A grand capital fit for a Christian emperor is built on the shores of the Bosphorus, and in order to ensure its safety, Constantine decides to retake the province of Dacia established by Trajan two centuries earlier.

Below, you can see the Balkan portion of the Roman empire. Constantinople’s location near the Danubian frontier allowed the emperor to quickly respond to threats from that direction, but it also put the capital at risk.

To strengthen the empire’s Balkan defenses, Constantine pushed his armies beyond the Danube, defeated the Sarmatian Iazyges and the Germanic Goths, and created two buffer provinces: Sarmatia and Gothia. He also subjugated the Gothic tribes inside the Carpathian arc, and though those peoples still had autonomy, they were subject to the empire.

If we focus on the lands of the original province of Dacia, we see that Gothia was located between the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River. The territory was protected by a defensive line of earthen ramparts and ditches punctuated by forts, which was staffed by both Roman soldiers and Gothic warriors.

The new province of Gothia included the city of Sucidava, which had remained under imperial control even after the abandonment of Dacia, and which now hosted a permanent stone bridge across the Danube.

The province also included the city of Malva, which had been abandoned during Aurelian’s retreat but which continued to house a population of Roman descendants; the army repaved the road between Malva and Sucidava, and so connected that settlement to the rest of the empire.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 1, Episode 19: Reconquest

Last episode, Diocletian began a great persecution of the Christians and then abdicated on the anniversary of his 20^th year in power. No one besides him really believed in his system of four emperors sharing the empire, and it only took a year for civil war to break out. The Roman world was racked by chaos for nearly two decades, and the climate of religious persecution added a spiritual element to these struggles. In the end, the man who defeated all other rivals was Constantine, an avowed Christian.

In 324, he became sole ruler of the empire – the first in 40 years – and he needed somewhere to rule from. As you know, Diocletian had established four capitals, each one housing an emperor near a frontier, but none of them were suited to be the centrepiece of the empire. Constantine could’ve gone back to Rome, but the city had long ago lost its preeminent position, and in any case, it was too far from the borders and from the rich provinces of the East. Plus, everywhere you looked, there were temples to Jupiter and statues of Minerva and altars to Apollo – but the empire’s first Christian emperor needed a capital untainted by false gods.

And so, Constantine chose a completely unexpected site for his capital: the city of Byzantion on the western coast of the Bosphorus. Founded in the 7^th century BCE, this Greek city was an important port, but never became much more than that. Yet Constantine realized that Byzantion was perfectly located between the eastern frontier with the Persians and the Danubian frontier facing the Germanic tribes, two areas which had presented the biggest threats over the last century. On top of that, the city had a natural harbour and was surrounded by water on three sides, which would make it basically impossible to besiege. And by turning a minor settlement into his grand capital, Constantine could easily erase the imprint of Greek cults and place Christianity at the forefront of his city.

The emperor began transforming Byzantion in 324 as soon as he had defeated Licinius, which shows just how much he had prepared for this move. He called his city Nova Roma, “New Rome,” to indicate that this was a new start for the empire. The old gods had served their purpose, but now that Jesus’ message was known to all, it was time to enter a new era. The Roman empire had to stand behind the Christian god and follow His steward on Earth, Constantine. There could be only one god and one emperor.

This, of course, meant that all government decisions had to ultimately go through Constantine. To avoid being overwhelmed, he relied on the vast bureaucracy established by Diocletian. The main difference was that, instead of having four emperors each ruling a quarter of the empire, there were now four praetorian prefects each administering a quarter of the empire and reporting to Constantine. These men were responsible for justice, taxation, army recruitment, and public works in their regions – known as praetorian prefectures – allowing Constantine to meet with only the most important people and tackle only the biggest matters.

One of those matters was religion. You see, Constantine was a passionate convert and wanted to mould the empire to his will. He declared that Christianity was the one true faith, and that the Christian Church had the full support of the imperial government. As such, he stopped maintaining traditional temples and instead funded the construction of hundreds of churches in settlements across the empire, from regional market towns to huge cities. In Jerusalem, for instance, he built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which contained both the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and the tomb where he was buried and resurrected.

Constantine also promoted Christians to high office and encouraged them to join his government. Many ambitious men converted to advance their careers in the administration or to rise through the ranks of the army; and average citizens, too, were increasingly changing their beliefs. The Romans saw victory in battle as an undeniable sign of divine favour, and the fact that Constantine had won every battle he’d fought was clear proof that the traditional gods were false and that the only true god was the Christian god.

Yet the Christians weren’t united in their faith, as there were still lots of debates about the correct interpretation of the Bible, their holiest text. One of the biggest debates was sparked by an Egyptian priest named Arius. The Bible states that God has three aspects: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – which is known as the Trinity. Arius argued that, since Jesus was the Son, then he must’ve come after the Father, and so he was subordinate to the Father. Arius’ ideology, known as Arianism, was at odds with those who believed that the Father and Son had always existed alongside each other without having a beginning, meaning that they were equal to one another.

Arianism divided Christian communities across the empire, which was a nightmare for Constantine. The emperor was a pragmatic man and he wanted the Church to be united in its teachings – whatever those teachings were, as he didn’t really care about theological details. Since the clergy had failed to resolve this issue on their own, he decided to put them all in a room and force them to resolve it.

And so, in 325, the emperor called an ecumenical council – ecumenical deriving from the Greek word oikoumenikos, meaning the whole world, which was fitting because all bishops in the empire were invited. Only about 300 out of 1,800 were able to attend the meeting in Nicaea, a city just on the other side of the Bosphorus opposite New Rome, but every part of the empire was represented. After weeks of debate, a majority of bishops finally agreed that the Father and Son were of the same essence, that they had existed alongside each other since before time, and that they were equal. This statement of faith, known as the Nicene Creed, was written down to be shared by churches across the empire. Arius and his followers were condemned as heretics, and their writings were to be burned. But the fact that a majority of bishops had agreed on one interpretation didn’t automatically convince the other side that they were wrong; for those who believed in Arius’ teachings, this was a matter of salvation, and they weren’t going to abandon their faith because the majority told them to. They were going to resist and continue worshipping as they believed was right.

Nevertheless, Constantine considered that the Council of Nicaea had done its duty. Now that the correct interpretation of the scriptures was decided, it was just a matter of enforcing it; it would take time, sure, but the Church could take care of that while he focused on other affairs.

After six years of construction, the emperor’s capital city was inaugurated on May 11, 330, with wide streets, impressive monuments, and an imposing palace. Though it was meant to be called “New Rome,” people dubbed it “the city of Constantine,” and the term became so popular that it was officially adopted. So, Nova Roma became Constantinopolis, or, in English, Constantinople.

The capital was only a three-week march from the Danubian frontier, so to ensure that no barbarians would barge in, the emperor focused on making that border impenetrable. Accordingly, he invested heavily in the provinces along the Danube, using the army to rebuild any damaged or destroyed buildings and to expand existing defenses. For instance, in the city of Tomis on the coast of the Black Sea, the buildings destroyed during the raids of the 3^rd century were rebuilt, a new aqueduct was put in, roads were repaved, a new gate was built, and new walls were erected. The military commander of the province had his headquarters just outside Tomis in a camp, called Constantiana after the emperor. A version of that name would eventually be applied to the city itself, which is how the modern city on that site got its name: Constanța. And, as a sidenote, it’s in Constanța that I would be born sixteen centuries after this story.

Dozens of other settlements were fortified along the Danube, and the emperor also transferred more troops to the bridgeheads on the north bank of the river, since he intended to expand imperial control there. In fact, Constantine had already campaigned north of the river before he had become sole emperor. As you’ll recall from last episode, he had resided at Sirmium near the Danube while he was sharing the empire with Licinius.

As he had waited for an opportunity to strike his rival, Constantine had spent several summers campaigning against the nomadic Sarmatian Iazyges in their homelands east of Pannonia. By 322, he had subjugated them and forced them to become foederati. In effect, the Iazyges became allies of the Romans; they would remain where they were and act as a buffer between the empire and the barbarians beyond it. The Roman army built a defensive line around the lands of the Iazyges facing outwards, consisting of earthen ramparts and ditches as well as castra, and these fortifications were staffed by Roman soldiers as well as Iazyges warriors.

A couple of years later when Constantine became sole ruler, he turned his attention towards the Goths, intending to force the same settlement on them. In the 60 years since the empire had abandoned the original province of Dacia, the Goths had moved onto its territory and subjugated the various Dacian tribes that had migrated there before them, as well as the descendants of Romans that had stayed behind. By Constantine’s reign, the Goths controlled the lands from the western end of the Carpathian Mountains to the coast of the Black Sea, and had lived there for two generations, leading the Romans to call that area Gothia.

Yet it’s important to understand that the lands under Gothic rule weren’t only inhabited by Goths. For instance, archeologists have found a workshop in Gothia that made glass using Roman techniques, which suggests that some glassmakers from the original province of Dacia had stayed after the evacuation and passed on their craft to their children. Another example is that of the Carpi, who lived in and around the Carpathian Mountains. This Dacian tribe had been a powerful enemy of the Romans during the 3^rd century, but after Constantine’s reign, we don’t hear anything more about them in our sources. It’s not because they were exterminated by the Goths, but because they were absorbed under their rule, and Roman writers very rarely talk about a people if they don’t have an army.

Contemporary historians focused on kings and generals because that’s what concerned them at the time: which people attacked us when, where, how many were there, and who led them? They didn’t care about these peoples’ economies, cultures, and societies. And so, they applied the blanket term “Goths” to the inhabitants of the region because they were the ones wielding military power. As such, when Roman writers speak of the Goths north of the Danube, they’re often talking in political terms, not ethnic ones. Of course, the Goths made up a significant part of the population of this area, but there were also Dacian tribes and Roman descendants that lived in the region but who remain invisible because they didn’t wield power.

We also have to keep in mind that the Goths weren’t united under a single ruler. To better understand how they were organised, we can contrast them with the independent Dacian kingdom under Decebal, which we’ve explored in episodes five through seven. Back then in the 1^st century, the Dacian king lived in a fortified capital city; he had a council of nobles who administered the towns in his realm, as well as a class of priests who granted him divine support. The Dacian kingdom minted coins, undertook large construction projects, coordinated production in workshops to equip its warriors, and could make treaties as a unified political unit.

In contrast, the Goths in the 4^th century were divided into several tribes, each with its own king who ruled a decentralized society. The king didn’t hold a permanent court, but instead let his nobles rule the various settlements in his realm, and called upon them only when needed, like when he was planning a raid or a war. In times of peace, he let his nobles do as they wished as long as they gave him his tribute of food, goods, and warriors. The populace practiced agriculture, raised livestock, and made pottery and iron tools without much interference from their king or nobles; their lives were much more dependent on the decisions of their village elders.

So when Constantine looked beyond the Danube, he saw disunited Gothic tribes that ruled several peoples. After becoming sole emperor, Constantine ordered the construction of a stone bridge connecting the city of Oescus on the south bank of the river with that of Sucidava on the north bank, making it the first permanent bridge since Trajan’s two centuries before. The project was completed four years into his reign, in 328, and Constantine then immediately invaded Gothic territory. Over the next few summers, the Roman army devastated the region between the river and the mountains and captured thousands of prisoners. By 332, the Gothic tribes were completely exhausted and were forced to become foederati. Like the Iazyges, they were allowed to stay where they were, but would turn their warriors the other way around and defend the empire against other barbarians.

But Constantine hadn’t built a permanent bridge over the Danube just for that. He had much bigger ambitions, and after subjugating the Gothic tribes south of the Carpathians, he pushed his armies north and defeated those beyond the mountains as well. Writing 25 years after these events, emperor Julian relates that Constantine reconquered the entire province of Dacia which Trajan had created; we have no details about this campaign, but it was a massive achievement that spoke to the renewed strength of the Roman army and the emperor’s own immense determination. However, Roman occupation seems to have been light inside the Carpathian arc. While the Goths south of the mountains were under direct imperial control, those to the north were more akin to vassals, coming to the aid of the Romans but otherwise governing themselves independently.

In the area directly under his control, Constantine built another defensive line consisting of earthen ramparts and ditches punctuated with forts. This 700-kilometre line ran West to East on the plains between the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River, and its fortifications were staffed by Gothic warriors as well as Roman soldiers. I’ve put a couple of maps up on the website to give you a better idea of the imperial presence north of the Danube. The first shows the territory Constantine took from the Iazyges and Goths, while the second focuses on the lands of the former province of Dacia.

This renewed Roman control between the Carpathians and the Danube didn’t lead to an influx of colonists, as it had done in Trajan’s time. At that point in the 2^nd century, the empire had been at peace for generations, and there were plenty of people willing to relocate to get a piece of land and start a new life in a prosperous province staunchly defended by the legions. Now in the 4^th century, the empire had gone through several crises, civil wars, and plagues; its communities were just beginning to recover, and its inhabitants weren’t enthusiastic about moving to a land defended by a mix of Romans and Goths.

In order to govern the area, the imperial authorities had to collaborate with the Gothic nobles they had defeated, but they also sought to strengthen their position by building links with the Roman descendants that lived in the area. For example, the city of Malva still had a community of Roman descendants, and the army repaved the road connecting the city to the rest of the empire. Though Malva never regained the vitality it once had as an urban centre, it was used as a market hub for surrounding villages and as a transit point for soldiers and supplies going to the frontiers.

Furthermore, Constantine applied his imperial policy to this reconquered land as if it was part of the empire; indeed, coins minted in 332 name Gothia as if it was a new province. The communities under direct imperial control included villages of Goths, Dacians, Roman descendants, and some of mixed ancestry, and they were all put under the empire’s administrative system. Their young men were conscripted into the army, and their village elders had to gather goods to pay taxes. Artisans and traders from faraway villages now flocked to markets in the cities, whether it was Malva on the plains or Sucidava on the river. We find goods made in the empire both south and north of the Carpathians: oil and wine vases, lamps, fibulas, glass beads, and tools, as well as numerous coins. The use of coinage in the region had nearly collapsed after Aurelian’s retreat, then slowly recovered and now exploded under Constantine’s reign. Gold coins were given to Gothic leaders for the upkeep of their warriors, while silver and bronze ones were used in everyday transactions.

With the empire once more present north of the Danube, Christianity began spreading there at a rapid pace. Constantine built a church at Sucidava on the north bank of the river, which attracted believers from across the region and also served as a base for missionaries to head into the interior.

Yet Christianity also spread organically, as there were some Christians who had lived amongst the Goths for generations. Remember how, during the 3^rd century, the Goths had raided the Balkans and Asia Minor and captured Roman citizens? Well, they brought those captives back with them north of the Danube. Undoubtedly, many prisoners were physically, mentally, and sexually abused, as well tortured and malnourished. But the Goths weren’t looking to kill them; they wanted to keep these prisoners alive and put them to work in their communities. These captive Romans made the best of their situation and adapted to their surroundings, and many left behind descendants.

One of these descendants was a man named Ulfilas. His ancestors were Christians who had been captured in Asia Minor in the 260s; when they were brought to Gothia, they managed to maintain a Roman Christian community and passed on their religion, language, and culture to their children. Ulfilas’ father may have been a Goth, but he himself kept much of his Roman identity; in addition to Gothic, he spoke Latin and Greek even two generations after his ancestors had been forcibly displaced. He was also a passionate Christian and, by age 30, he had become a preacher in his local church. His reputation soon spread, and the Gothic aristocracy attached him to a delegation to Constantinople, thinking that the Romans would be better disposed to one of their own. Ulfilas lived in the capital for a few years in the 330s and was then ordained the bishop of Gothia.

In 341, he returned north of the Danube and spent the next few years preaching and converting the population. Ulfilas himself believed in Arius’ interpretation of the Trinity, but he still had the support of the empire. By this point, Constantine was dead, his sons had divided the empire between themselves, and the one who ruled in the East had Arian sympathies. Even so, most villagers in Gothia didn’t understand or care about the different views on the nature of the Trinity. That was a debate for bishops, whereas they were attracted by the core tenets of Christianity: God had sent His Son to Earth to die for our sins, and he was then resurrected; if you believe in Jesus’ resurrection and follow his teachings, then you’ll receive eternal life. It was a powerful message, especially for the poor and mistreated, and many people converted.

So many people were converting, in fact, that the Gothic aristocracy was feeling threatened. You see, they still held on to their traditional beliefs, and Christianity was associated with Rome. To stop people from aligning more closely with the empire, they expelled Ulfilas and his closest followers in 348. This wasn’t a mass expulsion of Christians by an enraged populace, but a targeted exile of a few visible individuals by the elite. This political act shows that the Gothic nobility collaborating with the imperial authorities still had significant power; the expulsion of Ulfilas strained relations with Constantinople, but it didn’t lead to a break between the two sides; the Goths were still too valuable as a buffer state to antagonise.

Even so, Ulfilas’ expulsion wasn’t successful at stopping the spread of Christianity, nor the influx of preachers. Ulfilas established himself in Moesia just south of the Danube and, for the next three decades, worked to spread Christianity amongst the Goths and to send missionaries to their communities. With his followers, he invented a Gothic alphabet based on the Greek one and then translated the Bible into Gothic. It was an immense achievement; for the first time, a Germanic language received a written form, and ideas could be shared in writing.

Even without the bishop of Gothia physically present in his diocese, Christianity continued to grow in the region throughout the 4^th century. Everyday contact between Christians and various Gothic and Dacian individuals led to more converts. Churches sprang up in numerous villages, and they allowed believers to gather, worship together, and create networks between different communities.

Christianisation was most acute in areas that had closer ties with the empire or that had more Roman descendants, such as former cities, castra, and villas. For instance, in cities like Apulum, Potaissa, and Napoca in the northern parts of the former province of Dacia, we find altars to traditional gods that were carved with crosses, lamps with Christian symbols like the Chi Rho or the dove, and graves with rings inscribed with crosses. Yet such objects are found all around the Carpathian Mountains in various communities. Some religious objects were made by devout locals, while others were imported from the empire to serve the needs of a growing number of believers. One such object is a bronze disc with a cross and the Latin inscription Ego Zenovius votum posui, which means “I Zenovius placed this gift.” The message presumably refers to an unknown missionary who had given the object as a gift to a Latin-speaking Christian community in the former province of Dacia.

And so, for more than a generation, from the 330s to the 360s, the Roman empire once again had a presence north of the Danube, bringing with it its material culture, administration, language, and religion. We’ll pick up the story next time in the mid-360s, but next time will come a bit later than usual.

I’m moving to another apartment in less than a week, and with all the packing, unpacking, and setting up, I may not be able to deliver the next episode in two weeks like you’re used to. But I’ll release the next episode as soon as I can, and when it arrives, so will a people that will terrify all before them: the Huns.