Was The Abandonment Of Dacia A Good Thing?

[Antonius Miles]

I think it's important to keep in mind that there was no really Grand Strategy as we would think of it. Conquests were often embarked on for no other reason than to provide the emperor with a triumph. As someone else already noted. Dacia provided Trajan with quite a bit of loot (probably enough to justify it) and a triumph that left us a nice colum in his forum. As to why it was abandoned they probably didn't see it as being profitable enough to justify keeping it. As an agriculturual society it was more important to protect the areas that provided farm income to the empire. Maybe if Dacia had silver it would have been different as that was the main common currency. The idea that it was strategic is I believe flawed because the maps of the time are so inaccurate that the fact that Dacia was a bulge in the defenses would not have been clear to them.

[Kosmo]

Dacia was rich in resources, not only gold but also silver, led, copper, lots of salt and it was a fertile land.

Because of the military situation this were hard to exploit. Pax romana was never extended to this region. For example at the death of Trajan in Asia sarmatians and free dacians launched a large attack. A similar thing happened during the marcomanian wars of Marcus Aurelius. Several other wars had to be fought against sarmatians in the Pannonian plain to the West and against dacians and germans to the North and East. Moesia Superior was also attacked from the north.

 

The province had some natural defences to the East along the Carpathians, but they have many passes. South of Carpathians the border was along the Alutus (Olt) river and it was defended by a limes east of the river. The north was not defended by mountains and the north legionary castrum of Porolissum was attacked repeatedly. In the West the border was in open plain in the south and mountainous in the north. Despite these low western mountains barbarians were able to attack thru the mountains the gold mines.

 

The roman garrison in Dacia was some 50.000 men and other troops had to keep defending the Danube border to the south because of raids over middle and lower Danube.

 

One of the reasons Trajan had to conquer Dacia was the potential of the dacian kings, with their ample gold resources, to use against the romans the tribes of Pannonia and Sarmatia.

 

The problem that the romans had it's the fact that despite Danube being the largest river from Europe proper it is not difficult to pass. During the winter the ice makes a bridge over it and in summer small boats and rafts are good enough for the short crossing. During recorded history there are countless examples of armies going north and south over lower Danube. From the Iron Gates to the sea the Danube was crossed very often and even dacians had control over both banks.

 

So I think that Aurelian was forced to abandon Dacia because of the crisis, but this was a bad thing for the empire.

The moment when Dacia was abandoned it's still debated and so are the conditions in which was abandoned and to whom.

 

Romans kept control over large areas north of Danube at least until the time of Iustinian. A limes was build by them over the Romanian plain paralel with the Danube for hundreds of kilometers.

[Kosmo]

The abandonment of Dacia was a bad thing, because Rome lost a source of gold that could finance her deficit in trade with the East and could not prevent forming of alliances and federations between the Pannonian steppe and the steppe north of the Black Sea.

This was very important when the huns created a state that controlled both regions.