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“Men learn better from examples.”
With internal matters seemingly settled, Trajan’s gaze began to turn east, towards Dacia, the kingdom in modern-day Bulgaria to the north of the Danube. Rome’s policy had been to quickly contain any foreign threats at its borders, and Domitian had spent part of his reign campaigning against Dacia. He had won a victory, albeit at a heavy price to Rome, which say the Dacian King Decebalus declared a Roman client king in return for receiving a stipend (payment), and numerous craftsmen, plus permission for legions to pass through his territory to attack the hostile Germanic tribes to the north. The idea behind these payments and craftsmen was that Dacia would secure its own northern borders with fortifications and weapons, allowing Rome to keep its border as the Danube (betwixt Moesia and Dacia). Soon the opposite began to transpire though, with Decebalus forming alliances with the Germanic tribes, and defences and weapons springing up along the Danube, pointing at Rome.
Domitian’s perceived poor handling of the Dacian front had stirred up much antagonism against him, and is believed to have been one of the causes behind the plot which resulted in his assassination. In addition to paying Decebalus, he had agreed a swift peace as he needed his Danube legions on the Rhine to quell a revolt from the governor of Germania. The high cost of defending the Roman Empire from invaders across Europe, coupled with the devaluation of the currency under Nero leading to economic problems, also made the resource-rich kingdom of Dacia an attractive prospect. Gold and silver mines were confirmed in the kingdom, while huge amounts of copper and iron fed a thriving metalwork industry. Only around a tenth of barbarian Celts would have had access to swords at the time, mostly relying on spears or axes instead as they needed less metal, giving the legions a distinct advantage. This was not the case in Dacia, where sword ownership was as common as in Rome, and the powerful kingdom could field up to a quarter of a million soldiers. With no defensive policy for the region, and little chance of sustaining a defensive war should the Dacians invade, Trajan decided to pre-empt the issue and move to swiftly annex Dacia instead.
Despite leaving other provinces dangerous undermanned, Trajan gained the formality of the Senate’s approval for an invasion of Dacia in 101 AD. Two legions spearheaded the Roman advance, with a further seven behind them, razing towns and villages as they marched into the heart of Dacia. The legions met the forces of Decebalus at the Second Battle of Tapae, and despite being hard pressed, the Dacians took the outbreak of a storm to be a bad omen, and retreated. The winter saw Trajan’s forces amass near the city of Nicopolis, expecting an attack from the Sarmations, though held firm to capture the city. In 102, Decebalus sued for peace after a number of skirmishes. The peace again empowered Decebalus to create a powerful allied zone to act as a buffer against Germanic tribes, with Roman craftsmen supporting this aim. This also allowed construction to start on Trajan’s Bridge, designed by Apollodorus of Damascus, to allow swift Roman invasions of Dacia in the future. The first bridge to be built over the lower Danube, the segmental arch bridge would be one of the greatest achievements of Roman architecture, considered the longest arch bridge in both total span and length for over a millennium, despite only remaining functional for 165 years. The 20 columns of the bridge were still visible in 1858, when a draught saw the Danube fall to its lowest level, and some remains can still be seen on the Serbian bank of the river today.
Despite agreeing peace, it was not long before Decebalus was again agitating for war. Again stirring up anti Roman sentiment and raiding settlements south of the Danube, he began forming anti-Roman alliances and fortifying against an attack from the south. An attempt to use Roman deserters to kill Trajan failed, and the captured legate Longinus chose to poison himself rather than remain in Dacian custody. The Dacians still posed a considerable threat to Rome, especially the abundance of heavy weapons among their soldiers. The first wars had seen the top of legionary helmets in particularly being a vulnerable spot for the Dacians, with their heavy weapons frequently hacking through them rather than seeing blows deflected. The Romans addressed this by retrofitting a steel cross within the helmet across the top of the dome, adding strength and protection against this former weakness.
The second war followed a similar course to the first, and was made up more of skirmishes than decisive battles, though again the legions suffered heavy and unsustainable casualties. Faced with a growing anti-Roman coalition, Trajan drafted in 14 legions to take the offensive in 105, gradually conquering the mountain fortress system that defended the capital of Sarmizegetusa. A final decisive battle took place outside the city in the summer of 106, and although the initial Roman attack was repelled, treacherous nobles helped the legions to identify and cut off the source of the city’s water. The city fell and was razed, and a fleeing Decebalus, tracked by Roman cavalry, chose to commit suicide rather than be captured. The war closed when a defecting Dacian royal confidant helped Trajan to find the kingdom’s treasury, and with it some 165 tonnes of gold and 331 tonnes of silver – worth over £7.5/$10 BILLION today (£7,529,409,000 - $10,233,596,240).
With such a gold haul, Trajan announced 123 days of celebrations throughout the empire. Dacia contributed over 700 million denarii to the Roman economy, financing Trajan’s future campaign’s and an increase in town building throughout Europe. Some 100,000 slaves were taken, and two legions left in the southern half of Dacia, which was annexed. Victory in Dacia marked a sustained period of growth and internal peace for the Roman Empire, and provided the funds for Trajan to embark on construction projects across the Mediterranean. The wars had seen up to 175,000 legionaries deployed in the kingdom, and despite it now being annexed, it would not remain Roman for long. The Danube would go on to replace the Rhine permanently as the focus point for Rome’s legions, and the removal of the Dacian kingdom ended the final buffer betwixt Rome and the Germanic barbarians that within a decade would go from a force Rome would cross the Danube to punish, to a force they would desperately struggle to keep out of the empire.
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