Authors: Stephen Dando-Collins
Trusting the amenable Longinus more now, Decebalus relaxed the guard on him, which was exactly what the general had been hoping for. Once he had learned that his secretary had left Dacian territory, Longinus drank poison which his freedman had procured for him in the Dacian capital. Longinus died that same night. Now, the emperor would not have to worry about his loyal friend’s safety when he decided his course of action regarding Dacia.
Decebalus was furious. He sent messages demanding the return of the freedman, promising to exchange him for the body of Longinus and ten of the Roman troopers of his escort now languishing in a Dacian prison. There was no response from Rome. Decebalus was becoming more and more determined to have his own way, to the point of irrationality. He paroled the centurion in charge of Longinus’ escort, and sent him to Rome with instructions to bring back the freedman, whom, no doubt, he planned to execute for his part in the general’s suicide. Not surprisingly, Trajan retained both freedman and centurion.
AD
105–106
XLIII. SECOND DACIAN WAR
Trajan’s total war
“A great and glorious victory in the finest tradition of Rome.”
P
LINY THE
Y
OUNGER
,
Letters
,
X
, 14
For three years the Dacians had been preparing to renew hostilities with Rome, and, although King Decebalus had not been able to convince any allies to join him in a new challenge to Trajan, in the spring of
AD
105 he went on to the offensive. Dacian
fighters poured down from the mountains and attacked Roman auxiliary forts throughout occupied territory. They even attacked the fortress at Drobeta, which guarded Apollodorus’ handsome new Danube bridge, a structure which the Dacians detested—as much for the Roman subjugation of their land that it represented as its strategic importance.
Trajan’s Column shows the Dacians surprising legion work parties in Dacian territory. Separated from their stacked shields, the legionaries fight back with axes and entrenching tools, but their chances of survival appear slim. At forts, surrounded auxiliaries fight desperately. A legion, or more than one, is shown arriving by forced march to relieve the defenders of one particular fort.
Come the first days of summer, Trajan was still in Rome, but news of the Dacian offensive spurred him to action, and he left on June 4. The date was significant in the Roman religious calendar, being the day on which the god Hercules Magnus Custos (Hercules the Great Protector) was honored. Within two years, Trajan would be expressing his thanks to Hercules Invictus (Hercules the Unconquerable) on his coins. [Dus.,
DRA
]
To speed his progress to Moesia, Trajan hurried along the Valerian Way to Picenum and Italy’s east coast. Trajan’s Column picks up the story of the Second Dacian War with Trajan at a major Italian port, thought to be Ancona. From there he, his staff, and troops of the Praetorian Guard and Singularian Horse boarded warships of the Ravenna Fleet and were quickly conveyed across the Adriatic to Dalmatia. Word of the emperor’s impending arrival went before him, and a vast crowd of officials and townspeople waited for him at the dock of a Dalmatian port, probably Salonae near present-day Split in Croatia. There, with a grand drama theater behind him, and surrounded by standards of the Praetorian Guard, Trajan is seen on the Column performing ritual sacrifices.
As cargo ships brought supplies across the stormy Adriatic behind him, Trajan marched inland toward the Danube, preceded by Singularian Horse squadrons. Just south of Siscia, the emperor would have swung east to march to Sirmium. Trajan’s Column shows that all along the route men, women and children crowded the roadsides to see their emperor and cheer his passing. From Sirmium, Trajan followed the Danube east to Viminacium and then to Drobeta, collecting legions along the way—including the 1st Minervia, which had marched from its base at Bonna, a legion that now had a new commander, Trajan’s nephew Hadrian.
While Trajan was on the march, auxiliaries at Drobeta had been reinforced by legionaries from Moesia who beat off the Dacians attacking the approaches to Apollodorus’ new bridge. On the Moesian side of the Danube, Roman legions and tens of thousands of auxiliaries assembled. At the height of the summer Trajan arrived, accompanied by the Praetorian Guard. He inspected Apollodorus’ impressive new Danube bridge, built entirely by the labor of soldiers of Rome’s legions.
Historian Cassius Dio, whose father governed Dalmatia and who also later governed the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia, saw this bridge some seventy years after it was built. By that time, the superstructure had been removed by Trajan’s successor Hadrian—to prevent it from being used by barbarian invaders. [Dio,
LVIII
13] Despite the fact that “the bridge is no use to us,” Dio would say, it appeared to him as if the piers “had been erected for the sole purpose of demonstrating that there is nothing which human ingenuity cannot accomplish.” [Ibid.] Today, at low water, the remains of those piers can still be seen. As for its designer, Apollodorus, like his bridge, would be destroyed by Hadrian; following a quarrel, Hadrian was to execute Trajan’s great architect in
AD
130.
As Trajan dedicated the bridge and conducted the lustration of the legions’ standards, with Hadrian in his entourage, at least six different foreign delegations waited on the emperor. Dacian envoys promised peace on Decebalus’ behalf provided Trajan elected not to go to war. There were Suebi German ambassadors, with their long hair tied up in the Suebian knot that distinguished free Suebian from slave. “They occupy more than half of Germany,” said Tacitus of the Suebi. [Tac.,
Germ
., 38] There were also ambassadors present from Grecian states such as the Bosporan kingdom; even from as far away as India. Some ambassadors had come to offer friendship, others to beg the emperor not to go to war with the Dacians. He accepted the former, and rejected the latter—Trajan’s Column next shows him leading the Roman army across the Apollodorus bridge into Dacia.
Trajan’s army advanced across the Dacian lowlands to join legions camped near a circular Dacian religious sanctuary. With the end of summer near, Trajan ordered his forces to camp for the winter where they were, and the legions passed the winter of
AD
105–106 at marching camps deep inside Dacia.
With the spring thaw of
AD
106, Trajan once again conducted the Lustration Exercise. Once the ceremony had been completed, the Column shows the emperor being approached by a cavalry officer. This was Lusius Quietus. A dark-skinned Moor
from Morocco, Quietus had once commanded a cavalry unit in the Roman army but had been “condemned for base conduct” and “dismissed from the service.” But when the First Dacian War commenced he had approached Trajan and offered his services. Trajan, who “needed the assistance of the Moors,” re-employed him. [Dio,
LXVIII
, 32] Quietus had “displayed great deeds of prowess” in the First Dacian War, and “being honored for this, he performed far greater and more numerous exploits in the Second War.” [Ibid., 17] At his own suggestion, Quietus led a cavalry column which set off to take the most difficult mountain route to Sarmizegethusa.
Trajan’s army, now consisting of twelve legions and scores of auxiliary units, advanced over the Transylvanian Alps from four different directions—Trajan led one force, Sura another, Maximus the third and Quietus the fourth. In their rear, supplies were brought up from the Danube by baggage train, but the further they advanced the more difficult the supply situation became. Even the residents of Sarmizegethusa habitually brought in foodstuffs from the fertile Mures river valley, many miles from the Dacian capital, to the inhospitable high country.
At Trajan’s marching camp in the mountains, supplies were stockpiled as a major Dacian fortress was reconnoitered. Dacian scouting parties led by cap-wearers watched the Roman build-up from the trees, but were driven back into the forests by auxiliary attack. The siege of the Dacian fortress now began.
Chief among the fortresses assaulted by Trajan were those at Costesti, Blidaru and Piatra Rosie. With outer defenses of two wooden palisades and high main walls of limestone blocks many feet thick, the fortresses’ citadels typically featured five defensive stone towers and a single gate. Yet there was nothing sophisticated about these fortresses, and they were only capable of holding a few thousand defenders each. To Roman legionaries, with a vast array of equipment and tactics for assaulting fixed emplacements, taking the hill fortresses would have been child’s play. The legions soon marched on, leaving the fortresses looted, strewn with Dacian dead and in flames.
By the beginning of summer, Sarmizegethusa was reached by one Roman column. Too impatient for victory and booty, these troops could not wait until artillery and archers arrived to clear a section of the wall of defenders. Trajan’s Column shows a mixed group of legionaries, auxiliaries and cavalrymen going against the wall with scaling ladders. Above the Roman attackers, Dacian defenders on the wall lobbed anything they could lay their hands on, including boulders, at the climbing Romans.
The Dacians were renowned bee-keepers, and according to Romanian lore Dacian defenders even resorted to throwing beehives at the Romans. The attack was beaten off.
Trajan’s Column reveals that soon, another Roman force of both legionaries and auxiliaries reached the city from a different direction. Catapults were set up, and Roman archers took up firing positions. Now Dacians sallied out of a city gate to attack the Romans before they could renew the assault. From the city walls, other Dacians anxiously watched the battle below.
Cassius Dio tells of a Roman cavalry trooper who was severely wounded during this fighting and taken to his tent. Believing that he would not live, the trooper picked himself up, found his equipment, and went back to the battle. “Taking his place in the line once again,” said Dio, the trooper “perished after displaying great feats of courage.” [Dio,
LXVIII
, 14] This battle outside the city was a bloody affair, in which the Dacians were ultimately overwhelmed. Trajan’s Column shows piles of mangled Dacian bodies.
Once all four Roman columns arrived, the assault on the city walls resumed. After a barrage from the missile-launchers, legionaries equipped with dolabrae attacked the stone foundations to undermine the wall. But the hail of missiles from above forced them back. Now Trajan gave orders for entrenchments to be built and siege equipment constructed. This operation was going to take time.
Trajan’s Column shows Roman troops preparing major siege works. Sarmizegethusa was surrounded by trenches and marching camps. On the Column, legionaries are seen cutting timber and building wooden siege towers. While auxiliaries stood guard, the men of the legions removed their helmets, laid aside their shields and javelins, and in their armor built massive earth ramps at strategic locations that increased in height as they crept closer to the walls. The siege of Sarmizegethusa dragged on for months through the summer.
With the distance between ramps and walls expected to be closed within days, Decebalus sent out a cap-wearing envoy to plead for surrender terms. But this time Trajan was not interested in Decebalus’ surrender. He only wanted his head. As for Trajan’s troops, they did not want the Dacians to surrender; under the rules of plunder, they could only loot the city if they took it by storm. The envoy was sent back to Decebalus without terms for surrender.
Trajan’s refusal to treat caused consternation among senior Dacians. They knew that when the Romans did storm the city, all Dacian men of military age were likely
to be killed, and the women raped, while survivors would be enslaved. Decebalus, if he were taken alive, could expect to be the star attraction of Trajan’s next Triumph at Rome, after which he would be garroted, as Roman tradition required. The prospects, for all those inside Sarmizegethusa, were grim.
In the twilight, as the last tons of earth were carried up the ramps by legionaries protected from missile attack by high wooden screens, the siege towers were pushed and pulled into position at the base of the ramps, and the men who would man them prepared for the final assault the next day. Now fires began breaking out in Sarmizegethusa. The Dacians were setting light to their own capital. The Dacian buildings, built mostly of wood, with wooden shingle roofs, burned well. As night fell and fires raged in those parts of the city nearest the Roman ramps, Decebalus met with his nobles in his citadel.
On a stove in the king’s apartments, a cauldron was bubbling. Decebalus dipped a precious metal cup into the liquid bubbling in the cauldron. Eight hundred years before, Zamolxis had promised his Dacian followers eternal life, and now Decebalus was offering his nobles a swift route to the afterlife. He proffered the cup to a woman—a wife of the king, or a daughter perhaps? His sister was already in Roman hands. The woman drank, and fell dead to the floor. Decebalus refilled the cup. A bearded young man stepped up and took the cup from the king—the king’s son, or perhaps the high priest of Zamolxis? Or was this the princely Diegis whom Domitian had sent back to Decebalus wearing a crown seventeen years earlier? The young man drank the poison, and he too died there in front of the watching nobles.
The bodies of the woman and the young man are shown on Trajan’s Column at the feet of Decebalus as the king and one of his nobles offer poison to other capwearers. Most of the nobles eagerly reach for the fatal cups. One of them has rent open his clothes and is reaching heavenwards, beseeching a Dacian deity to help his people. But not all the Dacian nobles took their own lives, and Decebalus himself had no intention of committing suicide while there was a chance of escaping and continuing the fight against Rome.
In the dead of night, Decebalus, his closest followers and his bodyguards escaped from the city. Trajan’s Column shows them using what appears to be a secret tunnel under a city wall, quite possibly emerging at the riverbank. Horses were waiting for them, and Decebalus and his party made good their escape, perhaps following the river shallows northwards to evade the encamped Roman army.