DACIA, or the country of the Daci, the ancient name of that district of Europe which lies to the N. of the Danube between the Theiss on the W. and the Dniester on the E. It thus comprehended the modern provinces of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, the Bukowina, the banat of Temeswar and other parts of Hungary, as well as the southern portions of Galicia.
The first occupants of the district with whom we are made acquainted by history are the Getae, a rude tribe of Thracian extraction, originally settled on the right bank of the Danube. They first appear in connection with the Scythian campaign of Darius, which nominally attached them for a moment to the Persian empire. By Philip of Macedon their friendship was considered of importance, and he married Medopa, the daughter of their king Cothelas; but they afterwards took part in the confederation of the Scythian tribes against the invasion by which Alexander the Great sought to secure his northern frontiers. About forty years later Lysimachus, king of Thrace, made an attempt to subdue them, but he was defeated and obliged to give his daughter in marriage to their chief; and a second expedition, by which he hoped to retrieve his fortunes, left him a prisoner in their hands, and brought him under obligation to his Dacian son-in-law, Dromichaetes, for the restoration of his liberty. We next hear of the Getae as being defeated by the Gauls, by whom many of them were sold as slaves to the Athenians and other Greeks....
The Getae gradually retire from the foreground of history, and give place to the Daci, or Daoi, as they were called in Greek, a cognate race, who seem to have migrated from Rhodope, and about 90-57 b.c. attained a stable settlement and extensive influence under their leader Burvista. It has been usual to identify the Getae and Daci as one, but though they continued to occupy the same country, and were, at least for a time, politically united, the allusions of the ancient writers seem to point to an essential difference. At the time of the war between Octavius and Antony, the Getae sided with the former and the Daci with the latter; and during the fifty years after the formation of the province of Mcesia the Getae continued to disturb the Roman frontiers, while the Dacians kept peacefully at home. After 73, however, the Getae almost completely disappear, and the Dacians come forward as one of the most powerful enemies of Rome. Their reputation was heightened by the submission which they exacted from the tyrant Domitian, and the tribute by which he was obliged to purchase immunity from their attacks. In 101 a.d. Trajan, who had succeeded to the purple, set out against them in person, and defeated them with great slaughter at a place which is still called Prat de Trajan (Pratum Trajani), or Crossfield, near Thorda, in Transylvania. This was followed in 104 by another invasion, in which he advanced to the Dacian capital Sarmizegethusa (now Varhely), and routed Decebalus, who soon after committed suicide. The country was reduced to a Roman province, under the jurisdiction of a legate of praetorian rank; and colonists were brought from other parts of the empire, and more especially from southern Italy. In honour of the campaign of 104 the famous column of Trajan was erected at Rome; and to secure his conquests the victor constructed three great military roads and the bridge over the Danube, which ranked as one of the architectural wonders of the world. Under Hadrian (129 a.d.) the province was divided into two parts—Upper Dacia, which probably included the Banat and the mountain region of Transylvania; and Lower Dacia, situated in the Wallachian lowlands. Under Antoninus Pius the division became three-fold—Dacia Apulensis, so called from Apulum, the modern Carlsburg; Porolissensis, from Porolissum; and Malvensis, a name of unknown derivation. Dacia remained a Roman province till 272, when Aurelian adopted the line of the Danube as the frontier of the empire. The Roman legions and colonists retired to the southern side of the river and settled in the eastern part of Upper Mcesia and the district of Dardania; while their former territory was relinquished to the Goths and other Germanic tribes. The name of Dacia, sometimes with the addition of A r ova or Ripensis, was applied to the new region along the Danube, and Dardania was distinguished as Dacia Mediterranea, or Inland Dacia. After the time of Constantine the designation, in its wider use, included Dacia Ripensis, Dacia Mediterranea, Mcesia Prima, Praevalitana, and a part of Macedonia Salutaris; in its narrower use it comprehended only the first two. Numerous traces of Roman occupation are found throughout the region, and in Roumania the people pride themselves on their supposed descent from the Roman colonists, and use a dialect which bears a strong similarity to Latin. In features they are said to have a resemblance to the Dacians figured on Trajan’s pillar. See Dierauer, Geschichte Trajan's; W. Froehner, La Colonne trajane, Paris, 1865; Roesler, Rom ä nische Studien, 1871.
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