The Dacians: Rome\'s Greatest Enemy?

[Nathan Ross]

Going from Tapae to Sarmizegetusa it takes maybe 2 days... it will take little effort to go to Dacian capital, even if not conquering, bt at least lay a short siege and show to enemy who's the boss.

As far as I know, we don't have a definite location for Tapae. But we could assume that it's somewhere in the narrow valley between Bucova and Zeicani. From the midpoint here to Sarmizegetusa Regia is about 40 miles. Roman troops could cover 20 (Roman) miles a day on good roads, but advancing into enemy territory they would apparently cover more like 10 miles a day, on the evidence of camps in Scotland. Since this territory was the heartland of the Dacian kingdom, and the last part was hill country with at least one large fort (Piatra Rosie) covering the western approaches to Sarmizegetusa (itself a strong fortification), an advance here towards the close of the campaign season with the prospect of a siege (however 'short') at the end of it would be no small undertaking.

In fact, Julianus' campaign, from what we know of it, resembles Trajan's first advance in AD101: a river crossing near Viminacium, passage through the Banat region to the Iron Gates, battle at Tapae, forward reconnaissance and then withdrawal to winter camps. Roman armies seldom made winter camps right at the frontline of newly captured territory, but rather pulled back to previously established positions. Julianus' withdrawal, therefore, was standard procedure.

The story in Dio of the 'wooden army' sounds fantastical, and I doubt it was intended to 'comfort badly wounded pride', as it makes the Romans appear ridiculous! Whether it was based on some real event (dummies placed on the walls of a fort, perhaps?) or not we don't know. We also don't know whether Julianus and/or Domitian actually intended a further advance into Dacia or not at this date. But either way, I don't think we need to look for additional reasons why Julianus did not continue his advance much beyond Tapae itself: he clearly believed that a battle won was sufficient to satisfy his mandate at that point.

Incidentally, the majority of casualties in ancient battle seem to have occurred after the fighting, during the retreat and rout. We see this at, for example, Mons Graupius. At Tapae, the ability of the Romans to follow up on a Dacian defeat would have been hampered by the close terrain - the Dacians could retreat safely for some distance along the narrows and up into the hills and so conserve much of their strength. (This is a point made by, I think, MacKendrick in The Dacian Stones Speak). So a Roman victory at Tapae, however definite, may not have been as crushing as they would have liked.

175,000 soldiers from Strobel... Michael Schmitz... mention 14 legions of 27 the empire had back then, plus 60,000 auxiliar troops... If you put the legion as the usual war number of troops, so around 6,000 soldiers, you may reack a close number

But (again) what sources do these authors give for their figures? What evidence? As I've said before, many of them are relying on previous estimates, which are rather more cautious. The only evidence for legion numbers comes from inscriptions and from Trajan's Column. Based on the inscriptional evidence, I would estimate a maximum of ten legions involved in Trajan's 105-106 campaign: at least two of these, and probably more, were at vexillation strength.

Auxiliary numbers are actually easier (at least in theory) to determine approximately, as we have diplomas giving troop listings for Moesia before the conflict and Dacia after it. Based on these, I would estimate 5-6 cavalry alae (one - Flavia Britannica - milliarian), plus around 5 milliarian and 26 quingenary infantry cohorts.

Legion strength on paper at this date was probably closer to 5000 men, but few units were at full strength at any point. But assuming they were, with six full legions and four vexillations, and all the auxiliary cohorts and alae at full regulation size, and adding three praetorian cohorts and some equites singulares, we have a total army in AD106 of 60-65,000 men. A very reasonable figure, I'd say: the emperor Julian invaded Persia with an army of that size 250 years later!