After the Roman conquest, Dacia became imperial property and, as such, its territory was assigned to different administrative categories (military territorium, municipal territorium, imperial property). Trajan granted Dacia provincial status soon after the conquest. This region would hardly have attracted settlers if the newly conquered territory had remained under m ili
tary administration, which always suggested a lack of security. The intro
duction of civilian administration and the management of the affairs of the population called for the founding of a civilian settlement, a town. This took place in 110-112, at the latest. The veterans of the legions that had fought in the Dacian wars were settled in Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta — later known as Sarmizegethusa — founded by Trajan. The native Dacian population of this area who had not fled with their brethren do not appear to have enjoyed preferential treatment over the legionary veterans at the time of the foundation. Since large tracts of arable land were scarce in the m ountainous region, the resettlement of the local population somewhere else was a more pressing problem than in other colonies. This colonia re
mained the only one of its kind in the province until the reign of Hadrian.
The new town adopted the name of Decebal's seat, Sarmizegethusa Regia, in spite of the fact that it lay some thirty-seven kilometres to the west of the former Dacian capital and that it had no Dacian antecedents.
The adoption of the geographic names used by the native population corresponds to general Roman practice. The survival of earlier place-names was m ade possible by the fact that when the Roman army conquered this territory during the course of the first Dacian war, these settlements were still inhabited; thus, their names could be passed on. That this had indeed been the case was revealed by the emperor himself. In his campaign journal of the Dacian wars, Trajan recorded the route of his advance. According to the single surviving fragment of this journal "... from here we advanced to Bersobis, and then to Aisisis".
32. D io n C a s s iu s , LXXVIII, 27.
The survival of the place names used by the native population, however, does not necessarily imply the actual survival of earlier settlements, espe
cially if the Roman town was founded on the site or in the immediate vicin
ity of an abandoned military camp, as was the normal practice in Dacia.
The building of a military camp generally entailed the annihilation of what
ever Dacian settlement there might have been there. The native name was retained even if the camp was sited in the broader environs of the native settlement as, for example, Aquincum and Brigetio in Pannonia, as well as Singidunum in Moesia. Sarmizegethusa Regia and Colonia Dacica in Dacia are a case in point. They demonstrate that the Roman conquerors used Dacian place names quite liberally when naming their settlements. Consequently, it is impossible to identify Dacian settlements on the basis of the Dacian names given to Roman camps and forts. Neither do these names demon
strate the continuity of the Dacian settlements.
W hen Hadrian organized the three Dacian provinces, he also founded two new towns for the administration of civil matters. The municipium of Dacia Inferior was created from the vicus beside the military camp of Drobeta lying on the Danube River. The reasons for choosing this particular settle
ment were obvious. The importance of the settlement guarding the north
ern bridgehead of the stone bridge increased considerably owing to a large traffic while the rapid growth of its population also called for a grant of urban autonomy. Napoca in Dacia Porolissensis was promoted to the rank of municipium in the northern province.
M unicipal development and urbanization was extremely slow com pared with other provinces. The foundation of the first colonia was necessitated by the introduction of civil administration, whilst the next two were brought into being following the creation of new provinces. Little is known of the circum stances and the foundation date of later towns. The vicus of the camp of Romula was made a municipium after the transfer of its troops, perhaps under the rule of Antoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius. The civic settlement next to the legionary fortress of Apulum (Apulum I) was granted urban rights by Marcus Aurelius. Some time later it was already being mentioned as a colonia, a rank granted, at the latest, under Commodus. Urbanization proceeded on a larger scale under Septimius Severus. The canabae of the legionary fortresses of Apulum (Apulum II) and Potaissa became municipia at this time. The fort vicus of Dierna and Tibiscum received the status of municipium in the third century, perhaps under the Severi, whilst Drobeta became a colonia. Potaissa and Apulum II were raised to the rank of colonia by Caracalla. The town of Malva has not yet been identified. Som e scholars equate it with Romula, while according to others, its location should be sought for elsewhere. W hat is certain is that it became a colonia in 230.
There were only about eleven or twelve towns in Dacia including three or four municipia and eight coloniae (the status of Ampelum is uncertain, and the identification of Romula with Malva, as we have noted, is still moot).
Moesia Superior, considerably smaller than Dacia, boasted thirteen towns, while Pannonia had about twenty to twenty-three. In contrast to other prov
inces w here the towns of the urban network were dispersed more or less evenly over the entire province, the urban settlements of Dacia were con
centrated in the western half of the province.
Civitates, which normally played a decisive role in the "civilization" of the native population were entirely lacking in this province. It would ap
pear that the fact that municipal rights were only conferred on most of the settlements (certainly five of six of them) at a relatively late date, under Septimius Severus, was directly linked to the lack of such civitates. In Dacia, towns could evolve only from military settlements that grew up around the camps because there alone were communities with large enough populations to be found. In the second century A.D., however, this possible course of urban development was still blocked. The territoria that lay under military administration were inhabited by the families of the soldiers as well as dis
charged veterans, merchants and various craftsmen. The municipalization of these settlements would necessarily have called for the loss of a part of the territoria, i.e., for joining this land to the new town, in spite of the fact that it was needed for provisioning the military. The abolition of the mili
tary territoria only began under Septimius Severus, and this delay proved an obstacle to urbanization in Dacia. Owing to the great number of camps, the areas attached as military territoria were rather extensive. At the same time, the emergence of larger civilian settlements was hindered by the rela
tively late date of the conquest on the one hand, and by the smallness of the civilian population on the other. Owing to their low numbers, the towns, concentrated as they were in western Dacia, could not become disseminators of Roman culture throughout the province.
The settlement of various peoples after the conquest did not yield spec
tacular results while, from the 160s, a gradual emigration from the prov
ince can even be noted. Long drawn out wars and plagues decimated the population. The lack of civilian population also hindered urban develop
ment. The disastrous economic situation following the M arcomann wars and the lack of urban autonomy led to unrests and, later, to revolts. This situation, in turn, called for radical measures to ensure some sort of im provem ent and the repopulation of the area. The grants of ius ltalicum were m eant to rem edy this situation. Sarm izegethusa, Napoca, Apulum and, perhaps, D iem a were granted the rare privilege of exemption from land tax under Septimius Severus at the latest, a measure that was designed to at
tract and encourage settlers from outside Dacia. These measures proved successful as the ranks of the provincial population were swelled by Syr
ians and other orientals. The organs of the provincial em peror's cult and the provincial assembly also sprang into life — after a long hiatus — in the Severan period. The lack of such organs for expressing civic loyalty in the preceding period is highly conspicuous. The provincial assembly was the main body uniting the towns and the civitates of the native population and also fulfilled another important corporate function in addition to perform ing the public rites of the emperor's cult. This assembly could instigate pros
ecutions against an unjust governor after he had finished his time in office and it could request the investigation of alleged grievances. The existence of this organization is not attested to in the pre-Severan period in Dacia, but is documented in a number of inscriptions from later times. The title of
"m etropolis" as definitely linked to the location of the provincial assembly, appears next to the name of Sarmizegethusa only under the reign of Alex
ander Severus.
The relatively late appearance of the provincial assembly can be traced back to two causes. On the one hand, the low number of second-century towns did not call for the introduction or for the zealous practice of the em peror's cult. These rites were, in any case performed regularly in the military camps and by the augustales in the towns. On the other hand, the government in Rome considered the local population too small; the civitas organization was also lacking. Under the Severi, however, the urban popu
lation increased along with the number of towns which in turn eventually necessitated a provincial assembly and the organization of the em peror's cult on a provincial level. The high priest of the imperial cult was called coronatus, "w reath-w earer", a word borrowed from the eastern provinces.
By the time the towns and their leading organizations were called into being under the Severi, Dacia looked back on a hundred years of existence.
As it happened, it could look forward to less than three decades of peaceful dev elop m en t, w hich obviously restricted the extent and in ten sity of romanization in the towns and elsewhere.
Little is known about the rural settlements. It would appear that the ur
banized areas also influenced the occurrence of villa economies. Estate cen
tres and their buildings have mostly been excavated in the western part of the province, in Transylvania, and generally in the vicinity of towns. The main buildings are small, rarely covering more than 400 square yards or so.
They are simple and unpretentious without a trace of luxury, such as m osa
ics, wall paintings or ornamental marble slabs in their internal furnishings, which suggests that these villae belonged to small- or middle-sized estates.
And hardly any villa estates are known from the Oltenian plains even though this region was better suited to agricultural activities.