The Roman Province of Dacia Author(s): Thos. Hodgkin Reviewed work(s): Source: The English Historical Review, Vol.

2, No. 5 (Jan., 1887), pp. 100-103 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/546833 . Accessed: 03/02/2012 11:28
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Kambyses was regarded for at least eleven years as king of Babylon, Cyrus being for part of this period ' king of countries.' It appears,moreover, from the annalistic tablet (' Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch.' vii. 168), that Kambyseswas in Babylon shortly after its capture,and he may have succeeded Gobryas as viceroy some years (say in B.C.537) before he was raised to the higher dignityof vassal king, the whole period of his government being afterwards popularly,though not officially,regarded as his reign in Babylon. In like manner Ktesias makes the reign of Darius I only thirty-one years instead of the thirty-six of other writers, the difference arising from the periods of the Babylonianrevolts, the exact duration JOHN GILMORE. of which is uncertain, being deducted.

THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF DACIA.

A QUESTION of historical geographywhich, as it seems to me, deserves more attention than it has yet received, is this: What were the limits of the Roman province of Dacia added by Trajan to the empire? I propose here to recapitulatesome of the arguments on this subject adduced by M. de la Berge (' Essai sur le Regne de Trajan,' 55-62), adding a few of my own. Most geographershave consideredthemselves bound by the authority of Ptolemy (iii. 8. 4) to accept as the boundaries of Trajan's province the Tibiscus (Theis ?) on the west, the Carpathianmountains on the north, the Tyras or Dniester on the east, and the Danube on the south.' This demarcation gives to the province of Dacia the eastern half of Hungary, the Banat, Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia, forming an aggregate of at least 70,000 square miles. Even on the face of the ordinaryclassical atlas there are some objections to such a demarcation as this. The interval between the Danube (when it is flowing from north to south) and the Theiss is so long and narrow that it is difficult to suppose that a strategist like Trajan would leave such a wedge between Pannonia and Dacia to be occupied by the to Jazyges Metanasta3, whom, on the authority of Ptolemy, it is assigned. Again, on the north-easternfrontier of the provinceit is almost inconceivable that the Romanswould abandonthe splendidnatural defenceafforded and by the Carpathians, choose such a comparatively feeble defenceagailnst the wandering hordes of Scythia as might be afforded by the river Dniester. The chief argument, however, brought forward by M. de la Berge is derivedfrom Eutropius, who estimates the whole circumference of the province of Dacia at 1,000 Roman miles; ea provincia decies
centencamillica passuum in circuitu tenuit. For the Dacia of the maps

this figure is decidedlyinsufficient.2 And though Eutropius is certainly

Ptol. 3. 8. 1 (ed. Muller). 'H AsaKa 7rFpLoptIErac a'7rb V &pICrKTwV Trs :ap/aTL'as E'p'PEL 'rir f3v ECpO) p 'ar Lr pO47 -oi Tupa &wro?o KapiarTov ovpovs rcEpaTOS T'1S ELp7LLE/ LE%XpL
5O-EWS To7s 'IdavCsTo0s METravdo"TaL KaTa' 7rOTauoLO. .. Tov T$i'o'iCov 7ro'abLo'v. a'rb &,f yiEao77/jiptas ApEl'0i ACoYoavovBJov 7ora/Lo'v 7(s (arb '7s ExtpOW'rS 'ov TLi$o'Kov'o'rapiov e AaVoILos 2rOV ?CKoAy 'AtLO7uAovvAEw5s is f571 Kc-Lael'L 6 /LeXpi 'oi 116V'rovKcal a&(p1

"Io-rpos. There is some doubt whether the Tibiscus is meant for the Theiss or the

Temes. 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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not a first-rate authority, it is to be observed that he had no reason for minimising, but rather for magnifying, the extent of Trajan's conquests. As M. de la Berge remarks, this number is found in all the MSS. of Eutropius, is confirmed by his brother abbreviator Sextus Rufus,3 and may very probably have been borrowed from some official record to which Eutropius had access. Let us then for a moment, relying on this passage of Eutropius, admit was speaking, not of the Roman province of the possibility that Ptolemiiy Dacia, but of a very different matter, the geographical extension of the Dacian people; and thenilet us consider what size we should be disposed to attribute to the Dacialnprovince,judging from the best of all evidence, the undoubtedtraces of Roman occupation. Thus consideringthe question, we shall, it is submitted, be almost compelledto reduce the area of Dacia to that of Transylvaniaand Little Wallachia (or Wallachia west of the river Aluta) with the eastern half of the Banat. Take the Roman roads as given in the ' Tabula Peutingeriana,'and as explained, for instance, in the preface to Smith's ' Atlas of Ancient Geography.' There is a little difficultyabout the identificationof a few of the sites, but there is no doubt that they were all in Transylvania, Eastern Banat, and Western Wallachia. The Peutinger table itself shows the roads ruliniiig up into the roots of the mountains (Alpes Bastarnicceapparentlybeing the Carpathianmountains), but never crossing them. Still more striking is the argument which we may derive from a study of the inscriptions in vol. iv. of the ' Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum' (edited by Mommsen). We there filndtllat the Latin inscriptions for the province of Dacia exist in overwhelmingpreponderance Transylvania, in chiefly at Apulum (Karlsbutrg), Napoca (Klausenburg), Polaissa (Torda?), and Sarmisegetusa (near Varhely). A few are found in Eastern Banat, and one or two, far fewer than might have been expected, in Little Wallachia, but none at all-as far as the ' Corpus' bears testimony-in Moldavia or Wallachia east of the Aluta. It is true that tlle German settlers in Siebenburgen (Transylvania) are probablybetter finders and reporters of Latin inscriptions than their Roman and Slavonic neighbours; still that fact alone will hardly account for so enormous a difference. Another weighty argument may be derived from the comparative smallness of the Roman army of occupation in Dacia. According to Mommsen ('Corpus,' iv. 1CO) this consisted only of the thirteenth legion (Gemina) possibly increased under Septimius Severus by the fifth (Macedonica). When we remember that three legions were the minimum of the army of occupationl Britain, can we suppose that only two would for have been entrusted with the defence of the immense tract of country between the Theiss and the Dniester, intersected by the great Carpathian chain, which if not used as a bulwarkwould immensely increase the difficulty of holdinlgit ?
alone is 1,400 kilometers (875 miles) in length. more like the distance. 3 De Victoriis, cap. 7. From the map 500 kilometers looks

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Anotherargument,to which, however, I do not attach so much importance, is that when the true Dacia, north of the Danube, was abandoned, and when Aurelian formed the new province of Dacia out of Western Mcesia,its northern frontier was formed by the Danube between Singidunum and a point a little below Ratiaria. It thus stood nearly fronting what I believe to have been the old provinceof Dacia, and was not far at from its equivalentin size. There is no such correspondence all between the Dacia of the maps and the new province of Aurelian. With referenceto the western frontier of the province, it seems to be admitted by the general (but not unanimous) consent of map-makersthat this was not the river Theiss, but the Vallum (of which there appearstill to be traces), which runs from a point north of Temesvar southwards to the Danube, which it touches at Viminacium. This certainly makes the look somewhat less narrow slip of territoryleft to the Jazyges Metanast2e absurd. We must suppose that the desire not to occupy too large an extent of territorypreventedthe emperorfrom pushing his frontier,as we might naturally have expected him to do, up to the eastern border of Pannonia. But is it conceivablethat while thus cautious on the western side he would have pushed his eastern frontier over the Carpathiansinto the limitless Scythian wilderness? As to the geographicalextent of the lesser Dacia for which I am contending, its perimeteris thus calculated by M. de la Berge:
Roman miles

From Viminacium to the mouth of the Aluta . Length of the Aluta. From the source of the Aluta to Porolissum (Dees?) . Porolissum to Viminacium .285

243 190 120 838

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 considered to be pretty nearly conterminous with Dacia, and I suspect that it is chiefly on his authority that the latter name has been extended to include also Wallachiaand Moldavia. In recent times philologersfinding the Roumanianlanguage spoken on both sides of the Carpathians,and believing that this was a legacy from the Roman occupation of Dacia, have fallen easily into the same view. But this argument from language proves far too much, since Roumanian is spoken in Thrace, in Macedonia,and even in Thessaly, and I suppose it will now be generally admitted that it is not safe to found upon the limits of the diffusion of Roumanian speech any argument as to the official boundariesof Trajan'sprovinceof Dacia. Possibly I may be arguing for a proposition which scholars have already silently accepted; but if so, our school and college maps certainly requirereconstruction. Inscriptions found in large numbers east and south of the Carpathians might easily upset all that has been here advanced. My chief interest in the subject-on account of which I should be grateful even to a hostile critic who would give me some nearer approachto certainty on the point-is that this romanised Dacia, what-

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ever were its limits, seems to have been the chief dwelling-place of the Goths (rather, however, of the Visigoths than the Ostrogoths)during the hundredyears which elapsed between Aurelian and Valens. THOS. HODGKIN.
MOLMEN AND MOLLAND.

SEND a few notes in confirmation of the views expressed by Professor Vinogradoff in his communication on the subject of ' Molmen and Molland' (ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW,vol. i. p. 734). The earliest mention (eo nomine) of this tenure seems to be found in the important cartulary of Burton, which purports to be of the early date 1100-1113. Here the holdings are dividedinto two classes, (1) ad matlamand (2) ad opus. This, it will be seen, is exactly parallel to the ' mollond' and 'werklond ' of the St. Paul's inquisition of 1279. ArchdeaconHale has some notes on the latter ('Domesday of St. Paul's,' pp. lxxiv-v), in which he observes that tenants of ' Forland ' (at Thorpe, Essex) in 1222 are represented by tenants of ' Mollond' in 1279-a curious point. As the division ad malam and ad opus correspondswith the division elsewhere ad censum and ad operationem (as in ' Worcester Registers,' p. xli), I presumethat the censoresor censarii of ' Domesday' are molmen. If so, we may have the distinction between nol and gafol, to which Professor Vinogradoffalludes, representedby the distinction in ' Domesday' between censarii and gablatores. Though I am not sure that I can follow him in the respective denotations he assigns to the terms mol and gafol, I may observe that, though eventually ' rent,' gafol previously (as Mr. Seebohm expresses it) consisted of ' payments in money, or kind, or work, rendered by way of rent' (p. 78). Thus gafol, as a money rent, -mightrepresent a commutationfor a rent once paid either in labouror in kilnd. To this may be added that the early sense of gafol, as a tributary rent in kind, is well preservedin ' Domesday' itself, where,in Sussex, the porci de gablo represent the annual tribute of swine due from the hogward to his lord at slaughter time. It is, of course,importantto remember, as Gneist has rightly pointed out, that Kemble and Dr. Stubbs are distinctly in errorin speaking of gafol as a ' tax.' It is noteworthy that 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 ' Tenures of Land in the Marches of North Wales.') Lastly, we have a curious usage of the term in ' Hucstermoll,'a due from which the men of Leicester were freed by charter of 27 Edward III. (Eighth Report, Hist. MSS. Commission, app. i. 411.) J. H. ROUND.

RANUI,F

FLTAMBARD AND HIS SONS.

IN

the ' Liber de Miraculis sanctae Marite Laudunensis' (ii. c. 6, Migne clvi.) the following passage occurs: Nos itaque non ex umbra mortis sed ex ipsis faucibus ejus, ut nobis