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Roman Province of Dacia

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    The Roman Province of DaciaAuthor(s): Thos. HodgkinReviewed work(s):Source: The English Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 5 (Jan., 1887), pp. 100-103Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/546833 .

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    100 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS Jan.Kambyses was regarded for at least eleven years as king of Babylon,Cyrusbeing for part of this period ' king of countries.' It appears,more-over, from the annalistic tablet (' Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch.' vii. 168), thatKambyseswas in Babylon shortly after its capture,and he may have suc-ceeded Gobryas as viceroy some years (say in B.C.537) before he wasraisedto the higher dignityof vassal king, the whole periodof his govern-ment being afterwardspopularly,though not officially, regardedas hisreign in Babylon. In like manner Ktesias makes the reign of Darius Ionly thirty-one years instead of the thirty-six of other writers, the differ-ence arising from the periodsof the Babylonianrevolts,the exact durationof which is uncertain,being deducted. JOHN GILMORE.

    THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF DACIA.A QUESTION of historical geographywhich, as it seems to me, deservesmore attention than it has yet received, is this: What were the limits ofthe Romanprovince of Dacia added by Trajan to the empire? I pro-pose here to recapitulatesome of the argumentson this subject adducedby M. de la Berge (' Essai sur le Regne de Trajan,' 55-62), adding a fewof my own. Mostgeographershave considered hemselves boundby theauthority of Ptolemy (iii. 8. 4) to accept as the boundaries of Trajan'sprovince the Tibiscus (Theis ?) on the west, the Carpathianmountainson the north, the Tyras or Dniester on the east, and the Danube on thesouth.' This demarcationgives to the province of Dacia the easternhalf of Hungary, the Banat, Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, andBessarabia, formingan aggregateof at least 70,000 squaremiles.Even on the face of the ordinaryclassical atlas there are some objec-tions to such a demarcationas this. The interval between the Danube(when it is flowing from north to south) and the Theiss is so long andnarrow that it is difficult to suppose that a strategist like Trajan wouldleave such a wedgebetween Pannonia and Dacia to be occupied by theJazyges Metanasta3,o whom, on the authorityof Ptolemy, it is assigned.Again,on the north-eastern rontier of the province t is almost inconceiv-able that the Romans would abandon he splendidnatural defenceaffordedby the Carpathians, ndchoose such a comparatively eebledefenceagailnstthe wandering hordes of Scythia as might be afforded by the riverDniester. The chief argument, however,brought forward by M. de laBerge is derivedfromEutropius, who estimates the whole circumferenceof the province of Dacia at 1,000 Roman miles; ea provincia deciescentencamillica passuum in circuitu tenuit. For the Dacia of the mapsthis figure is decidedly nsufficient.2 And though Eutropius is certainly

    Ptol. 3. 8. 1 (ed. Muller). 'H AsaKa 7rFpLoptIErac a'7rb V &pICrKTwVE'p'PELrs :ap/aTL'as'rir f3v ECpO) p 'ar&wro?o KapiarTov vpovs LE%XpL cEpaTOS T'1S ELp7LLE/ Lr pO47 -oi Tupa7rOTauoLO .. 5O-EWSo7s 'IdavCsTo0s METravdo"TaL KaTa'Tov T$i'o'iCov 7ro'abLo'v. a'rb&,f yiEao77/jiptas ApEl0i ACoYoavovBJov 7ora/Lo'v 7(s (arb '7s ExtpOW'rSov TLi$o'Kov o'rapiov

    e 'AtLO7uAovvAEw5s&(p1 s f571 Kc-Lael'L 6 /LeXpi 'oi 116V'rovKcalrOV ?CKoAy AaVoILos"Io-rpos. There is some doubt whether the Tibiscus is meant for the Theiss or theTemes. Axiopolis is generally identified with Rassova.2 Though I do not think M. de la Berge can be right in saying that the Theiss

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    1887 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 101not a first-rateauthority, it is to be observed that he had no reason forminimising, but rather for magnifying, the extent of Trajan's conquests.As M. de la Berge remarks, this number is found in all the MSS. ofEutropius, is confirmed by his brother abbreviator Sextus Rufus,3andmay very probably have been borrowed from some official record towhich Eutropius had access.Let us then fora moment, relying on this passage of Eutropius,admitthe possibilitythat Ptolemiiywas speaking,not of the Romanprovince ofDacia, but of a very different matter, the geographical extension of theDacian people; and theni et us consider what size we should be disposedto attributeto the Dacialnprovince,judging from the best of all evidence,the undoubted races of Roman occupation. Thus consideringthe ques-tion, we shall, it is submitted,be almost compelledto reduce the area ofDacia to that of Transylvaniaand Little Wallachia (or Wallachiawest ofthe river Aluta) with the easternhalf of the Banat.Take the Roman roadsas given in the ' Tabula Peutingeriana,'andas explained,for instance, in the preface to Smith's ' Atlas of AncientGeography.' There is a little difficultyabout the identificationof a fewof the sites, but there is no doubt that they were all in Transylvania,Eastern Banat, and Western Wallachia. The Peutinger table itselfshows the roads ruliniiig up into the roots of the mountains (AlpesBastarnicceapparentlybeing the Carpathianmountains), but never cross-ing them.Still more striking is the argumentwhich we may derive from a studyof the inscriptions in vol. iv. of the ' CorpusInscriptionumLatinarum'(edited by Mommsen). We there filnd llat the Latin inscriptions for theprovince of Dacia exist in overwhelmingpreponderancen Transylvania,chieflyat Apulum(Karlsbutrg),Napoca (Klausenburg),olaissa (Torda?),and Sarmisegetusa(near Varhely). A few are found in Eastern Banat,and one or two, far fewer than might have been expected, in LittleWallachia, but none at all-as far as the ' Corpus' bears testimony-inMoldavia or Wallachia east of the Aluta. It is true that tlle Germansettlers in Siebenburgen (Transylvania) are probablybetter finders andreporters of Latin inscriptions than their Roman and Slavonic neigh-bours; still that fact alone will hardly account for so enormous a dif-ference.Another weighty argument may be derived from the comparativesmallness of the Roman army of occupation in Dacia. According toMommsen('Corpus,' iv. 1CO) his consisted only of the thirteenth legion(Gemina) possibly increased under Septimius Severus by the fifth (Mace-donica). When we remember that three legions were the minimum ofthe army of occupationl or Britain, can we suppose that only two wouldhave been entrusted with the defence of the immense tract of countrybetween the Theiss and the Dniester, intersected by the great Carpathianchain, which if not used as a bulwarkwould immensely increase the dif-ficulty of holdinlg t ?

    alone is 1,400 kilometers (875 miles) in length. From the map 500 kilometers looksmore like the distance.3 De Victoriis, cap. 7.

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    102 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS Jan.Another argument,to which, however,I do not attachso much import-ance, is that when the true Dacia, north of the Danube, was abandoned,

    and when Aurelian formed the new province of Dacia out of WesternMcesia, ts northern frontierwas formedby the Danube between Singi-dunumand a point a little below Ratiaria. It thus stood nearly frontingwhat I believe to have been the old provinceof Dacia, and was not farfrom its equivalent n size. There is no such correspondence t all betweenthe Dacia of the maps and the new provinceof Aurelian.With referenceto the western frontier of the province,it seems to beadmittedbythe general (but not unanimous)consent of map-makers hatthis was not the river Theiss, but the Vallum (of which there appearstillto be traces), which runs from a point north of Temesvar southwards tothe Danube, which it touches at Viminacium. This certainly makes thenarrow slip of territory eft to the Jazyges Metanast2eook somewhat lessabsurd. We must suppose that the desire not to occupytoo large anextent of territorypreventedthe emperorfrom pushing his frontier,as wemight naturally have expected him to do, up to the eastern border ofPannonia. But is it conceivablethat while thus cautiouson the westernside he wouldhave pushedhis eastern frontier over the Carpathians ntothe limitless Scythian wilderness?As to the geographicalextent of the lesser Dacia for which I am con-tending, its perimeter s thus calculated by M. de la Berge:

    Roman milesFrom Viminacium to the mouth of the Aluta . 243Length of the Aluta. 190From the source of the Aluta to Porolissum (Dees?) . 120Porolissum to Viminacium .285838

    This result, as some of the distances have been taken as the crow flies,correspondsnearly enough with the 1,000 Roman miles of Eutropius.It is clear from the language of D'Anville (i. 262, Eng. tran8l. 1810)that Transylvaniawas in his time consideredto be pretty nearly conter-minous with Dacia, and I suspect that it is chiefly on his authoritythatthe latter namehas been extendedto include also WallachiaandMoldavia.In recent times philologers indingthe Roumanian anguage spokenonboth sides of the Carpathians,and believing that this was a legacy fromthe Roman occupationof Dacia, have fallen easily into the same view.But this argumentfromlanguage provesfar too much, since Roumanianis spokenin Thrace, in Macedonia,and even in Thessaly, and I supposeit will now be generallyadmitted that it is not safe to found upon thelimits of the diffusion of Roumanian speech any argument as to theofficialboundariesof Trajan'sprovinceof Dacia.Possibly I may be arguing for a propositionwhich scholars havealready silently accepted; but if so, our school and college maps cer-tainly requirereconstruction. Inscriptions found in large numberseastand south of the Carpathiansmight easily upset all that has been hereadvanced. Mychief interest in the subject-on accountof which I shouldbe grateful even to a hostile critic who would give me some nearerapproach o certainty on the point-is that this romanised Dacia, what-

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    1887 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 108ever were its limits, seems to have been the chief dwelling-place of theGoths (rather, however, of the Visigoths than the Ostrogoths)during thehundredyears which elapsed between Aurelian and Valens.THOS.HODGKIN.

    MOLMEN AND MOLLAND.I SEND a few notes in confirmationof the views expressed by ProfessorVinogradoff in his communication on the subject of ' Molmen andMolland' (ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW,vol. i. p. 734). The earliestmention (eo nomine) of this tenure seems to be found in the importantcartularyof Burton, which purports to be of the early date 1100-1113.Here the holdings are divided into two classes, (1) ad matlamand (2) adopus. This, it will be seen, is exactly parallel to the ' mollond' and'werklond ' of the St. Paul's inquisition of 1279. ArchdeaconHale hassome notes on the latter ('Domesday of St. Paul's,' pp. lxxiv-v), inwhich he observesthat tenants of ' Forland ' (at Thorpe, Essex) in 1222are represented by tenants of ' Mollond' in 1279-a curiouspoint. Asthe division ad malam and ad opus correspondswith the division else-where ad censum and ad operationem (as in ' Worcester Registers,'p. xli), I presumethat the censoresor censarii of ' Domesday' aremolmen.If so, we may have the distinction between nol and gafol, to which Pro-fessor Vinogradoffalludes, representedby the distinctionin 'Domesday'between censarii and gablatores. Though I amnot sure that I can followhim in the respectivedenotations he assigns to the terms mol and gafol,I may observe that, though eventually ' rent,' gafol previously (asMr. Seebohm expresses it) consisted of 'payments in money, or kind, orwork, rendered by way of rent' (p. 78). Thus gafol, as a money rent,-mightrepresenta commutationfor a rent once paid either in labouror inkilnd. To this may be added that the early sense of gafol, as a tributaryrent in kind, is well preserved n ' Domesday' itself, where,in Sussex, theporci de gablo represent the annual tribute of swine due from the hog-ward to his lord at slaughter time. It is, of course,important o remember,as Gneist has rightly pointed out, that Kemble and Dr. Stubbs are dis-tinctly in errorin speakingof gafol as a 'tax.'It is noteworthythat mal (or mol) occurs in Wales; as in Anglesey,where we find in the 'Record of Carnarvon' (1353) Gwir Male (i.e.Gwyr Mal), or tenants who paid a money rent, opposed to Gwir Gweith(i.e. Gwyr Gwaith), or those who held ad opuss. (Palmer's ' TenuresofLand in the Marches of North Wales.') Lastly, we have a curioususageof the term in ' Hucstermoll,'a due from whichthe men of Leicester werefreedby charter of 27 Edward III. (Eighth Report, Hist. MSS. Com-mission, app. i. 411.) J. H. ROUND.

    RANUI,F FLTAMBARD AND HIS SONS.IN the ' Liber de Miraculis sanctaeMariteLaudunensis' (ii. c. 6, Migneclvi.) the followingpassage occurs:

    Nos itaque non ex umbra mortis sed ex ipsis faucibus ejus, ut nobis


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