Romes Dacian Wars: Domitian, Trajan, and Strategy on the Danube, Part I*I

Feature

Everett L. Wheeler

Abstract Two recent major monographs, one on the Dacian wars of Domitian and Trajan (Stefan) and another on ancient migrations from the Ukraine into the eastern Balkans (Batty, Rome and the Nomads) invite discussion and evaluation. A survey of the problematic literary and archaeological sources (not least Trajan's Column) for the history of this area in the first and second centuries A.D. prefaces an evaluation of new archaeological evidence on Dacian defenses and innovative topographical identifications. The development of a Geto-Dacian state in Transylvania within the context of multiple ethnicities on the Lower and Middle Danube is discussed and use of new archaeological discoveries to clarify narratives of the wars of 8489, 101102, and 105106 is evaluated. Interpretations of scenes on Trajan's Column and the metopes of the Adamklissi monument remain controversial.

he Roman conquest of Dacia (the ancient forerunner of modern Romania) has not ceased to fascinate, as demonstrates the weighty tome here discussedon my bathroom scale well over six pounds of arguments, photographs, maps, and*Part II of Everett Wheelers Romes Dacian Wars: Domitian, Trajan, and Strategy on the Danube will appear in the Journal of Military History 75, no. 1 ( January 2011).

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Everett L. Wheeler, scholar in residence at Duke University received his A.B. from Indiana University/Bloomington and a Ph.D. from Duke. He specializes in the history of military theory, ancient history, and Armenian-Caucasian studies. His extensive publications in ancient military history include Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery (1988), translation (with Peter Krentz) of Polyaenus, Stratagems of War, 2 vols. (1994), and (ed.) The Armies of Classical Greece (2007). Besides regular participation in the International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies and the Lyon Congress on the Roman Army, he serves on the editorial board of Revue des tudes Militaires Anciennes.The Journal of Military History 74 (October 2010): 11851227. Copyright 2010 by The Society for Military History, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Editor, Journal of Military History, George C. Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, P.O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450. Authorization to photocopy items for internal and personal use is granted by the copyright holder for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 121 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA (www.copyright.com), provided the appropriate fee is paid to the CCC.

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bibliography: Alexandre Simon Stefan, Les guerres daciques de Domitien et de Trajan: Architecture militaire, topographie, images et histoire, Collection de lcole Franaise de Rome 353 (Rome: cole Franaise de Rome, 2005). A trio of general theses undergirds this mountain of archaeological and topographical detail: first, the people generally called Getae in Greek and Daci in Latin were not barbarians like their German or Sarmatian neighbors, but a strongly Hellenized state of some sophistication; second, the Emperor Domitian (r. 8196 A.D.), the victim of hostile senatorial historiography and the propaganda of Trajan (r. 98117), merits rehabilitation: in reality, Trajan only imitated and continued Domitians work in both the military and artistic spheres; third, Stefans massive assemblage and reevaluation of archaeological data on the Dacian wars, combined with innovative use of aerial photography, permits new topographical interpretations of Roman campaigns and a reassertion of the historical accuracy of scenes on Trajans Column. Proper appreciation of the authors contentions, however, merits a prolegomenon on the archaeological and historiographical difficulties of treating Romes Dacian wars, particularly as Stefans work spans the history of the Geto-Dacians from the late sixth century B.C. to the Roman annexation in 106 A.D., and a subsequent recent work has much to say on the context of these conflicts.1

1. R. Batty, Rome and the Nomads: The Pontic-Danubian Realm in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), attempts to trace the history of migrations from the Ukraine into Romania and Bulgaria (fifth century B.C.fourth century A.D.). Although supplementing Stefans tome, Battys disappointing work suffers inter alia, as this papers commentary will document, from factual errors and out-of-date or omitted bibliography (e.g., ignorance of A. Suceveanu and A. Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine [Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedica, 1991]; and A. Alemany, Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000]). His curious pronouncements about Roman policy on the Lower Danube derive exclusively from a very limited (cherrypicked?) knowledge of the literature on Roman strategy (discussed in Part II of this article). For other (and less tendentious) recent surveys of Roman archaeology on the Danube, although not comprehensive and somewhat disappointing from a military historians perspective, see J. Wilkes, Recent Work along the Middle and Lower Danube, Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998): 23197; and Wilkes, The Roman Danube: An Archaeological Survey, Journal of Roman Studies 95 (2005): 124225. Footnotes to this discussion, modestly updating Stefans fifty-nine double-columned pages (70563) of bibliography through 2003, alert readers to important work available in North American and Western European libraries without attempting to be comprehensive. Stefan attests the prolific production of Romanian scholars, including many works generally inaccessible outside Romania, and often adds his own twist to other excavators ideas, properly cited in his footnotes. His fuller documentation will not be reproduced. Full bibliographical citations for all ancient sources will not be given; English translations of most are available in the Loeb Classical Library series. The following abbreviations appear: AE=LAnne pigraphique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1888-); ILS=H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 3 vols. in 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 18921916). Apologies are owed to the Editor, whose patience in awaiting this paper and toleration of its length are exemplary.

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The skills of siegecraft, engineering, and logistics required to penetrate the sophisticated and extensive Dacian defenses of the Carpathians probably exceeded those of the more famous sieges of the Jewish War (6670 A.D.) and certainly involved much larger forces on both sides. Although the Dacian conflicts of Domitian (8489) and Trajan (101102, 105106) lack a Josephuss detailed narrative, the spades of Romanian archaeologists, active for over a century, have compensated for sparse literary sources by unearthing much of the Dacian fortification system and providing clues to the campaigns. Above all (quite literally), Roman victory required capture of the Dacian capital, Sarmizegethusa Regia (modern Gradishtea Muchelelui)no small feat for operations at an elevation of nearly 1,000 meters in the heart of the southern Carpathians Orashtie Mountains. The capital lies on a narrow ridge, which peaks at Muncel (elevation 1,563.5 meters) and whose sheer slopes plunge into the Alb and Godeannul Rivers on its northern and southern sides respectively. Built on fourteen man-made terraces with additional habitation extending along the ridge for 2 kilometers to the west and about 1 kilometer to the north, Sarmizegethusas massive fortifications, exploiting every topographical advantage, enclosed an urban area of over three acres.2 But only half of the capitals urban space has even been explored, much less dug. Extensive forestation, greater today than in Antiquity, has impeded understanding this site besides many others of these wars. Moreover, the potholes of treasure-hunters as early as the Napoleonic era, seeking fabled Dacian gold, and the discontinuity of Romanian excavations, often with different working assumptions, have complicated discerning the sites pristine state. Not least, the Romans, true masters of wiping cities off the face of the earth, as modern investigators of Hellenistic Corinth and Carthage (both destroyed in 146 B.C.) can verify, left little behind. These factors render Sarmizegethusa Regia an archaeological nightmare. Dacian accomplishments and Romanias Roman heritage play a significant role in Romanian national prideperhaps even more so than with the popular notions of Roman Britain or Roman Germany, spawning antiquarianism and costumed wargamers acting out their fantasies. In 1980, when Romania hosted the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Bucharest, the regime of Nicolae Ceaucescu simultaneously celebrated 2,050 years of a Romanian national state, taking 70 B.C. as a firm date (the real date in the first or second quarter of the first century B.C. is hazy) for Burebistas creation of a Dacian empire, extending from Ukrainian Olbia on the Black Sea south to the Bulgarian Haemus Mountains (modern Stara Planina), and as far west as modern Slovakia.3 More recently (282. Stefans work dwarfs I. Olteans (Dacia: Landscape, Colonisation and Romanisation [London: Routledge, 2007]) minimalist view of Sarmizegethusa Regia: 87, 89. 3. On the Ceaucescu regimes control of even dissertation topics in ancient history, see V. Lica, The Coming of Rome into the Dacian World, trans. C. Patac and M. Neagu, rev. A. R. Birley (Konstanz: UVK Universsittsverlag, 2000), 35 n.50; Romanian originswhether Geto-DacianMILITARY HISTORY

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September1 October 2006), an international conference at Cluj commemorated Trajans creation of provincia Dacia (106 A.D.).4 The current mania for commemorative academic conferences, however, is not exclusively Romanian. The 2,000th anniversary of the reign of Trajan (98117), the first Spanish emperor, prompted a conference in Spain and, as Trajan was in Germany when Nerva (his predecessor) died, a German conference of 1998 has been followed by a semi-popular book of useful essays and nice pictures.5 Nor should a recent biography of Trajan in English (now corrected and reprinted) be ignored, although not a replacement for Paribenis substantial two-volume study.6 Trajan and the Dacian wars are currently hot. Apart from any nationalistic considerations (whether Romanian, German, or Spanish), the Dacian wars present an interesting methodological and historioor Romanhave been a political football in Romania and a source of regional antagonism with Hungary and Bulgaria, both of which still wince at Romanian possession of parts of Transylvania and the Dobrudja (the area between the Danubes northward bend and the Black Sea), respectively; for post-Ceaucescu evaluations of these issues, see M. Babe, Devictis Dacis. La conqute trajane vue par larchologie, in Civilisation grecque et cultures antiques pripheriques. Hommage P. Alexandrescu, ed. A. Avram and M. Babe, (Bucharest: Editura enciclopedica, 2000), 324 with n. 6, 325 n. 10; I. Haynes and W. Hanson, An Introduction to Roman Dacia, in Roman Dacia: The Making of a Provincial Society, ed. W. Hanson and I. Haynes, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Suppl. 56 (Portsmouth, R.I., 2004): 2729; K. Locklear, The Late Iron Age Background to Roman Dacia, in Hanson and Haynes, eds., Roman Dacia, 3335; a convenient summary (by no means definitive) on Burebista may be found in I. Cristan, Burebista and His Time, trans. S. Mihailescu (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania, 1978), a work unknown in C. Bruuns bizarre paper, The Legend of Decebalus, in Roman Rule and Civic Life: Local and Regional Perspectives, ed. L. De Ligt et al. (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 2004), 15375. This reviewer, a participant in the 1980 congress, visited Sarmizegethusa Regia, at that time undergoing conversion into a tourist attraction with dubious reconstructions (in Stalinist concrete) of the monuments in the sacred area (Terraces XXIII, featuring seven temples/ sanctuaries; cf. Stefan, 2269 with n. 235) and damage to the scientific understanding of the site. Ascent to the site required four-wheel drive vehicles. 4. See I. Piso, ed., Die rmischen Provinzen: Begriff und Grndung (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Mega, 2008). 5. J. Gonzles, ed., Trajano Emperador de Roma (Rome: LErma di Bretschneider, 2000); E. Schallmeyer, ed., Traian in Germanien, Traian im Reich (Bad Homburg: Saalburgmuseum, 1999); A. Nnnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian: Ein Kaiser der Superlative am Beginn einer Umbruchzeit? (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2002); on Trajans somewhat peculiar position in Germany in 98 (named Caesar, i.e., Nervas successor, in October 97 and thus subsequently possessing an imperium proconsulare, but on present evidence not the provincial governor of either Germania Superior, which he had been in 97, or Germania Inferior), see B. Pferdehirt, Militrdiplome und Entlassungskunden in der Sammlung des Rmisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums (Mainz: Verlag des Rmisch-Germanischen Kommission, 2004), 1:2627; cf. M. A. Speidel, Bellicosissimus Princeps, in Nnnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian, 24. 6. J. Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 2d ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); cf. my brief (and generous) review of the first edition: Journal of Military History 62

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graphical problem for military historians concerned with operations and strategy. Detailed information is at a premium. Domitian, the victim of hostile sources and Trajans propaganda, falls in the chasm of imperial biographies between Suetonius, whose De vita Caesarum ends with Domitian, the last of the Flavians, and that most curious assemblage of biographies and historical novellas written in the late-fourth or early-fifth century, the Historia Augusta, which begins with Trajans successor, Hadrian (r. 117138)a remarkable phenomenon for a ruler hailed as the best emperor (optimus princeps). Narrative surveys of Trajans reign survive exclusively in the summaries of epitomators of the fourth century and later. Tacituss Histories, covering the Flavian dynasty and thus including Domitians campaigns (8489), survive only for events up to 70 A.Dmost regrettably, as Orosius (7.10.4) reported that Tacitus (a contemporary of Domitian and Trajan) recounted Domitians Dacian war in great detail. Appians Dacica, written within a generation or two of Trajans wars and known from brief references by Photius in the ninth century and Zonaras in the twelfth century, has no surviving fragments. Apparently few read it. Literary accounts of events and motives are reduced to two sources: the Roman History of the senator Cassius Dio, completed in the 220s and for the period of Domitian and Trajan preserved in excerpts from John Xiphilinuss eleventh-century epitome, supplemented by scattered fragments in other Byzantine sources, and the Getica of Jordanes (fl. 550), probably a Sarmatian Alan in Constantinople, whose family had earlier assimilated with the Goths. Jordanes claimed to be epitomizing the twelve-volume De origine actibusque Getarum of the Ostrogoth bureaucrat and scholar Cassiodorus (c. 490c. 585), but he also cited a lost Gothic history by Ablabius of unknown date. Jordanes Getica contains material from the Stoic-Cynic orator and sophist Dio Chrysostom, whose time in Dacia in the 90s (after being exiled from Rome by Domitian) inspired his Getica, but whether Jordanes knew Chrysostoms Getica directly or through another source is unknown. The archaizing tendency of Late Roman authors like Jordanes in combining Dacians and Goths and calling a work on Goths a Getica is clear.7 From the third century on, the(1998): 38283; R. Paribeni, Optimus Princeps, 2 vols. (Messina: G. Principato, 192627), with some echoes of the il Duce of Paribenis time; note also: R. Hanslik, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, Real-Encyclopdie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Suppl. 10 (1964): 10321113; M. Fell, Optimus Princeps? Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der imperialen Programmatik Kaisers Traians (Munich: Tuduv, 1992); and (more briefly) Speidel, Bellicosissimus Princeps, 2340. 7. Cassius Dios Books 6768 on Domitian and Trajan are available in the Loeb Classical Library: Dios Roman History, trans. E. Cary, vol. 8 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925), but the Greek text is best read in Cassii Dionis Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum Quae Supersunt, ed. U. P. Boissevain, 4 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 18981931); Jordanes: T. Mommsen, ed., Iordanis Romana et Getica, Monumenta Germanicae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882); The Gothic History of Jordanes, trans. C. C. Mierow (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1915); Jordanes Alan ancestry: Alemany, Sources on the Alans, 13637; fragments of Dio Chrysostoms Getica: F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden:MILITARY HISTORY

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German Goths occupied some territory earlier belonging to the Thracian GetoDacians (especially after Aurelians abandonment of Dacia, c. 270). Some Dacian descendants, both native survivors of the Roman conquest and the so-called Free Dacians, inhabiting territory not annexed as part of Trajans province, may have assimilated with Gothic intruders, although a Geto-Dacian culture, distinct from the Sntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture associated with the fourth century Goths, continued into the Middle Ages.8 Detailed contemporary accounts did exist. In the tradition of Caesars Gallic War, Trajan published his own commentaries on his campaigns, a Dacica, fromE. J. Brill, 1923 ), nr. 707; Cassiodorus: B. Croke, Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes, Classical Philology 82 (1987): 11734; for doubts about Ablabius as a source, see A. Gillett, Jordanes and Ablabius, in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, ed. C. Deroux, vol. 10, Collection Latomus 254 (Brussels, 2000), 479500; Locklears skepticism (Late Iron Age Background, 34), typical of new archaeologists, on the value of literary sources like Jordanes, lacks authority, as his view seems derived from English translations and not the original Latin, nor does he understand the archaizing tendencies of Late Roman authors. 8. On the Free Dacians, see G. Bichir, Die freien Daker im Norden Dakien, and I. Ionita, Die freien Daker an der nordstlichen Grenze der rmischen Provinz Dakiens, in Rmer und Barbaren an den Grenzen des rmischen Dakiens, ed. N. Gudea, Acta Musei Porolissensis 21 (1997): 785800 and 879888, respectively; Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 36568; Lica, Coming of Rome, 256, 264, although his citation of ILS nr. 854 seems more relevant to the Costoboci than the Free Dacians; cf. Olteans misunderstanding of Lica: (Dacia, 56). Batty (Rome and the Nomads, 485) erroneously believes that Trajans wars depopulated Dacia; for correctives, see Babe , Devictis Dacis, and literature at note 38 below. Ethnic confusion can befuddle even modern authors: Stefan (359 n.2) corrects a gaffe (the more egregious for a book on an ancient geographer) that the Getae were Germans: D. Dueck, Strabo of Amaseia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome (London: Routledge, 2000), 97; Oltean (Dacia, 47) erroneously equates the German Bastarnae of southern Moldavia with Iranian Sarmatians; evidence on the Bastarnae collected in Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 22124, 23656; see also M. B. Shchukin, Forgotten Bastarnae, in International Connections of the Barbarians in the Carpathian Basin in the 1st5th Centuries A.D., ed. E. Istvnovits and V. Kulscr (Aszd/Nyregyhza: Jsa Andrs Museum; Osvth Gedeon Museum Foundation, 2001), 5764. On the Sntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture, see the convenient but largely inconclusive summary (as of 1991) in P. Heather and J. Matthews, The Goths in the Fourth Century (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 51101; B. V. Magomedev, Die Cernjachov-Marosszentanna/Sntana de Mures-Kultur in der Karpatenregion, in Istvnovits and Kulscr, eds., International Connections, 22733; L. Ellis, Dacians, Sarmatians, and Goths on the Roman-Carpathian Frontier: Second-Fourth Centuries, in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, ed. R. Mathisen and H. Sivan (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996), 10525; note also the recent archaeological survey of F. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 5001200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Batty (Rome and the Nomads, 250), who strangely omits discussion of the Sntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture, is skeptical of Romanian scholars identification of various ethnicities (Costoboci, Carpi, Bastarnae) with specific material cultures, although his own views lack appreciation of archaic ethnic terms in late authors for various tribes of their own day, and he uncritically accepts material in (e.g.) Plinys Natural History, where earlier sources are indiscriminately mixed with contemporary ethnographical descriptions.

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which a single sentence survives in the grammatical work of Priscian (fl. 500), although interpreters of Trajans Column (including Stefan) see that monument as a massive illustration of the Dacicas contents. A few Byzantine fragments of the Getica of Trajans physician, Titus Statilius Crito, a participant in the campaigns, provide valuable but limited details. Even Balbus, a civilian surveyor called into service with Trajan, offers intriguing hints of his duties in building roads, bridges, and siege-works but regrettably without specific geographical locations.9 Indeed Domitian, known as a good poet, commemorated his Dacian war with an epic poem, of which a few lines, inscribed in monumental letters on a block found in the Lateran area of Rome, were first recorded by the humanist Petrarch.10 Archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, and papyrology strongly supplement the sketchy literary sources. Many Dacian forts and Roman camps are known, for which dates of construction or destruction can be discerned or approximated. Dates for the beginning and end of hostilities besides terms of peace are clear, as are which units of the Roman army and their commanders participated in these campaigns.119. Trajans Dacica: Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae 6.13=E. M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), no. 32: Traianus in I Dacicorum: Inde Berzobim, inde Aizi processimus [From Berzobis, then from Aizis we advanced.]; Crito: Jacoby, Die Fragmente, nr. 200; cf. J. Scarborough, Criton, Physician to Trajan: Historian and Pharmacist, in The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr, ed. J. Eadie and J. Ober (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 387405; for an attempt to find more fragments, see I. I. Russu, Getica lui Statilius Crito, Studii Clasice 14 (1972): 11128 (cited in Stefans footnotes, but missing from his bibliography); Balbus: B. Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors, Journal of Roman Studies Monograph 9 (London, 2000), xxxixxl, 2056 (Latin text with English translation), esp. lines 1730. Despite Campbells waffling between whether the emperor is Domitian or Trajan, Balbuss references to mountain warfare in Dacia speak for Trajan, as the Dacian campaigns under Domitian (none led by Domitian himself ) reached, but did not penetrate the Dacians Carpathian fortifications; cf. Stefan 419 with n. 118. Like Crito and Balbus in Trajans entourage, the famous architect Apollodorus of Damascus and possibly Dio Chrysostom (cf. Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 67) were not soldiers but civilian comites (companions). For attempts to connect Apollodorus of Damascuss Poliorcetica [Siegecraft] to Trajans Dacian wars, see P. Blyth, Apollodorus of Damascus and the Poliorcetica, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 33 (1992): 12758; D. Whitehead, Apollodorus Poliorketika: Author, Date, Dedicatee, in A Roman Miscellany: Essays in Honour of Anthony R. Birley on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. H. Schellenberg et al. (Gdansk: Foundation for the Development of Gdansk University, 2008), 20411. 10. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, VI 1207; cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 10.1.91; Silius Italicus, Punica 3.61621; Suetonius, Domitianus 2.2; further commentary in Stefan 472. 11. See K. Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1984), now updated at K. Strobel, Die Eroberung DakiensEin Resmee zum Forschungsstand der Dakerkriege Domitians und Traians, Dacia 50 (2006): 10514, and K. Strobel, Die Donaukriege Domitians (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1989), although many of Strobels assertions require qualification: see F. Leppers review of Strobels method: Classical Review 35 (1985): 33335; see also N. Gostar, Larme romaine dans les guerres daces de Trajan (101102, 105106), Dacia 23 (1979): 15522; G. Cupcea and F. Marcu, The Size and Organization of the Roman Army and the Case of Dacia under Trajan, Dacia 50 (2006): 17594; basic remains K. Patsch, Der KampfMILITARY HISTORY

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Trajan's Column, scene LXV, courtesy Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Rome, Italy

But the visible yet impenetrably silent glue holding together the framework of Trajans Dacian wars is that towering shaft (28.9 meters on a pedestal of 6.2 meters) in the middle of Rome, with its cartoon of over 2,500 figures twisting around it for 200 meters. Trajans Column, dedicated in 113, tells the story of his Dacian wars, which his victory arch at Beneventum (dated 113114) completes by depicting his Dacian triumph. On the Column, Trajan, Decebalus (the Dacian king), and various Roman units or hostile ethnic forces (for example, Lusius Quietuss Moorish cavalry, Sarmatian cataphracts of the Rhoxolani) are readily identifiable; there is a splendid display of Roman military practices.12 Some scenes correspond to the fragments of Cassius Dios account. Yes, the Column tells a story, but theum den Donauraum unter Domitian und Trajan, 5/2, Beitrge zur Vlkerkunde von Sdosteuropa, 5.2 (Vienna: Verlag der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1937); a brief survey of Danubian legions and their bases is at J. Wilkes, Roman Legions and their Fortresses in the Danube Lands (First to Third Centuries), in Roman Fortresses and their Legions, ed. R. Brewer (London/Cardiff: Society of Antiquaries of London; National Museums & Galleries of Wales, 2000), 10119. 12. See I. A. Richmond, Trajans Army on Trajans Column, Papers of the British School at Rome 13 (1935): 140, reprinted in Trajans Army on Trajans Column, ed. M. Hassall (London: British School at Rome, 1982), which also includes Richmonds study of the Adamklissi monument (Tropaeum Traiani): Adamklissi, Papers of the British School at Rome 35 (1967): 2939.

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crux for operational analysis comes with topographical identifications, pinpointing a scene with a specific site on the ground, particularly as the theater of the Dacian wars included not only modern Romania, but also parts of Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia, and possibly extreme southwestern Ukraine, and several Roman armies operated simultaneously.13 Hence frustration and scholarly debate flourish. Comparison with the problems presented by the Bayeux Tapestry for William the Conquerors campaign of 1066 is apropos. Nor is study of the Columns reliefs uncomplicated. Modern environmental hazards, damaging this monument like many others, have obliterated or blurred details and necessitated a cleaning and attempts at restoration (198188). All painted details and likewise metal supplements (for example, spears in the figures hands) have long vanishedthus the value of records of the Column in earlier, better states of preservation. Happily, Napoleon IIIs well-known interest in Julius Caesar led him to Rome. In 186162 he had molds made of the Columns entire historical scroll, from which three complete sets of plaster casts were later produced. These now reside in Paris (Muse des Antiquits Nationales Saint-Germain-en-Laye), Rome (Museo della Civilt Romana), and London (Victoria and Albert Museum).14 Historical interpretation of the Column began at the dawn of the twentieth century with Conrad Cichorius, a student of the revered Theodor Mommsen, who, working from the 414 casts at Rome made from Napoleon IIIs molds, produced a multi-volume photographic archive of the casts with commentary. Cichoriuss division of the casts into 155 scenes (traditionally given in Roman numerals) remains the standard method of citing the Column, and his photographs are considered the best ever produced. Nevertheless, Cichoriuss belief in the Column as a valid historical account of Trajans wars and his identifications of Romanian sites in the Columns scenes (at a time when excavations of Dacian sites were still in their infancy) soon elicited harsh reviews and alternative topographical views, such as those of G. A. T. Davies (1920), who persisted, however, in seeing the Column as an illustration of Trajans Dacica. Six years later the axe fell: the art historian Kurt Lehmann-Hartlebens assessment of the Column as a work of art demolished Cichoriuss case for the Columns precise historical narrative and his topographical identifications.1513. Stefans map (674 fig. 276) does not include all Dacian sites relevant to the 106 campaign; for a supplement, see A. Diaconescu, Dacia and the Dacian Wars, Journal of Roman Archaeology 21 (2008): 590. 14. A fourth set, the work of the now defunct cole Roumaine de Rome in 193943, has been since 1967 on display at the National Museum of History in Bucharest, where the bands of the spiral (roughly 11.5 meters high) can be profitably studied at eye-level, as this writer can attest from visits in 1980 and 1996. 15. C. Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssule, vols. 23 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 18961900; vol. 1 not published); G. A. T. Davies, Topography and the Dacian Wars, Journal of Roman Studies 10 (1920): 128; cf. his Trajans First Dacian War, Journal of Roman Studies 7 (1917): 7497; K. Lehmann-Hartleben, Die Trajanssule. Ein rmisches Kunstwerk zu Beginn der Sptantike, 2 vols. (Berlin/Leipzig: W. de Gruyter & Co., 1926); a more detailed account of the Columns history is in R. Lepper and S. Frere, Trajans Column (Gloucester, U.K.; Wolfboro, N.H.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1988), 14; cf. Stefan 34.MILITARY HISTORY

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Henceforth advocates of the Column as an historical source have been on the defensive. Even the Roman army seen on the Column has become a victim of the artists (or artists) supposed inaccuracies and generalizations, although with little appreciation of what was possible in limited space. Accordingly, individual legions cannot be identified; the equipment of both legionaries and auxiliaries is misrepresented; even the legionary and Praetorian signa (standards) are wrong.16 Perhaps the apogee of the anti-Column movement came in 1988, when Frank Lepper and Sheppard Frere republished Cichoriuss plates (long out of print) and subjected all aspects of Trajans Dacian wars to keen critical analysis. If their reproduction of Cichoriuss folio plates in an octavo volume was a major disappointment (miniscule and often unclear)an Italian volumes reproduction of the plates the same year is far superiortheir tome represented a useful status quaestionis.17 Inter alia, a frequent target of their criticism became the idea that Apollodorus of Damascus, the architect behind construction of Trajans famous stone bridge over the Danube at Drobeta (modern Turnu Severin) and the supposed designer of Trajans Forum, was the genius (the Maestro) behind the Columns reliefs, although they concede that he might have been the architect of the Column. Indeed, as generally agreed whoever the Maestro wasthe Columns scenes (in whole or part) derive from paintings of the wars events displayed in Trajans triumph.18 For the history of the16. J. C. N. Coulston has led the charge against the Column: The Value of Trajans Column as a Source for Military Equipment, in Roman Military Equipment: The Sources of Evidence, ed. C. van Driel-Murray (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989), 3144; The Architecture and Construction Scenes on Trajans Column, in Architecture and Architectural Sculpture in the Roman Empire, ed. M. Henig (Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1990), 3950; Three New Books on Trajans Column, Journal of Roman Archaeology 3 (1990): 290309; cf. M. C. Bishop and J. C. N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment (London: B. T. Batsford, 1993), 2123; M. Charles, The Flavio-Trajanic Miles: The Appearance of Citizen Infantry on Trajans Column, Latomus 62 (2002): 66695; C. G. Alexandrescu, A Contribution on the Standards of the Roman Army, in Limes XIX: Proceedings of the XIXth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies Held in Pcs, Hungary, September 2003, ed. Z. Visy (Pcs: University of Pcs, 2005), 14756; for a more sympathetic view of the accuracy of the Column and what was really possible, see D. Richter, Das rmische Heer auf der Trajanssale. Propaganda und Realitt: Waffen und Ausrstung, Marsch, Arbeit und Kampf (Mannheim: Bibliopolis, 2004), and M. Galinier, La representation iconographicque du lgionnaire romain, in Les lgions de Rome sous le Haut-Empire, ed. Y. Le Bohec and C. Wolff, 3 vols. (Paris: De Boccard, 20002003), 2:41739; a credulists position on the Columns representation of the army is in L. Rossi, Trajans Column and the Dacian Wars, trans. J. M. C. Toynbee (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971). 17. Lepper and Frere, Trajans Column; S. Settis et al., La Colonna Traiana (Turin: G. Einaudi, 1988); note also the reproduction of the plates in F. Coarelli, The Column of Traian, trans. C. Rockwell (Rome: Colombo, 2000). 18. See J. N. C. Coulston, Overcoming the Barbarian. Depiction of Romes Enemies in Trajanic Monumental Art, in The Representations and Perception of Roman Imperial Power, ed. L. De Blois et al. (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 2003), 42021, elaborating on an idea of LehmannHartleben, Die Trajanssule); Apollodorus: Lepper and Frere, Trajans Column, e.g., 1819, 149 50, 271; the bridge, depicted on the Columns scenes XCVIIIXCIX (=Stefan fig. 267), was

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wars military operations, however, Lepper and Frere marched on well-trodden paths. Despite nearly a century of faultfinding, it cannot be denied that the Columns spiral tells a story. But what story? The book discussed here seeks in part to revalidate some aspects of the Columns historical worth. Stefans massive monograph, the fruit of over thirty years of archaeological and topographical studies of ancient Romania, appears in the distinguished series of the cole Franaise de Rome, often reserved for the ultimate in French dissertations, the doctorat dtat. The work bears the characteristics of such: thickness (704 pages of text in double columns!) and exhaustive discussions (in the sense of both depleting what can be said and trying a readers patience). No one except a reviewer (or perhaps a graduate student) would ever read this book cover to cover. Nevertheless, its bibliography alone renders the volume an indispensable reference tool, and no serious future work on the Dacian wars of Domitian or Trajan will be able to ignore Stefans gold mine of information. The text is excellently complemented by 286 illustrations (photographs, maps, sketches)all in the superb quality traditional in this series. Indeed the volume contains some of the best photographs of scenes from Trajans Column available. Regrettably, in the French tradition of academic publications this bulky monument of scholarship (over 800 pages) is in paperback!19 This is not a typical monograph, but actually at least three books in one. Stefans first book offers a detailed archaeological analysis of all known Dacian fortifications in the Carpathians, the Dacian forts (discovered so far) in southern Moldavia (guarding passes into the Dacian heartland from the east), and Dacian forts on the north bank of the Danube (a Dacian limes of sorts) in the area west of the Iron Gates Gorge, where a branch of the Carpathians extends into northern Serbia and divides the Middle from the Lower Danube. In addition, he examines most Roman camps in Romania associated with the wars of Domitian and Trajan, with particular attention to the controversial Roman camp at Sarmizegethusa Regia in 102 and its successor in 106. If a complete archaeological record of the Dacian wars lies far in the future even for the area of Sarmizegethusa Regia, Stefan presents the most extensive record of Romanian archaeology on these wars to date. The highly techcompleted in 105 for the start of Trajans second war; for the bridges remains and bibliography, see Stefan 64142, who corrects (641 n. 34) the archaeological misconceptions of S. P. Mattern (Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate [Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999], 149 n. 113), although he does not respond to Lepper and Freres claim (Trajans Column, 14950) that the Column misrepresents the superstructure of the bridge; see, most recently, M. Serban, Trajans Bridge over the Danube, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 38 (2009): 33142. 19. This non-native reader of French detected only occasional misprints in the texttoo infrequent to catalogue or distractand two over-inked pages (485, 488) are the only production errors. Embarrassing must be Stefans confusion (754 in the Bibliography and passim in footnotes, e.g., 532 n. 190) of Michael P. Speidel with his nephew, Michael A. Speidel, the real author of Bellicosissimus Princeps, in Nnnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian, 2340.MILITARY HISTORY

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Map 1: Dacia KEY Passes: A) Iron Gates; B) Vulcan; C) Red Tower Geto-Dacian Sites: 1) Sarmizegethusa Regia; 2) Buridava; 3) Deva; 4) Apulum; 5) Piatra Craivii; 6) Porolissum; 7) Piroboridava; 8) Troesmis; 9) Noviodunum; 10) Aegyssus; 11) Popeshti; 12) Sboryanovo; 13) Borovo; 14) Divici; 15) Berzobis; 16) Aizis Greek Cities: 17) Tyras; 18) Histria; 19) Tomis; 20) Callatis; 21) Dionysopolis; 22) Odessus; 23) Mesembria; 24) Apollonia; 25) Axiopolis Roman Sites: 26) Aquincum (Budapest); 27) Lugo; 28) Szeged; 29) Singidunum (Belgrade); 30) Viminacium; 31) Lederata; 32) Oescus; 33) Novae; 34) Nicopolis ad Istrum; 35) Serdica (Sofia); 36) Durostorum; 37) Adamklissi; 38) Colonia Sarmizegethusa; 39) Drobeta

nical discussion of construction techniques for walls, towers, and buildings may be impenetrable for the uninitiated in this type of archaeological argument, although one can admire Stefans diligence in re-examining the entire record of excavation reports and earlier sketches of the sites (often ignored by later excavators) to determine the pristine states of sites and the excavators original findings. Stefan has also pioneered use of aerial and satellite photography in Romanian archaeology, not only to find sites but also to discern the lines of fortification walls not visible at ground-level. This highly technical archaeological discussion (Parts III equal 339 pages), essentially half the book, is not well integrated, however, with Parts IVV (pp. 397704), detailed discussion of the wars of Domitian and Trajan, where the1196THE JOURNAL OF

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reader is expected to recall too much from what he/she read, say, 400 pages earlier. But then again, this is not a typical monograph. Stefans compendium of archaeological data provides the building blocks for various theses. In the case of Sarmizegethusa Regia, for example, it has been much debated whether Gradishtea Muchelelui was in fact the Dacian capital in Trajans time. Some once preferred the site of Varhly (43 kilometers west-southwest of Gradishtea Muchelelui, as the crow flies), where a Colonia Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegethusa was founded c. 107 on the site of a Roman camp 101105.20 The Colonia lies in a plain just east of the famous Iron Gate Pass, but the site lacks evidence of pre-Roman occupation. Gradishtea Mucheleluis role as a major Dacian religious centermost probably on the holy mountain Cogaeonum, mentioned in one of Strabos reports (7.3.5) on Burebistaseems clear: the sacred area of Terraces XXIII features seven major sanctuaries and comprises 15 to 20 percent of the three-acre site, the only portion so far subjected to extensive excavation. Gradishtea Mucheleluis sanctuaries exceed in size and number the four at Costesti, a major fortress guarding the northwestern approach to Gradishtea Muchelelui, and the three at Fetele Alba, on a ridge of equal elevation opposite Gradishtea Muchelelui. Such a concentration of sanctuaries surely indicates the sacred character of the area.21 Further, Stefan now argues that Gradishtea Muchelelui was not an open site or mere citadel of refuge, but the Dacian capital and a major fortified city with curtain walls and, as he conjectures, towers at every 25 to 30 meters. More complete study of the archaeological evidence also permits a better understanding of the citys water system attested on the Column as well as other architectural20. On the problem of a precise date for foundation of the Colonia, see I. Piso, Les dbuts de la province de Dace, in Piso, ed., Die rmischen Provinzen, 31922; on the camp see note 27 below; the confusion of Colonia with Regia is perpetuated in Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 529, whose fig. 41.8 (290) also incorrectly transposes the locations of the forts Blidaru and Costesti. 21. Strobel (Die Eroberung Dakiens, 111 n. 29) rejects without argument the identification of Cogaeonum with Gradishtea Muchelelui, but ignores that Strabos Cogaeonum is a mountain, not a specific site; for lists and discussions of Dacian sanctuaries, see Babe, Devictis Dacis, 33031; Locklear, Late Iron Age Background,5763.MILITARY HISTORY

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features.22 Here Stefan initiates his motif of confirming the accuracy of individual details on the Column concerning siegecraft and Dacian architecture with archaeological evidence. In fact, he asserts (against current opinions) that all major Dacian forts, generally atop hills or mountains with difficult lines of approach, were totally enclosed fortifications, that is, even on sides bordering cliffs or inaccessible slopes. Moreover, he demonstrates that the sophistication of Dacian building techniques conformed to Hellenistic Greek practices. Dacian walls, often 3 meters thick in the murus Dacicus technique (front and back stone abutments with earth/rubble filling and both transverse and lateral timbers as stabilizers and linkage), employed large, wellcut, nicely faced stone blocks (some marked with Greek letters). Dacian military architecturefar from being barbarianreflected (with some local modifications) the recommendations of Philo Mechanicus (fl. 225 B.C.) for construction of walls immune to battering rams, and likewise Philos view on the architectural integrity of towers (that is, structures independent of the walls, so that a collapsing wall did not bring a tower down with it).23 Dacians built huge towers (surface area up to 221.12 square meters) to cover curtain walls and isolated, independent towers (up to c. 225 square meters) outside the enceinte, often within a few hundred yards of a forts principal gate. Stefan convincingly argues that these monstrous towers, even the so-called tower-palaces generally on the highest point(s) of the interior of a Dacian fort, were artillery platforms.24 Dacian artillery is known from both Cassius Dio and Trajans Column.2522. E.g., Dacian use of monumental roofed streets (scene CXIV=Stefan fig. 33) is confirmed by finds at Sarmizegethusa Regia: Stefan 7476; on the water system: 7681, 9899; some earlier views posited no springs or water system inside the city; for Stefan (6012) the Columns scenes LXXVLXXVI (fig. 252: Decebaluss surrender in 102) unquestionably show Sarmizegethusa Regia, but Lepper and Frere (Trajans Column, 271) cite (captiously?) depiction of polygonal rather than the ashlar walls known from the site as proof that the Maestro had never seen the Dacian capital; but cf. C. D. Stoiculescu, Trajans Column: Documentary Value from a Forestry Viewpoint, Dacia 29 (1985): 8198: the Columns accuracy in representing flora found in modern Romania. 23. For a critical edition of the Greek text of Philo on siegecraft (=his Syntaxis mechanike, Book 5) with French translation and commentary, see Y. Garlan, Recherches sur de poliorctique grecque (Paris: cole franaise dAthnes, 1974), 279404; English translation: A. W. Lawrence, Greek Aims in Fortification (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 69107. 24. Three tables (27476) feature the measurements of all known Dacian towers on the walls, within the walls, and outside the walls. Stefan (271, caption to fig. 134) assumes a minimal artillery range of 250 meters; cf. E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 91, 13132: maximum effective range for both arrowshooters and stone-throwers was 400 yards (c. 366 meters); Oltean (Dacia, 7880, 116) posits these tower-houses as status symbols of the Dacian elite. 25. Of course Stefans view depends on the construction of such towers not antedating Dacian possession of artillery, which on present evidence would not be before Decebalus received military engineers (mechanopoioi) from Domitian in the peace terms of 89 (Dio 67.7.4; cf. 68.9.5); ordnance captured earlier in Domitians war is another possibility; cf. Stefan 436,

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MAP 2: Sarmizegethusa Theater (not to scale)

SR = Sarmizegethusa Regia SC = Sarmizegethusa Colonia

The limited topographical access to the Dacian forts (often only one way up the hill) exposed attackers to a withering crossfire from the independent towers in conjunction with fire from the curtain-wall towers and the elevated interior towers (for example, 271 fig. 134: illustration of artillery coverage at Costesti). Stefans emphasis on the significance of artillery in Dacian defenses is new. His exploitation of the archaeological data drives home what a grueling and onerous conflict of siegecraft and mountain warfare the conquest of Dacia was. The northwestern approach to Sarmizegethusa Regia from the Muresh River valley (north of the central Carpathians) demonstrates the extent of the Dacian defensive system. An army marching south toward the Dacian capital must first take Costesti, a major religious center and perhaps Burebistas capital before the construction of Sarmizegethusa Regia. Located on a promontory (elevation c. 600 meters) overlooking a narrow defile and approachable only from its southern side, Costestis double ring of walls encloses about nine hectares. As the crow flies, one is only about 14 kilometers from the Dacian capital. But 300 meters to the southeast across a valley begins the tip of the mountain ascending to Sarmizegethusa. An earthen rampart traceable for over 300 meters guards the initial ascent; behind it are at least eighteen isolated towers, which impede the approach to another fort, Blidaru, only 1,500 meters from Costesti (as the crow flies) but 150 meters higher in elevation. A third major fort, Piatra Rosie (Red Rock), c. 7 kilometers south of Blidaru, guarded the western and southwestern approaches to Sarmizegethusa (c. 13 kilometers away) from the Strei River valley. On51617; given the sophistication of Dacian architecture, however, earlier possession of artillery could be conjectured.MILITARY HISTORY

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present evidence, this northwestern approach to Sarmizegethusa Regia was the most heavily fortified. Besides this Costesti corridor, Stefans astute birds-eye perspective has discerned two circles of Dacian forts protecting access to the Dacian heartland of the Carpathian interior and extending throughout this entire mountain range. This new and more comprehensive understanding of the Dacian defense system in turn leads to new topographical arguments for the routes of Roman armies in 8889, 101102, and 105106, as passes dictated the avenues of access (discussed below). Nevertheless, many of these hilltop forts have Hallstatt (Iron Age) origins. Stefan generally assumes rather than proves that the Dacian fortification system was initially Burebistas work with some later improvements.26 Worthy of report is also Stefans remarkable analysis (32355) of the Roman camps at Sarmizegethusa Regia. According to Cassius Dio (68.9.7), Trajan left a stratopedon (ambiguous whether: army camp or legion) at Sarmizegethusa after Decebuluss capitulation in 102 to ensure Dacian compliance with the terms of peace, which included dismantling Dacian defenses. Roman garrisons also were scattered at other sites key in the war of 101102 south and west of the capital, including one at the later Colonia Sarmizegethusa, besides several south and east of the Carpathians.27 Despite Dios explicit testimony, a Roman camp at Sarmizegethusa Regia, its garrison, and even the continued presence of the Dacian king Decebalus at his capital after 102 have been much debatedin part from disbelief that Decebalus could function as a king and perpetrate violations of the 102 agreement with a Roman camp at his very doorstep, and not least from the lack of archaeological evidence for a Roman camp there in 102; further, Dio refers to the Dacian capital, but never calls it (in extant excerpts) Sarmizegethusa. Nevertheless, the Colonia, the only alternative, was a Roman creation without evidence of pre-Roman Dacian occupation.28 Some26. Stefan 11356 (Costesti), 156200 (Blidaru), 21829 (Piatra Rosie). New major Dacian fortified sites continue to be discovered: one in 2004 near Poiana Brasnov and Rsnov, comprising twenty-two to thirty hectares with twenty-two towers, dated to at least 1416 A.D., and identified as the Cumidava of Ptolemy (Geography 3.8.8); another at Cetatea Znelor near Covasna with fortifications dating first century B.C.first century A.D.; details in Strobel, Die Eroberung Dakiens, 11112. 27. A burned layer beneath the site of the later forum of the Colonia may attest a Roman camp destroyed by the Dacians at the start of the second war in 105: see I. Piso, Les lgions dans la province de Dacie, in Le Bohec and Wolff, eds., Les lgions de Rome, 1:209, and Les dbuts de la province de Dace, 32021; Stefan 28081 with n. 41; Strobel, Die Eroberung Dakiens, 108 with n. 12. The partial deconstruction of many Dacian forts in 102 (e.g., Costesti, Blidaru) and hasty reconstructions in 105 are clear in the archaeological record: Stefan 65457; cf. Column scene CXXXII=Stefan fig. 272 with caption. E. Sauers critique of Stefan on this point (review of Stefan, American Journal of Archaeology 112 [2008]: 196) seems captious, as Sauer cannot cite a specific historical context (other than 105) for use of such fortifications near Blidaru for Dacian resistance; Roman forts outside the Carpathians: Stefan 64243. 28. Lepper and Frere (Trajans Column, 3049) discuss the problem of the name Sarmizegethusa for both sites; Ptolemy (Geography 3.8.4), writing within a generation of two of Trajans Dacian wars, lists Zarmizegethousa to Basileion, that is, the royal residence, but omits the Colonia; cf. Piso, Les dbuts de la province de Dace, 322.

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would even have Decebaluss kingdom after 102 reduced to the area north of the Muresh River with a new Dacian capital established at Piatra Craivii (the Apoulon of Ptolemy, Geography 3.8.8 [?], c. 20 kilometers north of modern Alba Iulia) and the whole theater of the second war (105106) transferred to extreme northern Dacia. Piatra Craivii, a rocky protrusion (elevation 1,083 meters), fortified in the second half of the first century B.C. (era of Burebista) and later topped by a small (67 by 36 meters) medieval citadel (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries), suffered destruction by fire. As often for pre-Roman fortified Dacian sites, that destruction is assumed to be Trajanic, but no evidence ties Decebalus to Piatra Craivii or attests a transfer of his residence north of the Muresh.29 Certain is that the southern end of the curtain wall at Sarmizegethusa Regia, enclosing Terraces IVVI, was dismantled. Decebaluss palace, thought to have occupied the highest elevation within the city (Terraces IIII) was left untouched. Stefan asserts that the rampart (vallum) of a Roman camp of 102105, incorporating Dacian architectural fragments, can be traced on the ground and enclosed an area of six to seven hectares. It included part of the former southern interior of the city, but also extended 100 to 200 meters south of the former defensive wall. Stefans aerial photograph (to this reviewers eye) does not prove the case. Besides, he would have the Romans copying Dacian construction of walls 3 meters thicknot normal Roman practice.30 Decisive in support, however, is an argument from stratigraphy. Excavation of part of the wall of the Roman camp of 106 along Terrace V revealed Roman renovations: the camp wall of 106 rested on two layers of filling (nearly 1 meter thick): beneath one layer the remains of a Roman forge came to light, which had been installed over the site of a Dacian mint at a lower level. That Roman forge buried under the level of the 106 camp must surely belong to the camp of 102105. Whatever its precise perimeter, the camp of 102105 no longer seems in doubt. The camp of 106 was built on higher ground after Romans raised the surface of the entire southern half of the former city and leveled off the area, including obliteration of the palace complex on Terrace I.3129. Decebalus and Piatra Craivii: C. Opreanu, Bellum Dacicum Traiani, Dacia 50 (2006): 11820, reasserting his earlier views: e.g., The Consequences of the First Dacian-Rumanian War (101102). A New Point of View, in Gonzlez, ed., Trajano Emperador de Roma, 39697; on the site, see Stefan 24755; contra Opreanu, Piso, Les dbuts de la province de Dace, 297 n. 2; Strobel, Die Eroberung Dakiens, 112 with n. 35. 30. An objection raised by I. Bogdan Cataniciu, Dacias Borders under Trajans RuleRemarks, in Visy, ed., Limes XIX, 726 n. 24, 727 n. 31, and Cataniciu, Daci i Romani. Aculturatie n Dacia (Cluj-Napoca: Academia Romana, 2007), 127; Piso (Les dbuts de la province de Dace, 304 with n. 5) and Strobel (Die Eroberung Dakiens, 111) also reject a 102 Roman camp; Oltean (Dacia, 56) favors a 102 camp. Certainly 3-meter thick walls are un-Roman, but use of Dacian architectural fragments in building the camp wallsa practice even more extensive in construction of the Roman camp walls of 106 after the citys destructionas well as other evidence (see below) speak against this objection. The Romans did incorporate part of the original city wall in the northwest side of the camp of 106. 31. Stefans view of the 102105 camp develops an earlier thesis espoused by A. Diaconescu, who (to no surprise) endorses Stefans position in his review: Dacia and the Dacian Wars,MILITARY HISTORY

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No such problems beset the camp of 106, for its outline in the current forest is clearly discernible from aerial photographs (20 fig. 4, 332 fig. 168). This much smaller camp (2.8 hectares) on Terraces IV overlapped only partially the camp of 102105 and incorporated the area of the former palace. Two gates, six towers, a trace of barracks, a cistern, and (of course) a bath (outside the camp to the south and exploiting earlier Dacian water works) are known, although the camp has not been studied or dug in detail. The respective garrisons of these camps remain controversial.32 Evidence from the fill used for the camp walls of 106 attest the presence of vexillationes (detachments) of the legions II Adiutrix and VI Ferrata for the garrison of 102105, which in Stefans reconstruction of events would have been wiped out or taken prisoner by the Dacians in 105.33 Fragments used for fill between wall faces in 106 must surely represent older discarded material. Less clear is a detachment of IV Flavia Felix at the 102105 camp, although a vexillatio of this legion manned the site in 106 and later, when its chief duty was destruction of the Dacian capital. The size of both camps indicates a Roman presence not even close to the strength of a full legion (c. 5,000 men), but rather approximates the size of camps allotted to auxiliary units of 1,000 or 500 men.34 How long after 106 or 107 troops remained at a city now

592; cf. his Dacia under Trajan. Some Observations on Roman Tactics and Strategy, in Beitrge zur Kenntnis des rmischen Heeres in den dakischen Provinzen, ed. N. Gudea, Acta Musei Napocensis 34.1 (1997): 1822; Opreanu, The Consequences, 397401; on the mint, producing Dacian imitations of Roman denarii dated 126 B.C., 68 B.C., and 1437 A.D., see Stefan 71. 32. Stefan 34854; for a different view, see Piso, Les lgions dans la province de Dacie, 21113. 33. Stefan (34951) persists in including I Adiutrix in the 102 garrison despite C. Opreanu, Legio I Adiutrix in Dacia. Military Action and its Place of Garrison during Trajans Reign, in Roman Frontier Studies. Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies, ed. N. Gudea (Zalau: County Musuem of History and Art, 1999), 57172, followed by Piso, Les dbuts de la province de Dace, 304 with n. 50. Oltean (Dacia, 56) would include the legion IV Flavia Felix in the 102 camp. The fragmentary text attesting a vexillatio of the VI Ferrata (AE 1983 nr. 825) suggests restoring VI Ferrata (a legion based in Syria) in a lacuna detailing the transfer of detachments of eastern legions to the 101102 Dacian war, noted in the career inscription of C. Iulius Quadratus Bassus (consul 105), who later died fighting the Sarmatians (c. 118) as Hadrians first Dacian governor (Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian, no. 214): E. Dabrova, The Governors of Roman Syria from Augustus to Septimius Severus (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1998), 88 with n. 889. This new text of VI Ferrata from the 102105 camp disproves previous reconstructions of this legions history, which put it the 105106 war: e.g., K Strobel, Zu Fragen der frhen Geschichte der rmischen Provinz Arabia und zu einigen Problemen der Legionsdislokation im Osten des Imperium Romnum zu Beginn des 2. Jh. n. Chr., Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 71 (1988): 25253, followed by Speidel (Bellicosissimus Princeps, 35), who erroneously thinks the whole legion went to Dacia. 34. On the size of legionary and auxiliary camps, see Y. Le Bohec, The Roman Imperial Army (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1994), 16162.

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destroyed and its population forced to migrate is unknown.35 As usual, Romans destroyed and burned the camp of 106 when it was abandoned. It should not be forgotten, however, that Sarmizegethusa Regia was the chief cult site of Dacian religion and located on its holy mountain. Directly across the Alb River valley from the capital and at the same elevation (1,800 meters away, as the crow flies, but c. 4,500 meters for someone descending one slope and ascending the other), lay Fetela Alba, another cult site with three sanctuaries. It shared the capitals fate of total destruction in 106 after damage in 102.36 The rise of the Dacian empire under Burebista in the first century B.C. had involved religious fervor, in which the holy man Decenaeus had played a role.37 Romans in 106 wiped out not only a Dacian kingdom but also native Dacian religion. A Roman garrison at Sarmizegethusa may have lingered longer than the time needed to destroy the city to ensure enforcement of the new prohibition of the native Dacian cults.38

35. A unit of Germaniciani exploratores, permanently stationed at Orashtioara de Sus, not far from the entrance to the Costesti corridor, perhaps had among its duties surveillance of the former sacred Dacian district: Piso, Les dbuts de la province de Dace, 306; on the unit, see N. Gostar, Ein numerus Germanicianorum exploratorum im oberen Dacia, Germania 50 (1972): 24147, although his identification of this unit with German infantry seen on Trajans Column is dubious: exploratores are generally mounted units; on this Roman camp, see Stefan 283; N. Gudea, Der dakische Limes: Materialen zu seiner Geschichte, Jahrbuch des rmischgermanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 44 (1997): 1045. 36. For a classic example of a new archaeologists attempt to turn an event like the destruction of Sarmizegethusa Regia and Fetele Alba into a process, see Locklear, Late Iron Age Background, 5051, who also (45) claims Fetele Alba was unfortified; contra, Stefan 21317. 37. For one view of Decenaeus, see R. Vulpe, Dcne, conseiller intime de Burbista, in his Studia Thracologica (Bucharest: Editura Republicii Socialiste Romnia, 1976), 6268. Although the accounts of Decenaeus include many Greek topoi associated with lawgivers and creators of civilization (cf. A. Szegedy-Maszak, Legends of the Greek Lawgivers, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 19 [1978]: 199209), it is a mistake, ignoring valid information in Strabo, to reject Decenaeus as a myth: sic P. Heather, Goths and Romans 332489 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 36. 38. Dr. Mihai Popescu (Paris) advises me that absolutely no trace of the native Dacian religion survived in Roman Dacia. See his La religion dans larme romaine de Dacie (Bucharest: ditions de lAcadmie Roumaine, 2004); cf. Oltean, Dacia, 111, 200; Babe, Devictis Dacis, 33136; Piso, Les dbuts de la province de Dace, 31617; D. Ruscu, The Supposed Extermination of the Dacians: The Literary Tradition, in Hanson and Haynes, eds., Roman Dacia, 7585. Lepper and Frere (Trajans Column, 3078, 318) on a survival of Dacian religion are in error; see also G. Florea and P. Pupeza, Les dieux tus. La destruction du chef-lieu du Royaume dace, in Piso, ed., Die rmischen Provinzen, 28196. Romans did wage religious warfare on occasion, and the religious and cultural contexts of Roman battles are generally not appreciated: see my Shock and Awe: Battles of the Gods in Roman Imperial Warfare, Part I, in LArme romaine et la religion sous le Haut-Empire, ed. Y. Le Bohec and C. Wolff (Paris: De Boccard, 2009): 22567; a Part II is in preparation.MILITARY HISTORY

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Stefans second book (43684, 66793) treats the art and iconography celebrating the victories of Domitian and Trajan. A single thematic chapter might have been preferable to chronological placement, that is, after the campaigns of Domitian and Trajan respectively. Much here will interest art historians more than their military counterparts.39 Nevertheless, art plays an important role in Stefans continuation of attempts to rehabilitate Domitians reputation, a trend begun with Stphane Gsell (1894) and reflected in recent biographies.40 Readers of Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Youngers Panegyric to Trajan in 100, and even Cassius Dio are familiar with Domitians bad press from writers of the senatorial class, although he was not disliked by the army, whose pay he had raised. The Senate decreed a damnatio memoriae after his assassination in 96. Hence Domitian vanished from the public record: his name was erased from all public documents and monuments. Moreover, what Domitian had proclaimed as a Roman victory in Dacia in 89, Trajan, especially after his annexation of Dacia in 106, could recast in the public eye as a humiliating defeat now avenged. Trajan readily added Dacicus to his titulature, an honor that Domitian had declined. Forgetting Domitian would not have been easy for the Eternal Citys inhabitiants, as the extent of Domitians building projects in Rome rivaled those of Augustus. Trajans Forum and Market superseded Domitians Forum Magnum, still under construction at the time of his assassination. Many large fragments of sculptures from colossal victory monuments, transferred to depots of marble, escaped destruction. The two gigantic trophies, sitting today on the balustrade of39. Stefans painstaking work in assembling his material from studies of architectural and sculptural fragments and archaeologists endless debates on the topography of the city of Rome cannot be fully expounded here. Curiously, Stefan does not engage more fully with J. E. Packers massive study, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments, 3 vols. (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), although Packer is occasionally cited. Indeed yet another study of Trajans Forum and Column has recently appeared: M. Galinier, La colonne trajane et les forum impriaux (Rome: cole franaise de Rome, 2007), reviewed by Packer, The Column of Trajan: The Topographical and Cultural Contexts, Journal of Roman Archaeology 21 (2008): 47178. 40. S. Gsell, Essai sur le rgne de lempereur Domitien (Paris: Bibliothque des coles franaises dAthenes et de Rome, 1894); B. W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian (London: Routledge, 1992); P. Southern, Domitian: Tragic Tyrant (London: Routledge, 1997); see also K. H. Waters, Traianus Domitiani Continuator, American Journal of Philology 90 (1969): 385405, and a conference at Toulouse: J.-M. Pailler and R. Sablayrolles, eds., Les annes Domitien (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1994). Stefan (699 n. 5) castigates F. M. Ahl, The Rider and the Horse: Politics and Power in Roman Poetry from Horace to Statius, Aufstieg und Niedergang der rmischen Welt II.32.1 (1984): 40110; R. Saller, Domitian and his Successors, American Journal of Ancient History 15.1 (1990 [2000]): 418; and contributors to A. J. Boyle and J. W. Dominik, eds., Flavian Rome (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), for perpetuating the literary traditions negative views.

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the Capitol at Rome and representing Germania and Dacia, are (as attested by an inscription) Domitianic.41 Similarly, as Stefan argues (47277 with fig. 209), the Dacian frieze, re-used on the Arch of Constantine and assumed to be Trajanic, is in reality Domitianic. For historical reliefs Domitian had to surpass the celebrations of the Jewish War seen on his older brother Tituss Arch; likewise Trajan had to excel (hence the Column) Domitians displays.42 Trajans Forum, in fact, may have included as many as eighty-two colossal statues of Dacians, excelling in number, size, and expense (use of the rarest high-quality marble) Augustuss forty of Orientals commemorating his so-called Parthian accord of 20 B.C., which involved the return of lost legionary standards.43 Stefan (690) may well be correct that of all barbarians only Parthians and Dacians (not Germans) occupied a special place in the Roman public memory. Domitians artistic celebrations of his Dacian war may also be credited with establishing in Roman iconography the female type of a personified Dacia and the conventional portrayal of Dacians, which Trajan exploited.44 As Stefan demonstrates (contrary to some views), Domitian did commemorate his Danubian wars on coins, which for the first time depicted Dacian arms.45 Further, Domitian revived the concepts both of the emperor on horseback (his colossal equestrian statue known only from coins and poetic references) and of the emperor as a leader at the front in major warsa model followed by Trajan and Marcus Aurelius.4641. Erroneously associated with Mariuss victories over the Cimbri and Teutones two centuries earlier by A. Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 164; Stefan 456 n. 249. 42. Stefans thesis of Trajans borrowing from Domitianic projects finds support in Aurelius Victor (De Caesaribus 13.5) and is not criticized in the two reviews (so far) of Stefan in major Anglophone archaeological journals: Sauer (above, note 27), 19596; Diaconescu, Dacia and the Dacian Wars, 58994; cf. Coulston, Overcoming the Barbarian, 41619. 43. For Augustuss Parthian accord as a contrivance of propaganda and one of the great non-events of Roman history, see E. L. Wheeler, Roman Treaties with Parthia: Vlkerrecht or Power Politics? in Limes XVIII. Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Roman Frontiers Studies Held in Amman, Jordan (September 2000), ed. Philip Freeman et al. (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2002), 1:28792. Stefan (535 with n. 214), like Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, 60, falls victim to Augustuss propaganda: the standards lost in Mark Antonys Parthian war (36 B.C.) had already been returned in 33 B.C. 44. An earlier personification of Dacia, labeled in Greek ethnos Dakon (nation of Dacians), had appeared among the figures of conquered peoples (gentes captae) in the late Neronian Sebasteion at Carian Aphrodisias in Asia Minor: see Stefan 46162, 484. The Roman populace had first seen Dacians in 29 B.C., when Octavian (Augustus) staged a combat of Dacians vs. German Suebi as part of his victory celebration for the defeat of Marc Antony: Cassius Dio 51.22.6. 45. Coulstons remarks (Overcoming the Barbarian, 392, 421) on the Trajanic origin of depictions of Dacians and their weapons should now be modified. 46. On the portrayal of Trajan on his Column as the perfect general conforming to the principles of Onasanders Strategikos, see G. Picard, Tactique hellnistique et tactique romaine: le commandement, Comptes Rendus de lAcadmie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1992, 17883.MILITARY HISTORY

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Notable, too (for Stefan), is Domitians concern for Roman war dead. Commemoration of the slain on state-sponsored monuments was not a Roman custom. Germanicuss recovery and proper burial (15 A.D.) of the dead from Quinctilius Varuss Teutoburg Forest disaster (9 A.D.) offered the only precedent.47 Atop the hill of Adamklissi (extreme southeastern Romania), Trajan erected in 108109 a cylindrical Tropaeum Traiani, 44.44 meters in diameter and at c. 37 meters tall, approximately the same height as his Column in Romea monument visible north of the Danube (10 kilometers away); its attraction and location on major north-south, east-west routes spawned a town (Municipium Tropaeum Traiani) flourishing into the Late Roman period. The Tropaeum Traiani would be merely an interesting detail were it not for the survival of fifty-four metopes (1.48 meters high), which once decorated the frieze of this monument (destroyed by an earthquake c. 500). These remarkable examples of early second-century provincial art illustrate, as Stefan believes, the Dacian and Rhoxolan counterattack across the Danube in the winter of 101102, not only supplementing Trajans Columns scenes of the same operations, but also providing a different view of Dacian and Roman armor and weapons.48 As the metopes, however, were not found in situ, whether they tell a story and in what sequence they should be read provoke discussion. Yet two other enigmatic monuments share the site: on another hill 127.5 meters north-northwest of the Tropaeum lies a Roman-style mausoleum with little datable material and 255 meters east of the mausoleum stands a monumental altar inscribed with an extremely fragmentary casualty list estimated at 3,000 to 4,000 dead, to which the titulature of either Domitian or Trajan could be restored.49 Debate47. Tacitus, Annals 1.6162; Suetonius, Caligula 3.2; Cassius Dio 57.18.1; on the Roman attitude, see G. Clementoni, Germanico e i caduti di Teutoburgo, in Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. La morte in combattimento nelantichit, ed. M. Sordi (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1990), 197206; J. Rpke, Wege zum Tten, Wege zum Ruhm: Krieg in der rmischen Republik, in Tten im Krieg, ed. H. von Stietencron and J. Rpke (Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1995), 23334; cf. M. Reuter, Gefallen fr Rom. Beobachtungen an den Grabinschriften im Kampf getteter rmischer Soldaten, in Visy, ed., Limes XIX, 25563. 48. The metopes, now housed in a museum at the site, are reproduced in F. B. Florescu, Das Siegesdenkmal von Adamklissi: Tropaeum Traiani (Bonn/Bucharest: Verlag der Akademie der Rumnischen Volksrepublik, 1965); cf. Stefans republication of nine of them at fig. 233, which he believes depict the Romans surprise attack by night on the Dacians and Rhoxolani at scene XXXVIII of the Column. A recent view that the Dacian-Rhoxolan attack occurred somewhere north of the Danube (e.g., Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 9293) has little to support it, particularly as the invaders are shown on the Column (scene XXXI) swimming a major river, surely the Danube, and the Dacians captured a slave of Laberius Maxiimus, the governor of Moesia Inferior (Pliny, Letters 10.74.1): see Stefan 56068, and on the Tropaeum Traiani: 693 with figs. 27778. 49. ILS 9107; on Roman identification of battle dead and construction of such casualty lists, see D. Peretz, Military Burial and the Identification of the Roman Fallen Soldiers, Klio 87 (2005): 12338; Charless denial (The Flavio-Trajanic Miles, 669) of any Domitianic association with the site, based in part on A. Poulter, The Lower Moesian Limes and the Dacian Wars of Trajan, in Studien zu den Militrgrenzen Roms III: Acten des 13. Internationalen Limeskongrees, Aalen 1983, ed. C. Unz (Stuttgart: Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Wrttemberg, 1986),

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rages whether the mausoleum and the altar are originally Domitianic or the whole site is Trajanic. In Stefans reconstruction, Adamklissi marks the site of a major Roman defeat, when the Dacians initiated Domitians war in late 84 or early 85 by an attack across the Danube and killed the provincial governor of Moesia, Oppius Sabinus. Domitian (pace Stefan) later erected a victory monument (Tropaeum Domitiani = the mausoleum) west of the altar (89 or 90?) to celebrate his Dacian war, although this Tropaeum was destroyed probably in 96 as part of the damnatio memoriae and Domitians name was erased from the altar.50 During Trajans first war, as Stefan argues, the Dacian counteroffensive (with their Rhoxolan allies) in the winter of 101102, after Roman forces had gained access to the Costesti corridor to Sarmizegethusa Regia, followed the same route as the attack of late 84,51 crossing the lower Danube into the Dobrudja and sweeping south with the Danube on their right past Adamklissi and west into Roman Moesia Inferior. Trajan halted the Dacians and Rhoxolani 45 kilometers south of Novae and commemorated the victory by founding the city of Nicopolis ad Istrum (Victory City at the Istrus River), of which the construction (pace Stefan) appears in scene XXXIX of Trajans Column, where (besides civilian settlers) soldiers are shown working with chisels, thus indicating building in stone (that is, a city) rather than the earth-wood construction of an army camp. After the war Trajan built at Adamklissi his own Tropaeum, dedicated to Mars Ultor (the Avenger) to obscure the earlier Domitianic monuments, just as he obliterated Domitians building projects at Rome. Sic Stefan, generally following traditional views on the 101102 campaign. Something happened at Adamklissi, a rather isolated site hitherto of no significance, to occasion a rare state-sponsored war memorial; the dedication of the51928, is too sweeping. Poulters case for the legion I Minervas connection with Adamklissi monuments is not convincing, as Poulter cannot establish that Durostorum (Bulgarian Silistra) c. 60 kilometers from Adamklissi, was ever a base of the I Minerva. This legions participation in Trajans Dacian wars is not at issue: see Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans, 8687; Y. Le Bohec, Legio I Minervia (1er-IIe sicles), in Le Bohec and Wolff, eds., Les lgions de Rome, 1:8385; cf. on the enigimatic text ILS 4795, on which Poulters case is partially based, E. Wheeler, A New Book on Ancient Georgia: A Critical Discussion, Annual of the Society for the Study of Caucasia 67 (199496): 7071 with n. 76. 50. Stefan 43738, 44244 with fig. 191; the attacks date of late 84 or early 85 derives from Dacian arms, signaling military action, depicted already on Roman coins dated to January March 85: see 400, 402; the semi-popular work of I. M. Ferris, Enemies of Rome: Barbarians through Roman Eyes (Stroud, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 2000), 70-71, concedes a Domitianic origin of the mausoleum and the altar. 51. J. Wilkes, Les provinces danubiennes, in Rome et lintgration de lEmpire 44 av. J.-C.260 ap. J.-C., II: Approches rgionales du Haut-Empire romain, ed. C. Lepelley (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998), 263, would put the Dacian inroad of late 84 west of the Iron Gates Gorge; Strobel (Die Donaukriege Domitians, 43) locates the attack east of Novae (Bulgarian Svishtov), the base of the legion I Italica under the Flavians; on this important site, see J. Kolendo and V. Bozilov, eds., Inscriptions grecques et latines de Novae (Msie Infrieure) (Paris: De Boccard, 1997); M. Absil, Legio I Italica, in Le Bohec and Wolff, eds., Les lgions de Rome, 1:22738.MILITARY HISTORY

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Tropaeum Traiani to Mars Ultor suggests revenge for a defeat. Geographical details and literary narratives are lacking. Oppius Sabinus, consul with Domitian in early 84, subsequently (perhaps already later in 84) became governor of Moesia (in 86 divided into two provinces, Superior and Inferior, as a result of the Dacian war). The Dacians plundered Moesia in 85 and were still in Moesia in 86.52 A second Roman defeat followed (although not necessarily in Moesia and possibly in 87 rather than 86) with the loss of the Praetorian Prefect Cornelius Fuscus and a legionary or praetorian standard. Stefan (405) equates the severity of the situation to the Teutoburg Forest debacle. Positing Adamklissi as the site of Oppiuss defeat goes back to Sir Ronald Syme (1928). Likewise conjectural is Stefans route of the attack through the Dobrudja in both 8485 and 101102, reasoning that the Dacians attacked the less well-defended sector of Moesia, as no legions were yet stationed on the Danube east of Novae, although scattered units of auxilia and the Moesian fleet (established by Vespasian) surveyed the area between Novae and the Danubes mouth.53 For the Dacian-Rhoxolan offensive of winter 101102 (absent in Cassius Dios fragments and Jordanes) interpretative possibilities are reduced to scenes on Trajans Column and the metopes of the Tropaeum Traiani. Nicopolis ad Istrum, however, as the site of Trajans victory finds confirmation in two literary sources, and the capture of the governor of Moesia Inferiors slave would seem to attest Dacian operations south of the Danube. Diaconescu, highly critical of Stefans views of the campaigns associated with the Adamklissi monuments and an advocate of their exclusively Trajanic origin, would derive from the scenes of the Column and the metopes a second Roman victory of Trajan at Adamklissinot the first attempt to tie Adamklissi directly to the events of 101102.54 The Adamklissi monuments remain enigmatic, but on present evidence Stefans viewsby no means definitive and largely in accord with traditional interpretationsmake sense of what is available52. Jordanes, Getica 76 (the fullest account); Eutropius 7.23.4; cf. Suetonius, Domitianus 6.1; Tacitus, Agricola 41.2; excavations at Novae and Viminacium (Serbian Kostolac; base of the legion VII Claudia) show some destruction in this period possibly associated with Dacian attacks; Stefan (400, 406) attributes the same destruction layer at Viminacium to Dacian attacks in both 85 and 86. Available evidence permits various reconstructions of the chronology. 53. R. Syme, Rhine and Danube Legions under Domitian, Journal of Roman Studies 18 (1928): 47; Stefan 400 with n. 6, where he rejects an alternative view (above, note 51), placing the Dacian attacks in the sector between Viminacium and the Danubes Iron Gates Gorge; cf., most recently, L. Petculescu, The Roman Army as a Factor of Romanisation in the North-Eastern Part of Moesia Inferior, in Rome and the Black Sea Region. Domination, Romanisation, Resistance, ed. T. Bekker-Nielsen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2006), 3135; for a survey of previous work on the problems of the Adamklissi monuments, see Lepper and Frere, Trajans Column, 295304, although they offer no real solutions. 54. Victory at Nicopolis: Ammianus Marcellinus 31.5.16; Jordanes, Getica 101; Stefan 400 with additional evidence, including coin hoards; Diaconescu, Dacia and the Dacian Wars, 593; cf. Lepper and Frere, Trajans Column, 87; see also above, note 48, for a view that there was no Dacian-Rhoxolan invasion of Moesia Inferior in 101102. Scene XXXIX may indicate Trajans foundation of Nicopolis ad Istrum, as Stefan believes, but it seems unlikely that Trajan devoted

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.

Stefans third book (359441, 485673) covers the entire history of the Dacians from the sixth century B.C. to the conclusion of Trajans second war in A.D. 106. His extensive pre-history to the wars of Domitian and Trajan seeks to validate his theses concerning Hellenization of the Dacians (for example, Sarmizegethus Regia as a Dacian version of Attalid Pergamum: 10911) and the rule of Burebista and Decebalus over essentially Hellenistic kingdoms. These thorny questions can only have their surface pricked here. Greek influence on Dacian architecture and urbanism is less problematic than the character of the Dacian state. Some impression of these issues will precede discussion (V) of Stefans innovative reconstructions of the topography of Domitians and Trajans campaigns. Part II of this article will assess Dacians and Roman strategy on the Lower Danube. Stefans emphasis on Dacians marginalizes the conglomerate of other peoples (Greeks, Iranians, Germans, Celts) sharing the Carpathian basinan ancient ethnic mix antedating medieval complications (for example, Magyars, Slavs). These other major players demand acknowledgement. In the Greek Classical period Thracian tribes, of which the Getae were a branch, dominated the area between the Strymon River (Thraces border with Macedonia) and the Black Sea, and from the northern coast of the Aegean Sea northward through the Carpathians and beyond the Siret River, as well as westward through modern Bulgaria into Serbia. The Odrysae, the most powerful Thracian tribe in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. south of the Haemus Mountains (modern Stara Planina), figured prominently in the power politics of Athens and Philip II of Macedon in the northern Aegean during the fourth century B.C. An Odrysian dynasty retained varying degrees of authority over much of Thrace into the forties B.C., when a dynasty of the Sapaean tribe emerged. Rome tolerated Thrace as a client-kingdom as long as order was preserved, but dynastic disputes compelled annexation in 46 A.D.55 Historically, Macedonia buffered Greece and the Mediterranean world generally from inroads of Thracians as well as Illyrians northwest of Macedonia. After Macedonias annexation in 146 B.C., it fell to the Roman governor of Macedonia to deter threats anywhere in the Balkans, a task subsequently incumbent on Roman commanders in Moesia (the area between the Haemus Mountains and the Danube) from the time of Augustus.56time and manpower to building and settling a city in the middle of the 101102 campaign. If Stefan is correct, the scene may be an anachronistic interpolation in the Columns narrative. 55. On the Thracians, see now Z. H. Archibald, The Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace: Orpheus Unmasked (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); opinions differ on whether the Dobrudja, including the Greek cities of the coast, was annexed as part of Thrace in 46 and when the Dobrudja became part of the Moesian province: cf. Suceveanu and Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine, 2528, and De nouveau autour de lannexion romaine de la Dobroudja, in Piso, ed., Die rmischen Provinzen, 27180; Petculescu, The Roman Army, 31, 41 n. 2; Lica, Coming of Rome, 14647. 56. Macedonia as buffer: Livy 33.12.1011; cf. 42.52.1; Strabo 7.3.11; note Alexander the Greats campaign (335 B.C.) to the Danube against the Triballi to secure Macedonias northernMILITARY HISTORY

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Decline of Odrysian power in the fourth century B.C. favored a Getic rise north of the Haemus. Two branches can be discerned: the Getae proper, extending on both the northern and southern banks of the Danube from the Iron Gates Gorge east to the Black Sea coast, of which the Trizes/Terizes tribe was prominent in the Dobrudja, and the Crozbyzes of the Carpathiansthe mountain Getae, which Latin sources called Daci. Ptolemy, however, could list fifteen Geto-Dacian tribes.57 Toponyms ending in -dava distinguish Geto-Dacian sites. In the Classical Greek and Hellenistic eras, the Getae often allied with the Thracian Triballi, with whom they shared the cult of Zalmoxis, the chief deity of Dacian religion. The Triballi stretched from Oescus (modern Gigen) on the Danube southward and west into the Serbian mountains. By the time of Roman occupation they were more a name than a people.58 Non-Thracians, however, also inhabited or migrated into the Carpathian basin. From the seventh century B.C. Greek colonies dotted the west coast of the Black Sea: (for example) in Romania, Histria, Tomis (modern Constantia), Callatis, and in Bulgaria, Dionysopolis (modern Balcic), Odessus (modern Varna), and Mesembria (modern Nesebur). A Greek market (emporium) even arose at some point far inland at Axiopolis (modern Cernavoda, c. 60 kilometers due west of Tomis on the northward bend of the Lower Danube), an oddity not matched by Greek ventures into theborder before his Persian expedition: Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri 1.46.11; cf. Strabo 7.3.8; Lica, Coming of Rome, 38, 74. Battys denial of Augustuss annexation of Moesia (Rome and the Nomads, 429; cf. 460) obscures the complex and poorly reported history of Roman military activity on the Middle and Lower Danube; the absence of a consular governor of a province of Moesia before Claudius (r. 4154) does not preclude Moesia as a provincia in the sense of a military command: on the problems, see R. Syme, The Early History of Moesia, in Syme, The Provincial at Rome and Rome and the Balkans 80 BCAD 14, ed. A. R. Birley (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999), 193220; cf. H. Wolff, Die rmische Erschliessung der Rhein- und Donauprovinzen im Blickwinkel ihrer Zielsetzung, in Rmische InschriftenNeufunde, Neulesungen und Neuinterpretationen: Festschrift fr Hans Lieb, ed. R. F. Stolba and M. A. Speidel (Basel: F. Reinhardt, 1995), 32527; and, most recently, M. Mirkovic, Die Anfnge der Provinz Moesia, in Piso, ed., Die rmischen Provinzen, 24970. 57. Strabo 7.3.1213; Ptolemy, Geography 3.8.14; Stefan 35960; cf. 37678: a superfluous commentary on ancient authors preferences for Getae or Daci, synonymous terms from Burebistas time. 58. Strabo 7.3.13; Syme, The Early History of Moesia, 200201, 21718 with n. 110; Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 52022; Ptolemy, Geography 3.10.5: Oescus of the Triballians (Oiskos Triballon). Oescus, the northern terminus of the shortest route between Macedonia and the Danube, was the first legionary camp downstream from the Iron Gates Gorge and became the base of the legion V Macedonica perhaps as early as Tiberius (r. 1438), but certainly during Claudiuss reign (3854): N. Gudea, Die Nordgrenze der rmischen Provinz Obermoesian. Materialen zu ihrer Geschichte (86275 n. Chr.), Jahrbuch des rmisch-germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 48 (2001): 1112; cf. M. Zahariade and N. Gudea, The Fortifications of Lower Moesia (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1997), 72: a synopsis of the Roman forts history; Batty, Rome and the Nomads (405; without sufficient evidence) would have Oescus as a permanent legionary base from 2/3 A.D. or 11 A.D.; cf. Wilkes, Roman Legions and their Fortresses, 102 for the V Macedonica at Oescus as early as 9 B.C.

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interior elsewhere.59 Of equal significance, Iranian peoples from the Ukrainian steppe were already migrating into Transylvania, the plains of Wallachia, and the Dobrudja by the sixth century B.C. The Agathyrsi, apparently a Thracian people on the Muresh River, had a king with an Iranian name (Spargapeithes) in the early fifth century B.C.; burials show a mixture of Geto-Dacian and Scythian elements until the midfifth century B.C.60 Intermittent Scythian migrations and raids from the Ukraine through the fourth century B.C. later intensified, as the Scythians were pushed from the steppe into the Crimea and the Dobrudja by the Sarmatians, another Iranian people, whose successive waves (Iazyges, Rhoxolani, Aorsi, Alani) dominated the steppe from the Don to the Dnieper, until the Goths arrived in the third century and the Huns in the fourth. The Dobrudja became Little Scythia (in Greek, Mikra Skythia), a term revived in the Late Empire, when the Dobrudja (detached from Moesia Inferior) became Scythia in the Diocletianic reorganizatio