War erupts between the Dacians and Romans, and after a series of setbacks, the Dacians elect a new king to lead them to victory.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 1, Episode 6: Decebal

Last episode, we explored Dacian civilization and the economic and cultural exchanges it had with the Roman empire whose borders now rested on the Danube. Today, we’ll follow the events which brought these two neighbours into irreconcilable conflict.

The Dacians had raided the territories south of the Danube for generations, and this practice continued even after the Romans arrived in the area during the reign of Augustus. For the next hundred years, bands of warriors would occasionally cross the river and raid the empire’s settlements. But the Romans held firm and built permanent fortifications along the Danube to repulse these attacks. By the 70s CE, they had made a deal with the barbarians to the north: the emperor conferred the title of “ally and friend of the Roman people” to the Dacian king, and paid him every year not to attack.

This arrangement suited both sides. The Dacian king received a regular shipment of coin which he distributed to his nobles, and which they then distributed to their dependents. Instead of risking their lives for loot that may or may not be worth the risk, Dacian warriors were now sure to routinely receive a portion of the empire’s wealth; what they used to take, they were now given, and so were happy to leave the empire be.

The Romans, too, benefitted from the deal. Citizens south of the Danube could live without fear of being killed or of having their produce and goods stolen; as such, the empire not only fulfilled its duty to protect them, but also ensured that it could reliably collect taxes from them.

The peace brought other economic advantages as well. The Dacians now had many more coins in their pouches, and what do you think they did with them? That’s right, they bought stuff, and they bought it from the Romans. As we’ve seen last episode, we find plenty of luxury Roman imports in Dacian settlements. Though the Romans didn’t consider this aspect, the treaty gave them another market for their goods, and the payments made to the Dacians subsidized their sale and helped their own artisans.

Finally, there were important military benefits. With no more raids, the legions along the Danube didn’t lose soldiers in constant defensive battles, and could instead focus on maintaining order. In fact, the responsibility of dealing with barbarians beyond the border was effectively transferred from legionaries to Dacian warriors. As long as the Dacians remained allies, they could prevent less friendly and more unpredictable peoples, like the nomadic Sarmatians who lived next to them, from approaching the borders of the empire and demanding their portion of its wealth. By making an ally of Dacia, Rome turned it into a buffer state that reduced threats to the empire and helped maintain its stability in the Balkans.

This dynamic between the Romans and Dacians worked well for over a decade, but the relationship would change with the ascension of emperor Domitian in 81 CE.

You see, Domitian used a lot of money during his reign. Among other expenses, he rebuilt parts of Rome and erected new structures, organized numerous contests and banquets, gave generous donatives, and raised the pay of the army by one third. To help pay for these expenditures, he decided to extract more money from tributary peoples and reduce subsidies to allies. This was obviously unpopular. In 85 CE, a Berber tribe in North Africa revolted against Roman tax collectors who tried to extort more tribute from them. That same year, payments made to the Dacians were decreased, and as you can imagine, they had a similar reaction.

The Dacians had grown accustomed to regular shipments of coin and to the lifestyle they afforded. Their king at the time, Duras, had to respond: if the Roman emperor thought he could change the terms of their deal, he would remind him why the payments were necessary. When the Danube froze at the end of the year 85, Dacian warriors crossed the river to take what they were no longer given.

Most of the Dacian army marched on foot and had little equipment. Due to a custom which stated that only nobles could cover their heads, common warriors went bareheaded, while their chieftains wore a cloth hat that resembled a Phrygian cap. Dacian infantry didn’t use any body armour either, but instead wore a tunic, trousers, sandals, and cloak. They were armed with clubs, spears, axes, and swords, which they used in conjunction with oval wooden shields painted with ornamental designs. Some warriors carried a unique Dacian weapon called the falx. This was a double-handed curved sword with the blade pointing towards its wielder; often described as a war-scythe, the falx was a terrifying weapon that could snatch shields away from enemy soldiers and cleave through flesh.

Besides the melee warriors, the Dacians had units of archers armed with recurve bows, and a large number of horsemen, neither of which wore armour. The cavalry employed spears, swords, javelins, and bows, and used their mobility to strike enemies quickly and ferociously, and overwhelm them with their numbers.

The Dacian army used four-wheeled wagons to transport supplies like food and tools; and these wagons would be loaded with loot after a successful attack. However, when it comes to these attacks, we don’t know what formations the Dacian forces employed in battle.

But they must have had some sort of organization. Among the masses of warriors, standard bearers carried banners shaped like dragons. These consisted of a cloth tube depicting an animal with a serpent’s body and a wolf’s head, which was placed atop a wooden pole. This Dacian standard, called draco by the Romans, was held up to catch the wind, or carried by a horseman as he galloped; the air that rushed through the tube inflated the dragon and made a piercing sound meant to embolden the Dacians and frighten their enemies.

This Dacian army of melee warriors, archers, and cavalry crossed into Moesia and pillaged Roman settlements. They took whatever goods they wanted, attacked those who resisted, and spread panic throughout the province.

The governor Gaius Oppius Sabinus was completely surprised by this massive attack, and quickly mustered his legions. His forces looked and operated very differently from those of the Dacians.

A Roman legion at this time mainly consisted of foot soldiers using swords and shields. Legionaries were protected by leather and metal body armour, a metal helmet, and a rectangular wooden shield. They were armed with a short, straight, double-edged sword mainly used for thrusting; a large dagger; and two javelins whose tip was designed to bend on impact so that it couldn’t be easily extracted from its target nor reused by the enemy.

Before battle, legionaries formed several rows and locked their shields to create a wall. If they were fired upon by archers, the rows behind the first one held their shields over their heads to protect the entire formation. As they approached the enemy, the legionaries threw their javelins to inflict initial damage before methodically marching forward to push the enemy with their shields and cut them down with their swords.

Legions were aided by units of auxiliary soldiers, which were volunteers who didn’t hold Roman citizenship. Auxiliaries occupied forts in the empire’s peripheral provinces as well as strongpoints along the frontier defenses.

These troops had less equipment than legionaries: they wore leather corselets and metal helmets, and used javelins and short swords along with oval wooden shields. Commanded by Roman citizens, the auxiliaries were just as numerous as the legionaries and fought using the same formations, though during battle, they were stationed on the flanks.

With three legions and their attached auxiliaries, Sabinus must have had more than thirty thousand soldiers under his command. We don’t know how many troops Duras commanded, but since peoples from beyond the frontiers usually outnumbered the Romans, we can infer that the Dacian army must have been bigger.

Early in 86 CE, the Roman forces blocked the path of the invaders, and the Dacians took up the challenge. Arrows and javelins flew, swords and shields clashed, hooves and battle standards roared. In the end, the Dacians warriors overwhelmed the legionaries, and Sabinus was killed in the fighting. Roman forces retreated, and the Dacians marched deeper into the empire.

Upon hearing the news, Domitian immediately headed for Moesia under the protection of his elite bodyguard unit called the Praetorian Guard. Once he arrived, he divided the province into two: Moesia Superior and Moesia Inferior, named after their position along the flow of the Danube. This division was meant to make the region easier to govern and defend, since each province would have its own forces and commander who could more quickly respond to threats.

As for the fighting, Domitian entrusted that to the commander of the Praetorian Guard, Cornelius Fuscus. The general was given five legions to deal with the Dacian threat, bringing his forces to nearly sixty thousand soldiers. He marched them to face Duras, defeated the invading army, and forced it to flee back across the Danube in the spring of 86 CE. When Domitian received the news, he was ecstatic, and soon returned to Rome to celebrate a triumph for his victory over the Dacians.

But the war wasn’t quite over. As the battered Dacians returned to their homeland, they realized they needed to change their strategy, and that meant replacing their king. We don’t have their side of the story, but we can infer a few things from what happened next. The Dacian nobles may have thought that Duras had led them into a disastrous war and that he didn’t have the vision or skill necessary to ensure victory. To replace him, they chose a man named Decebal who had gained a reputation for both his military and diplomatic prowess. Duras peacefully gave up his throne, and Decebal now had to devise a strategy to get his people out of this war.

His first move was to send messengers to the Roman emperor asking to discuss peace, but Domitian refused; his side was winning, and he saw no reason to stop now. He ordered the victorious Fuscus to march into Dacia and decisively defeat the barbarians to show them the consequences of attacking Rome.

Upon learning of the invasion plan, Decebal sent another delegation to Domitian. This embassy said that the Dacians would continue to inflict defeats upon the Romans unless every citizen paid Decebal two silver coins every year. This was an outrageous proposal, and that was exactly the point. Decebal knew that there was nothing he could say to change Roman plans to cross the Danube, but if he insulted and infuriated them, he might push them to act recklessly and make a mistake.

In the summer of 86 CE, Fuscus ordered his soldiers to build a bridge of boats over the Danube and invade Dacia. He marched across the plains and headed directly for the capital of Sarmizegetusa in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains, and encountered little resistance.

But as the Romans entered the foothills, the Dacian army ambushed them. In the ensuing battle, Fuscus was killed, an entire legion was annihilated, and its legionary standards were taken. The Roman camp was raided, and the Dacians captured numerous weapons, valuables, and prisoners.

After vanquishing Fuscus, Decebal again sent messengers to negotiate peace, but Domitian would not end the war on a defeat. He appointed the governor of Moesia Superior, Lucius Tettius Iulianus, as the new commander and tasked him with avenging Fuscus’ defeat and cowing the Dacians.

In 87 CE, Iulianus crossed the Danube. To embolden his soldiers, he told them to write their names and the names of their centurions on their shields so that everyone could distinguish between the brave and the cowardly. Iulianus engaged Decebal’s second-in-command and defeated him, then headed towards Sarmizegetusa. In response, Decebal cut down trees, adorned them with weapons, and placed them in the citadels of the mountain passes to make the Romans think his army was more numerous than it was. Our sources tell us this trick worked, as the Romans retreated out of fear of being overwhelmed by the Dacians. However, this trick may not have happened at all; an experienced commander like Iulianus would’ve sent scouts ahead and discovered the ruse, but, even so, he may have feared being ambushed like Fuscus and thought he wouldn’t be able to take Sarmizegetusa anyway, so he decided not to advance any further. He remained in Dacia over the winter and ravaged the countryside the following year, but made no substantial gains in the war.

While this campaign was ongoing, Domitian launched a punitive expedition against the Quadi and Marcomanni, two Germanic peoples living west of Dacia who were allied with the empire but who had refused to help the Romans in their war. Domitian hoped to defeat these Germanic tribes in battle and then force them to attack the Dacians from the west, but instead, the Quadi and Marcomanni defeated his forces.

Now facing a two-front war in which his armies were stalled both against the Germans and the Dacians, Domitian sent messengers to Decebal in 89 CE asking for a truce. The Dacian king accepted, as he had tried to stop this damaging war since the beginning of his reign. However, he didn’t go to negotiate with Domitian himself. The emperor had previously put to death peace embassies from the Quadi and Marcomanni, and so Decebal was weary of treachery. To avoid a potential trap, he sent his brother as his representative, along with a few captured Roman prisoners and weapons as a show of goodwill. After the two men reached a deal, Domitian crowned Decebal’s brother with a diadem as if he was the victor in this war and could choose who ruled the Dacians. But Decebal’s brother wasn’t seduced by this fake crown, and returned to his king’s side.

For his part, Domitian lavished his soldiers with honours and money, and returned to Rome with a few dissident Dacian nobles and a letter he claimed was written by Decebal; we don’t know what the letter said, but scholars agree it was a forgery meant to make the emperor look good. Domitian celebrated a triumph, though he had no captured treasures to show his people, and perhaps realising that he couldn’t push the fantasy of his victory too much, he didn’t adopt the title of Dacicus.

It was clear that Rome had lost this confrontation. The peace terms granted the Dacian kingdom the status of foedus, meaning it once again became an ally that would be given subsidies; the amount was even higher than before the war, now reaching eight million sesterces, which was roughly equivalent to the annual wages needed for an entire legion. As part of the deal, Domitian also provided Decebal with a number of skills artisans; while their specialties aren’t mentioned, the sources state that their crafts could be applied in times of peace as well as war, which implies that some of them were experienced in building fortifications and siege weapons.

Contemporary Roman writers saw this peace as a humiliation. Domitian had failed to avenge the deaths of Sabinus and Fuscus and had lost thousands of soldiers. Meanwhile, the Dacians had achieved their goal of preventing the empire from reducing its payments, had in fact increased the subsidies they received, and had negotiated from a position of equality, which was insulting to Roman honour.

The war had lasted a bit over three years, from late 85 to early 89, and the peace was a compromise made necessary by the losses and exhaustion on both sides. Domitian probably planned on restarting hostilities, as he stationed more troops in Moesia Superior. But resistance to his rule in the following years prevented him from devoting energy to a new campaign.

Resentment with Domitian’s leadership reached such a point that, in 96, he was assassinated by members of his court. Within hours, the Roman Senate which had opposed him his entire reign proclaimed one of their own as emperor. This was Nerva, a 65-year-old man without children. He was chosen to serve the interests of the Senate, but was unpopular with the army, and would struggle to assert his authority. Preoccupied as they were with political disorder, the Romans left the Dacians alone for the time being.

A hundred and fifty years ago, Burebista had created the first Dacian kingdom by uniting nobles under his banner in the face of external threats; but his realm didn’t evolve solid institutions, and once he was murdered, the nobles returned to their local powerbases.

By comparison, the present Dacian kingdom was more cohesive, developed, and prosperous. A network of villages and davae formed a connected economy and culture centred on the capital, where the nobility had positions in the ruling structure and a say about who sat atop it. To illustrate the nobility’s integration into the governance of the realm, we only need to look at two examples from our narrative.

Whereas Burebista had welcomed a Greek ally into his court and used him as an ambassador, Decebal was surrounded by Dacian nobles and sent them to negotiate with the Romans. And when the realm’s nobles became disaffected with Burebista, they assassinated him; whereas when they grew dissatisfied with Duras, they used their political influence to peacefully replace him with Decebal.

As such, in the interval between Burebista and Duras, Dacian society had developed social and legal norms which went beyond the will of an individual, and were instead followed and upheld by the collective. By Decebal’s time, the Dacian kingdom can be described as a state with organized and stable institutions.

This more integrated society allowed the Dacian king to better mobilize the resources of his realm, which became a crucial concern for Decebal.

When the peace was signed in 89 CE, Roman troops under Iulianus were still on Dacian territory, and Decebal didn’t think he could stop another concerted attack. Given the situation, he had managed to negotiate a tremendously advantageous treaty for his people. But he knew that once the Romans resolved their inner conflicts, they would likely seek to undo the humiliation of Domitian’s treaty; so, he needed to reform his army and defenses before they decided to take revenge.

Decebal had seen that, in direct confrontations, the well-equipped and disciplined legions outmatched his forces, which weren’t drilled in the use of formations and lacked armour and heavy weapons.

In the decade following the war, Decebal welcomed Roman deserters and, using the subsidies he was given, paid them to instruct his army in Roman tactics. The goal was to teach his warriors how the Romans operated, as well as to train them to adopt some of their battlefield tactics.

Decebal also used the artisans he had received from the empire to reinforce his fortifications, forge more weapons for his warriors, make body armour and helmets based on legionary designs, and build catapults and other war machines which were used by the Romans.

The Greek historian Dion Chrysostomos was in Dacia in 98 CE and saw the natives preparing for war. He says: “I, who was useless for all such things, came among men who were not dullards, and yet had no leisure to listen to speeches, but were high-strung and tense like race-horses at the starting barriers, fretting at the delay and in their excitement and eagerness pawing the ground with their hooves. There one could see everywhere swords, everywhere corselets, everywhere spears, and the whole place was crowded with horses, with arms, and with armed men. Quite alone I appeared in the midst of this mighty host, perfectly undisturbed and a most peaceful observer of war, weak in body and advanced in years, desiring to see strong men contending for empire and power, and their opponents for freedom and native land.”

The moment when the natives would have to defend themselves from that powerful empire was close at hand; but that story will have to wait three weeks, as I will take a short break for the holidays. When I return, we’ll find ourselves in 98 CE, the year Nerva died and was succeeded by an accomplished and energetic general named Trajan. While in the army, Trajan had contemplated the situation on the Danube for years. Now that he had all the empire’s resources at his disposal, he would set out to resolve the Dacian problem, permanently.