Why did the romans develop a problem with Dacia?

The Dacian capital Sarmisegetusa, is supposed to have been constructed somewhere around 1 BC, and it was somewhat like the society of classical Greece with added comfort. Except for their stonework and pluming , there is evidence that Dacia had a tight commerce rope to Greece as well as Rome, from where they imported all sorts of luxury items.

So what exactly got in the way of that healthy trading relationship the romans had with Dacia? It is said that the Emperor Augustus betrothed his daughter to a dacian chief... Where did it all go wrong? 

Well, here's a clue. The local use a different name for this part of the Carpathian mountains, they call it - the Metal Mountains. Yes, you've got it. The dacians were cursed with gold. And lots of it.  Deep within the mountains there lay some of the purest white gold, as well as quartz, copper, iron and opal. Gold had made Dacia rich, well at least its ruler. 

As legend tells us, king Decebalus had a pretty astonishing treasure stashed away at Sarmisegetusa,  it was vastly more then he needed or knew what to do with.  And that's where the romans come in. They had plenty of ideas. They just needed to get their hands on it.  And all they needed was an excuse...  As usual it involved borders. Where exactly did Rome end and Dacia begin?  Well certainly not where the dacians thought. 

At the end of the 1st AD the dispute got pretty nasty. Up til then, the dacian king Decebalus had managed to run diplomatic rings around the roman emperor. All that changed when the the top job in Rome got vacant and it was occupied by Trajan.  And Trajan had a small problem. He needed cash. Fast. And lots of it. The Roman Empire was on an economic decline. And the dacians were, well, sitting on a gold mine. Literally. Trajan just couldn't resist. He just had to exterminate them.

101 AD he took a first bite of the apple. A hard one. Same thing that happened 100 years before when the romans fought the barbaric germanians and underestimated them, happend to him. The romans couldn't breach the fortifications, so he had to pull back.

In 106 AD he returned with 13 Legions, that makes, round about 100.000 men. This wasn't a fight for conquest anymore. It was extermination. They finally succeeded in bringing the dacian walls down, so they burned and wrecked  everything on their way in. 

When Trajan was done, it's said that he emptied Dacia of 1.600t of gold and 3.000t of silver demolished the temples and burned the cities down. There wasn't anything left anymore of the dacian civilisation. Maybe just a memory.

But at least, Trajan now, had enough cash to pay for some nice military campaigns and also to pay Apollodor of Damascus' fee for the pretty column he had designed, especially for Trajan.

(This nice statue depicts the all mighty emperor Trajan and the simple people of Dacia with a cute little boy, bringing him flowers, a small token of consideration for wiping his friends & family of the face of the Earth. )

About Trajans Column in Rome and the savage head hunters...

Now we have all heard of Trajans Column. It's this huge column in Rome depicting the great roman success over the ''barbarians'' who inhabited Dacia. This victory came slowly and painfully for the romans, it took them about 7-8 years to get there, due to the strong defense system the dacians, i mean the barbarians,  had. 

But let's get back to the column, the romans have many records about the Daco-Roman wars describing it as the fight with the savage head hunters who cut their victims heads off and stuck them on poles  No wonder the romans were terrorized by the savage barbarians behind those fortyfied city walls ... well,  except for the fact that on this column, the only savages that are shown cutting heads off and bragging about it, are the romans... This roman column is a public celebration of roman ruthlessness on a really grand scale, about 9 feet tall, depicting over 5200 figurines to be exact.

   

Now as I said before it is a record of the roman victory over the people of Dacia, the present Romania - the land of the Romans... Now if you are not a romanian, the chances to have ever heard of Dacia are quite slim, and this is so, because it is here where the romans applied the lesson they have learned in Germania 100 years before. 

   

They decided not only to conquer but to exterminate a whole ''barbaric'' civilization. And the romans did a fine job indeed, because the experts are trying really hard to piece together who the dacians, really were... After conquering the land, they colonized the remaining people, turned them into a province, instituted latin as the provinces' official language, enforced the roman pantheon and renamed everybody. Anyone who didn't agree, well... had to die. Quite simple. After taking all the gold they could find and sending the grand capture to Rome... which made Rome very happy of course... they had a good time exploiting the land for a couple of hundred years, until 275 AD when, the romans, suddenly packed up and left, leaving Dacia to the dacians, or was it, the romanians?!?

Facts about the Romanian Territory

In order to get you started on this journey, I decided a catching up on ''Romanian'' history might do us all some good, so here we go... Chapter One...

Prehistory

The territory of  Romania has been inhabited by different groups of people since prehistory. One of the fossils found—a male, adult jawbone—has been dated to be between 34,000 and 36,000 years old, which would make it one of the oldest fossils found to date of modern humans in Europe. A skull found in The Cave with Bones in 2004-5 bears features of both modern humans and Neanderthals..

Dacia

The territory of today's Romania was inhabited since at least 513 BC by the Getae or Dacians, a Tracian tribe. Under the leadership of Burebista. (82-44 BC), the Dacians became a powerful state which threatened even the regional interests of the Romans. Caesar even intended to start a campaign against the Dacians before he was assassinated  A few months later, Burebista shared the same fate, assassinated by his own noblemen. His powerful state was divided in four and did not become unified again until 95, under the reign of the Dacian king Decebal.  

The Dacian state sustained a series of conflicts with the expanding Roman Empire, and was finally conquered in 106 AD. Faced by successive invasions of the Goths and Carpi, the Roman administration withdrew in 271.