Definition of Dacian Wars

The Dacians were a bellicose people who lived in what is now approximately Romania, and who constituted (although relatively unknown to the general public) one of the great enemies of Rome throughout its expansion.

The Dacian Wars were three armed conflicts that confronted the Roman Empire on the one hand and, on the other, a series of tribes of Dacian culture.

The First Dacian War started in 86 AD. C, when King Decebalus ascended the Dacian throne, who changed a politics of traditional alliance with Rome, for an aggressive policy with the empire, allying with the peoples of the north and east of Dacia and making incursions into territory imperial.

As expected, Rome reacted, sending a first campaign that failed against the Dacians. The Second had a greater military success on the ground, but the difficulty of the terrain (very steep) and Needs on other fronts eventually forced Rome to reach an agreement of peace with the Dacians that, in practice, made it a tribute to them.

It does not take much effort to deduce that neither the national pride of the Romans, nor their thirst for conquest, would allow this to remain that way for long ...

The second confrontation with the Dacians took place in 101 AD. C, when Trajan obtained permission from the Senate to pounce on Dacia.

If the above conflict is seen by historians as a precursor to what would come next and at the hand of Trajan, this confrontation is the one that It will be known as the First Dacian War, although in practice we can consider it as the second confrontation between Dacians and Romans.

Trajan wanted to eliminate threat that it supposed the Dacian kingdom of a certain blow and, for this, it requested permission to the Senate (which it obtained) and prepared a numerous and well-equipped and prepared army, of near 150,000 units.

Trajan entered Dacian territory without much difficulty thanks to his vast numerical superiority and superiority technique military and strategy of the Roman troops, but his offensive was slowed by a Dacian counterattack on Moesia, forcing Trajan to divert his troops from him to respond to the incursion.

The Dacians were forced to withdraw from Roman territory, with which Trajan could continue his persecution, until he forced Decébalo to surrender and sign a peace treaty.

Said treaty reversed the terms of the previous agreement, making Dacia a tributary state of the Roman empire. This conflict ended in 102 AD. C.

The Second Dacian War started in 105 AD. C. and ended in 106.

As a result of the previous confrontation, Decébalo and the Dacians had to host troops Roman occupation and pay taxes to the Italian city, which was generating a series of tensions.

As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, Decébalo returned to the incursions on the Roman area of Moesia, and to lighten the spirits of his Dacian compatriots, which led to a new confrontation.

To this weather rarefied, Rome responded again with a concentration of troops, again commanded by the emperor Trajano, who, again also, forced the passage through the same place in which in the first confrontations in 86 d. C. they had been defeated, and in 101 they had won: the Tapae pass.

Attacked by three fronts, Dacia ended up succumbing, but not before having been able to successfully repel an attack on its capital, and displaying the ferocity and belligerence of the Dacian people, who posed an unexpected problem for Rome.

In 106 d. C. Decébalus committed suicide for fear of being captured alive by the Romans. It is the end of the Dacian resistance.

The benefit of the immense Dacian treasure, estimated at hundreds of thousands of kilos of gold and silver, quickly made itself felt in the Roman Empire.

The conquest of Dacia was reflected in one of the most important and well-known monuments of ancient Rome that have survived to this day: the Trajan Column.

Photo: Fotolia - radub85

Themes in Dacian Wars