Dacian

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Author: Laxman Burdak, IFS (R).
Map showing Roman Dacia and surrounding peoples in 125 AD
Getae on the World Map according to Herodotus

Dacians were the ancient Indo-European inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. Classical authors are unanimous in considering them a branch of the Getae. Strabo specified that the Daci are the Getae who lived in the area towards the Pannonian plain (Transylvania), while the Getae proper gravitated towards the Black Sea coast (Scythia Minor). They are often considered a subgroup of the Thracians.[1]

Variants

Jat Gotras Namesake

Ch.3 Alexander at the Danube and in the Country of the Getae (p.14-15)

Arrian[5] writes.... On the third day after the battle, Alexander reached the river Ister, which is the largest of all the rivers in Europe, traverses a very great tract of country, and separates very warlike nations. Most of these belong to the Celtic race,[1] in whose territory the sources of the river take their rise. Of these nations the remotest are the Quadi[2] and Marcomanni[3]; then the lazygianns,[4] a branch of the Sauromatians[5]; then the Getae,[6] who hold the doctrine of immortality; then the main body of the Sauromatians; and, lastly, the Scythians,[7] whose land stretches as far as the outlets of the river, where through five mouths it discharges its water into the Euxine Sea.[8] Here Alexander found some ships of war which had come to him from Byzantium, through the Euxine Sea and up the river. Filling these with archers and heavy-armed troops, he sailed to the island to which the Triballians and Thracians had fled for refuge. He tried to force a landing; but the barbarians came to meet him at the brink of the river, where the ships were making the assault. But these were only few in number, and the army in them small. The shores of the island, also, were in most places too steep and precipitous for landing, and the current of the river alongside it, being, as it were, shut up into a narrow channel by the nearness of the banks, was rapid and exceedingly difficult to stem.

Alexander therefore led back his ships, and determined to cross the Ister and march against the Getae, who dwelt on the other side of that river; for he observed that many of them had collected on the bank of the river for the purpose of barring his way, if he should cross. There were of them about 4,000 cavalry and more than 10,000 infantry. At the same time a strong desire seized him to advance beyond the Ister. He therefore went on board the fleet himself. He also filled with hay the hides which served them as tent-coverings, and collected from the country around all the boats made from single trunks of trees. Of these there was a great abundance, because the people who dwell near the Ister use them for fishing in the river, sometimes also for journeying to each other for traffic up the river; and most of them carry on piracy with them. Having collected as many of these as he could, upon them he conveyed across as many of his soldiers as was possible in such a fashion. Those who crossed with Alexander amounted in number to 1,500 cavalry and 4,000 infantry.

1. The classical writers have three names to denote this race:— Celts, Galatians, and Gauls. These names were originally, given to all the people of the North and West of Europe; and it was not till Caesar's time that the Romans made any distinction between Celts and Germans. The name of Celts was then confined to the people north of the Pyrenees and west of the Rhine. Cf. Ammianus (xv. 9); Herodotus (iv. 49); Livy (v. 33, 34); Polybius (iii. 39).

2. Arrian is here speaking, not of Alexander's time, but of his own, the second century of the Christian era. The Quadi were a race dwelling in the south-east of Germany. They are generally mentioned with the Marcomanni, and were formidable enemies of the Romans, especially in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, when Arrian wrote. This nation disappears from history about the end of the fourth century.

3. The Marcomanni, like the Quadi, were a powerful branch of the Suevic race, originally dwelling in the south-wesb of Germany; but in the reign of Tiberius they dispossessed the Boii of the country now called Bohemia. In conjunction with the Quadi, they were very formidable to the Romans until Commodus purchased peace from them. The name denotes "border men." Cf. Caesar (Bel. Gal., i. 51).

4. The lazygians were a tribe of Sarmatians, who migrated from the coast of the Black Sea, between the Dnieper and the Sea of Azov, in the reign of Claudius, and settled in Dacia, near the Quadi, with whom they formed a close alliance. They were conquered by the Goths in the fifth century. Cf. Ovid (Tristia, ii. 191).

5. Called also Sarmatians. Herodotus (iv. 21) says that these people lived east of the Don, and were allied to the Scythians. Subsequent writers understood by Sarmatia the east part of Poland, the south of Russia, and the country southward as far as the Danube.

6. These people were called Dacians by the Romans. They were Thracians, and are said by Herodotus and Thucydides to have lived south of the Danube, near its mouths. They subsequently migrated north of this river, and were driven further west by the Sarmatians. They were very formidable to the Romans in the reigns of Augustus and Domitian. Dacia was conquered by Trajan ; but ultimately abandoned by Aurelian, who made the Danube the boundary of the Roman Empire. About the Getae holding the doctrine of immortality, see Herodotus (iv. 94). Cf. Horace (Carm., iii. 6, 13; Sat., ii. 6, 53).

7. The Scythians are said by Herodotus to have inhabited the south of Russia. His supposition that they came from Asia is doubtless correct. He gives ample information about this race in the fourth book of his History.

8. Herodotus (iv. 47) says the Danube had five mouths; but Strabo (vii. 3) says there were seven. At the present time it has only three mouths. The Greeks called the Black Sea πόντος εύξεινος, the sea kind to strangers. Cf. Ovid (Tristia, iv. 4, 55):—"Frigida me cohibent Euxini litora Ponti, Dictus ab antiquis Axenus ille fuit."

p.14-15

Distribution

They are often considered a subgroup of the Thracians.[6] This area includes mainly the present-day countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Ukraine,[7] Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia,[8] Hungary and Southern Poland.[9]

The Dacians spoke the Dacian language, which has a debated relationship with the neighbouring Thracian language and may be a subgroup of it. Dacians were somewhat culturally influenced by the neighbouring Scythians and by the Celtic invaders of the 4th century BC.

Etymology of Dacians

The Dacians were known as Geta (plural Getae) in Ancient Greek writings, and as Dacus (plural Daci) or Getae in Roman documents,[10]but also as Dagae and Gaete as depicted on the late Roman map Tabula Peutingeriana. It was Herodotus who first used the ethnonym Getae in his Histories.[11]In Greek and Latin, in the writings of Julius Caesar, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder, the people became known as 'the Dacians'.[12] Getae and Dacians were interchangeable terms, or used with some confusion by the Greeks.[13][14] Latin poets often used the name Getae.[15] Vergil called them Getae four times, and Daci once, Lucian Getae three times and Daci twice, Horace named them Getae twice and Daci five times, while Juvenal one time Getae and two times Daci.[16] In AD 113, Hadrian used the poetic term Getae for the Dacians.[[17] Modern historians prefer to use the name Geto-Dacians.[18] Strabo describes the Getae and Dacians as distinct but cognate tribes. This distinction refers to the regions they occupied.[19] Strabo and Pliny the Elder also state that Getae and Dacians spoke the same language.[20][21]

By contrast, the name of Dacians, whatever the origin of the name, was used by the more western tribes who adjoined the Pannonians and therefore first became known to the Romans.[22] According to Strabo's Geographica, the original name of the Dacians was Δάοι "Daoi".[23] The name Daoi (one of the ancient Geto-Dacian tribes) was certainly adopted by foreign observers to designate all the inhabitants of the countries north of Danube that had not yet been conquered by Greece or Rome.[24]

The ethnographic name Daci is found under various forms within ancient sources. Greeks used the forms Δάκοι "Dakoi" (Strabo, Dio Cassius, and Dioscorides) and Δάοι "Daoi" (singular Daos).[25]

Latins used the forms Davus, Dacus, and a derived form Dacisci (Vopiscus and inscriptions).[26]

There are similarities between the ethnonyms of the Dacians and those of Dahae (Greek Δάσαι Δάοι, Δάαι, Δαι, Δάσαι Dáoi, Dáai, Dai, Dasai; Latin Dahae, Daci), an Indo-European people located east of the Caspian Sea, until the 1st millennium BC. Scholars have suggested that there were links between the two peoples since ancient times.[27][28][29] The historian David Gordon White has, moreover, stated that the "Dacians ... appear to be related to the Dahae".[30] (Likewise White and other scholars also believe that the names Dacii and Dahae may also have a shared etymology – see the section following for further details.)

By the end of the first century AD, all the inhabitants of the lands which now form Romania were known to the Romans as Daci, with the exception of some Celtic and Germanic tribes who infiltrated from the west, and Sarmatian and related people from the east.[31]

The name Daci, or "Dacians" is a collective ethnonym.[32] Dio Cassius reported that the Dacians themselves used that name, and the Romans so called them, while the Greeks called them Getae.[33] Opinions on the origins of the name Daci are divided. Some scholars consider it to originate in the Indo-European *dha-k-, with the stem *dhe- 'to put, to place', while others think that the name Daci originates in *daca 'knife, dagger' or in a word similar to dáos, meaning 'wolf' in the related language of the Phrygians.[34]

One hypothesis is that the name Getae originates in Indo-European *guet- 'to utter, to talk'.[35] Another hypothesis is that Getae and Daci are the Iranian names of two Iranian-speaking Scythian groups that had been assimilated into the larger Thracian-speaking population of the later "Dacia".[36]

History

Early history: In the absence of historical records written by the Dacians (and Thracians) themselves, analysis of their origins depends largely on the remains of material culture. On the whole, the Bronze Age witnessed the evolution of the ethnic groups which emerged during the Eneolithic period, and eventually the syncretism of both autochthonous and Indo-European elements from the steppes and the Pontic regions.[37] Various groups of Thracians had not separated out by 1200 BC,[38] but there are strong similarities between the ceramic types found at Troy and the ceramic types from the Carpathian area.[39] About the year 1000 BC, the Carpatho-Danubian countries were inhabited by a northern branch of the Thracians.[40] At the time of the arrival of the Scythians (c. 700 BC), the Carpatho-Danubian Thracians were developing rapidly towards the Iron Age civilization of the West. Moreover, the whole of the fourth period of the Carpathian Bronze Age had already been profoundly influenced by the first Iron Age as it developed in Italy and the Alpine lands. The Scythians, arriving with their own type of Iron Age civilization, put a stop to these relations with the West.[41] From roughly 500 BC (the second Iron Age), the Dacians developed a distinct civilization, which was capable of supporting large centralised kingdoms by 1st BC and 1st AD.[42]

Since the very first detailed account by Herodotus, Getae are acknowledged as belonging to the Thracians.[43] Still, they are distinguished from the other Thracians by particularities of religion and custom.[44] The first written mention of the name "Dacians" is in Roman sources, but classical authors are unanimous in considering them a branch of the Getae, a Thracian people known from Greek writings. Strabo specified that the Daci are the Getae who lived in the area towards the Pannonian plain (Transylvania), while the Getae proper gravitated towards the Black Sea coast (Scythia Minor).

References

  1. ↑ Waldman, Carl; Mason, Catherine (2006). Encyclopedia of European Peoples. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 1438129181.p.205
  2. ↑ Strabo. Geographica [Geography] (in Ancient Greek). VII 3,12.
  3. ↑ Strabo. Geographica [Geography] (in Ancient Greek). VII 3,12.
  4. ↑ Dionysius Periegetes, Graece et Latine, Volume 1, Libraria Weidannia, 1828, p. 145.
  5. ↑ The Anabasis of Alexander/1a, p.14-15
  6. ↑ Waldman, Carl; Mason, Catherine (2006). Encyclopedia of European Peoples. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 1438129181.p.205
  7. ↑ Nandris, John (1976). Friesinger, Herwig; Kerchler, Helga; Pittioni, Richard; Mitscha-Märheim, Herbert (eds.). "The Dacian Iron Age – A Comment in a European Context". Archaeologia Austriaca (Festschrift für Richard Pittioni zum siebzigsten Geburtstag ed.). Vienna: Deuticke. 13 (13–14). ISBN 978-3-700-54420-3. ISSN 0003-8008.p.731
  8. ↑ Husovská, Ludmilá (1998). Slovakia: walking through centuries of cities and towns. Príroda. ISBN 978-8-007-01041-3. p. 187.
  9. ↑ Nandris, John (1976). Friesinger, Herwig; Kerchler, Helga; Pittioni, Richard; Mitscha-Märheim, Herbert (eds.). "The Dacian Iron Age – A Comment in a European Context". Archaeologia Austriaca (Festschrift für Richard Pittioni zum siebzigsten Geburtstag ed.). Vienna: Deuticke. 13 (13–14). ISBN 978-3-700-54420-3. ISSN 0003-8008.p.731
  10. ↑ Appian & 165 AD, Praef. 4/14-15,
  11. ↑ Herodotus. Histories (in Ancient Greek). 4.93–4.97.
  12. ↑ Fol, Alexander (1996). "Thracians, Celts, Illyrians and Dacians". In de Laet, Sigfried J. (ed.). History of Humanity. History of Humanity. Vol. 3: From the seventh century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. UNESCO. ISBN 978-9-231-02812-0.p.223
  13. ↑ Nandris 1976, p. 730: Strabo and Trogus Pompeius "Daci quoque suboles Getarum sunt"
  14. ↑ Crossland, R.A.; Boardman, John (1982). Linguistic problems of the Balkan area in the late prehistoric and early Classical period. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 3. CUP. ISBN 978-0-521-22496-3.p.837
  15. ↑ Roesler, Robert E. (1864). Das vorromische Dacien. Academy, Wien, XLV.
  16. ↑ Roesler 1864, p. 89.
  17. ↑ Everitt, Anthony (2010). Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome. Random House Trade. ISBN 978-0-812-97814-8.p.151
  18. ↑ Fol 1996, p. 223.
  19. ↑ Bunbury, Edward Herbert (1979). A history of ancient geography among the Greeks and Romans: from the earliest ages till the fall of the Roman empire. London: Humanities Press International. ISBN 978-9-070-26511-3.p.150
  20. ↑ Bunbury, Edward Herbert (1979). A history of ancient geography among the Greeks and Romans: from the earliest ages till the fall of the Roman empire. London: Humanities Press International. ISBN 978-9-070-26511-3.p.150
  21. ↑ Oltean, Ioana Adina (2007). Dacia: landscape, colonisation and romanisation. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-41252-0.p.44
  22. ↑ Bunbury 1979, p. 151.
  23. ↑ Strabo & 20 AD, VII 3,12.
  24. ↑ Fol 1996, p. 223.
  25. ↑ Strabo & 20 AD, VII 3,12
  26. ↑ Mulvin, Lynda (2002). Late Roman Villas in the Danube-Balkan Region. British Archaeological Reports. ISBN 978-1-841-71444-8.
  27. ↑ Kephart, Calvin (1949). Sanskrit: its origin, composition, and diffusion. Shenandoah. p. 28: The Persians knew that the Dahae and the other Massagetae were kin of the inhabitants of Scythia west of the Caspian Sea.
  28. ↑ Chakraberty, Chandra (1948). The prehistory of India: tribal migrations. Vijayakrishna. p. 34: "Dasas or Dasyu of the RigVeda are the Dahae of Avesta, Daci of the Romans, Dakaoi (Hindi Dakku) of the Greeks"
  29. ↑ Pliny (the Elder) & Rackham 1971, p. 375.
  30. ↑ White, David Gordon (1991). Myths of the Dog-Man. University of Chicago. ISBN 978-0-226-89509-3.p.239
  31. ↑ Crossland & Boardman 1982, p. 837.
  32. ↑ Grumeza, Ion (2009). Dacia: Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe. Hamilton Books. ISBN 978-0-7618-4465-5.
  33. ↑ Florov 2001, p. 66.
  34. ↑ Barbulescu, Mihai; Nagler, Thomas (2005). The History of Transylvania: Until 1541. Coordinator Pop, Ioan Aurel. Cluj-Napoca: Romanian Cultural Institute. ISBN 978-9-737-78400-1.p.68
  35. ↑ Barbulescu & Nagler 2005, p. 68.
  36. ↑ Toynbee, Arnold Joseph (1961). A study of history. Vol. 2. OUP.p.435
  37. ↑ Dumitrescu, Vlad; Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L; Sollberger, E (1982). The prehistory of Romania from the earliest times to 1000 BC. The Prehistory of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries BC. The Cambridge Ancient History. CUP. ISBN 978-0-521-22496-3.p.166
  38. ↑ Dumitrescu, Vlad; Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L; Sollberger, E (1982). The prehistory of Romania from the earliest times to 1000 BC. The Prehistory of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries BC. The Cambridge Ancient History. CUP. ISBN 978-0-521-22496-3.p.166
  39. ↑ Dumitrescu, Vlad; Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L; Sollberger, E (1982). The prehistory of Romania from the earliest times to 1000 BC. The Prehistory of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries BC. The Cambridge Ancient History. CUP. ISBN 978-0-521-22496-3.p.166
  40. ↑ Parvan, Vasile (1928). Dacia. CUP.p.35
  41. ↑ Parvan, Vasile; Vulpe, Alexandru; Vulpe, Radu (2002). Dacia. Editura 100+1 Gramar. ISBN 978-9-735-91361-8.p. 49.
  42. ↑ Koch, John T (2005). "Dacians and Celts". Celtic culture: a historical encyclopedia. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-851-09440-0.p. 549
  43. ↑ Herodotus & 440 BC, 4.93–4.97.
  44. ↑ Oltean, Ioana Adina (2007). Dacia: landscape, colonisation and romanisation. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-41252-0.p. 45.

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