Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge

by Derek Williams

  In about 80 BC a unified kingdom began to emerge under Burabista; and from then until the Roman invasion a distinctively Dacian culture flourished. The soil, the iron deposits, the gold and silver mines, were amply and creatively exploited. Writing was adopted, using Greek and Roman characters. Quality pottery was produced, with painted, geometric designs. Medicinal botany exceeded the average standards of the day. There was a calendar, based on Dacian astronomical measurements. Coinage had been issued for 150 years, though by the 1st century BC extensive trade with the empire led to the adoption of Roman currency. Borrowing from outside practice, the Dacians now excelled in citadel construction, typically of hillfort character, with ditch-fronted walls: some of squared blocks with towers, modelled on the Pontic cities; others of irregular masonry, immensely thick and internally cross-tied with wooden beams in the Celtic manner. The capital was ringed by major fortresses, some enclosing impressive religious sanctuaries. Religion was polytheistic: not far removed from Mediterranean paganism, though resembling the northern religions in the practice of human sacrifice. Ptolemy tells us they boasted forty cities. Sarmizegetusa (Gradishtea) had piped water and was defended by mighty walls of Celtic type, both turreted and galleried. With the accession of Decebal in AD 87, Dacia could be called the most developed nation-state in Europe outside the Mediterranean, perhaps the only one.

  Around the beginning of Domitian’s reign Decebal was already drilling a national army of paid professionals modelled on that of Rome. As we have seen, he would not hesitate to use it. It may be overstretching parallels to call this king a 1st-century Saddam Hussein; yet both were cool gamblers who defied the superpower of their day. The stakes were high: for Saddam a fifth of world oil; for Decebal a chance to slip his mountain leash and take control of the lower Danube, the Black Sea ports and even the Aegean. Both believed bluff and distance would protect them. Both placed trust in secret weapons: in Decebal’s case abundant gold with which to attract the foreign specialists needed to match Rome’s war machine. Trajan too was a gambler. To muster an overwhelming force he would be obliged to draw down his other frontier garrisons to danger level. The cost, as it transpired, would be loss of Scotland; the prize, Dacia’s mines, last great booty within Rome’s reach.

  Let us return to the heroic helix, and particularly its content. Because the sculpted band slants upwards from a horizontal base, it must taper in, requiring half a turn to reach full width and curiously resembling the ‘fade-in’ at the beginning of a motion picture. Its opening scene offers the only known portrait of a Roman frontier: the Danube bank, with its watchtowers and guards, seen from the river, as it may have appeared from the barbarian side. There are stone watchtowers, surrounded by circular palisades of pointed stakes, with wooden balconies. From each balcony door a long firebrand slants skywards. All are alight, suggesting the hours of darkness: probably just before dawn on a morning in April, 101.

  Still on the first spiral, we see a Roman fortress. From its front gate, in one of the most striking images in military art, stream legionaries and guardsmen, marching across the Danube on two boat-bridges, side by side. Why two bridges? Why double a laborious piece of engineering for a few hours gained in crossing time? And why is Trajan leading the further task force and relegated to the background? The reason is surely that this is a convention for simultaneous invasion on two fronts, with Trajan in charge of the upstream crossing. In fact we are fairly sure his departure point was Viminiacum (below Belgrade). The other army, under Lucius Quietus, crossed 125 miles downstream, at Drobetae (Turnu Severin) in today’s Romania. The two locations are separated by the Iron Gates gorges and the mountains through which the Danube has cut its dramatic path. The strategy is clearly a pincer movement against the Dacian capital, Royal Sarmizegetusa, situated some seventeen miles south-east of present-day Hunedoara. Trajan’s group, from the west, faced the easier mountain crossing but the tougher fighting; the second group, from the south, the stiffer climb through the Transylvanian Alps, but a back-door approach to the capital.

  In spiral two, on Dacian soil, Trajan holds a war council, followed by a religious service. A barbarian emissary arrives on a mule and a circular object hanging from his saddle is thought to be the large mushroom upon which, according to Dio,27 was written a message from the Dacian king telling Trajan to turn back. In a moment of humour (rarest of commodities in monumental art) the courier slips while dismounting and is shown, in slapstick manner, sprawling on the ground. This is the first of several small concurrences between Dio and the Column, suggesting a common source, probably Trajan’s lost Commentary. The emperor now addresses the army. Scenes of camp-building and other construction work follow.

  Spiral three shows Trajan advancing through foothills. Torrents are bridged and soldiers, cutting avenues through dark thicket, remind us of the later name ‘Transylvania’ (land beyond the forest). The enemy retreats and Trajan diverts to inspect an abandoned hillfort, small but with ominously impressive walls and arched gateways. Captured by the vanguard and held by the hair, the first prisoner of war is thrust into the emperor’s presence. A deserted city, believed to be Tibiscum (Caransebesh) now comes into view. Rooftops peep over the tall, silent, multi-angular ramparts. Swirling round them from two directions the Roman armies, which have advanced by different routes, now recombine. Their meeting tells us the mountains have been crossed.

  In the Bistra Valley (spiral four) the Dacians turn and give battle at Tapae. They fight desperately: tousled, bearded warriors in flapping cloaks and baggy breeches, with round shields and, probably, wielding sickles (later prized from their marble grip by metal robbers). Rome prevails and the way to the capital seems open.

  Nevertheless Sarmizegetusa is ringed by powerful citadels and, in spiral five, further advance is barred by one of them. Trajan, accompanied by a staff officer, views it from across the valley. The intervening ground is sewn with mantraps. On the battlements are displayed a captured standard and a row of Roman heads. Within is a large larder, on stilts, and a huge, wooden watertank: signifying the siege-resistant properties of these strongholds. Above all flutters the sinuous dragon flag of Dacia. The Romans do not attack, but burn the surrounding villages. By a stroke of luck the king’s sister falls into Roman hands.28 Trajan ushers her aboard a boat whose bow points westwards. On this note the story of the first campaigning season ends; and in the absence of an obvious victory we assume its objectives were not achieved. Having failed to break the defensive ring Trajan dares not wait for winter to close the passes behind him and makes a timely retirement to the Danube. Wintering beyond the Carpathians, with Dacian strength still intact (an outcome toward which Decebal was obviously working) would have meant almost certain Roman destruction.

  Spiral five opens with cinematic suddenness. Dacian warriors, their mounts and a wagon are floundering in the freezing Danube. Some drown, but many survive to attack a Roman fort whose defenders fight desperately from the walls. The wily Decebal has launched a winter counter-offensive. But where? At such a juncture the lack of captions is especially irksome. However, had this been a silent movie, it is likely that a card would now read: ‘Winter, further down the Danube.’ For evidence of this we have Adamclisi to thank.

  Hard by the Romanian village of Adamclisi, forty miles inland from Ovid’s Tomis, is the most important group of ancient remains in the lower Danube region. Here is the so-called Altar: a war memorial, attributed to Domitian, where it is supposed that the emperor was mauled by this same Dacian king in one of his earlier breakouts from the mountain ring. Now, more than a decade later, is it possible that Decebal was drawn back to the scene of his early success, like Hitler to the Ardennes, striking southwards toward the lightly defended Black Sea ports? For the Altar is not the only monument in this curious corner of the Pontic steppe. There is a second, known as the Mausoleum, attributed to Trajan: a mound which, when dug,29 revealed a circular structure whose design resembles Roman tombs of the 1st century. Inside were found only ox bones, suggest
ing a ceremonial purpose; and there was also the base of a stone upright, indicating that this too was some kind of cenotaph. There is, however, more. Two hundred yards away, on this same, windy hill, stands a third ruin, far more famous: the Tropaeum Traiani (Trajan’s Trophy). This is a victory monument, whose purpose appears to have been to commemorate the diversionary campaign of the winter of 101–2, depicted on spirals six and seven of the Column.

  The Tropaeum took the form of a circular drum, stone-faced on a concrete core 100 feet in diameter and 130 high. At its summit was a hexagonal shaft which carried the trophy: a Dacian captive at the feet of a faceless, three times life-size Roman warrior, clutching an ensemble of captured weapons. The dedication, dated AD 108, is to Mars the Avenger, indicating that Trajan’s victory was seen as a retrieval of Domitian’s defeat of a generation earlier. Possibly the Mausoleum had been provisional, the more ambitious Tropaeum replacing it after the war’s end. Richest by far of its gifts are two rows of sculpted stone panels, recovered from rubble around the base. Out of an original fifty-four tablets in the lower row, forty-eight have survived, of which only four are badly damaged. These were hung round the drum’s middle and consist of war scenes. The upper row had a further twenty-six tablets, thought to have stood around its parapet like crenellations, each containing a full-figure portrait of a prisoner of war. There were, in addition, two decorative bands: one with foliage and wolves’ heads, the other with interlaced palmettes.30 The entire monument is now to be seen in the form of a lavish, full-scale in situ reconstruction, completed in 1977; encasing the much eroded core. For a modest tip, the custodian may be persuaded to open a door in the modern shell, revealing something of the original masonry within. Carvings and decorative stonework are displayed in a specially designed museum.

  The connection between these tableaux and the Column was first recognized by E. Petersen in 1905.31 Prior to this, spirals six and seven were perhaps the most mystifying, for all they tell us is that Trajan embarked somewhere, disembarked somewhere else, defeated persons unknown and re-embarked. The clue is wagons, common to both versions. Their presence (and, on the Adamclisi portrayal, that of women and children) implies that this was a migratory movement; an invasion of Roman territory induced by the promise of land. In addition the panels reveal the invaders as a mixture of peoples: Dacians, Sarmatians of other tribes, and Germans. The only place where these coincided was Bessarabia (Moldova), since the Basternians, a totally isolated German tribe, had somehow found their way into that region.32

  Decebal then, in his hour of peril, had succeeded in rallying his allies and persuading them to support him in opening a second front in the form of Danube crossings, perhaps just above the delta. We need not suppose a battle at Adamclisi itself. This was merely a symbolic location, hallowed by earlier events. Many of the panels show trees: to be exact, an unlikely selection of palms and oaks, suggesting pursuits as varied and far afield as the delta and the Carpathian foothills. Recalling Ovid’s ‘bare and leafless landscape without tree’,33 it is unlikely that the main fighting was in steppe surroundings.

  Comparison between Trajan’s Column and the Adamclisi panels is of great interest: seemingly two versions of the same story, seen through different eyes and chiseled by different hands; one by master craftsmen, the other in all probability by common soldiers, perhaps military masons, who combined active service with the function of regimental tombstone carvers. As one might expect, the difference in execution is as striking as that between world-class orchestra and bar-room piano. Crudely carved in pocked and pitted limestone with lumpy, Frankenstein-like figures in stiff poses, the Tropaeum’s panels verge on the grotesque. Surprisingly the ornamental bands above and below the tablets are of accomplished workmanship, perhaps by Greek sculptors from nearby Histria. The panels themselves were seemingly entrusted to someone whose technical ineptitude was compensated by battlefield experience; and this naïve authenticity enhances their value as evidence.

  The Adamclisi artist sees things closely. His characters, usually full-figure and numbering from one to three persons per panel, are about 80 per cent life size. They are therefore two-and-a-half times bigger than on the Column (though the Column’s finer chisel work often allows more detail). He was incapable of elementary perspective and more than rudimentary composition. Crowd scenes or complex movements were out of the question. His technique allowed no departure from a rigid viewpoint or a single plane of action. Costumes suggest winter, but, apart from solitary trees,34 there is no sense of surroundings. This is in marked contrast with the Column, which shows or implies forests, streams, mountains, wild animals, villages, towns, time of day and weather with amazing skill and care. On the other hand, the Adamclisi scrutiny, though confined to simple events, is realistic and uncompromising. It sees no glamour in war. Its scenes of hand-to-hand fighting are brutal. The Column is by artists for the Roman public; the Tropaeum by soldiers for soldiers.

  Such differences tell us much of both: for example, about intention and propaganda role. In this sense the Tropaeum’s sentiments are the more trustworthy, inasmuch as they were farther removed from sponsorship and censorship. What differences did this produce? The emphasis of Adamclisi is on combat and ceremonial. Its panels feature Trajan; but there is only one address, no religious services and no camp-building or other constructional activity. We therefore conclude that the Column’s preoccupation with pious observance and engineering achievement reflects a government view of what ought to be seen; while the Tropaeum’s interest in battlefield prowess and victory parades reflects what the soldiers wanted to see.

  Since the tablets were retrieved piecemeal, with some carted off to Bucharest, their order round the drum is uncertain. Nevertheless, the intention was clearly sequential. The panels fall readily into groups and it is not hard to guess their drift. The army advances toward the scene of disturbance. Trajan meets the migrating barbarians, who beg for land. He rejects their appeal. A battle follows, among wagons. Then pursuit, slaughter and shepherdless flocks. Finally a parade with captives, followed by celebratory scenes, with trumpeters and standard bearers.

  It is revealing to compare the two sources in their portrayal of the barbarians. The Column is remarkable for its perception of the background, yet Dacians themselves are depicted conventionally. Though seen as more powerful and capable than most enemies, this is an off-the-peg portrait, with the barbarian looking much as in other examples of official art. He is tousled, bearded, heavy featured, with a short hooked nose, high cheekbones, beetle-browed and always scowling and sombre. There are cap wearers – who, according to Dio, were the aristocracy – and the bareheaded commonality. (The Dacian cap, conical and floppy with its point drooping forwards, was not unlike that of Snow White’s seven dwarfs.) But despite differences of rank and age there is little facial variety. It is as if the artist found them – as newly arrived Westerners did the Japanese – seemingly identical. Doubtless, being derived from a small genetic pool, they did to some extent look alike.

  The Adamclisi artist was more familiar with and fascinated by the enemy. Relatively speaking, greater space is devoted to his portrayal. Not only do we see more weaponry, costume and other features but, as has been said, people of three racial origins are depicted. The Tropaeum may therefore be considered the richer and more accurate ethnological source. The Dacians and their Sarmatian cousins, some stripped to the waist, wield the double-handed battle scythe35 like some fearsome hockey stick (whereas the Column favours the sickle, preferred by the Transylvanian Dacians and more suited to close combat in wooded terrain). Their breeches are heavy and plaited vertically. They wear boots and tight-fitting leather helmets with neck flap, rather like a dustman’s cap, though with a chinstrap. Some have long, belted tunics, apron-cut and split high up the sides. The Sarmatians wear shin-length riding coats, probably of sheepskin with the fleece turned inwards, split to the navel. Some Dacians have pudding-basin haircuts, as shown also on the Column. Others have wild hair and all wear
long beards. The Germans are bearded, too, though neatly trimmed, their hair swept into the distinctive Suebic or south-German knot, on the right-hand side. They are tall and trousered, with a double rope-belt and a v-shaped cape of poncho type covering chest and stomach. The tidy appearance of these Basternian Germans denies Tacitus’ verdict: sordes omnium (they are all filthy).36

  Returning to the Column: it is unlikely that the supposed war artist was present at this diversionary campaign. Accordingly its presentation is subtly different, with greater than normal drama and compression. Mistakenly the Pontic Dacians and their allies are dressed exactly like the Transylvanian Dacians. By contrast, on the Roman side, there are precise and seemingly accurate data: a first aid post; a cart-mounted ballista on the move; a prison pen, filled with captives. In short it seems likely that this entire parenthesis had been synthesized from the accounts of others and beefed up with incidents transposed from the main theatre. The campaign ends with Trajan granting citizenship to a group of joyful auxiliary soldiers.

  The Column’s designer had now to break the thread and start afresh: to end the winter campaign on the lower Danube, get Trajan back upriver and commence the spring assault on Transylvania. In order to signal this decisive switch he uses a ‘shock-cut’, from the joyful auxiliaries to Roman prisoners being tortured: naked men, bound, face upwards, with hot irons applied to the flesh. The tormentors appear to be high-class Dacian women, perhaps priestesses, with hair in buns, richly dressed in ankle-length costume similar to that worn by the king’s sister. The setting is mountainous, perhaps the capital itself. Finally the action returns to the lower Danube, where the emperor embarks on a warship whose prow points upstream.