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Studies
concerning ancient military activity in the Romanian area offer, a
revealing insight into an original military culture gained developed
through long
experience, ancient teachings, an unbreakable desire for freedom
(highly spread in the North-Balkan Thracian civilization) and skillful
and renowned leadership under leaders such as Decebal. The decision to give Decebal the royal title had a precise
reason: this choice was made by the king Duras and his council 86 AD in
response to Roman preparations for military operations against the free land of the Getae in the North Danube.
In the face of this great threat the Dacians had to act quickly: the resistance
in front of the attacks had to be organized, the anarchical tendencies
of local leaders had to be put off, the whole population had to
contribute to the general improvement of the defensive system
,discipline had to be imposed, the Dacian army mustered and
organized, a reliable and practical system of alliances had to negotiated
and so on. All these could be achieved only through the wise leadership of
a young, strong commander and a skilled diplomat. Naming Decebal king of
the Dacians was a practical and realistic solution as he possessed those
strengths demanded of a Dacian leader. The Dacians could analyze objectively the
current situation, their own economical,
demographic and military powers (units, weapons and techniques,
training, fortresses and so on) as well as those of the enemy. This is a
known fact and Romanian military doctrine uses it as proof of the
continuity of its thinking: all those who could fight were mustered in case of foreign attack.
The military ways of the Dacians and of their descendants, the
Romanians, can be characterized by flexibility and ability to adapt to
new situations. They were also very imaginative and creative, being able
to create new tricks and military tactics astonishing to the enemy.
The following examples are illustrative of this ability:
1. Dromichaites sent general Seuthes into the enemy lines
as a traitor (a strategy used by Stefan the Great in 1486 at the battle
of
Scheia) with the purpose of luring Lysimacos' army onto a
secondary
road to the fortress of Helis through, "unfavourable places" in a
dry and deserted land without water or any other means of survival.
Following the exhaustion of the enemy the Dacians were prepared the
attack against the Macedonians.
2. The strategy of the Odrisian king Seuthes, who, in response to
an Athenian invasion of Thracian Chersones, "hired 2000 Getae Getae
and secretly ordered them to assault, as if they were the
enemy, to set fire to the whole country and to attack those who guarded
the fortress' walls". When they saw such thing, the Athenians " took
heart, got off the sailboats and approched the walls. Seuthes came out
from the fortress and met the Athenians as the Getae would join his
troops. When these reached the
Athenians' back, attacked them from behind and, being assaulted from one
side by the Thracians and from the other by the Getae, the Athenians were
crushed".
3. The strategy used by Decebal during the first battle of Tapae (88 AD) when, overwhelmed by Tettius Iulianus' forces and in order
to make the Romans withdraw, "he cut the trees about the place and he
leaned the weapons against the trunks so that the Romans fear soldiers
could be near and withdraw, which it happened". Decebal was famous for his skills in "setting traps" and he
was, as Dio Cassius says, close to stopping the war with Trajan by
using two unexpected methods :
a) he sent to Moesia, in July 105 A.D, a diversion unit which in
nowadays terms we would call a "commando" unit with the mission of
killing Trajan as "he could easily be reached" for the "war made him
receive without selection any man who would want to speak to him. So,
Decebal sent to Moesia some runaways to kill him but these could not do
it; one of them was caught, tortured and he confessed the whole plan
ploted by Decebal"
b) he invited to the negotiations and captured Gnaaeus Pompeius
Longinus, the commander of the
Roman legions occupying Dacia after the first Dacian war, whom he wanted
to use as hostage for negotiations with Traian.
Decebal would ask Trajan through messengers to free "the country as
far as the Hister and to return the money he had spent with the war;
only under these conditions he would see Longinus alive again".
This plan failed too because Longinus committed suicide and Trajan
proceeded to the "second Dacian war " which, given the famous "slyness"
of Decebal, he carried through, cautiously than with ardor". "
Avoiding
war at any cost, saving the population and the goods from those who
attacked was another feature of the Dacian and Getae military mental
conception which, continued to become a general Romanian military conception. Burebista, Dicomes and Coson interfered in the fights between the emperors
and those who were thought to be their people's enemies (Caesar, Octavianus)
in order to sustain others in their political climbing whom they
considered allies and with whom they had various negotiations (Pompeius,
Antonius). This was the way of the Dacian's, practiced centuries later
by Mircea the Old, who by sustaining Musa, Mustafa and Bedr-ed-Din
between 1409-1418 against Mehmed I, the youngest son of Bayazid Ildīrīm
and the ally of the Byzantine Empire, in order to eliminate the Ottoman
danger.
Once war began, negotiations were only used to gain the
necessary time to organize the defenses and to protect the goods and the
civilian part of the population. Dio Cassius wrote in regards to this
that, "Decebal was ready to accept (in the winter of 101-102 AD) all
he would have been asked, not because he wanted to actually do what he
would be asked, but to regain his breath". Considering their concern for
their population and goods, the Dacians had another strategy of defense
designed to protect them. This strategy involved every part of the
population, acting as best it could to harass the enemy physically and
psychologically, luring it into various traps and ambushes to reduce its
strength bit by bit. We can easily use a remark
made on Stefan the Greats' account as a general characterization for
both the Dacians and the Romanians, "they did not dare to come in the
open" (in front of the Turkish armies, in the plains of Buceac-1484),
they preferred to stay in narrow, mountainous, wooden or swampy areas and
to attract the enemy in these parts to prevent them from using all their
forces" This exploitation of the terrain was a key feature of Dacian
military practice. Other key features included the preferring flexible,
mobile units, avoiding battle and retiring to fortifications. They
exploited the large area of their territory to defend in depth and as a
refuge in case of defeat.
(as Decebal did after he
left Sarmizegetusa and withdrew in the unoccupied territories inside the
Carpathians.
Our ancestors possessed a dynamic military
character that allowed them to create a varied strategy of defense.
Avoiding high casualties and material losses were the key aims of the
Dacians.
Their methods and strategies aimed at achieving victory with little loss
and in short time against various attackers, usually militarily superior
to them.
According to the great
historian Radu Rosetti "it is most admirable the fact that the Dacian
strategy although inferior as military force, but with great tactics
succeeded in opposing the Romans such strength that could not be defeated
if there weren't those powerful techniques and many years of effort"
Key features of Getae and Dacian military strategy that continued into
Romanian military doctrine included ensuring that the means were
proportionate to the end, a strategy of defense followed by a counter
attack and the pursuit of the enemy back and into his territory. More
generally they included taking the keeping the initiative, choosing the
place and time of battle, concentration of force, using allies, allocating
an area to retreat and regroup in, adaptation to weather conditions and
exploiting the terrain, whether it be hills, rivers, woods or swamps.
For Burebista (49-44BC), Cotyso (maybe a
descendant of Deceneu at Sarmizegetusa, or perhaps only a local "king),
Zyraxes (
31-28 BC, a king from the Northern Dobrogea, who dwelled at Genucla and
presumed father of Decabel) and
Scorilo (Coryllus)
or Duras (Dorpaneus) the key goals of their reigns were the freedom of
the Getic throne of the southern Danube from the Romans. To build a strong
system of alliances the Dacians, found allies against common enemies. Thus
in 514 BC they joined with the Scythians against Darius and again in 325
BC (possibly 334,333,331 or 330 BC) against the governor left by Alexander
the Great in Thracia Zopyrion. Against the Roman Empire they allied with
the Celts (109BC), the Bastarnae (29-38BC, 85-86AD), the Quadi and the
Marcomanni (88-89BC), the Sarmations, especially the Roxolane (69, 85-86,
101-105,117-118AD), the Boe (101-102AD), and the even the Macedonians
(171-168BC) Invoking common military interests they allied with the
Thracian tribes from the Northern Balkans
(ex: the Tribalii in 335 BC, the Moesii, rebelled in 26, 69 and 86 AD),
the Greek colonies (339 BC when
controlling a Getae and Histrian coalition a "rex Histrianorum" shows
up: in 326 BC when the Dacians are Olbia's allies against Macedonians;
in 300-392 BC, when Dromichaites conducts all military efforts to put
an end to Lysimachos' invading plans; in 72-71 BC and 61 BC against the Roman
proconsul of Macedonia, and so on) Ariovist,
the king of Suebii (60-50 BC) or Pacorus II, the king of the Partae
(103-105 AD), etc.
The reasoning behind these alliances can be see in
Decebal's call to his
neighbors in the spring of 105 when, as Dio Cassius tells us ,"he
instigated them to war" saying that if they left him, they would
endanger
themselves, that freedom was more easily kept if they fought by his side
and that if they left the Dacians to die, later, all alone without any
allies, they would follow them in death. In their plans of defense Getae
and Dacian leaders tried to construct them to leave room to adapt to
their enemies' force and objectives.
From the data we have, in the year 514 BC in front of the huge
Persian army (around 700,000 warriors and 600 galleys) "being
determined to stubbornly resist", the Getae attacked the invaders "even
before they arrived to the Hister".
In front of the most powerful military units of the age (the Macedonian
phalanx of Alexander the Great) the Thracians from the North-Balkans
decided in 335 BC to close the passes in the Balkans and to crush
the enemy through an unusual tactic: they besieged the enemy in a
uneven, dangerous land
specially arranged "Posada" style and then the concentric attack
should give them full victory.
Arrian wrote,
"they had brought wagons and putting them in front, used them as
entrenchments to fight from them if they were attacked. At the same time,
they thought of crushing those wagons against the Macedonian phalanx from
the highest place of the mountain. They imagined that, the harder a wagon
hit a compact phalanx the easily it was scattered by the violence of the
hit". Arrian also mentions
the pursuit of Syrmos' Tribalii, who followed the enemy as far as the
Danube, and the coming of the state union's army in the Southern plain
with 4000 horsemen and 10 000 infantry determined
not to let the enemy cross the river. In the same way, the last great
Dacian ruler, Decebal, would defend
the whole of the Danube's shores, as would his descendants - Mircea the
Old, Vlad the Impaler, Stefan the Great, Ion the Terrible or Mihai the
Brave. Crito, an eyewitness to this, said
that in forcing the Danube frontiers by the Romans in 101 AD had brought
upon
themselves, "an attack, as they passed the river and prepared to
disembark". The point of defense was chosen where conditions were very
difficult (uneven land, wooden mountains, deep and wide river) in Haemus,
the Banat's Carpathians or near the Danube. Florus writes about the, "Dacian's
who depend on the mountains" and the proconsul of Macedonia, C. Scribonius Curio, who gave up his campaign of crossing the Danube in 75-74
BC "terrified" by "the darkness of woods" and about Vergilius' fear of
the, "Dacian's who come from the Hister which plots against us".
If the enemy succeeded in crossing the frontiers, the second stage of
Dacian military strategy emerged: a flexible defense, organized as
the army moved, with their own camps well organized. In 101-102AD
the Romans managed to penetrate the Dacian lines at various points, in an
attempt to turn the left flank of the Dacian
front in order to fully surround Sarmizegetusa. Some
units passed waited in reserve and when the initiative was regained and
maintained they arranged and "engineered" the whole place. With the enemy
upon Dacian territory "Popular war" involving all social classes was
carried out. This involved the harassment of the enemy day and night, the crushing of scouts or
defense systems with the mobile light cavalry, the luring of the enemy
on dark secondary unsafe roads, the burning of the land and all in all
the artificial arrangements to get the perfect Getic desert (in which
Zopyrion's army died in 326 B.C.) were the most common methods used to exhaust
and madden the enemy. The villages were set on fire, the wheat was
buried, the cattle and the population hidden and as Arrian wrote, Alexander
marched through "deserted places" in the Southern plain.
This depressing picture was very much alike the one offered to Mehmed
the Conqueror in 1462 by the army of Vlad the Impaler. The sources
regarding Lysimacos' campaign from 292 B.C. against Dromichaites tell us
that Seuthes, "had brought the Macedonians in unfriendly territories
where they suffered of hunger and thirst; Lysymachos' army was
tortured by hunger. Friends advised the king to get away as soon as he
could and to abandon the thought that his army could save him.
Lysimachos answered that it was not fair to leave his men and friends,
organizing some shameful escape for himself". At the end of such
'Psychological" war, when the enemy could not oppose with the same force,
the third stage of the Dacian military strategy emerged, the final battle.
Battle was given at pre chosen sites, well prepared in advance. It is well known that the Tribalii used
a tactical plan based on 4 lines: in the first line were the skirmishers,
young men armed with missile weapons. In the second were the adult
warriors armed for melee attacks. In the third the horsemen and finally
the women watched to encourage
those who fought.
Underneath this joke of Nicolaos of Damascus we can identify the organization
of the Dacian army in battle. The infantry bore the brunt of the battle
whilst the cavalry turned the enemies flanks and surrounded him. On
occasion they could launch frontal assaults in a wedge formation but more
commonly they would be reserved for the pursuit of the enemy once he was
defeated.
Defeated, the enemy could be taken
prisoner, as happened with Lysimachos' Macedonian army, could be
killed as it happened with Fuscus' legions or forced to withdraw
chaotically, a situation in which, the Dacians followed the enemy until it
crossed the frontier or until it was totally crushed. This pursuit was
made with the light cavalry detachments upon the rear or the flanks of
the enemy In the latter situation the enemy could be surrounded and stopped
from withdrawing by blocking passes. In these given circumstances,
the army of Zopyrion was completely crushed on its way back to
Oblucita. It was surrounded on swampy land while a storm broke loose
and destroyed all its fleet and the Getic army managed to, "erase it
from the face of the earth". When the enemy wasn't completely crushed and
retired across the river with great loss, the pursuit could be longer.
Organizing on the move, the Dacian's continued the attack in order to
free the Southern parts of the Danube, occupied by their enemies.
The Gatea acted in such
manner in 514 BC, when permanently harassing the
Persian army on its way back. They organized a counter-attack with the Getae
and Scythian army joined by other Balkan tribes and Greek colonies. The
consequences of this attack were felt all the way to Asia Minor. The
counter-attack was prepared and while
the approach of enemy troops could not be stopped; the Getae wanted to
open a second battle front which, would ease the efforts on the main
front or allow for the Dacians to regroup. . According to some ancient authors, this plan of battle brought Decebal final victory in 87 AD.
The contradictory evidence that has
come to our attention, regarding the Roman attack in the Northern parts
of the Danube lead by Cornelius Fuscus, takes us to a contradictory
hypothesis. Petrus Patricius, Tacitus, Iordanes and Juvenal offer us the
first version whereby, the Roman Seante was deliberately provoked
by a demand
that the peace be compensated by a certain sum of money collected from
each Roman citizen, "two oboli each citizen"
Decebal decided the start and the direction in which the war would
go. The invading army crossed the river from the West from Oescus (Ghighen) on
a pontoon bridge, commanded by Fuscus and moved
South-North, on the Olt valley. He aimed to force the Turnu-Rosu pass
and maneuver for an attack on the Secas and
Mures valleys thereby isolating the powerful Dacian fortress from
the Orastie mountains.
"Skilled in setting traps", Decebal prepared a huge ambush in the
mountains in the narrow pass Olt. He was the first, in a long line of
leaders to exploit this position for battle, a decision that was repeated
in 1330 and 1395. Experts in exploiting the mountains and
woods, "the Dacians even from the first encounter defeated the Romans,
killed their general Fuscus and robbed the riches from their military
camp, even capturing the flag of the V legion Alaudae" (Iordanes).
The second hypothesis sustained by Suetonius and the poet Martial,
suggests the existence of slight victory of Fuscus in the beginning of
the campaign. To stop his advance Decebal launched a powerful counter-attack in Dobrogea,
trying to weaken the rear of the Roman front by destroying their military bases in Moesia. Forced to withdraw, Fuscus had
to send troops to defend the fortresses from the Lower Danube, weakening
him before he was crushed in the final battle, which is said to
have been somewhere around Adamclisi. The mausoleum from Adamclisi is
said to be his and upon it are carved the names of the 3800 soldiers
he lost. After some years, it is said that Trajan added to this
mausoleum s trophy representing his victory over the Dacians. Both
hypotheses lead us to the same conclusion: the Dacians obtained a great
victory due to their warriors' courage, to their clever strategy
and of course to their skilled leader-Decebal.
A second counter-attack took place in a similar situation in the early
spring of 102AD, when Trajan returned to the front from Hateg.
Several months before, after the victory from the second battle of Tapae
(autumn 101AD), while the main Roman forces began to "climb mountains"
getting close to "the Dacian royal dwelling place", the Moorish cavalry,
commanded by Lucius Quietus, had began to force the Valcan pass in order to
surround the place and, "attacking from other side, it slaughtered many
and many it had caught alive. Decebal sent his messengers," a
ruse to gain time to re-organize. The Dacian king, "knew how to escape sane from a defeat", so
he used the short time he got because of the winter. Counting on the Getae support, the Thracians and Getae in Moesia Inferior - ready to
rebel against Roman authorities, on the alliances with the Roxolane ,
Bastarnae and perhaps on the Partian king Pacorus II, he attacked the
Romans in Moesia before the Danube thawed . He also tried to intercept "Trajan's
communicating with the Empire's resources" and to catch the Roman army
from the mountains between two battle-fronts.
The events carved in Trajan's Column, scenes XXXI-XLIV, proved the realism
of his strategic ideas. nature was against him however, and a early thaw caused
great loss to the Dacian cavalry when they crossed the river and at the same time,
gave Trajan time to embark quickly and
to move his units to support the garrison at Moesia. The courageous
decision to attempt to turn the right flank of the Romans
failed, 3800 soldiers dieing in the final battle from North-Eastern Durostorum (Silistra) and South of Axiopolis (Cernavoda)
Upon this site a monument would be built and the new city of Tropaeum
Traiani. Trajan managed to stop the attack and to keep the situation
under control. In great hurry he embarked with his available forces on
his fleet (Classis Flavia Moesica), returning to the main battle-front
to continue the assault in the mountains of Orastie. Decebal's newest
attempt to gain time by sending "the most brave pilleati" as messengers
failed. The main forces of the Roman army, led by Trajan in person,
together with the Moorish cavalry started to advance again to
Sarmizegetusa, organizing its positions by building the so called "castrum"
(military base) "on the high cliffs of Jigoru Mare, Comarnicel and
varful lui Patru".
Many of the forces from Moesia Inferior penetrated Transilvania through
the Bretcu pass and Bran (after the military base from Targsor, Malaiesti,
Pietroasele, Drajna de Sus were built), through Turnu Rosu; the latter
bases being commanded by the governor Manius Laberius Maximus which
organized the attack in the Western front. Many of these counter-attacks'
failed, mainly due to weather conditons. (in the exact way in which 19
centuries after this moment the same failure would occur to the
Romanians in Turtucaia) and because of the direct results of the rich legacy
of military art left by the grand era of the brave leaders Burebista and
Decebal. Called in front of the Getae and Dacian armies joined together
by the great poet and king, Deceneu, the Getae king Burebista started in
extremely short time (61-55 BC), with the purpose of stopping the
aggression (the proconsuls actions), 3 great military campaigns one after
another which had a great success but disturbed the unity of the North-Balkan
Thracian state. One was against the Boe and Teurisci from North-West, another
against the Greek fortresses from the Western parts of the Black Sea
which wanted an alliance -as a continued action of the one that took
place in 61 BC when C. Antonius Hybrida's legion was crushed in Histria
and against the Scordisci and Illyrians from the united land of Tisa and
Danube.
These were actions were meant to answer the Roman aggression
which, wanted to rule after 111 BC the Thracian and Getae lands between
the Hister, Haemus and the
sea. They were continued after the Romans
created Moesia (15 AD) and after they left a bastion (Scythia Minor) as
a permanent threat to the unified Dacian state from Sarmizegetusa. As a first military action, these kings, (Scorilo or
Duras), initiated the campaign from 69 AD to free the land from the
Southern Danube as far as Haemus mountains; this campaign was surprising,
because of the great number of Getae and Dacian units and because of the
large parts of Moesian, Thracian and Getic population involved and
encouraged to rebel. The Roxolane were also involved against
Romans. To prevent any Dacian military action from taking place, the
emperor Vespasian (69-79AD) charged Rubrius Gallus to take strong
measures in order to defend the new province of Moesia: the emperor gave
him 4 legions, reinforced the Danubian fleet (Classic Flavia Moesica)
whose base was established at Aegyssus (now called Tulcea) and Noviodunum
(Isaccea). A grave threat began to hang over
the Dacian state from the Northern Danube. The military base system, the Moesic territories and
the Roman fleet, not only made any attempt at freeing the land almost
impossible, but gave the Romans the possibility of returning through
Scythia Minor to the Dacian front and to start an invasion from the best
possible situation.
This attack was necessary for the Romans as its successful conclusion
would finally defeat the Dacian kings who could not accept the loss of their
southern lands. Ruling over the Danube was important given its economic
and military importance. Given these
circumstances, when the confrontation between the Northern Thracians and
the Romans had reached its final stage
(after a quarter of a millennium, from the Macedonian
collapse in the battle from Pydna on June 6th 168 B.C., and after its
last attempt to regain freedom in 146 B.C.), Decebal's
ascension as Dacia's king took place. He was a prince, perhaps a son or
nephew of Duras; Decebal could have been apprenticed as a commander
in 82 AD when the Dacians took the initiative of attacking the Romans
in order to free the Dacian-Moesian lands and when Domitian (81-96
AD) managed with difficulty to put an end to these attacks by asking the
help of the Germans. It is likely that Decebal conducted the campaign
over the winter of 85/86 AD which was very close to succeeding in reuniting
the great Dacian state of Burebista. Except for the names and the
peoples participating to this battle, we could easily compare this
campaign of Decebal - the only Dacian campaign thoroughly described - with the campaigns described in the Medieval chronicles of Mircea the Old, Vlad
the Impaler, Stefan the Great or Mihai the Brave. Crossing the Danube in
the winter and attacking the Roman units at every military base along
the Danube, the Dacians managed to annihilate most of Roman
garrisons. They "started to sack the Danube shores, ruled a long time
now, by the Romans, destroying the units and their commanders", wrote
the Goth historian, Iordanes.
The ruler of this province at that time was Oppius Sabinus and the Goth (Get) ruler
was Dorpaneus; "in the battle, the Romans were defeated and Oppius
Sabinus was beheaded". The whole Southern Danube military system was
ruined, numerous "military bases and cities" fell, the communication
lines were interrupted and as Tacitus says, "the legions' fortresses
and our very ruling was doubted in those times". To save this whole
situation, Domitian was forced to use all Empire's resources. He
arrived at Naissus (Nis) to personally watch the military operations,
engaged the Pretorian guards in the battle giving Cornelius Fuscus the
title of "Pretorian prefect", commander of all armies gathered at the
Danube. After he put an end, with difficulty, to the Dacian attacks, the
emperor tried to organize the defense of the region. He split the newly conquered
province of Moesia in two, Inferior and Superior, attaching to each one
a powerful military unit. These two were meant to be bases incursions into
Dacia. This was the beginning of the final period of Dacian-Roman
conflict. It became, "the biggest war for the Romans in those times", that
lasted for 20 years. Lead by their, "fierce" king Decebel, the war ended
in defeat at the hands of the Dacians greatest enemy, Marcus Ulpius
Nerva Trajan (98-117AD)
It is
from these two civilization, Thraco-Dacian and Roman that the Romanian
people can trace their historical legacy. As the great historian Vasile Parvan
wrote, Dacian
opposition was like " a love song that peoples rarely sung to their
endangered countries". The Dacians leave a mental and military
legacy that would continue to emphasis the importance of protecting the
civilian population whilst seeking to defeat the enemy through a strategy
of harassment, scorched earth policy and finally battle.
The archeological evidence together with written sources allow us, with a
certain amount of certainty, to reconstruct Thracian-Getic-Dacian military
practices. At the same time we are also able to establish the similarities
between the Northern Thracians and the Romans in terms of military units,
materials, techniques, army composition, defensive fortifications, tactics
and strategy. This reconstruction allows us to assess the originality of
Dacian thinking and its key features that include the mobilizing of the
male population, protection of the civilian one, exploitation of terrain
and using proportionate force to the importance of the objective. Active
in political and diplomatic areas the Dacians had a clear strategy when
it came to defending their homeland. An active defense was organized that
included harassing the main army, preparing a scorched earth policy and
luring the invaders into deserted regions before attempting to turn his
right flank and counter attacking him in a final effort to remove him from
Dacian territory.
Attacks were always strategically well prepared and aimed, especially when
attempting to retake Dacian territory, for example the Southern lands
invaded by the Romans. In Burebista's era these attacks were accompanied
by an attempt to unify the Dacian peoples and organize a Dacian state.
Dacian military commander always aimed to to surprise the enemy tactically
and strategically, employing unusual ruses and exploiting the advantages
the terrain offered them. In conclusion there are many similarities
between the military practices of the Dacians, the Romans, Medieval
Romania and the Modern day. Some general features include:
1) the originality and high degree of evolution of Thracian and Dacian
military practices are similar to Roman ones.
2) the continuing presence of Romanians in the Dacian homeland is provable
through the evolution of the specific features of military practice.
3) the legacy that the Dacians left to the Romanians was the doctrine of
mobilizing all able bodied people in defense of the Thracian-Dacian
homeland.
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