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“Optimus Princeps” was the appellation of Trajan all along the time since he reduced the kingdom of Dacia to the “benevolent” subjection of the Roman eagles, bringing a much needed peace and the rule of law among lawless and warlike barbarians. Grandiose buildings, enduring monuments, his name growing on the walls like ivy, a reverent historiography, bear witness to the grandeur of the man whose statue sat on top of the Column that celebrated for the centuries to come the magnificent victory of civilization upon barbarity. The Column that so much impressed a saintly Pope that he prayed God to pardon Trajan for his ruthless persecution of the Christians and grant him a place in the Christian Paradise .Victories upon victories, unprecedented prosperity, the rule of an enlightened and cultured class, wise and virtuous, who with smiling tolerance allowed the eternal weaknesses of human nature to have their own course, while delighting in the image of liberty under the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, this was the image of the Roman Empire in the days of its greatest glory. The soft humour of Gibbon, the eminent literary quality of the greatest history in the English language of the civilization of the Late Roman Empire, magnified the Antonines’ time to the status of a Golden Age, during which “the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous”, happiness, alas, undermined by the dark forces of fanaticism and irrationality, which after a protracted period of Decline brought about the Fall from that Golden Age.
There is a scene on the Column of Trajan (scene XLV) that from the time of Alfonso Chacon, the Spanish Jesuit who first described the Trajan’s Column, to the latest descriptions of the Column was read with this image in mind. Ciaconius in his Historia utriusque belli Dacici a Traiano Caesare Gesti et simulacris quae in Columna eiusdem Romae visuntur collecta, published at Rome in 1576, described it in the following terms: “Foemina Dacicae, manes suorum maritorum et natorum, qui in proeliia adversus Romanos ocubuerant, vindicta placare volentes, captives milites Romanos, etiam vicentes, facibus soevissime exurunt”. This expression has been taken unchanged in all subsequent descriptions of the Column, from Pietro Santo Bartoli [1], to Froehner [2] and Salomon Reinach [3].
It was Conrad Cichorius who gave the most complete description of the scene [4], adding to it the full weight of German pedantry. For him the content of the picture was “ohne weiteres klar”. The Roman prisoners were killed “in grausamster Weise”. He felt compelled to elaborate on the subject. Said he: “Probably they are the widows of those fallen in battle who, as it is even today the custom of the Naturvolker, took revenge on the prisoners”. He did not stop at that and added: “It was customary for the Dacians to kill the captives, as is proven in scene XXV, where we see skulls stuck on poles, and a similarly cruel treatment is described by Florus I, 39, 7, when he said of the northern peoples (i.e. Thracians , Dacians etc) : <<quippe in captivos igni ferroque saevitum est>>” [5]. Cichorius had no doubts that the scene of this cruel act was naturlich situated in the Dacian mountains. It must be mentioned here that the entire text of Florus quoted by Cichorius referred, to be exact, to the torture of the barbarian prisoners against whom, said Florus, the Romans were compelled to apply their own methods (Nec aliter cruentissimi hostium quam suis moribus domiti).
Karl Lehmann – Hartleben [6] thought that the scene was intended to contrast the savagery of the Dacians with the humane spirit of the Roman civilization, an opinion also held by Ian Richmond, in his seminal study on The Roman’s Army on Trajan’s Column [7]. It was precisely this vision of the contrast between Kulturvolker i.e. Roman Empire and Naturvolker i.e. primitive barbarians like the Dacians, Getians, etc., natural to western historiography (still current today in certain quarters) that perpetuated the wrong reading of the scene and by extension of the character of the Dacian wars.
Photos: sarmis.org
The Romanian historians took for granted Cichorius’ opinion, although a certain feeling that everything was not so neatly clear cut, transpired. So, when the reliefs of the Column have been exposed to the public gaze at the Museum of National History of Romania, the first photographic album published by Ion Miclea and Radu Florescu expressed strong doubts about the current interpretation. Radu Florescu remarked that the scene was clearly integrated in the Moesian episode of the first Dacian war and any ascription to the Carpathian zone would put in jeopardy any attempt to localize the events of the Column’s narrative [8].
The doubts were transparent also in the contrived theory of late Professor Radu Vulpe, who believed that the scene was meant to evoke a combined Dacian, Sarmatian and German manoeuvre on the rear of the principal Roman forces engaged in Transylvania, which led to the battle in whose memory the Monument of Adamclissi, the Tropaeum Traiani, was erected [9].
In 1975 I presented at the Conference organized by the Museum of Archaeology of Constanta a paper in which I was demolishing the current view. There were not Dacian women torturing Roman prisoners, but on the very contrary Roman women torturing Dacian prisoners! Not only the whole scene is set in the Moesian episode of the first Dacian War, clearly taking place on the southern Danubian shore, but also the previous scenes show Dacian prisoners in the Roman camp. Also the dress of the women burning the prisoners is different from the dress of Dacian women depicted in other scenes (Dacian women always wore a scarf on the Column, whereas the tortionists are bareheaded and their hairstyle is typically roman). As expected, the paper was dismissed by Professor Radu Vulpe, who advised me to read more (namely his own article) in order to get the things right. I succeded in publishing the abridged paper under the title “Taina unei scene de pe Columna lui Traian” in 1982 in Magazin Istoric (Nr.8 (183) Iunie 1982) after a long resistance. And that despite the fact that in 1977 Werner Gauer had reached the same conclusions. He argued that the blockhouse (the tower) around which the scene of the torture took place must have been in Moesia (either Oescus or Novae) so the women must have been Moesian widows and mothers avenging the slaughter of their menfolk on Dacian or Sarmatian captives, and at the very place where the raiders had originally crossed the Danube [10]. Any doubt is precluded by the fact that the rear of the boat represented in the following scene cuts the tower clearly situated on the shore, giving the impression that it was moored there. It is also interesting to mention that the Roman penal code knew of a torture by the fire applied for various crimes, especially of a military nature and also to the Christians [11].
The resistance to the publication surprised me. It took a time to realize that I was at variance with firmly entrenched opinions and prejudices. The national mythology had that Trajan’s subjection of Dacia was in fact a blessing in disguise, bringing the barbarian Dacia into the civilized world, a grand and generous design befitting the Best of Princes.
But was the conquest of Dacia that grand design to “implant” a strong latinitas among “lazy and barbaric” peoples of the Lower Danube and to make Dacia a bulwark against the eternal Asian peril? Or it had more trivial causes? The latest edition of the Cichorius plates by Frank Lepper and Sheppard Frere summarized the various causes of the Dacian wars put forward from time to time [12].
First, the official Roma version reflected in Dio’s account and the Column itself, both certainly inspired by Trajan’s own lost Dacica [13]. Dacia was a well-organized and warlike neighbour, whose treacherous king humiliated the Romans using the Roman subsidies and technical aid granted to them by an unworthy emperor (who was also an insufferable tyrant to his own people) to concoct even more sinister plans. Trajan emerged just in time to stop the “insolence” of the barbarian king and avenge the wounded majesty of the Romans. “Memento Romane…debellare superbos”. After epic battles, Trajan succeded in removing once and for all the threat posed by the existence of the Dacian kingdom. As Gibbon humorously remarked :”According to Livy, the Romans conquerd the world in self defence”!
Another cause put forward was the danger of a revolt of the Danubian legions, outraged by the murder of Domitian. Lepper and Frere quote the anecdote about Dion Chrysostom, retailed by Philostratus (Vita Sophistarum, I, 7) which tells us how Dion succeeded in stopping the mutiny by a brilliant discourse about tyranny and democracy. One would suspect that this discourse was already the thinly dissimulated apology of Trajan of the De regno discourses of Dion. The fact behind the story might have been that Trajan thought of a standard procedure, to single out a few ring leaders for exemplary punishment and as soon as practicable to lead the remainder into battle against a foreign enemy [14].
Another cause was the weakness of the new regime. Despite the bombasts of Pliny, Trajan was a rather obscure commander. Even Pliny could not find much more than the loyal zeal displayed on the occasion of the rebellion of Antonius Saturninus. Trajan did not see, let alone win, a full-scale pitched battle, at a time when there were still some senatorial ex-governors who had [15]. In fact, this consideration carries a great weight as we shall see.
There is then the desire for fame of Trajan and the permanent desire for gold of the Romans [16]. Strong incentives indeed. These two alone may be taken as the principal causes, at least for the good reason that they are the real causes of all wars. But Dacia was also renowned for its abundance of gold. Jerome Carcopino argued that the principal reason for invading Dacia was the acquisition of the gold mines of Ampelum, which were not aquired following the first war and thus sowing the seeds for the second [17]. Lepper and Frere scoff at Carcopino’s argument, preferring the classical argument: it was the disloyalty of the barbarian king that the Romans could not tolerate; the blame must be put entirely on the Dacians [18].
In his list of causes Lepper discussed another aspect, put forward by some Romanian scholars, namely that the rulers of the Roman Empire, with its slave economy felt uneasy at the proximity of the vigorously free Dacians, ready to fight for their independence and even to become the focus of the aspirations to freedom of the neighbouring nations enslaved by the Romans. Therefore the Romans were determined to risk a war, hoping thereby not only to be rid of this danger but, at the same time to aquire a nice supply of strong and healthy slaves. Lepper attributed the Romanian scholars’ view to the Marxist philosophy and insisted that no sign in the ancient evidence shows it as being a conscious aim, although, to put in in Lepper’s own words “it would be foolish to maintain that no Dacians were enslaved or recruited somewhat forcibly into the Roman auxiliary forces after conquest”. He added that “in this particular case such a claim may seem rather implausible in western eyes” [19]. It is not in itself, but it is equally true that the West has always shown a certain reluctance to admit that their wars were not always motivated by noble motives! Slaves were, nevertheless, a bonus.
So, where do we stand? There is no way out, I believe, than to follow the advise of Lepper himself on “whether to swallow one of these theories whole, to concoct for oneself a mixture of any or all of them, or to propound yet another candidate for inclusion in future lists of <<causes>>.
The apparent difficulty to choose any one of them is that all these “causes” are true and by one of these rare coincidences in history, operated in full force together.
Reversing the order of causes exposed by Lepper and Frere, it was the resistance of the peoples exposed to the Roman order which was the first cause. “Auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium et ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant”. Decebalus would have been made to utter the same words, had Tacitus written the story of the Dacian wars. The “aggressions” of the Dacians were fights in self defence. They started not with Trajan or Domitian but long before.
It is beyond reasonable doubt that the Dacian gold glittering beyond the horizon was a powerful magnet for the Emperors short of cash. The booty of the Dacian wars, even if not as fantastic as Lydus said, was sizeable enough even with the corrections made by Carcopino [20]. And even if, as Ronald Syme has shown [21], the gold of Dacia did not come into question to redress the shaken finances of the Empire, allegedly squandered by Domitian, it certainly made Trajan and his clique immensely rich overnight. It provided him with the means to bribe the army with generous donativa and to flatter the populace with games, shows, congiaria for years. The slaves captured were slaughtered in the arena for the delight of the always avid of blood Roman populace. Extravagant expenditure was always a way to win popular support. It certainly contributed to gild his rather lackluster image. It is also significant that the gold mines of Ampelum had been immediately taken into the Patrimonium Caesaris [22].
And it was the desire for fame which pushed to the subjugation of the indomitable Scythians and Getians. Let us not forget that fame was an essential political capital, in the agonistic world of Antiquity. As Michael McCormick stressed: “Since the days of the Republic, prominent men engaged in the scramble for power vaunted their felicitas, their good fortune or divine favour, as an essential gratification for leadership. And what more unequivocal confirmation of felicitas could they desire than a resounding military victory achieved under the proper conditions and sanctioned by the Senate and the gods in the spectacular triumphal ceremonies?... felicitas and the mystique of victory fitted easily into the ideological stock of the Augustan principate and quickly became a significant buttress of the new order. As Gage demonstrated, the essential trait of this mystique was that the emperor’s victories demonstrate his aptness for rulership” [23], in other words that he was capax imperii. What Trajan really needed was to stamp his heel on the neck of that “enemy of the Roman People” driven into suicidal desperate resistance, the arch villain Decebalus (“debellare superbos”), at the big show of his triumph. This hope was partially frustrated by the actual suicide of the Dacian king.
Now, Trajan came to power more as a usurper. A resounding military victory was simply a condition of his survival. Let us not forget the conditions of Trajan’s accession to power. His hasty adoption by Nerva took place against the background of the tumultus of Casperius Aelianus, former prefectus pretorii under Domitian, reinstated by Nerva and who was now demanding the punishment of Domitian’s murderers. The unrest of the Danubian legions seems to be in connection with that and certainly was a serious matter of concern. Was the adoption of Trajan the result of the acknowledgement of his eminent qualities? He probably was a man capable of handling the situation, but a grave suspicion arises. Could it be that he was chosen just because he was one of the most faithful to Domitian, an amicus principis, member of the Consilium Principis? He was accepted without much reservation by the mutineers and by the Danubian legions because of his perceived fidelity to Domitian. He certainly was expected to satisfy the requests of the mutineers, the avenging of Domitian’s murder and the punishment of its perpetrators. But what did he do immediately after his adoption? He summoned Casperius Aelianus and the other rebels to his headquarters in Germany. They went, obviously without suspicions. Casperius Aelianus was a friend of Trajan’s father [24]. And then we see Trajan’s applying the method of Germanicus. He arrested and executed without trial Casperius and then secured for himself the title of Germanicus for a minor success on the Rhine. But, even more significantly, he did not return to Rome, as it would have been normal, after the death of Nerva, but started his long inspection of the Danubian troops, certainly in order to quell the unrest by the lure of a victory against the “insolent” king Decebalus, guilty of contempt of the Empire and even more certainly with the lure of the immense riches of Dacia.
And we know for certain that Trajan had to face other competitors, and not inferior ones. One is alluded to by the Younger Pliny, in the Panegyricus, 8,5. He now appears in the full light of history. The inscription found in 1890 at Liria Edetanorum, in the province of Valencia, brought to light the identity of the unnamed competitor of Trajan. His name was M. Cornelius Nigrinus Curiatius Maternus. The real surprise was that Maternus was a general of Domitian, enjoying his confidence, former governor of Moesia, a hero of Domitian’s Dacian War, much decorated for his feats in that war, governor of Syria at the time of the succession crisis, who mysteriously sunk into oblivion for almost one thousand and eight hundred years. I refer to the illuminating article of Geza Alfoldi in Chiron 3 (1973) and to the comments of Ronald Syme on the last years of Domitian in the same Chiron 13 (1983) in order to better understand why that man was “todesschweigt” [25]. In short he had much more important credentials than Trajan to succed to Domitian. He certainly was popular in the Danubian army. Besides he was governor of Syria, and thus commanding the necessary forces to implement his ambitions. The danger of a joint action with the Danubian legions was very serious. It is only a conjecture, but the Dacians may have shown some support for Maternus, or been perceived as leaning towards him. We may presume that he was a Domitian loyalist and that fact alone might have scared the conspirators. A Spaniard like Trajan, he was a real match to the drunken lover of teenagers propelled to the highest office by a cabal of other Spaniards led by Lucius Licinius Sura, precisely for his lack of lustre. Or perhaps because they were sharing the same vices. It happened, as it happened so many times in history that Trajan revealed himself to be more shrewd than expected and eventually imposed himself against the desire of his protectors. Or was it quite so? Was the respect that Trajan – and later Hadrian – showed to the Senate only a tactical temporization until he was able, after his resounding successes to impose his absolute rule? Or was it rather a repayment to that Spanish coterie in the Senate who brought him to power?
A recent study of Adalberto Giovaninni put Pliny in an entirely different light which reflects on his credibility [26]. In his Panegyric of Trajan Pliny accused Domitian for his reign of terror similar to the proscriptions of Sylla. He surrounded himself with informers, the delatores. Pliny gives the impression that Domitian’s victims have been condemned for political reasons, that they were real or supposed critics of the regime. He alludes to the maiestas, the law of lese-majesty, therefore the condemnation had to do with treason or lese-majesty. There is no more doubt that the delatores had little to do with political opposition. In fact they were fulfilling the duties of what today would be the public prosecution and they were in fact reporting on matters of inheritance and succession tax, the vicesima hereditatum et legatorum paid by any inheritor, which alimented the Aerarium militare. The delatores were inquiring on the regularity of testaments estimating the fortune in view of the correct perception of the tax. The Aerarium was also inheriting the bona caduca, the goods inherited by people who had not the right to inherit according to the lex Papia Poppaea. Falsification or suppression of wills, illegal wills, false adoptions, false pregnancies were severely punished. The delatores were claiming the irregular successions for the Aerarium, receiving as reward a part of the fortune. It is somewhat ironical that Domitian himself took measures against the delatores (Suetonius, Dom., 9, 3). But no emperor, including Trajan, ever thought to suppress the rewards of the delatores, and indeed the function itself. And that because, in fact, the role of the delatores was to protect the financial interests of the ruling class. The fact that it was current practice to attach an accusation of maiestas to any sort of accusation created the false impression that the fiscal measures of Domitian were politically motivated [27].
But Pliny was, as well as Trajan, one of the closest collaborators of Domitian. Pliny held the office of prefectus aerarii militaris and in that capacity he was the man receiving the reports of the hated delatores and acting upon them. Pliny was a man compromised with the regime of Domitian. He was in a very uncomfortable position. It was wise for him to pose in discreet “dissident” and hide his collaboration with Domitian. His praise of Trajan is rather an attempt to save his own skin. After the fall of Domitian Pliny attacked a famous delator, Publicius Certus. He was advised by friends to desist because that would make him a marked man in the eyes of future emperors, naming “someone who had a great army in the east”, clearly an allusion to Nigrinus (Pliny, Epp. IX, 13, 11). His views on the Dacian Wars are in fact a denunciation of Domitian. The truth is that the Dacian War of Domitian was a success. The Romans were in fact victorious; the conditions of the treaty of 89 were entirely favorable to the Romans. Decebalus was giving no real signs of double-dealing. Pliny uttered a lie, in complete knowledge of the facts, when he said that Trajan celebrated the first triumph ever against the Dacians. The new regime had to outbid the Flavians at any cost.
Now let us have a quick look at the Dacian – Roman relations. It is clear that Decebalus had the status of a client king, of an amicus populi Romani. And the status of amicus went back to, at least Augustus. The Dacians always opposed the expansionist stand of Rome. They engaged in political alliances with the Roman parties which favored a realistic policy, namely political agreements which would take into consideration their own interests. They sided with Pompey against Julius Caesar, with Mark Anthony against Octavianus. They eventually came to an agreement with Augustus, agreement that worked, despite moments of tension and conflicts, till Trajan. Jordanes mentioned that the attack on Moesia by Decebalus during Domitian’s reign was in breach of a former foedus (Getica, XIII, 76). It seems clear that this foedus was old and in all likelihood it was the foedus of Augustus, renewed under Vespasian. I think that the subsidia paid by the Romans were not only a kind of of aid to the then Third World, but also a compensation for the customs duties levied by the Dacian kings on the Danubian commercial traffic, now received by the Romans, especially after the creation of the Classis Flavia Moesica under Vespasian. I surmise that the Dacian attack on Moesia in A. D. 85, that Jordanes ascribed to the “avaritia” of Domitian had a strong relationship with Roman infringements of a previous agreement. The Dacian war of Domitian, although probably intended to bring about the occupation of Dacia, but stopped by the lateral attacks of the Germans (allied with Decebalus?) and the revolt of Antonius Saturninus, ended eventually in a profitable agreement for both parties. The Romans were by no means humiliated, they were definitely the victors, showing a constructive clementia. It was in fact a piece of Realpolitik which could have had beneficial effects for the peace in the region. It was a policy that operated at least since the time of Alexander the Great. The famous peace between Lysimachus and Dromichaites had worked for nearly three centuries, reinforced by successive agreements under Pompeius, Marcus Antonius, Augustus, Nero and the Flavians. It certainly had economic aspects. It is clear that Dacia belonged to the the economic world of the Thracians and Aegean peoples and their traditional ties with the south were greatly upset by the Roman conquests in the Balkans [28]. We may surmise that the successive agreements mentioned before worked to remedy this situation. The fact that the Dacians minted Roman denarii is suggestive of monetary agreements, and it is perfectly possible that devaluations of Roman currency had undesired repercussions also on the Dacian economy.
It was the ascension to power of a group of homines novi recruited mainly from the provinces of Spain and Gaul, active, ambitious, industrious, with few scruples, if any at all, which overturned that more realistic policy inaugurated by Pompeius, followed by Augustus and the much maligned Tiberius. The conquest of Dacia was altogether an unnecessary piece of bravado, an act of treachery against an ally, reminding us of the destruction of Carthage and foreshadowing the Fourth Crusade, all to the advantage of an usurper, raised to power by a coterie of profiteers, very much preoccupied with their own well-being, which they were too ready to identify with the wellbeing of the Empire at large. And one may feel cynical that the Optimus Princeps deserved this appellation because he was able to offer the Roman populace one hundred twenty three days of continuous bombastic waste (in actual fact there were three years of continuous carnival in which the enormous booty of the Dacian wars was squandered to gorge with food, drinks, generous doles and the blood of more than ten thousand Dacian captives the sadistic Roman mob – whose condition, no wonder, was then the “most happy and prosperous”).
But of course, we cannot dismiss lightly the grandiose plans of conquest of the East, nurtured by the Romans at least since the time of Julius Caesar. He was planning the conquest of Dacia and Parthia, as the surest way to claim the royal title. Both Suetonius and Dio Cassius (XLIV, 15) tell the story of the intention of the quindecemvir Lucius Cotta to announce in the Senate that the prophetic writings stated that only a king can conquer the Parthians, therefore the title of king must be conferred on Caesar. It was this rumor that hastened the assassination of Caesar. But would not the actual conquest have boosted his pretensions? Trajan thought along the same lines.
Viewed in this context a curious passage of Florus (II, 26, 13-15) acquires a significant weight. After Actium the Romans were constrained to wage war against the peoples to the north, whose “tumidae inflateque cervices” were not used to the newly imposed yoke and opposed a stiff resistance: “Norici, Illyri, Pannonii, Delmatae, Moesi, Thraces et Daci, Sarmatae atque Germani”. Among them the Moesi were the most savage and cruel “barbari barbarorum”. Before the battle one of the Moesian leaders asked the Romans: “Who are you?” To which the Romans answered: “The masters of the world”. The barbarian leader answered in his turn: “That would be only if you defeat us”. Florus adds that “Marcus Crassus accepted the challenge”. Then they sacrificed a horse. I believe that the horse sacrifice was the equivalent of asvamedha and the Roman sacrifice of the October equus, a royal rite meant not only to ensure victory in battles, but also to establish the suzerainty of the king over other kings. It appears that the Moesian-Getian kings exhibited some pretensions to universal dominion as any other king and which appear to be very ancient. It is not surprising then, but was rather natural, that the Romans gave such importance to triumphs over these peoples and that the Roman Emperors included in their propagandistic arsenal old myths and religious ideas borrowed from the traditions of the peoples conquered or to be conquered. We can only speculate whether there is a relation between this episode and the granting of the title of Augustus to Octavian in 27 BC. But we can draw a parallel between the silencing of Cornelius Nigrinus and that of M. Licinius Crassus, the real victor in the Balkan war. This war was a vast enterprise in which Crassus was covered in glory. It was the campaign in which Crassus distinguished himself by starving to death a great number of people hiding in the Ceiris cave by immuring them. Its belittling in the imperial historiography [29] aimed at the belittling of Crassus, a potentially dangerous rival for Octavian. He was the grandson of the triumvir. He won a war there were Octavian himself failed. He killed in personal combat the king Deldo of the Bastarnae, entitled to the honors of spolia opima, the fourth one in the whole roman history, but which have been refused to him under the pretext that he was fighting under the auspices of Octavian!
We may ask: was it of any worth? Were Dacians really subdued? Was the grand design of the Latinitas in the East realized, if such a design ever existed at all? All the time Dacia was under Roman occupation was an uneasy time. Revolts of the Dacians and the arrival of new people eventually forced Romans out of Dacia. It was the reverting of Constantine the Great to the old policy of foedera, the creation of the limitanei, that brought a relative peace to the region. It was from this time and mainly through Christianity that a real Romanitas took shape north of the Danube. But Constantine represents the real landmark of a new era, an era when the centre of power returned to the East, as oracles like the Apocalypse of Hystaspes prophesied and against of which realization Rome dedicated so much effort.
There is a scene on the Column of Trajan (scene XLV) that from the time of Alfonso Chacon, the Spanish Jesuit who first described the Trajan’s Column, to the latest descriptions of the Column was read with this image in mind. Ciaconius in his Historia utriusque belli Dacici a Traiano Caesare Gesti et simulacris quae in Columna eiusdem Romae visuntur collecta, published at Rome in 1576, described it in the following terms: “Foemina Dacicae, manes suorum maritorum et natorum, qui in proeliia adversus Romanos ocubuerant, vindicta placare volentes, captives milites Romanos, etiam vicentes, facibus soevissime exurunt”. This expression has been taken unchanged in all subsequent descriptions of the Column, from Pietro Santo Bartoli [1], to Froehner [2] and Salomon Reinach [3].
It was Conrad Cichorius who gave the most complete description of the scene [4], adding to it the full weight of German pedantry. For him the content of the picture was “ohne weiteres klar”. The Roman prisoners were killed “in grausamster Weise”. He felt compelled to elaborate on the subject. Said he: “Probably they are the widows of those fallen in battle who, as it is even today the custom of the Naturvolker, took revenge on the prisoners”. He did not stop at that and added: “It was customary for the Dacians to kill the captives, as is proven in scene XXV, where we see skulls stuck on poles, and a similarly cruel treatment is described by Florus I, 39, 7, when he said of the northern peoples (i.e. Thracians , Dacians etc) : <<quippe in captivos igni ferroque saevitum est>>” [5]. Cichorius had no doubts that the scene of this cruel act was naturlich situated in the Dacian mountains. It must be mentioned here that the entire text of Florus quoted by Cichorius referred, to be exact, to the torture of the barbarian prisoners against whom, said Florus, the Romans were compelled to apply their own methods (Nec aliter cruentissimi hostium quam suis moribus domiti).
Karl Lehmann – Hartleben [6] thought that the scene was intended to contrast the savagery of the Dacians with the humane spirit of the Roman civilization, an opinion also held by Ian Richmond, in his seminal study on The Roman’s Army on Trajan’s Column [7]. It was precisely this vision of the contrast between Kulturvolker i.e. Roman Empire and Naturvolker i.e. primitive barbarians like the Dacians, Getians, etc., natural to western historiography (still current today in certain quarters) that perpetuated the wrong reading of the scene and by extension of the character of the Dacian wars.
Photos: sarmis.org
The Romanian historians took for granted Cichorius’ opinion, although a certain feeling that everything was not so neatly clear cut, transpired. So, when the reliefs of the Column have been exposed to the public gaze at the Museum of National History of Romania, the first photographic album published by Ion Miclea and Radu Florescu expressed strong doubts about the current interpretation. Radu Florescu remarked that the scene was clearly integrated in the Moesian episode of the first Dacian war and any ascription to the Carpathian zone would put in jeopardy any attempt to localize the events of the Column’s narrative [8].
The doubts were transparent also in the contrived theory of late Professor Radu Vulpe, who believed that the scene was meant to evoke a combined Dacian, Sarmatian and German manoeuvre on the rear of the principal Roman forces engaged in Transylvania, which led to the battle in whose memory the Monument of Adamclissi, the Tropaeum Traiani, was erected [9].
In 1975 I presented at the Conference organized by the Museum of Archaeology of Constanta a paper in which I was demolishing the current view. There were not Dacian women torturing Roman prisoners, but on the very contrary Roman women torturing Dacian prisoners! Not only the whole scene is set in the Moesian episode of the first Dacian War, clearly taking place on the southern Danubian shore, but also the previous scenes show Dacian prisoners in the Roman camp. Also the dress of the women burning the prisoners is different from the dress of Dacian women depicted in other scenes (Dacian women always wore a scarf on the Column, whereas the tortionists are bareheaded and their hairstyle is typically roman). As expected, the paper was dismissed by Professor Radu Vulpe, who advised me to read more (namely his own article) in order to get the things right. I succeded in publishing the abridged paper under the title “Taina unei scene de pe Columna lui Traian” in 1982 in Magazin Istoric (Nr.8 (183) Iunie 1982) after a long resistance. And that despite the fact that in 1977 Werner Gauer had reached the same conclusions. He argued that the blockhouse (the tower) around which the scene of the torture took place must have been in Moesia (either Oescus or Novae) so the women must have been Moesian widows and mothers avenging the slaughter of their menfolk on Dacian or Sarmatian captives, and at the very place where the raiders had originally crossed the Danube [10]. Any doubt is precluded by the fact that the rear of the boat represented in the following scene cuts the tower clearly situated on the shore, giving the impression that it was moored there. It is also interesting to mention that the Roman penal code knew of a torture by the fire applied for various crimes, especially of a military nature and also to the Christians [11].
The resistance to the publication surprised me. It took a time to realize that I was at variance with firmly entrenched opinions and prejudices. The national mythology had that Trajan’s subjection of Dacia was in fact a blessing in disguise, bringing the barbarian Dacia into the civilized world, a grand and generous design befitting the Best of Princes.
But was the conquest of Dacia that grand design to “implant” a strong latinitas among “lazy and barbaric” peoples of the Lower Danube and to make Dacia a bulwark against the eternal Asian peril? Or it had more trivial causes? The latest edition of the Cichorius plates by Frank Lepper and Sheppard Frere summarized the various causes of the Dacian wars put forward from time to time [12].
First, the official Roma version reflected in Dio’s account and the Column itself, both certainly inspired by Trajan’s own lost Dacica [13]. Dacia was a well-organized and warlike neighbour, whose treacherous king humiliated the Romans using the Roman subsidies and technical aid granted to them by an unworthy emperor (who was also an insufferable tyrant to his own people) to concoct even more sinister plans. Trajan emerged just in time to stop the “insolence” of the barbarian king and avenge the wounded majesty of the Romans. “Memento Romane…debellare superbos”. After epic battles, Trajan succeded in removing once and for all the threat posed by the existence of the Dacian kingdom. As Gibbon humorously remarked :”According to Livy, the Romans conquerd the world in self defence”!
Another cause put forward was the danger of a revolt of the Danubian legions, outraged by the murder of Domitian. Lepper and Frere quote the anecdote about Dion Chrysostom, retailed by Philostratus (Vita Sophistarum, I, 7) which tells us how Dion succeeded in stopping the mutiny by a brilliant discourse about tyranny and democracy. One would suspect that this discourse was already the thinly dissimulated apology of Trajan of the De regno discourses of Dion. The fact behind the story might have been that Trajan thought of a standard procedure, to single out a few ring leaders for exemplary punishment and as soon as practicable to lead the remainder into battle against a foreign enemy [14].
Another cause was the weakness of the new regime. Despite the bombasts of Pliny, Trajan was a rather obscure commander. Even Pliny could not find much more than the loyal zeal displayed on the occasion of the rebellion of Antonius Saturninus. Trajan did not see, let alone win, a full-scale pitched battle, at a time when there were still some senatorial ex-governors who had [15]. In fact, this consideration carries a great weight as we shall see.
There is then the desire for fame of Trajan and the permanent desire for gold of the Romans [16]. Strong incentives indeed. These two alone may be taken as the principal causes, at least for the good reason that they are the real causes of all wars. But Dacia was also renowned for its abundance of gold. Jerome Carcopino argued that the principal reason for invading Dacia was the acquisition of the gold mines of Ampelum, which were not aquired following the first war and thus sowing the seeds for the second [17]. Lepper and Frere scoff at Carcopino’s argument, preferring the classical argument: it was the disloyalty of the barbarian king that the Romans could not tolerate; the blame must be put entirely on the Dacians [18].
In his list of causes Lepper discussed another aspect, put forward by some Romanian scholars, namely that the rulers of the Roman Empire, with its slave economy felt uneasy at the proximity of the vigorously free Dacians, ready to fight for their independence and even to become the focus of the aspirations to freedom of the neighbouring nations enslaved by the Romans. Therefore the Romans were determined to risk a war, hoping thereby not only to be rid of this danger but, at the same time to aquire a nice supply of strong and healthy slaves. Lepper attributed the Romanian scholars’ view to the Marxist philosophy and insisted that no sign in the ancient evidence shows it as being a conscious aim, although, to put in in Lepper’s own words “it would be foolish to maintain that no Dacians were enslaved or recruited somewhat forcibly into the Roman auxiliary forces after conquest”. He added that “in this particular case such a claim may seem rather implausible in western eyes” [19]. It is not in itself, but it is equally true that the West has always shown a certain reluctance to admit that their wars were not always motivated by noble motives! Slaves were, nevertheless, a bonus.
So, where do we stand? There is no way out, I believe, than to follow the advise of Lepper himself on “whether to swallow one of these theories whole, to concoct for oneself a mixture of any or all of them, or to propound yet another candidate for inclusion in future lists of <<causes>>.
The apparent difficulty to choose any one of them is that all these “causes” are true and by one of these rare coincidences in history, operated in full force together.
Reversing the order of causes exposed by Lepper and Frere, it was the resistance of the peoples exposed to the Roman order which was the first cause. “Auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium et ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant”. Decebalus would have been made to utter the same words, had Tacitus written the story of the Dacian wars. The “aggressions” of the Dacians were fights in self defence. They started not with Trajan or Domitian but long before.
It is beyond reasonable doubt that the Dacian gold glittering beyond the horizon was a powerful magnet for the Emperors short of cash. The booty of the Dacian wars, even if not as fantastic as Lydus said, was sizeable enough even with the corrections made by Carcopino [20]. And even if, as Ronald Syme has shown [21], the gold of Dacia did not come into question to redress the shaken finances of the Empire, allegedly squandered by Domitian, it certainly made Trajan and his clique immensely rich overnight. It provided him with the means to bribe the army with generous donativa and to flatter the populace with games, shows, congiaria for years. The slaves captured were slaughtered in the arena for the delight of the always avid of blood Roman populace. Extravagant expenditure was always a way to win popular support. It certainly contributed to gild his rather lackluster image. It is also significant that the gold mines of Ampelum had been immediately taken into the Patrimonium Caesaris [22].
And it was the desire for fame which pushed to the subjugation of the indomitable Scythians and Getians. Let us not forget that fame was an essential political capital, in the agonistic world of Antiquity. As Michael McCormick stressed: “Since the days of the Republic, prominent men engaged in the scramble for power vaunted their felicitas, their good fortune or divine favour, as an essential gratification for leadership. And what more unequivocal confirmation of felicitas could they desire than a resounding military victory achieved under the proper conditions and sanctioned by the Senate and the gods in the spectacular triumphal ceremonies?... felicitas and the mystique of victory fitted easily into the ideological stock of the Augustan principate and quickly became a significant buttress of the new order. As Gage demonstrated, the essential trait of this mystique was that the emperor’s victories demonstrate his aptness for rulership” [23], in other words that he was capax imperii. What Trajan really needed was to stamp his heel on the neck of that “enemy of the Roman People” driven into suicidal desperate resistance, the arch villain Decebalus (“debellare superbos”), at the big show of his triumph. This hope was partially frustrated by the actual suicide of the Dacian king.
Now, Trajan came to power more as a usurper. A resounding military victory was simply a condition of his survival. Let us not forget the conditions of Trajan’s accession to power. His hasty adoption by Nerva took place against the background of the tumultus of Casperius Aelianus, former prefectus pretorii under Domitian, reinstated by Nerva and who was now demanding the punishment of Domitian’s murderers. The unrest of the Danubian legions seems to be in connection with that and certainly was a serious matter of concern. Was the adoption of Trajan the result of the acknowledgement of his eminent qualities? He probably was a man capable of handling the situation, but a grave suspicion arises. Could it be that he was chosen just because he was one of the most faithful to Domitian, an amicus principis, member of the Consilium Principis? He was accepted without much reservation by the mutineers and by the Danubian legions because of his perceived fidelity to Domitian. He certainly was expected to satisfy the requests of the mutineers, the avenging of Domitian’s murder and the punishment of its perpetrators. But what did he do immediately after his adoption? He summoned Casperius Aelianus and the other rebels to his headquarters in Germany. They went, obviously without suspicions. Casperius Aelianus was a friend of Trajan’s father [24]. And then we see Trajan’s applying the method of Germanicus. He arrested and executed without trial Casperius and then secured for himself the title of Germanicus for a minor success on the Rhine. But, even more significantly, he did not return to Rome, as it would have been normal, after the death of Nerva, but started his long inspection of the Danubian troops, certainly in order to quell the unrest by the lure of a victory against the “insolent” king Decebalus, guilty of contempt of the Empire and even more certainly with the lure of the immense riches of Dacia.
And we know for certain that Trajan had to face other competitors, and not inferior ones. One is alluded to by the Younger Pliny, in the Panegyricus, 8,5. He now appears in the full light of history. The inscription found in 1890 at Liria Edetanorum, in the province of Valencia, brought to light the identity of the unnamed competitor of Trajan. His name was M. Cornelius Nigrinus Curiatius Maternus. The real surprise was that Maternus was a general of Domitian, enjoying his confidence, former governor of Moesia, a hero of Domitian’s Dacian War, much decorated for his feats in that war, governor of Syria at the time of the succession crisis, who mysteriously sunk into oblivion for almost one thousand and eight hundred years. I refer to the illuminating article of Geza Alfoldi in Chiron 3 (1973) and to the comments of Ronald Syme on the last years of Domitian in the same Chiron 13 (1983) in order to better understand why that man was “todesschweigt” [25]. In short he had much more important credentials than Trajan to succed to Domitian. He certainly was popular in the Danubian army. Besides he was governor of Syria, and thus commanding the necessary forces to implement his ambitions. The danger of a joint action with the Danubian legions was very serious. It is only a conjecture, but the Dacians may have shown some support for Maternus, or been perceived as leaning towards him. We may presume that he was a Domitian loyalist and that fact alone might have scared the conspirators. A Spaniard like Trajan, he was a real match to the drunken lover of teenagers propelled to the highest office by a cabal of other Spaniards led by Lucius Licinius Sura, precisely for his lack of lustre. Or perhaps because they were sharing the same vices. It happened, as it happened so many times in history that Trajan revealed himself to be more shrewd than expected and eventually imposed himself against the desire of his protectors. Or was it quite so? Was the respect that Trajan – and later Hadrian – showed to the Senate only a tactical temporization until he was able, after his resounding successes to impose his absolute rule? Or was it rather a repayment to that Spanish coterie in the Senate who brought him to power?
A recent study of Adalberto Giovaninni put Pliny in an entirely different light which reflects on his credibility [26]. In his Panegyric of Trajan Pliny accused Domitian for his reign of terror similar to the proscriptions of Sylla. He surrounded himself with informers, the delatores. Pliny gives the impression that Domitian’s victims have been condemned for political reasons, that they were real or supposed critics of the regime. He alludes to the maiestas, the law of lese-majesty, therefore the condemnation had to do with treason or lese-majesty. There is no more doubt that the delatores had little to do with political opposition. In fact they were fulfilling the duties of what today would be the public prosecution and they were in fact reporting on matters of inheritance and succession tax, the vicesima hereditatum et legatorum paid by any inheritor, which alimented the Aerarium militare. The delatores were inquiring on the regularity of testaments estimating the fortune in view of the correct perception of the tax. The Aerarium was also inheriting the bona caduca, the goods inherited by people who had not the right to inherit according to the lex Papia Poppaea. Falsification or suppression of wills, illegal wills, false adoptions, false pregnancies were severely punished. The delatores were claiming the irregular successions for the Aerarium, receiving as reward a part of the fortune. It is somewhat ironical that Domitian himself took measures against the delatores (Suetonius, Dom., 9, 3). But no emperor, including Trajan, ever thought to suppress the rewards of the delatores, and indeed the function itself. And that because, in fact, the role of the delatores was to protect the financial interests of the ruling class. The fact that it was current practice to attach an accusation of maiestas to any sort of accusation created the false impression that the fiscal measures of Domitian were politically motivated [27].
But Pliny was, as well as Trajan, one of the closest collaborators of Domitian. Pliny held the office of prefectus aerarii militaris and in that capacity he was the man receiving the reports of the hated delatores and acting upon them. Pliny was a man compromised with the regime of Domitian. He was in a very uncomfortable position. It was wise for him to pose in discreet “dissident” and hide his collaboration with Domitian. His praise of Trajan is rather an attempt to save his own skin. After the fall of Domitian Pliny attacked a famous delator, Publicius Certus. He was advised by friends to desist because that would make him a marked man in the eyes of future emperors, naming “someone who had a great army in the east”, clearly an allusion to Nigrinus (Pliny, Epp. IX, 13, 11). His views on the Dacian Wars are in fact a denunciation of Domitian. The truth is that the Dacian War of Domitian was a success. The Romans were in fact victorious; the conditions of the treaty of 89 were entirely favorable to the Romans. Decebalus was giving no real signs of double-dealing. Pliny uttered a lie, in complete knowledge of the facts, when he said that Trajan celebrated the first triumph ever against the Dacians. The new regime had to outbid the Flavians at any cost.
Now let us have a quick look at the Dacian – Roman relations. It is clear that Decebalus had the status of a client king, of an amicus populi Romani. And the status of amicus went back to, at least Augustus. The Dacians always opposed the expansionist stand of Rome. They engaged in political alliances with the Roman parties which favored a realistic policy, namely political agreements which would take into consideration their own interests. They sided with Pompey against Julius Caesar, with Mark Anthony against Octavianus. They eventually came to an agreement with Augustus, agreement that worked, despite moments of tension and conflicts, till Trajan. Jordanes mentioned that the attack on Moesia by Decebalus during Domitian’s reign was in breach of a former foedus (Getica, XIII, 76). It seems clear that this foedus was old and in all likelihood it was the foedus of Augustus, renewed under Vespasian. I think that the subsidia paid by the Romans were not only a kind of of aid to the then Third World, but also a compensation for the customs duties levied by the Dacian kings on the Danubian commercial traffic, now received by the Romans, especially after the creation of the Classis Flavia Moesica under Vespasian. I surmise that the Dacian attack on Moesia in A. D. 85, that Jordanes ascribed to the “avaritia” of Domitian had a strong relationship with Roman infringements of a previous agreement. The Dacian war of Domitian, although probably intended to bring about the occupation of Dacia, but stopped by the lateral attacks of the Germans (allied with Decebalus?) and the revolt of Antonius Saturninus, ended eventually in a profitable agreement for both parties. The Romans were by no means humiliated, they were definitely the victors, showing a constructive clementia. It was in fact a piece of Realpolitik which could have had beneficial effects for the peace in the region. It was a policy that operated at least since the time of Alexander the Great. The famous peace between Lysimachus and Dromichaites had worked for nearly three centuries, reinforced by successive agreements under Pompeius, Marcus Antonius, Augustus, Nero and the Flavians. It certainly had economic aspects. It is clear that Dacia belonged to the the economic world of the Thracians and Aegean peoples and their traditional ties with the south were greatly upset by the Roman conquests in the Balkans [28]. We may surmise that the successive agreements mentioned before worked to remedy this situation. The fact that the Dacians minted Roman denarii is suggestive of monetary agreements, and it is perfectly possible that devaluations of Roman currency had undesired repercussions also on the Dacian economy.
It was the ascension to power of a group of homines novi recruited mainly from the provinces of Spain and Gaul, active, ambitious, industrious, with few scruples, if any at all, which overturned that more realistic policy inaugurated by Pompeius, followed by Augustus and the much maligned Tiberius. The conquest of Dacia was altogether an unnecessary piece of bravado, an act of treachery against an ally, reminding us of the destruction of Carthage and foreshadowing the Fourth Crusade, all to the advantage of an usurper, raised to power by a coterie of profiteers, very much preoccupied with their own well-being, which they were too ready to identify with the wellbeing of the Empire at large. And one may feel cynical that the Optimus Princeps deserved this appellation because he was able to offer the Roman populace one hundred twenty three days of continuous bombastic waste (in actual fact there were three years of continuous carnival in which the enormous booty of the Dacian wars was squandered to gorge with food, drinks, generous doles and the blood of more than ten thousand Dacian captives the sadistic Roman mob – whose condition, no wonder, was then the “most happy and prosperous”).
But of course, we cannot dismiss lightly the grandiose plans of conquest of the East, nurtured by the Romans at least since the time of Julius Caesar. He was planning the conquest of Dacia and Parthia, as the surest way to claim the royal title. Both Suetonius and Dio Cassius (XLIV, 15) tell the story of the intention of the quindecemvir Lucius Cotta to announce in the Senate that the prophetic writings stated that only a king can conquer the Parthians, therefore the title of king must be conferred on Caesar. It was this rumor that hastened the assassination of Caesar. But would not the actual conquest have boosted his pretensions? Trajan thought along the same lines.
Viewed in this context a curious passage of Florus (II, 26, 13-15) acquires a significant weight. After Actium the Romans were constrained to wage war against the peoples to the north, whose “tumidae inflateque cervices” were not used to the newly imposed yoke and opposed a stiff resistance: “Norici, Illyri, Pannonii, Delmatae, Moesi, Thraces et Daci, Sarmatae atque Germani”. Among them the Moesi were the most savage and cruel “barbari barbarorum”. Before the battle one of the Moesian leaders asked the Romans: “Who are you?” To which the Romans answered: “The masters of the world”. The barbarian leader answered in his turn: “That would be only if you defeat us”. Florus adds that “Marcus Crassus accepted the challenge”. Then they sacrificed a horse. I believe that the horse sacrifice was the equivalent of asvamedha and the Roman sacrifice of the October equus, a royal rite meant not only to ensure victory in battles, but also to establish the suzerainty of the king over other kings. It appears that the Moesian-Getian kings exhibited some pretensions to universal dominion as any other king and which appear to be very ancient. It is not surprising then, but was rather natural, that the Romans gave such importance to triumphs over these peoples and that the Roman Emperors included in their propagandistic arsenal old myths and religious ideas borrowed from the traditions of the peoples conquered or to be conquered. We can only speculate whether there is a relation between this episode and the granting of the title of Augustus to Octavian in 27 BC. But we can draw a parallel between the silencing of Cornelius Nigrinus and that of M. Licinius Crassus, the real victor in the Balkan war. This war was a vast enterprise in which Crassus was covered in glory. It was the campaign in which Crassus distinguished himself by starving to death a great number of people hiding in the Ceiris cave by immuring them. Its belittling in the imperial historiography [29] aimed at the belittling of Crassus, a potentially dangerous rival for Octavian. He was the grandson of the triumvir. He won a war there were Octavian himself failed. He killed in personal combat the king Deldo of the Bastarnae, entitled to the honors of spolia opima, the fourth one in the whole roman history, but which have been refused to him under the pretext that he was fighting under the auspices of Octavian!
We may ask: was it of any worth? Were Dacians really subdued? Was the grand design of the Latinitas in the East realized, if such a design ever existed at all? All the time Dacia was under Roman occupation was an uneasy time. Revolts of the Dacians and the arrival of new people eventually forced Romans out of Dacia. It was the reverting of Constantine the Great to the old policy of foedera, the creation of the limitanei, that brought a relative peace to the region. It was from this time and mainly through Christianity that a real Romanitas took shape north of the Danube. But Constantine represents the real landmark of a new era, an era when the centre of power returned to the East, as oracles like the Apocalypse of Hystaspes prophesied and against of which realization Rome dedicated so much effort.
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