At the height of his power, Burebista would have been able to m obilize an army of 200,000 men, while not much later Dacian military power is esti
mated at one-fifth this number. Burebista's kingdom broke up into four, and later, five principalities. In the heartland, Decaineus managed to main
tain his control over Burebista's own tribe for some time. His successor, Comosicus, probably in his person united the final form of royal and high priestly power. The list of kings recording the names of the kings from Burebista to Decebal obviously relates to this central territory, to the king
dom controlling southwestern Transylvania, whilst the other Dacian and Getan kings mentioned in various Augustan sources probably ruled over tribes of the Lower Danubian Getae. The list of kings poses problems of its own. Cotiso of the Dacians, mentioned by several sources as controlling the m ountainous Iron Gate section of the Danube, is omitted from the list nam ing Burebista, Decaineus and Comosicus. Since the list contains other mis
spellings too, Comosicus can perhaps be identified with Cotiso.
O f Burebista's fragmented kingdom only the intra-Carpathian Transyl
vanian principality can be regarded as strictly speaking Dacian, since the other kingdom s ruled over Getan tribes. O ne of their kings, a certain Dicom es, is said to have established contact with Anthony at the time of the civil war which raged after Caesar's death and to have offered his help before Actium. At the same time, Cotiso made overtures to Octavian and, if A nthony's accusations are to be believed, Octavian even toyed with the
idea of establishing family relations. Other Getan and Dacian kings, by navi
gating skilfully between the squabbling Roman parties, also hoped to achieve material and financial gains with promises of alliance. These extraordinar
ily far-reaching diplomatic ties, unusual among the barbarian peoples of this period, can be explained by the fact that each king of Burebista's frag
mented domain regarded himself as Burebista's political heir and tried to enlist powerful allies to further his political ambitions. Under these circum stances, the Dacian threat retained its priority in Roman public opinion even after Julius Caesar's death. Octavian, as Caesar's heir, declared war on the Dacians as the executor of Caesar's political legacy, in spite of the fact that the timeliness and possibilities of Rome's actually going to war had practi
cally passed. Even the Iapodic war fought between 35-33 B.C. was, ostensi
bly, launched as a preliminary to the campaign against the Dacians, though its real objective w as the occupation of the hinterland of the A driatic coastland connecting Italy with the Balkans. One undisputable result of this campaign was the capture of Siscia (Sisak, Yugoslavia) in the Sava Valley, a victory Octavian hailed as providing Rome with a highly advantageous start
ing point and a base for military operations against the Dacians.
The Dacian war, of course, never took place. For one thing, the years that followed saw the decisive phase of the struggle for autocratic power in Rome;
for another, the Dacian threat was by that time not so great as to be a prime concern of Roman foreign policy. Rome was satisfied to have Cotiso's con
trol broken south of the Danube. This happened in 29 B.C., not long after
The conquest of the territories that were to become Noricum and Pannonia to the south of the Danube, and the organization of a Moesian army subor
dinated to Macedonia again led to hostilities between the Roman Empire and the Dacians. In the last phase of this large-scale operation, Rome took the first steps towards ensuring its influence on the left bank of the Danube.
During the war that eventually led to the conquest of Pannonia (10 B.C.), the D acians crossed the Danube. The Rom ans repelled this attack and Augustus sent a punitive expedition against them which "forced the Dacians to acknowledge the supremacy of the Rom ans".10 This campaign was prob
ably directed by M. Vinicius, of whom we know that in the course of one of his campaigns he first defeated the army of the Bastamae, and later forced Dacians and Celts into an "alliance".11 Lentulus's expedition, which drove the Dacians, "a people inaccessible" in their mountainous lands, to the north of the Danube and established a Roman guardpost on that side of the river, was perhaps synchronous with this campaign. One of our sources com ments on this event to the effect that "Dacia, although not wholly vanquished,
10. Res gestae Divi Augusti (Monumentum Ancyranum) 30. = DobO, lnscriptiones ... 769.
11. DobO, lnscriptiones ... 769a.
was kept at arm 's length".12 Only a few details of some later Roman cam paigns in the area are known: a Roman army sailed up the Tisza and the Maros and approached the Dacians; and there must be some factual back
ground to the remark in a poetic work that the Dacian tribe of the Appuli — probably the inhabitants of the region around Apulum (Gyulafeherv^r) — could easily reach the Black Sea. This casual remark is the only indication of the fact that after Burebista's death the Dacians might have tried to estab
lish contact with the Lower Danube region. The shortest route between Apulum and the Black Sea lies by way of the Olt Valley. It cannot be mere chance that Augustus, who did not attach much importance to the military occupation of the Danubian frontier, established one of the earliest Danubian legionary camps not far from the mouth of the Olt (Oescus=Gigen, Bul
garia). The other early Augustan legionary fortress on the Danube (Camun- tum =Deutschaltenburg, Austria) was founded on territory neighbouring Rom e's other Danubian foe, the Germanic kingdom of Maroboduus. This would suggest that in spite of the disintegration and territorial losses of the Dacian Kingdom after Burebista's death, it nonetheless remained an almost inaccessible political formation of superior organization.
In this barely stabilized situation the Romans probably breathed a sigh of relief when two tribes of the equestrian Sarmatian people began their gradual westward migration along the Lower Danube. The Jazyges and the Roxolani advancing behind them were sandwiched not only between the Getae and the Dacians, but also between the Roman Empire and the Dacians, and eventually formed a buffer zone between the Dacians and Pannonia.
The Sarmatian migration — which was welcomed and even in some cases supported by Rome — could have been the occasion of the series of large and small Dacian incursions, which could well have included joint D acian- Sarmatian action. In order to ease the tensions north of the Danube, the Ro
mans had worked out a settlement policy under Augustus. A large number of Getae (Dacians?) were settled in Moesia in order to provide a homeland for the Sarmatians. The disturbances stirred up by these events subsided but gradually. Even in the final years of Tiberius's reign the Dacians and the Sarmatians frequently raided Moesia. Afterwards, however, there fol
lowed long decades of peace which, according to the afore-mentioned Dacian list of kings, roughly coincided with Coryllus's forty year long reign.
Coryllus occurs nowhere else in our sources, and is probably a m isspell
ing of Scorilo, a highly popular Dacian name. A typical anecdote about a Dacian king called Scorilo has come down to us. To discourage his people from taking sides in Rome's domestic quarrels, he pitted two dogs against each other; when he then threw a wolf in front of the dogs, both dogs imme
diately turned on the wolf.13 This kind of caution must have been a hall
m ark of C oryllus-Scorilo's long reign, and the anecdote about the dogs was especially apt at the time of the first real crisis in the history of the Roman Em pire (68-69 A.D.), when the Danubian frontier was left unprotected by the legions who marched off to participate in the civil war. The Sarmatians exploited this situation successfully on several occasions, inflicting fatal 12. Fl o r u s, Epitome II, 28 (= IV, 12).
13. Fro n tin u s, Strategemata 1 ,10, 4.
blows on a num ber of Roman armies and governors. Scorilo's cautionary parable can, in fact, be linked to a specific event. During the crisis of 68-69 (probably during the winter of 69-70), the Dacians crossed the M oesian section of the Danube and occupied a couple of frontier camps. If the par
able about the bickering dogs can indeed be attributed to the Dacian king m istakenly called Coryllus, it seems probable that the Danubian frontier was attacked by an independent Dacian group from W allachia, making Coryllus-Scorilo's admonition to his own people necessary.
Tacitus described the Dacians as an "ever unreliable nation" in connec
tion with this attack.14 Though this opinion reflects the experiences of later D acian-R om an conflicts as well, the Dacians had always been accorded special attention since Burebista. It proved infinitely more difficult to steer them into a relationship conveniently called an "alliance", but which practi
cally meant an incorporation into the dependent clientale system. When, at the close of A ugustus's reign, the Dacians are described as not being as dangerous as they had formerly been and as being on the verge of recogniz
ing Roman overlordship, this can be taken to reflect the more peaceful con
ditions of the Scorilo period. It would nonetheless appear that the Dacian- Roman alliance (foedus) rested on very shaky grounds indeed. The Dacian Kingdom differed in several respects from the Germanic and Sarmatian client kingdoms lying along the Danubian frontier which had entered into alliance with the Roman Empire. It enjoyed a singularly favourable geo
graphic position in that the heartland of the kingdom was cut off from the Danube by an impenetrable mountain chain. A Roman attack from the west through the Temes or Maros valleys, or from the east through the Zsil or Olt Valley would have definitely involved long deployment of the troops with a considerable detour, as well as the penetration of well defended moun
tain passes. The Dacians were undoubtedly at a tactical advantage in no less a place than in the most important section of the em pire's Danubian frontier, where the Danube cuts the southern Carpathians in a series of steep, narrow gorges. So that the Roman ships might be towed, a cliff road had to be hewn into the rockface. This amazing feat of ancient technology was completed towards the end of Tiberius's reign. It cannot be mere coinci
dence that a more peaceful phase of Dacian-Roman relations commenced at this time. Rome certainly would not have shirked even considerable fi
nancial sacrifice to make shipping safe through concessions to the Dacians.