Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge (32 page)

Since the tablets were retrieved piecemeal, with some carted off to Bucharest, their order round the drum is uncertain. Nevertheless, the intention was clearly sequential. The panels fall readily into groups and it is not hard to guess their drift. The army advances toward the scene of disturbance. Trajan meets the migrating barbarians, who beg for land. He rejects their appeal. A battle follows, among wagons. Then pursuit, slaughter and shepherdless flocks. Finally a parade with captives, followed by celebratory scenes, with trumpeters and standard bearers.

It is revealing to compare the two sources in their portrayal of the barbarians. The Column is remarkable for its perception of the background, yet Dacians themselves are depicted conventionally. Though seen as more powerful and capable than most enemies, this is an off-the-peg portrait, with the barbarian looking much as in other examples of official art. He is tousled, bearded, heavy featured, with a short hooked nose, high cheekbones, beetle-browed and always scowling and sombre. There are cap wearers – who, according to Dio, were the aristocracy – and the bareheaded commonality. (The Dacian cap, conical and floppy with its point drooping forwards, was not unlike that of Snow White's seven dwarfs.) But despite differences of rank and age there is little facial variety. It is as if the artist found them – as newly arrived Westerners did the Japanese – seemingly identical. Doubtless, being derived from a small genetic pool, they did to some extent look alike.

The Adamclisi artist was more familiar with and fascinated by the enemy. Relatively speaking, greater space is devoted to his portrayal. Not only do we see more weaponry, costume and other features but, as has been said, people of three racial origins are depicted. The
Tropaeum
may therefore be considered the richer and more accurate ethnological source. The Dacians and their Sarmatian cousins, some stripped to the waist, wield the double-handed battle scythe
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like some fearsome hockey stick (whereas the Column favours the sickle, preferred by the Transylvanian Dacians and more suited to close combat in wooded terrain). Their breeches are heavy and plaited vertically. They wear boots and tight-fitting leather helmets with neck flap, rather like a dustman's cap, though with a chinstrap. Some have long, belted tunics, apron-cut and split high up the sides. The Sarmatians wear shin-length riding coats, probably of sheepskin with the fleece turned inwards, split to the navel. Some Dacians have pudding-basin haircuts, as shown also on the Column. Others have wild hair and all wear long beards. The Germans are bearded, too, though neatly trimmed, their hair swept into the distinctive Suebic or south-German knot, on the right-hand side. They are tall and trousered, with a double rope-belt and a v-shaped cape of poncho type covering chest and stomach. The tidy appearance of these Basternian Germans denies Tacitus' verdict:
sordes omnium
(they are all filthy).
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Returning to the Column: it is unlikely that the supposed war artist was present at this diversionary campaign. Accordingly its presentation is subtly different, with greater than normal drama and compression. Mistakenly the Pontic Dacians and their allies are dressed exactly like the Transylvanian Dacians. By contrast, on the Roman side, there are precise and seemingly accurate data: a first aid post; a cart-mounted
ballista
on the move; a prison pen, filled with captives. In short it seems likely that this entire parenthesis had been synthesized from the accounts of others and beefed up with incidents transposed from the main theatre. The campaign ends with Trajan granting citizenship to a group of joyful auxiliary soldiers.

The Column's designer had now to break the thread and start afresh: to end the winter campaign on the lower Danube, get Trajan back upriver and commence the spring assault on Transylvania. In order to signal this decisive switch he uses a ‘shock-cut', from the joyful auxiliaries to Roman prisoners being tortured: naked men, bound, face upwards, with hot irons applied to the flesh. The tormentors appear to be high-class Dacian women, perhaps priestesses, with hair in buns, richly dressed in ankle-length costume similar to that worn by the king's sister. The setting is mountainous, perhaps the capital itself. Finally the action returns to the lower Danube, where the emperor embarks on a warship whose prow points upstream.

Back on the middle Danube (spiral seven) Trajan again leads the army across a bridge of boats. The campaigning season of 102 has begun and a second invasion of Transylvania is underway. So the frieze returns to the main story, re-establishing it with a scene which cleverly echoes the start of the first season. This time, however, the troops, streaming off the pontoon bridge, separate into what appears to be three columns of march, with Trajan in the nearest. For this the Vulcan, Tergova and Turnu Rossu passes all have their advocates; but the presence of supply carts with the upriver group suggests a less mountainous route for the left flank. This could only be the front-door approach via Tapae, the way taken by Trajan in the previous spring. Heavy
matériel
implies that this column's role will be siege or blockade, while the less encumbered armies, including Trajan's, will swing in from the rear.

In spirals eight and nine Trajan's force crosses the Carpathians by an arduous, flanking route, aiming to approach the almost impregnable environs of the Dacian capital from the less heavily fortified, eastern side. Again the Dacian army retreats, leaving local dignitaries to sue for peace. Trajan's force breaks into groups, in single file, with roughened marble signifying the uneven ground of mountain passes. Spiral ten sees the army across the divide at last. Another of the central citadels is encountered. A fort is built and gun-pits dug. An infantry attack is accompanied by an artillery duel, in which Dacians man a captured or copied
ballista.

In spiral eleven a final assault on the hilltop redoubt begins. German irregulars, half naked and armed with clubs, lead for Rome, backed by oriental or African archers and slingers. While the Dacians are lured out to fight before their palisades a legion attacks from the rear, storming a gateway under locked shields: the celebrated
testudo
(tortoise) formation. The Romans appear to have won a decisive victory and taken key strongholds commanding the approach to Sarmizegetusa.

Realizing that the game is up and wishing to preserve his capital and some vestiges of influence, the king pleads for an armistice. In spiral twelve, under the part-glimpsed walls of Sarmizegetusa, the Dacians kneel in mass surrender: rank on rank, with arms imploringly outstretched. Behind them on a rock stands Decebal, his palms raised skywards. So ends the First Dacian War.

A penultimate scene shows families being brought down from the hillforts. Resettlement in valleys was a standard first step in the Roman pacification of mountain country. Meanwhile other Dacians are dismantling walls in obedience to the peace terms. But some remain in hiding on the hill and their whispering implies an intention to subvert the treaty. Dio describes the surrender:

Trajan took some hillforts, where he found the weapons, engines and standards captured from Fuscus.
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Because of these reverses and the fact that his own sister had fallen into Maximus' hands,
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Decebal now accepted all the Roman conditions, though only as a ruse to buy time. So he consented to the surrender of armaments, engines and engineers, the extradition of deserters, the demolition of forts and the evacuation of captured land. Hencefoward he would align himself with Roman foreign policy, cease to harbour deserters and desist from employing fugitives from within the empire; for the biggest and best part of his army had been made up of those enticed from Roman territory. All this followed from his meeting with Trajan, to whom he prostrated himself, swore submission and surrendered his sword. After concluding this peace the emperor left the camp at Sarmizegetusa. Having placed garrisons throughout the conquered territory he returned to Italy where he celebrated a Triumph and received the title
Dacicus.
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So Dacia was reduced to protectorate status. Though there appears no intention to depose Decebal and annex his kingdom, precedent suggests this would follow, either when the Roman grip had tightened or upon his death. Dio reveals a factor which an official source like the Column would never admit: the embarrassingly large scale of Roman desertion to the Dacian side. Soldiers, veterans and engineers had long been improving Decebal's defences, equipping him with artillery, drilling his men and even fighting alongside them. This appears to belie all we have said about fear of the lands beyond the frontier. Dacia was, however, an exception. Where the less advanced regions of the European
Barbaricum
offered Roman runaways the likelihood of slavery or death, Decebal promised gold, plus a respected role in a stable state. The deserters' motive was no doubt gainful employment rather than opposition to Rome. Since the ancient world had not invented political viewpoints in the modern sense, there was little ideological basis for treason. By the same token there was little ideological or moral basis for loyalty, especially among provincials of non-Roman origin. The empire's subjects were, after all, a miscellany of conquered or overawed races, largely cemented by Roman success.

The final scene, a victory salute, is followed by an angel-like figure of
Victory,
flanked by trophies. This ensemble, half way up the Column, separates the First and Second Dacian Wars and is equivalent, in terms of modern theatre, to the interval. Some two-and-a-half years now pass unrecorded. Dio takes up the story; and we note that defection works both ways:

Because Decebal was reported to be breaking the treaty in all its clauses the Senate once more declared him an enemy. Rather than delegate the war to others Trajan again took personal command. But this time many Dacians began to desert to the Romans and Decebal soon seemed ready to throw in the sponge. And yet the stumbling block was that he would neither give up his arms nor accept personal captivity. As a result he continued to muster men and call on the adjacent peoples to join his cause.

Though losing in the field, Decebal attempted to hit back by means of terrorism, slipping deserters into Moesia
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with orders to assassinate Trajan. The emperor was an easy target due to his accessibility and his wartime habit of holding open situation-conferences. But the plan miscarried thanks to the arrest on suspicion of one, who revealed the others under torture.
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The Column's narrative recommences with Trajan's embarkation by night from an Italian Adriatic port. It is the spring of
AD
105. Two spirals are now devoted to the emperor's journey back to the war theatre. His itinerary may have been via Greece, to the head of the Aegean, then overland. These spirals can be closely inspected at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where the replica is divided into two and the beginning of its second half is at floor level. Unfortunately, from the standpoint of historical events, this is the least important part of the frieze and was probably included as makeweight. Because the first war was eventful and hazardous, while the second was relatively quick and easy, their stories are of unequal length. The designer was thus obliged to pad the second half of the narrative with these two bands at the beginning and two more, devoted to mopping-up operations, at the end.

With spiral fifteen the scene switches to Dacia, where hostilities have already begun. Roman forts are under fierce attack. The enemy's intention is to cut the new Danube bridge. This project, pushed forward during the ‘phoney peace' of 103–4, is the first known work of the Syrian-Greek engineer and architect, Apollodorus of Damascus. The bridging point was Drobetae (Turnu Severin) between today's Serbian and Romanian banks and just below the Iron Gates gorges, where routes branched out toward the key passes into Transylvania. At almost a kilometre (1,087 yards, including approaches) it would be the longest permanent bridge in antiquity.

A second project, no less remarkable, was the widening of the cliff road through the Iron Gates of Orsova. This deep, limestone gorge, eighty miles long, formed by the Danube cutting through the southern Carpathians, separates the middle Danube of Hungary and Serbia from the lower of Romania and Bulgaria. Today its whirling waters are stilled and their level raised by the dam of the Djerdap power station. During the Roman period the Iron Gates had frustrated efforts to build a continuous frontier road. Tiberius, Claudius and Domitian all attempted to cut a path into the vertical face on today's Serbian side; finally creating a throughway only three feet wide, increased to six by planking, supported on timber brackets keyed into the cliff from joist holes below. Presumably this had been stripped away by spring floods and the crashing ice for which the gorge is infamous. It was a link Trajan must mend, for his entry points to Dacia were at either end of it. Accordingly, over a distance of twelve miles in the canyon's sheerest stretch, the ledge was widened to six feet, producing a permanent rock road, dependent on wooden cantilevering for its safety-rail only. The ledge and beam holes were well preserved before the reservoir engulfed all trace; excepting a commemorative inscription, which was raised above the new high-water mark and may still be read.

Trajan's projects made unwelcome reading in Sarmizegetusa; especially the bridge, whose destruction was considered a matter of urgency. The Column shows the Romans stubbornly holding the bridgehead fort of Pontes. Behind is the bridge itself, its stone piers and timber spans depicted in meticulous detail, their number scaled down from twenty to five. Even carpenters still working on the superstructure are thrown into the line and fight with their axes. At this desperate moment, in finest Hollywood style, Trajan and his escort gallop to the rescue along the Iron Gates road. As they thunder by, two masons, seemingly unconcerned, are still smoothing the cliff, while a third is cutting the lettering of the inscription.