, as he didn’t intend to come back a third time.

By the summer, the Romans had encircled Sarmizegetusa once again and put it under siege. They brought siege engines, towers, and ladders, but the defenders repulsed all their attacks. Decebal and his loyalists resisted with every weapon and means at their disposal, knowing that, this time, surrender wasn’t an option.

When the Romans cut off the city’s water supply, the defenders began to weaken. Some fled the city and submitted to Trajan, asking for clemency. Those that remained inside were outnumbered and outmatched, and soon, the Romans penetrated into the city.

Civilians fled or hid from the invaders. Some nobles tried to buy amnesty with gold ingots. Others, perhaps led by the high priest, drank poison and committed mass suicide. The rest set fire to the part of the city they still controlled to deny its use by the enemy, then escaped. The Romans pillaged what they could, seized the Dacian royal treasury, and, by means of a dissenter, discovered the location of more treasure buried under a nearby river. They then burned everything to the ground: the fortifications, the civilian neighbourhoods, and the sanctuaries.

Decebal managed to escape before the city fell. He raced east to territory that hadn’t been captured by the Romans, aiming to rally his warriors and allies and continue the resistance. But a Roman cavalry unit had been sent after him, and tracked him relentlessly. Every day, it drew closer to its prey. Exhausted by the chase, Decebal realized that he couldn’t escape his pursuers; he knew he would be captured, paraded in Trajan’s triumph, humiliated, and, finally, killed. Choosing his own end, Decebal took a dagger and slit his own throat. When the Roman cavalry commander reached the body, he cut off the head to bring it to Trajan.

The Dacian king’s death didn’t immediately end the war. Dacian and Sarmatian warriors continued to hold out in the north and east of Dacia. As the Romans advanced further, civilians took whatever goods and animals they had left and fled to distant villages or remote regions where they could wait out the fighting. Legions marched to Dacian forts and davae, conquered them, and burned them to the ground to remove all centres of organized resistance. By August of 106 CE, the Dacian forces were defeated, and the war was over.

Trajan had gotten what he wanted; the Dacian kingdom was dismantled, its treasury was seized, and its gold deposits secured. His victory left the Dacian people adrift in a war-ravaged realm. Next time, we’ll explore the aftermath of this conflict, see what the Romans do with their new territory, and, just as importantly, see how the Dacians adapt to their overlords.