It is the modern verdict that in the conclusion of peace as well as after it, the Roman emperor abused the right of conquest. He retained possession of a part of the land of Dacia, established a Roman garrison on the rapids of the Danube, between Orsowa and Gladowitza, which at a later day bore the name of the “Iron Gates,” and threatened to seize the mountain country of southwestern Transylvania. This naturally enraged the Dacians and their king. Decebalus was by no means a mere barbarian; he had allied himself with the Parthian king, the principal enemy of the Romans in the far East, and had enlisted in his service many men who had served in the Roman army and who organised his troops after the Roman fashion. He had also brought a number of skilled workmen, partly by force and partly by money payments, from the neighbouring Roman province to his own country, to use their services in making instruments of peace and war.
THE SECOND DACIAN WAR
[103-113 A.D.]
According to his treaty with Trajan, he should have sent all such persons back; and Trajan was all the more ready to make this circumstance the pretext for another war, since Decebalus had attempted to ally himself with some of the neighbouring tribes. The emperor began the second Dacian war by building a stone bridge over the Danube, and thus manifested his intention of extending the dominion of Rome beyond the river. This bridge was erected three hours’ journey below the aforementioned gates, close to the town of Czernetz at the present day. It was thirty-five hundred paces long and provided with entrenchments at either end. The ruins of it are still to be seen at low water.
The war in what is now Wallachia, the country to which Trajan gained access by this bridge, offered many difficulties to the Roman army on account of its many morasses, its heavy clay soil, and the large and rapid rivers which traverse it. He therefore led his troops with great caution; he made roads, diverted the course of rivers, and hunted the Dacian king from forest to forest, and from swamp to swamp. At length Decebalus felt himself unable to hold his own against the Romans, and slew himself in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy. Trajan made a Roman province of the conquered land, and determined to establish as many colonies as possible in it, and to tame his barbarian subjects by culture. (106 A.D.)
In the uncultivated but fertile plains of Wallachia, he settled a large number of colonists from all parts of the Roman Empire, founded many towns and villages, and made Roman culture so acceptable that Latin became the dominant language of the country. By these means, however, he provoked the barbarous tribes who then occupied Poland and Russia to continual predatory attacks. Thrace and Mœsia, now Rumelia, Bulgaria, and Servia, which lay to the south of the Danube, gained most; they were protected from the barbarians by the new province beyond the Danube. A number of new towns were founded there, and from that time they continued to flourish.
The conquest of the Dacians and the attention it attracted throughout the Roman Empire seemed to have affected the emperor’s hitherto modest disposition, which had led him to devote himself to affairs of law and government; for the manner in which he celebrated his victory in Rome, as well as the oriental campaign which he subsequently undertook, were not in keeping with the character of wise moderation and the absence of excessive prodigality, which might have been expected of him, under the circumstances. When he returned to Rome, he celebrated his victory by magnificent architectural works and brilliant festivities. He erected a monument commemorative of his victory, which still exists, the celebrated Trajan column, 110 feet in height [to which we shall refer more at length presently]. (113 A.D.)
Besides several buildings in Rome, he built triumphal arches at Beneventum and other places, and made a road through the Pontine marshes which combined the excellence and strength of the old military roads with the conveniences of his own time. These undertakings were made in the old Roman spirit, and did him as much honour as the many bridges and canals which he built in different parts of the empire or the great military road which extended from the Black Sea to the west coast. On the other hand the feasts which he arranged in celebration of his victory recalled the foolish prodigality of Caligula and Domitian, and added not a little to the deterioration of morals. For 123 consecutive days he gave the people public games and other revels, in which no less than ten thousand gladiators took part, and eleven thousand wild animals were killed; so that one of the best emperors did most to promote the unnatural and inhuman pleasures of the degenerate inhabitants of Rome.
The Dacian conquest was not the sole triumph of Roman arms at this period. In 106 Cornelius Palma, governor of Syria, attacked the troublesome tribes inhabiting the ill-defined region between Damascus and the Red Sea. There was one short but severe campaign, and Arabia Petræa was added to the Roman province. The great caravan routes from the Euphrates to the Red Sea were now safe.