The character of the Roman empire evolves as all of its free inhabitants are granted citizenship, spurring ever more growth and prosperity in Dacia. Yet that very wealth draws the attention of two powerful tribes living on the periphery of the empire: the Dacian Carpi and the Germanic Goths.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 1, Episode 14: New citizens

Last time, we saw how Dacia prospered during the reign of Septimius Severus, who left the province with eleven cities and fifty thousand soldiers to defend its borders.

This legacy was part of a larger trend as, over the course of his reign, he accorded more importance and resources to the military. But Septimius Severus’ rule drew to a close in 211 when he fell deathly ill. Knowing he would not recover, he called his eldest son, Caracalla, and youngest son, Geta, to his side and made them equal emperors. He reportedly told them: “Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, scorn all others.” Besides perfectly encapsulating his ruling philosophy, this advice was sorely needed, as the brothers argued constantly. A few days later, their father died, and they actually considered dividing the empire in two.

But Caracalla had an even better idea: at a meeting organized by his mother to reconcile him with Geta, he had the Praetorian Guard kill his brother. He followed this murder with a massacre of Geta’s supporters – with an estimated twenty thousand people dying – and removed all traces of his brother from official documents, monuments, and coins, even making it a crime to write or say his name.

These heinous acts secured him the throne, but they also painted him as an immoral tyrant. If he wanted to retain power, he needed to repair his reputation and show the Roman people he was worth following. Caracalla soon found a way to endear them to him and took one of the most influential decisions in Roman history: in 212, a year after cruelly murdering his brother and his supporters, he issued an edict granting citizenship to all free men and women of the empire – except those who had been formerly enslaved or who had fought against Rome.

This led to a huge demographic change. Less than ten percent of the population of the empire were citizens, and citizenship was highly sought after, as it allowed you to appeal judicial sentences, own property, pass it on to your children, join the legions, vote, and hold office among other privileges; so the edict was happily welcomed by millions of people in the empire.

By bestowing this gift, Caracalla hoped to show that he was a benevolent ruler who had his people’s interests at heart; and he also hoped that his people would feel a tug of obligation and show him loyalty in return.

But gaining legitimacy wasn’t the only reason for issuing the edict; otherwise, any number of unpopular emperors could’ve done the same before. No, Caracalla was able to take this decision because the character of the empire was changing. Though there’s still a lot of debate among historians about the reasons behind the edict, the best explanation I’ve seen is that, beyond legitimacy, Caracalla was also thinking about revenue and recruitment.

See, his father had favoured the military by increasing pay, improving service conditions, and adding additional legions – all of which required lots of money. To maintain such an extensive army, Caracalla needed additional tax revenue and a larger pool of recruits, and the edict solved both of these problems; by increasing the number of citizens, the state collected more taxes; and since only citizens could join the legions, all men in the empire now became potential recruits. These two motivations – of revenue and recruitment – were closely linked and reinforced one another.

The repercussions of Caracalla’s edict were immense, as everyone in the empire was now on the same legal footing. There was no longer a division between provincials and citizens; everyone was a Roman and part of the same unitary empire.

If we look at Dacia specifically, the effects were massive. For one thing, many more men joined the legions after 212, drawn by the attractive pay and conditions. For another, the process of Romanization that had been ongoing for generations now reached its peak, and we actually have physical evidence of the change: after the edict, there’s a marked increase in the number of inscriptions written in Vulgar Latin, which is so called not because it was obscene, but because it was spoken by the vulgus, or the common people.

The Latin used in these inscriptions deviates from proper Latin in terms of phonetics, syntax, grammar, and verb tenses. Most of the inhabitants of Dacia learned Latin not by studying it, but by speaking it; and when newly enfranchised citizens had to write a contract or an epitaph, they wrote how they spoke, regardless of if it was proper or not. In effect, their mistakes and variations show how people actually spoke and how the language began to change.

For instance, the word in Latin for spouse is coniunx. There are two n’s in that word – coniunx – but you can barely hear the second one. Instead of straining to pronounce the word properly, people made their life easier by dropping the second n, and so coniunx became coniux.

Another example is veteranus, which is the word for old and for veteran. The middle vowel was dropped for simplicity, and veteranus became vetranus. In the same way, the word for father-in-law, socero, became socro, and the word for master, dominus, became domnus.

Sometimes, consonants at the end of words were dropped. The sentence, “I wish you a happy new year,” in classical Latin is “Accipio annus novus felice,” but in the Latin of the common people, it became “Accipio annu novu felice.”

These are all small changes, but they do add up. While the elite might’ve spoken Latin as it was written by classical writers, the middle and lower classes used a more conversational tone, more familiar words and expressions, and dropped sounds that were more difficult to say; in short, like people in other provinces, the locals in Dacia adapted Latin to suit their reality.

To understand how Caracalla’s edict and the development of Vulgar Latin affected the population, we can imagine a fictional woman of Dacian descent born after the edict was passed in 212. This woman’s great-great-grandparents would’ve lived their adult lives as imperial subjects under emperor Hadrian, would’ve been exposed to Roman ways, and could’ve learned words and phrases in Latin to trade with the colonists who settled near them.

Her great-grandparents would’ve lived during the prosperous time of Antoninus Pius, interacted with colonists from across the empire, and could’ve very well been bilingual, speaking Dacian with their relatives and Latin with the public.

Her grandparents would’ve lived through the crisis years of Marcus Aurelius’ reign, would’ve survived smallpox and rallied to their fellow imperial subjects to defend their way of life against barbarian invasions; they could’ve learned Latin from an early age and mixed in Dacian words and expressions, but may perhaps not have been able to speak Dacian fluently.

Her parents would’ve enjoyed the recovery and the attentions which Septimius Severus gave to the province; they would’ve had little reason to speak Dacian, as their older relatives were either bilingual or mainly spoke Latin.

Then, this fictional woman would’ve been born as a Roman citizen. Growing up, she would speak Latin as her first language with her parents and grandparents, and, coming of age, she would mingle in provincial society, follow Roman laws, pay homage to the imperial family, pray to the Roman gods, go to gladiatorial fights in the cities, and hang out with provincials from across the empire. Her ancestors were Dacian, and they had slowly been Romanized, but she herself was a Roman both by birth and by habit.

This fictional woman’s generation, born in the 210s and coming of age in the 230s, enjoyed a period of great prosperity. Dacia’s farms and workshops produced everything its population needed, from cheese to shoes, and the province was so prosperous as to export livestock, cereals, honey, salt, copper, and gold to the rest of the empire, as well as some manufactured products; for instance, almost half of the mirrors we’ve found in the Roman world come from the southern Dacian settlement of Sucidava. In exchange for these goods, the province imported choice wines, olive oil, fine ceramics and lamps, glass vases, jewellery, and luxury cloths.

This prosperity radiated from cities to towns, and from towns to villages – as did the state’s reach. Becoming a citizen didn’t just come with benefits, it also came with responsibilities; authorities made sure to send representatives to even remote villages to ensure that the empire’s new citizens were paying their taxes, enmeshing them further in the Roman system.

For instance, in the forested valleys of northeast Dacia, there were no cities, and the economy was mainly based on farming and shepherding. Yet there were many castra that guarded the mountain passes. Their commanders governed their surrounding territories and compelled the population to supply their garrisons with food and goods and to perform labour for them as a form of tax.

The affluence of the province also radiated beyond its borders. In the marshy southwest of Dacia, for instance, the city of Tibiscum prospered through trade with the Iazyges; its markets not only bustled with merchandise, but its customs stations also collected taxes from all goods and travellers that passed through its gates.

The effects of such trade were felt far beyond the frontiers. From the city of Porolissum in the north, there was a road that headed west into the land of the Iazyges and connected Dacia with Pannonia. This road was regularly travelled, and the Romans had interpreters that could speak with the Dacians, Germans, and Sarmatians they encountered.

In some cases, the peoples beyond the frontiers settled closer to the empire to have easier access to its merchants. South of the Carpathians, on the Olt frontier, free Dacians that were attracted by Roman goods founded villages next to the Roman fortifications to have better economic links.

Indeed, fifty years had passed since the last wars between the empire and the barbarians, and relations between the two parties had improved. The empire bought agricultural goods from the free Dacians, who, in turn, received oil, wine, glass cups, clothing, fibulas, and coral beads. The Romans also gave coins and silver objects to barbarian leaders as stipends to ensure their cooperation. Wealth was flowing in and out of the empire in great volumes, and the contacts between the peoples on the frontier and the Romans were closer than ever.

In the spring of 214, emperor Caracalla headed eastwards intending to attack the Persians, and he planned a stop in Dacia to review its defenses. A few months before his visit, roads were repaved, castra renovated, and inscriptions erected by troops and civilians in his honour.

The emperor travelled all the way to Porolissum, the military fort on the northern frontier of the province. Caracalla set up his headquarters there and called on barbarian leaders to come to him and talk. He managed to convince the Vandals, which were friendly to Rome, to attack the Marcomanni; in the case of the Quadi, he summoned their king and had him sentenced to death and executed; as for the free Dacians, he attacked them and captured hostages. The point of all these manoeuvres was to cow the barbarians to prevent them from attacking while he was gone in the East.

The strategy worked, and while Caracalla fought the Persians over the next couple years, the borders of Dacia remained calm. But in 217, the ambitious commander of the Praetorian Guard, Macrinus, orchestrated his assassination and declared himself emperor. Hearing of the turmoil, the free Dacians attacked Dacia to liberate their hostages; Macrinus wanted to avoid a crisis, so he simply returned the prisoners to them, and the free Dacians ceased their attacks.

The new emperor also ended the war with the Persians by paying them a huge indemnity so he could return to the capital to secure his position, but events overtook him. Carcalla’s aunt, Julia Maesa, engineered a revolt to return the throne to her family, and she put forth her grandson as a contender. After less than a month of fighting, her forces had executed Macrinus, and, by 218, the empire had a new ruler, her fourteen-year-old grandson Elagabalus.

This teenager was the high priest of a Syrian sun god named Elagabal, and he made this god the chief deity of the Roman pantheon, which was a shock to the established order. The emperor also wore makeup and wigs, and preferred to be called lady and queen, which outraged the Romans. As the years went on, Elagabalus’ un-Roman behaviour and foreign religious practices made him unpopular among both the elites of the capital and the Praetorian Guard.

Sensing a loss in support, Julia Maesa made a plan to replace him with her other grandson, Alexander. She convinced Elagabalus to appoint him as heir and made sure to ingratiate him with the Praetorian Guard. Elagabalus at first went along with this, but then saw that his cousin was becoming a rival, so he ordered the execution of the Praetorian soldiers who supported Alexander; but the Guard rebelled and turned on him instead. During the confrontation, the eighteen-year-old emperor fled into the arms of his mother, and they were both murdered as they embraced each other. The Praetorian Guard cut off their heads and dragged their naked bodies through the streets, finally throwing Elagabalus in the Tiber.

By default, Alexander became emperor, and he reversed his cousin’s religious reforms while killing or exiling his supporters. He was only fourteen years-old at the time, so the real power behind the throne lay with his mother and grandmother. This grandmother, Julia Maesa, had, in effect, orchestrated the murder of her own daughter and grandson to put her other daughter and grandson on the throne.

These abrupt changes at the top of the political structure had little direct effect on the inhabitants of Dacia. For a few years, they would’ve noticed that some coins showed a Syrian sun god, but not much else would’ve changed; their daily lives depended much more on the decisions of their local governor.

But the instability in the palace was no doubt a subject of discussion both on the street as town criers shared the latest news, and in elite households as magistrates discussed public affairs. The last time the empire had had a peaceful transition of power was in 180, when Commodus succeeded Marcus Aurelius. For the following forty years, emperors had come to the throne through violence. It seemed that designating an heir meant increasingly little; what mattered was influence in the army or the Praetorian Guard. The process started by Septimius Severus of making the army the central pillar of government had not only increased militarization in the provinces, but also in the palace.

Meanwhile, beyond the borders of Dacia, the free Dacians living east of the Carpathians had consolidated into a larger group called the Carpi. Like their kin in other areas outside of the empire, the Carpi inhabited hilly areas, lived in earthen huts, practiced agriculture, herding, and crafts, and incinerated their dead. They also traded intensely with the empire, and it was not uncommon to see Roman coins and luxury goods in the houses of their chieftains.

By Alexander’s reign, the Carpi had settled into a mutually beneficial relationship with the empire, but their comfortable position became challenged by pressure from further east. A Germanic people called the Goths had begun migrating from their homeland on the coast of the Baltic Sea in the 150s, and we’ve seen how their movement had partly caused the crisis that had defined Marcus Aurelius’ reign. By this point in our story in the 220s, the Goths had arrived north of the Black Sea and, using their massive numbers, had brought the native peoples of the area under their domination.

The empire had several cities on the northern coast of the Black Sea which traded extensively with the surrounding natives and exported goods by sea to Moesia Inferior. Accordingly, the Goths came into contact with the empire by way of these cities, and since the Goths didn’t have a unified leadership, different groups interacted with them in different ways; some traded with their merchants, others found work as seasonal labourers, and others were paid warriors protecting imperial interests; what united them all was that they were drawn by the empire’s wealth. Generations of Goths had come into contact with Roman goods through intermediary merchants as they migrated; now they had finally arrived at the gates of the empire that produced them, and the riches it held were more splendid than they could’ve ever imagined.

By the 230s, the Goths were well-settled on the periphery of the empire, and provincial governors sent their leaders annual gifts in return for their cooperation.

As the empire welcomed new neighbours north of the Black Sea, emperor Alexander was defending the provinces in the East against a Persian invasion. The fighting was so intense that an entire army was lost, and disease plagued the other units; but eventually, Alexander was able to repulse the Persians, and he returned to the capital victorious in 233.

But the young emperor would not get to enjoy peace. A year later, the Germanic Alemanni raided the Rhine frontier, and the Iazyges and free Dacians also joined in to raid Pannonia. The Roman forces on the border managed to halt the barbarians, and once the emperor arrived with reinforcements, it was expected that he would counterattack to punish them. The problem was that, at only 26 years-old, he was still inexperienced and continued to rely on his mother’s advice, which did nothing to gain him respect among his soldiers. His men looked much more to their generals, almost to the point of insubordination, and Alexander feared they wouldn’t follow him if he pushed them into another campaign; so, instead, he decided to take his mother’s advice and pay the barbarians to avoid a fight.

When the soldiers learned of this dishonourable decision, they were outraged and felt that Alexander wasn’t fit to lead them. After a heated confrontation, Alexander and his mother were murdered by his generals, and one of them, Maximinus Thrax, was hailed as emperor in 235. He was a career soldier who had risen to a position of leadership from the lowest ranks; now in command of the empire’s armies, he crossed the Rhine and, within a year, defeated the Alemanni, Iazyges, and free Dacians, gaining the titles of Germanicus Maximus, Sarmaticus Maximus, and Dacicus Maximus.

Meanwhile, between the Carpathians and the Black Sea, the Carpi and Goths were getting restless. We have few sources from this period, so we don’t know their motivations; it may be that some of their more ambitious leaders wanted to set themselves apart by taking a chunk of the empire’s wealth; or it may be that Roman officials slighted their leadership and they felt the need to respond. Whatever the reasons, we know that, in the spring of 238, Carpic and Gothic warbands descended down the coast of the Black Sea and invaded Moesia Inferior. If you remember any one of our previous maps, you’ll understand that the plains between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea offered an easy path into the empire; once over the Danube, the barbarians immediately reached the cities of Histria, Tomis, Callatis, Durostorum, and Marcianopolis. After seventy years of peace, these cities were totally unprepared for an attack; their suburbs were devastated and numerous inhabitants were taken prisoner. After intense fighting, the governor of Moesia Inferior halted the invaders and gave the Goths money and subsidies to leave the empire. The Carpi wanted the same deal, but the governor refused, and they could do little about it but retreat and plan their next move.

That same year, the landowners of the province of Africa rioted against a corrupt official and acclaimed their governor, Gordian, as emperor. At 80 years-old, their chosen man thought it wise to make his son co-emperor as well, and the Senate happily confirmed them; they had begrudgingly accepted Maximinus, but never actually liked him since, to their horror, he had been born a peasant, whereas Gordian was from a prominent senatorial family. In the days following the revolt, several provinces switched their allegiance to Gordian, but a nearby governor still loyal to Maximinus marched the only legion in the region into Africa. The result was that Gordian’s son was killed in battle and he himself committed suicide.

The whole affair had only lasted 22 days, but the Senate had shown its disloyalty, and Maximinus started a march on the capital to reassert his authority. Knowing they would be punished, the Senate decided to go all in and appointed Gordian’s grandson as emperor. Maximinus encountered resistance on his way to the capital, and during a harsh siege, his discontented soldiers murdered him and his son, and sent their heads to Rome. Accordingly, Gordian’s grandson, known as Gordian III, was left as sole emperor in 238; but at only 13 years-old, it was the Senate who would govern for him.

The Senate and their emperor spent the next few years consolidating their power, yet the Carpi would not make matters easy for them, as they still seethed at not being given subsidies. In 242, four years after their last raid, they attacked south into Moesia Inferior and west into Dacia, where they ravaged the countryside south of the Carpathian Mountains. Thankfully for the Romans, Gordian III was in Macedonia at this time on his way to repel yet another Persian invasion, so he was able to use his army to stop the attackers; and to keep them from attacking again, he gave the Carpi the subsidies they wanted, securing the Danubian provinces.

The emperor then travelled east to fight a brutal war against the Persians. We have few sources about these events, but, while on campaign, Gordian III died, either due to illness, injury, or murder. Whatever the reason, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, Philip, took the mantle of emperor in 244. To secure the loyalty of the army, he gave them a substantial donative, and to ensure he could return to Rome to consolidate his power, he gave the Persians a massive sum in exchange for peace.

To amass all this money, Philip had to increase taxes as well as stop paying subsidies to the peoples beyond the frontiers. As a direct result, the Carpi attacked Dacia and Moesia Inferior yet again. This time, the invaders penetrated the defensive line east of the Olt River, which, as you’ll remember, runs from the Carpathians to the Danube. The Romans were thus forced to retreat and reform their fortifications on the Olt River itself. Many inhabitants were taken prisoner, and many others fled in fear. Archeologists have found several coin hoards buried during this time whose owners were obviously never able to return to them.

The territory inside the arc of the Carpathian Mountains wasn’t affected by these raids. Though the Carpi lived just to the east of the Carpathians, it was much easier for them to attack Roman territory on the plains to the south than it was to cross the mountain passes.

In response to this devastating attack, Philip brought back his armies from the East, engaged the Carpi, and defeated them in 246. With Dacia secure, he gave it the resources needed to be more autonomous and better defend itself. Right after his victory, he granted Dacia the right to mint its own bronze coins; the disturbances on the border had led to less coinage arriving in the province, and a mint would help its merchants with their transactions without having to rely on imperial shipments. On some of these newly-minted coins, Dacia is shown as a woman holding ears of wheat in her left hand and, in her right, a falx which was a traditional Dacian weapon; on others, she’s holding the standards of the two legions stationed in the province. This imagery is supposed to convey not only the continued prosperity of Dacia, but also that its population was doing its duty to defend the empire.

Philip also allocated funds to Dacia to rebuild what had been damaged in the raids. In particular, soldiers built new walls for the city of Romula, while Sucidava and Drobeta – also located on the plains south of the Carpathians – quickly fortified themselves with walls using materials repurposed from public and private buildings.

As these construction projects were ongoing, officials in Dacia were also preparing for a singularly important event: celebrating Rome’s thousandth anniversary. See, the city that gave the empire its name had been founded in 753 BCE, and the Roman calendar started from that date, such that the year 247 marked the thousandth year. Philip put on spectacular shows in the capital, and special coins were issued for the occasion. Though we lack concrete sources, officials throughout the empire must’ve also put on similar festivities. In the case of Dacia, the province had suffered intermittent assaults from 238 to 246, but had repulsed all of them, and the soldiers who had done the fighting were the first generation to be born as Romans after Caracalla’s edict; this was an occasion to show that the barbarians could not cow them, and that they proudly stood with their brethren across the empire as Rome entered a new millennium.

Next time, the Romans will endure their most difficult period yet. As raids turn into wars and pretenders to the throne multiply, the Roman empire will face the very real possibility of collapse, and Dacia will be at the centre of the storm.