The Dacians: Rome\'s Greatest Enemy?

[Nathan Ross]

I remember I already posted few sources, Strobel, Schmitz, even Julian Bennet I think

I meant ancient sources, actually. As we've discussed before, Bennett says nothing of the sort (he claims that the Parthian force was one of the largest, IIRC), and Strobel and Schmitz's hugely inflated estimates are not supported by evidence. If you know of any such evidence, I'd be interested to hear of it.

The raid was made at the end of the season... The route taken by Tettius is the shortest possible one but the hardest one... In less then 3 days probably Tettius was at Tapae... but was shattered enough to turn around and retreat imediatly after. Hardly an important victory.

Why is it a 'raid' now? It appears to have been a sizeable expedition. The campaigning season in northern europe began in July (cf Caesar) - nothing implies that Tettius left it any later. The route is the same taken by Trajan in AD101 (based on the sole fragment of his own account of the campaign). It's unlikely a large army could move that distance in three days. Tettius' forward reconaissance towards Sarmi does not imply that his army was 'shattered' or that it 'retreated'. I've already given my opinion on what probably happened. We don't know any more about it, and have no further information upon which to speculate - but the Romans believed it was a victory and no further fighting was required for over a decade.

Domitian executed people who talk about his rule, and the humiliation from Dacia was surely among those. Roman authors even avoided to talk about the losses in Dacian wars, wonder why?

If this 'humiliation' was at all upon the minds of the plotters then the very anti-Domitianic historical record would surely have mentioned it. No such mention is made anywhere.

Roman authors played up the losses under Domitian to further blacken his name. They likewise avoided mention of heavy losses under Trajan (if any such existed) to increase the contrast. Roman histories are not known for their objectivity!

Some of those statues have the head bowed as they was placed on pedestals in Trajan Forum, so to a higher position, and was intended to look down at the people who entered there... Its a sign of respect for them.

The iconography of Roman victory monuments is a wider subject. But I think it unlikely that the Dacian statues were intended to loom over the heads of the Roman populace! The whole point was to emphasise the conquest of the Dacian people - it was in Trajan's interest to make the Dacians look powerful, so his own prestige in overcoming them was greater. But I doubt it went any further than that - Trajan's Column is not a pro-Dacian monument!

The point about the depiction of Roman casualties (wounded men, and tortured prisoners) on the Column is interesting too. The comparable column of Aurelius shows only enemy dead - notably civilians. One could argue that this is because the losses during the Marcomannic war were well known to be great: Roman armies were defeated in the field, Roman provinces devastated, Roman cities sacked and besieged. The Roman public, therefore, needed no reminder of the violence of the fighting, and the builders wanted to play down this aspect of the campaign. In this respect, the injured men shown on Trajan's column might suggest that the Romans felt no such grievance in connection with the Dacian war: it was a splendid imperial victory, difficult but decisive.

Which again is a sign of how hard and bloody was those wars

Yes, nobody disputes that the Dacian war was hard and bloody, or that the Dacians were a formidable enemy in the late 1st/early 2nd centuries. But I still don't believe that we can call the Dacians the greatest enemy that Rome ever faced. Far from it.

I'm sure we will end up debating again (but)... I will not participate in this discussion further.

I tend to agree. We've been over this ground many times, and unless anyone can offer new evidence or fresh supportable hypotheses, I think we'll have to agree to differ on our interpretations.

:-|