Dacians

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Dacian kingdom during the reign of Burebista, 82 BC

The Dacians (Lat. Daci, Gr. Dákai) were the ancient inhabitants of Dacia (located in the area in and around the Carpathian mountains and east of there to the Black Sea), present day Romania and parts of Moesia (mostly in northern Bulgaria) in southeastern Europe. They spoke the Dacian language, closely related with Thracian.

[edit] History

The first mention of the 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).

The Roman Emperor Trajan invaded Dacia mostly to benefit from its vast gold mines. Trajan's Column was constructed to celebrate the invasion of Dacia.

Dacian wars depicted on Trajan's column

The Dacian kingdom reached its maximum expansion during King Burebista. The capital of the kingdom was the city Argedava (also called Sargedava in some historical writings) situated close to river Danube.

Greek geographer Strabo claimed that the Dacians and Getae once had been able to muster a combined army of 200,000 men, but that their entire population had dropped to 40,000 by Strabo's own era.^[1]

[edit] Name

The Dacians (tribe) were known as Geton (plural Getae) in Greek writings, and as Dacus (plural Daci) and also Getae in Roman documents; also as Dagae and Gaete—see the late Roman map Tabula Peutingeriana. Strabo tells that the original name of the Dacians was "daoi", which could be explained with a possible Phrygian cognate "daos", meaning "wolf". This assumption may be supported by the fact that one of the Dacian standards, the Dacian Draco, had a wolf head. Phrygii was another cognate used within the region, and in later times, some Roman auxiliaries recruited from the area were referred to as Phrygi. Their capital was not Argedava near the Danube, but Sarmizegetusa, in the Sureanu mountains, in the Romanian Western Carpathians.