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Home , 90s, Apollodorus of Damascus, Burebista, Carpi (people), Costoboci, Dacica

Feature ’s Dacian Wars: , , and Strategy on the , Part I* I Everett L. Wheeler

Abstract Two recent major monographs, one on the Dacian wars of Domi- tian and Trajan (Stefan) and another on ancient migrations from the into the eastern (Batty, Rome and the Nomads) invite discussion and evaluation. A survey of the problematic literary and ar- chaeological sources (not least Trajan's Column) for the history of this area in the first and second centuries A.D. prefaces an evaluation of new archaeological evidence on Dacian defenses and innovative top- ographical identifications. The development of a Geto-Dacian state in within the context of multiple ethnicities on the Lower and Middle Danube is discussed and use of new archaeological discover- ies to clarify narratives of the wars of 84–89, 101–102, and 105–106 is evaluated. Interpretations of scenes on Trajan's Column and the metopes of the Adamklissi monument remain controversial.

he Roman conquest of (the ancient forerunner of modern ) has Tnot ceased to fascinate, as demonstrates the weighty tome here discussed—on my bathroom scale well over six pounds of arguments, photographs, maps, and

*Part II of Everett Wheeler’s “Rome’s Dacian Wars: Domitian, Trajan, and Strategy on the Danube” will appear in the Journal of Military History 75, no. 1 (January 2011).

Everett L. Wheeler, scholar in residence at Duke University received his A.B. from Indiana Univer- sity/Bloomington and a Ph.D. from Duke. He specializes in the history of military theory, ancient history, and Armenian-Caucasian studies. His extensive publications in ancient military history in- clude Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery (1988), translation (with Peter Krentz) of Poly- aenus, Stratagems of War, 2 vols. (1994), and (ed.) The Armies of Classical Greece (2007). Besides regular participation in the International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies and the Lyon Congress on the , he serves on the editorial board of Revue des Études Militaires Anciennes.

The Journal of Military History 74 (October 2010): 1185–1227. Copyright © 2010 by The Society for Military History, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or trans- mitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Editor, Journal of Military History, George C. Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, P.O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450. Authorization to photocopy items for internal and personal use is granted by the copyright holder for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 121 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA (www.copyright.com), provided the appropriate fee is paid to the CCC.

★ 1185 EVERETT L. WHEELER bibliography: Alexandre Simon Stefan, Les guerres daciques de Domitien et de Trajan: Architecture militaire, topographie, images et histoire, Collection de l’École Française de Rome 353 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005). A trio of general theses undergirds this mountain of archaeological and topographical detail: first, the people generally called in Greek and Daci in were not “barbar- ians” like their German or Sarmatian neighbors, but a strongly Hellenized state of some sophistication; second, the Emperor Domitian (r. 81–96 A.D.), the victim of hostile senatorial and the of Trajan (r. 98–117), merits rehabilitation: in reality, Trajan only imitated and continued Domitian’s work in both the military and artistic spheres; third, Stefan’s massive assemblage and re- evaluation of archaeological data on the Dacian wars, combined with innovative use of aerial photography, permits new topographical interpretations of Roman campaigns and a reassertion of the historical accuracy of scenes on Trajan’s Col- umn. Proper appreciation of the author’s contentions, however, merits a prolegom- enon on the archaeological and historiographical difficulties of treating Rome’s Dacian wars, particularly as Stefan’s work spans the history of the Geto- from the late sixth century B.C. to the Roman annexation in 106 A.D., and a sub- sequent recent work has much to say on the context of these conflicts.1

1. R. Batty, Rome and the Nomads: The Pontic-Danubian Realm in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), attempts to trace the history of migrations from the Ukraine into Ro- mania and (fifth century B.C.–fourth century A.D.). Although supplementing Stefan’s tome, Batty’s disappointing work suffers inter alia, as this paper’s commentary will document, from factual errors and out-of-date or omitted bibliography (e.g., ignorance of A. Suceveanu and A. Barnea, La Dobroudja Romaine [: Editura Enciclopedica, 1991]; and A. Alemany, Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000]). His curious pronounce- ments about Roman policy on the Lower Danube derive exclusively from a very limited (cherry- picked?) knowledge of the on Roman strategy (discussed in Part II of this article). For other (and less tendentious) recent surveys of Roman on the Danube, although not comprehensive and somewhat disappointing from a military historian’s perspective, see J. Wilkes, “Recent Work along the Middle and Lower Danube,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998): 231–97; and Wilkes, “The Roman Danube: An Archaeological Survey,” Journal of Ro- man Studies 95 (2005): 124–225. Footnotes to this discussion, modestly updating Stefan’s fifty-nine double-columned pag- es (705–63) of bibliography through 2003, alert readers to important work available in North American and Western European libraries without attempting to be comprehensive. Stefan at- tests the prolific production of Romanian scholars, including many works generally inaccessible outside Romania, and often adds his own twist to other excavators’ ideas, properly cited in his footnotes. His fuller documentation will not be reproduced. Full bibliographical citations for all ancient sources will not be given; English translations of most are available in the Loeb Classi- cal Library series. The following abbreviations appear: AE=L’Année épigraphique (: Presses universitaires de France, 1888-); ILS=H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 3 vols. in 5 (Ber- lin: Weidmann, 1892–1916). Apologies are owed to the Editor, whose patience in awaiting this paper and toleration of its length are exemplary.

1186 ★ THE JOURNAL OF The Dacian Wars of Domitian and Trajan

I The skills of siegecraft, engineering, and logistics required to penetrate the sophisticated and extensive Dacian defenses of the Carpathians probably exceeded those of the more famous of the Jewish War (66–70 A.D.) and certainly involved much larger forces on both sides. Although the Dacian conflicts of Domi- tian (84–89) and Trajan (101–102, 105–106) lack a ’s detailed narrative, the spades of Romanian archaeologists, active for over a century, have compensated for sparse literary sources by unearthing much of the Dacian fortification system and providing clues to the campaigns. Above all (quite literally), Roman victory required capture of the Dacian capital, Sarmizegethusa Regia (modern Gradishtea Muchelelui)—no small feat for operations at an elevation of nearly 1,000 meters in the heart of the southern Carpathians’ Orashtie Mountains. The capital lies on a narrow ridge, which peaks at Muncel (elevation 1,563.5 meters) and whose sheer slopes plunge into the Alb and Godeannul Rivers on its northern and southern sides respectively. Built on fourteen man-made terraces with additional habitation extending along the ridge for 2 kilometers to the west and about 1 kilometer to the north, Sarmizegethusa’s massive fortifications, exploiting every topographical advantage, enclosed an urban area of over three acres.2 But only half of the capital’s urban space has even been explored, much less dug. Extensive forestation, greater today than in Antiquity, has impeded understanding this site besides many others of these wars. Moreover, the potholes of treasure-hunters as early as the Napole- onic era, seeking fabled “Dacian ,” and the discontinuity of Romanian excava- tions, often with different working assumptions, have complicated discerning the site’s pristine state. Not least, the Romans, true masters of wiping cities off the face of the earth, as modern investigators of Hellenistic Corinth and Carthage (both destroyed in 146 B.C.) can verify, left little behind. These factors render Sarmizege- thusa Regia an archaeological nightmare. Dacian accomplishments and Romania’s Roman heritage play a significant role in Romanian national pride—perhaps even more so than with the popular notions of or Roman Germany, spawning antiquarianism and cos- tumed wargamers acting out their fantasies. In 1980, when Romania hosted the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Bucharest, the regime of Nicolae Ceaucescu simultaneously celebrated 2,050 years of a Romanian national state, taking 70 B.C. as a firm date (the real date in the first or second quarter of the first century B.C. is hazy) for ’s creation of a Dacian empire, extending from Ukrainian Olbia on the south to the Bulgarian Haemus Mountains (modern Stara Planina), and as far west as modern .3 More recently (28

2. Stefan’s work dwarfs I. Oltean’s (Dacia: Landscape, Colonisation and Romanisation [Lon- don: Routledge, 2007]) minimalist view of Sarmizegethusa Regia: 87, 89. 3. On the Ceaucescu regime’s control of even dissertation topics in ancient history, see V. Lica, The Coming of Rome into the Dacian World, trans. C. Patac and M. Neagu, rev. A. R. Birley (Konstanz: UVK Universsitätsverlag, 2000), 35 n.50; Romanian origins—whether Geto-Dacian

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1187 EVERETT L. WHEELER

September–1 October 2006), an international conference at Cluj commemorated Trajan’s creation of provincia Dacia (106 A.D.).4 The current mania for commemorative academic conferences, however, is not exclusively Romanian. The 2,000th anniversary of the reign of Trajan (98–117), the first “Spanish” emperor, prompted a conference in Spain and, as Trajan was in Ger- many when (his predecessor) died, a German conference of 1998 has been followed by a semi-popular book of useful essays and nice pictures.5 Nor should a recent biography of Trajan in English (now corrected and reprinted) be ignored, although not a replacement for Paribeni’s substantial two-volume study.6 Trajan and the Dacian wars are currently “hot.” Apart from any nationalistic considerations (whether Romanian, German, or Spanish), the Dacian wars present an interesting methodological and historio- or Roman—have been a political “football” in Romania and a source of regional antagonism with and Bulgaria, both of which still wince at Romanian possession of parts of Tran- sylvania and the Dobrudja (the area between the Danube’s northward bend and the Black Sea), respectively; for post-Ceaucescu evaluations of these issues, see M. Babeş, “‘Devictis Dacis.’ La conquête trajane vue par l’archéologie,” in Civilisation grecque et cultures antiques péripheriques. Hommage à P. Alexandrescu, ed. A. Avram and M. Babeş, (Bucharest: Editura enciclopedica, 2000), 324 with n. 6, 325 n. 10; I. Haynes and W. Hanson, “An Introduction to ,” in Roman Dacia: The Making of a Provincial Society, ed. W. Hanson and I. Haynes, Journal of Ro- man Archaeology, Suppl. 56 (Portsmouth, R.I., 2004): 27–29; K. Locklear, “The Late Iron Age Background to Roman Dacia,” in Hanson and Haynes, eds., Roman Dacia, 33–35; a convenient summary (by no means definitive) on Burebista may be found in I. Cristan, Burebista and His Time, trans. S. Mihailescu (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania, 1978), a work unknown in C. Bruun’s bizarre paper, “The Legend of ,” in Roman Rule and Civic Life: Local and Regional Perspectives, ed. L. De Ligt et al. (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 2004), 153–75. This reviewer, a participant in the 1980 congress, visited Sarmizegethusa Regia, at that time undergoing conversion into a tourist attraction with dubious reconstructions (in Stalin- ist concrete) of the monuments in the sacred area (Terraces X–XIII, featuring seven temples/ sanctuaries; cf. Stefan, 22–69 with n. 235) and damage to the scientific understanding of the site. Ascent to the site required four-wheel drive vehicles. 4. See I. Piso, ed., Die römischen Provinzen: Begriff und Gründung (Cluj-: Editura Mega, 2008). 5. J. Gonzáles, ed., Trajano Emperador de Roma (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000); E. Schallmeyer, ed., Traian in Germanien, Traian im Reich (Bad Homburg: Saalburgmuseum, 1999); A. Nünnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian: Ein Kaiser der Superlative am Beginn einer Umbruchzeit? (: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2002); on Trajan’s somewhat peculiar position in Germany in 98 (named , i.e., Nerva’s successor, in October 97 and thus subsequently possessing an proconsulare, but on present evidence not the provincial governor of either Superior, which he had been in 97, or ), see B. Pferdehirt, Militärdiplome und Entlassungskunden in der Sammlung des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums (Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Kommission, 2004), 1:26–27; cf. M. A. Speidel, “Bellicosissimus ,” in Nünnerich-Asmus, ed., Traian, 24. 6. J. Bennett, Trajan Optimus Princeps, 2d ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); cf. my brief (and generous) review of the first edition: Journal of Military History 62

1188 ★ THE JOURNAL OF The Dacian Wars of Domitian and Trajan graphical problem for military historians concerned with operations and strategy. Detailed information is at a premium. Domitian, the victim of hostile sources and Trajan’s propaganda, falls in the chasm of imperial biographies between , whose De vita Caesarum ends with Domitian, the last of the Flavians, and that most curious assemblage of biographies and historical novellas written in the late-fourth or early-fifth century, the , which begins with Trajan’s successor, (r. 117–138)—a remarkable phenomenon for a ruler hailed as “the best emperor” (optimus princeps). Narrative surveys of Trajan’s reign survive exclusively in the summaries of epitomators of the fourth century and later. ’s , covering the Flavian dynasty and thus including Domitian’s campaigns (84–89), survive only for events up to 70 A.D—most regrettably, as (7.10.4) reported that Tacitus (a contemporary of Domitian and Trajan) recounted Domitian’s Dacian war in great detail. ’s , written within a generation or two of Trajan’s wars and known from brief references by Photius in the ninth century and Zonaras in the twelfth century, has no surviving fragments. Apparently few read it. Literary accounts of events and motives are reduced to two sources: the Roman History of the senator , completed in the 220s and for the period of Domitian and Trajan preserved in excerpts from John Xiphilinus’s eleventh-century epitome, supplemented by scattered fragments in other Byzantine sources, and the of (fl. 550), probably a Sarmatian Alan in Constantinople, whose family had earlier assimilated with the . Jordanes claimed to be epitomiz- ing the twelve-volume De origine actibusque Getarum of the Ostrogoth bureaucrat and scholar Cassiodorus (c. 490–c. 585), but he also cited a lost Gothic history by Ablabius of unknown date. Jordanes’ Getica contains material from the Stoic-Cynic orator and sophist , whose time in Dacia in the (after being exiled from Rome by Domitian) inspired his Getica, but whether Jordanes knew Chrysostom’s Getica directly or through another source is unknown. The archaizing tendency of Late Roman authors like Jordanes in combining Dacians and Goths and calling a work on Goths a Getica is clear.7 From the third century on, the

(1998): 382–83; R. Paribeni, Optimus Princeps, 2 vols. (Messina: G. Principato, 1926–27), with some echoes of the il Duce of Paribeni’s time; note also: R. Hanslik, “Marcus Ulpius Traianus,” Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Suppl. 10 (1964): 1032–1113; M. Fell, Op- timus Princeps? Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der imperialen Programmatik Kaisers Traians (: Tuduv, 1992); and (more briefly) Speidel, “Bellicosissimus Princeps,” 23–40. 7. Cassius Dio’s Books 67–68 on Domitian and Trajan are available in the Loeb Classical Library: Dio’s Roman History, trans. E. Cary, vol. 8 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925), but the Greek text is best read in Cassii Dionis Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum Quae Supersunt, ed. U. P. Boissevain, 4 vols. (: Weidmann, 1898–1931); Jordanes: T. Mommsen, ed., Iordanis Romana et Getica, Monumenta Germanicae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 5 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1882); The Gothic History of Jordanes, trans. C. C. Mierow (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1915); Jordanes’ Alan ancestry: Alemany, Sources on the Alans, 136–37; frag- ments of Dio Chrysostom’s Getica: F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Leiden:

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German Goths occupied some territory earlier belonging to the Thracian Geto- Dacians (especially after ’s abandonment of Dacia, c. 270). Some Dacian descendants, both native survivors of the Roman conquest and the so-called Free Dacians, inhabiting territory not annexed as part of Trajan’s province, may have assimilated with Gothic intruders, although a Geto-Dacian culture, distinct from the Sîntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture associated with the fourth century Goths, continued into the Middle Ages.8 Detailed contemporary accounts did exist. In the tradition of Caesar’s Gallic War, Trajan published his own commentaries on his campaigns, a Dacica, f rom

E. J. Brill, 1923– ), nr. 707; Cassiodorus: B. Croke, “Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes,” Classical Philology 82 (1987): 117–34; for doubts about Ablabius as a source, see A. Gillett, “Jor- and Ablabius,” in Studies in and Roman History, ed. C. Deroux, vol. 10, Collection Latomus 254 (Brussels, 2000), 479–500; Locklear’s skepticism (“Late Iron Age Back- ground,” 34), typical of “new” archaeologists, on the value of literary sources like Jordanes, lacks authority, as his view seems derived from English translations and not the original Latin, nor does he understand the archaizing tendencies of Late Roman authors. 8. On the Free Dacians, see G. Bichir, “Die freien Daker im Norden Dakien,” and I. Ionita, “Die freien Daker an der nordöstlichen Grenze der römischen Provinz Dakiens,” in Römer und Barbaren an den Grenzen des römischen Dakiens, ed. N. Gudea, Acta Musei Porolissensis 21 (1997): 785–800 and 879–888, respectively; Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 365–68; Lica, Coming of Rome, 256, 264, although his citation of ILS nr. 854 seems more relevant to the than the Free Dacians; cf. Oltean’s misunderstanding of Lica: (Dacia, 56). Batty (Rome and the Nomads, 485) erroneously believes that Trajan’s wars depopulated Dacia; for correctives, see Babeş , “ ‘Devictis Dacis,’” and literature at note 38 below. Ethnic confusion can befuddle even modern authors: Stefan (359 n.2) corrects a gaffe (the more egregious for a book on an ancient geographer) that the Getae were Germans: D. Dueck, of Amaseia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome (: Routledge, 2000), 97; Oltean (Dacia, 47) erroneously equates the German of southern with Iranian ; evidence on the Bastarnae collected in Batty, Rome and the Nomads, 221–24, 236–56; see also M. B. Shchukin, “Forgotten Bastarnae,” in In- ternational Connections of the Barbarians in the Carpathian Basin in the 1st–5th Centuries A.D., ed. E. Istvánovits and V. Kulscár (Aszód/Nyíregyháza: Jósa András Museum; Osváth Gedeon Museum Foundation, 2001), 57–64. On the Sîntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture, see the convenient but largely inconclusive summary (as of 1991) in P. Heather and J. Matthews, The Goths in the Fourth Century (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 51–101; B. V. Mago- medev, “Die Cernjachov-Marosszentanna/Sîntana de Mures-Kultur in der Karpatenregion,” in Istvánovits and Kulscár, eds., International Connections, 227–33; L. Ellis, “Dacians, Sarmatians, and Goths on the Roman-Carpathian Frontier: Second-Fourth Centuries,” in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, ed. R. Mathisen and H. Sivan (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996), 105–25; note also the recent archaeological survey of F. Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Batty (Rome and the Nomads, 250), who strangely omits discussion of the Sîntana de Muresh-Cernjachov culture, is skeptical of Romanian scholars’ identification of various ethnicities (Costoboci, , Bastarnae) with spe- cific material cultures, although his own views lack appreciation of archaic ethnic terms in late authors for various tribes of their own day, and he uncritically accepts material in (e.g.) Pliny’s , where earlier sources are indiscriminately mixed with contemporary ethno- graphical descriptions.

1190 ★ THE JOURNAL OF The Dacian Wars of Domitian and Trajan which a single sentence survives in the grammatical work of Priscian (fl. 500), although interpreters of Trajan’s Column (including Stefan) see that monument as a massive illustration of the Dacica’s contents. A few Byzantine fragments of the Getica of Trajan’s physician, Statilius Crito, a participant in the campaigns, provide valuable but limited details. Even Balbus, a civilian surveyor called into service with Trajan, offers intriguing hints of his duties in building roads, bridges, and -works but regrettably without specific geographical locations.9 Indeed Domitian, known as a good poet, commemorated his Dacian war with an epic poem, of which a few lines, inscribed in monumental letters on a block found in the Lateran area of Rome, were first recorded by the humanist Petrarch.10 Archaeology, , , and papyrology strongly supplement the sketchy literary sources. Many Dacian forts and Roman camps are known, for which dates of construction or destruction can be discerned or approximated. Dates for the beginning and end of hostilities besides terms of peace are clear, as are which units of the Roman army and their commanders participated in these campaigns.11

9. Trajan’s Dacica: Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae 6.13=E. M. Smallwood, Documents Il- lustrating the Principates of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), no. 32: Traianus in I Dacicorum: “Inde Berzobim, inde Aizi processimus” [“From Berzobis, then from we advanced.”]; Crito: Jacoby, Die Fragmente, nr. 200; cf. J. Scarborough, “Criton, Physician to Trajan: Historian and Pharmacist,” in The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr, ed. J. Eadie and J. Ober (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 387–405; for an attempt to find more fragments, see I. I. Russu, “Getica lui Statilius Crito,” Studii Clasice 14 (1972): 111–28 (cited in Stefan’s footnotes, but missing from his bib- liography); Balbus: B. Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors, Journal of Roman Studies Monograph 9 (London, 2000), xxxix–xl, 205–6 (Latin text with English translation), esp. lines 17–30. Despite Campbell’s waffling between whether the emperor is Domitian or Trajan, Balbus’s references to mountain warfare in Dacia speak for Trajan, as the Dacian campaigns under Domitian (none led by Domitian himself) reached, but did not penetrate the Dacians’ Carpathian fortifications; cf. Stefan 419 with n. 118. Like Crito and Balbus in Trajan’s entourage, the famous architect Apollodorus of and possibly Dio Chrysostom (cf. Bennett, Tra- jan Optimus Princeps, 67) were not soldiers but civilian comites (“companions”). For attempts to connect ’s Poliorcetica [Siegecraft] to Trajan’s Dacian wars, see P. Blyth, “Apollodorus of Damascus and the Poliorcetica,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 33 (1992): 127–58; D. Whitehead, “Apollodorus’ Poliorketika: Author, Date, Dedicatee,” in A Roman Mis- cellany: Essays in Honour of Anthony R. Birley on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. H. Schellenberg et al. (Gdansk: Foundation for the Development of Gdansk University, 2008), 204–11. 10. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, VI 1207; cf. , Institutio oratoria 10.1.91; Sil- ius Italicus, 3.616–21; Suetonius, Domitianus 2.2; further commentary in Stefan 472. 11. See K. Strobel, Untersuchungen zu den Dakerkriegen Trajans (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1984), now updated at K. Strobel, “Die Eroberung Dakiens—Ein Resümee zum Forschungsstand der Dakerkriege Domitians und Traians,” Dacia 50 (2006): 105–14, and K. Strobel, Die Donaukriege Domitians (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 1989), although many of Strobel’s assertions require qualifica- tion: see F. Lepper’s review of Strobel’s method: Classical Review 35 (1985): 333–35; see also N. Gostar, “L’armée romaine dans les guerres daces de Trajan (101–102, 105–106),” Dacia 23 (1979): 155–22; G. Cupcea and F. Marcu, “The Size and Organization of the Roman Army and the Case of Dacia under Trajan,” Dacia 50 (2006): 175–94; basic remains K. Patsch, Der Kampf

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Trajan's Column, scene LXV, courtesy Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome, Italy

But the visible yet impenetrably silent glue holding together the framework of Trajan’s Dacian wars is that towering shaft (28.9 meters on a pedestal of 6.2 meters) in the middle of Rome, with its cartoon of over 2,500 figures twisting around it for 200 meters. Trajan’s Column, dedicated in 113, tells the story of his Dacian wars, which his victory arch at Beneventum (dated 113–114) completes by depict- ing his Dacian triumph. On , Trajan, Decebalus (the Dacian king), and various Roman units or hostile ethnic forces (for example, Lusius ’s Moorish cavalry, Sarmatian cataphracts of the Rhoxolani) are readily identifiable; there is a splendid display of Roman military practices.12 Some scenes correspond to the fragments of Cassius Dio’s account. Yes, the Column tells a story, but the um den Donauraum unter Domitian und Trajan, 5/2, Beiträge zur Völkerkunde von Südosteuropa, 5.2 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1937); a brief survey of Danubian legions and their bases is at J. Wilkes, “Roman Legions and their Fortresses in the Danube Lands (First to Third Centuries),” in Roman Fortresses and their Legions, ed. R. Brewer (London/Cardiff: Society of Antiquaries of London; National Museums & Galleries of Wales, 2000), 101–19. 12. See I. A. Richmond, “Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column,” Papers of the British School at Rome 13 (1935): 1–40, reprinted in Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column, ed. M. Hassall (London: British School at Rome, 1982), which also includes Richmond’s study of the Adamklissi monu- ment (Tropaeum Traiani): “Adamklissi,” Papers of the British School at Rome 35 (1967): 29–39.

1192 ★ THE JOURNAL OF The Dacian Wars of Domitian and Trajan crux for operational analysis comes with topographical identifications, pinpointing a scene with a specific site on the ground, particularly as the theater of the Dacian wars included not only modern Romania, but also parts of Hungary, , Bul- garia, Moldavia, and possibly extreme southwestern Ukraine, and several Roman armies operated simultaneously.13 Hence frustration and scholarly debate flourish. Comparison with the problems presented by the Bayeux Tapestry for William the Conqueror’s campaign of 1066 is apropos. Nor is study of the Column’s reliefs uncomplicated. Modern environmental hazards, damaging this monument like many others, have obliterated or blurred details and necessitated a cleaning and attempts at restoration (1981–88). All painted details and likewise metal supplements (for example, spears in the figures’ hands) have long vanished—thus the value of records of the Column in earlier, better states of preservation. Happily, Napoleon III’s well-known interest in led him to Rome. In 1861–62 he had molds made of the Column’s entire historical scroll, from which three complete sets of plaster casts were later produced. These now reside in Paris (Musée des Antiquités Nationales à Saint-Germain-en-Laye), Rome (Museo della Civiltà Romana), and London (Victoria and Albert Museum).14 Historical interpretation of the Column began at the dawn of the twentieth century with Conrad Cichorius, a student of the revered , who, working from the 414 casts at Rome made from Napoleon III’s molds, produced a multi-volume photographic archive of the casts with commentary. Cichorius’s divi- sion of the casts into 155 “scenes” (traditionally given in Roman numerals) remains the standard method of citing the Column, and his photographs are considered the best ever produced. Nevertheless, Cichorius’s belief in the Column as a valid historical account of Trajan’s wars and his identifications of Romanian sites in the Column’s scenes (at a time when excavations of Dacian sites were still in their infancy) soon elicited harsh reviews and alternative topographical views, such as those of G. A. T. Davies (1920), who persisted, however, in seeing the Column as an illustration of Tra- jan’s Dacica. Six years later the axe fell: the historian Kurt Lehmann-Hartleben’s assessment of the Column as a work of art demolished Cichorius’s case for the Col- umn’s precise historical narrative and his topographical identifications.15

13. Stefan’s map (674 fig. 276) does not include all Dacian sites relevant to the 106 cam- paign; for a supplement, see A. Diaconescu, “Dacia and the Dacian Wars,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 21 (2008): 590. 14. A fourth set, the work of the now defunct École Roumaine de Rome in 1939–43, has been since 1967 on display at the National Museum of History in Bucharest, where the bands of the spiral (roughly 1–1.5 meters high) can be profitably studied at eye-level, as this writer can attest from visits in 1980 and 1996. 15. C. Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssäule, vols. 2–3 (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1896–1900; vol. 1 not published); G. A. T. Davies, “Topography and the Dacian Wars,” Journal of Roman Studies 10 (1920): 1–28; cf. his “Trajan’s ,” Journal of Roman Studies 7 (1917): 74–97; K. Lehmann-Hartleben, Die Trajanssäule. Ein römisches Kunstwerk zu Beginn der Spätantike, 2 vols. (Berlin/Leipzig: W. de Gruyter & Co., 1926); a more detailed account of the Column’s history is in R. Lepper and S. Frere, Trajan’s Column (Gloucester, U.K.; Wolfboro, N.H.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1988), 1–4; cf. Stefan 3–4.

MILITARY HISTORY ★ 1193 EVERETT L. WHEELER

Henceforth advocates of the Column as an historical source have been on the defensive. Even the Roman army seen on the Column has become a victim of the artist’s (or artists’) supposed inaccuracies and generalizations, although with little appreciation of what was possible in limited space. Accordingly, individual legions cannot be identified; the equipment of both and auxiliaries is misrep- resented; even the and Praetorian signa (standards) are wrong.16 Perhaps the apogee of the anti-Column movement came in 1988, when Frank Lepper and Sheppard Frere republished Cichorius’s plates (long out of print) and subjected all aspects of Trajan’s Dacian wars to keen critical analysis. If their reproduction of Cichorius’s folio plates in an octavo volume was a major disappointment (minis- cule and often unclear)—an Italian volume’s reproduction of the plates the same year is far superior—their tome represented a useful status quaestionis.17 Inter alia, a frequent target of their criticism became the idea that Apollodorus of Damascus, the architect behind construction of Trajan’s famous stone bridge over the Danube at (modern Turnu Severin) and the supposed designer of Trajan’s Forum, was the (“the Maestro”) behind the Column’s reliefs, although they concede that he might have been the architect of the Column. Indeed, as generally agreed— whoever “the Maestro” was—the Column’s scenes (in whole or part) derive from paintings of the wars’ events displayed in Trajan’s triumph.18 For the history of the

16. J. C. N. Coulston has led the charge against the Column: “The Value of Trajan’s Column as a Source for Military Equipment,” in Roman Military Equipment: The Sources of Evidence, ed. C. van Driel-Murray (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1989), 31–44; “The Architecture and Construction Scenes on Trajan’s Column,” in Architecture and Architectural Sculpture in the , ed. M. Henig (Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1990), 39–50; “Three New Books on Trajan’s Column,”Journal of Roman Archaeology 3 (1990): 290–309; cf. M. C. Bishop and J. C. N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment (London: B. T. Batsford, 1993), 21–23; M. Charles, “The Flavio-Trajanic Miles: The Appearance of Citizen Infantry on Trajan’s Column,” Latomus 62 (2002): 666–95; C. G. Alexandrescu, “A Contribution on the Standards of the Roman Army,” in XIX: Proceedings of the XIXth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies Held in Pécs, Hungary, 2003, ed. Z. Visy (Pécs: University of Pécs, 2005), 147–56; for a more sympathetic view of the accuracy of the Column and what was really possible, see D. Richter, Das römische Heer auf der Trajanssaüle. Propaganda und Realität: Waffen und Ausrüstung, Marsch, Arbeit und Kampf (Mannheim: Bibliopolis, 2004), and M. Ga- linier, “La representation iconographicque du légionnaire romain,” in Les légions de Rome sous le Haut-Empire, ed. Y. Le Bohec and C. Wolff, 3 vols. (Paris: De Boccard, 2000–2003), 2:417–39; a credulist’s position on the Column’s representation of the army is in L. Rossi, Trajan’s Column and the Dacian Wars, trans. J. M. C. Toynbee (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971). 17. Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column; S. Settis et al., La Colonna Traiana (Turin: G. Ein- audi, 1988); note also the reproduction of the plates in F. Coarelli, The Column of Traian, trans. C. Rockwell (Rome: Colombo, 2000). 18. See J. N. C. Coulston, “Overcoming the Barbarian. Depiction of Rome’s Enemies in Trajanic Monumental Art,” in The Representations and Perception of Roman Imperial Power, ed. L. De Blois et al. (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 2003), 420–21, elaborating on an idea of Lehmann- Hartleben, Die Trajanssäule); Apollodorus: Lepper and Frere, Trajan’s Column, e.g., 18–19, 149– 50, 271; the bridge, depicted on the Column’s scenes XCVIII–XCIX (=Stefan fig. 267), was

1194 ★ THE JOURNAL OF