"There is no one among the Sarmatians and the Getae who doesn't wear a scabbard with a bow and arrows dipped in adder blood"
                                                                                                                             Ovidius: Trist; IV; 1; 78

          "the Getae, neighbours of the Scythians, use the same weapons as these do, they are all horsemen and archers"
                                                                                                                                        Tucidide; II; c.96

         "the bow, the string and the arrow is a complicated mechanism, whose invention involved a long experience and a very creative spirit, altogether with the deep knowledge of other inventions "
                                                                                                               Fr Engels; Family origins; page 23

All healthy men, as soon as they were able to carry a weapon participated directly at battles usually within the family or the tribe they belonged to. Depending on the characteristics of the tribe or the social status of the person, he could be pedestrian or horseman. In both cases the individual was a skilled archer, as archery was learnt during the military practice, huntings or during the frequent military conflicts.     The bow is the weapon which reached highest performances in Dacian armies. It was handled with great skill and due to the fact that it was a basic weapon, the manufacture techniques (choosing the wood, its boiling in order to make it bent) were very developed.     The bow was a long-distance weapon and its roots are unknown and very old; it was made by the warriors themselves or by skilled craftsmen.     Some bows were made of animal horns, tied together in the middle by a straight piece ,others were made of cornel tree wood, larch wood, hazel, hornbeam, ash or elm wood. The strings were made of flax, hemp, animal bowels, horse or cattle veins. On rainy weather the warriors wore the bows unstrained not to lose its flexibility. When they walked, the warriors wore it hanged on their shoulder, in their hands or in special scabbards. A medium bow could throw arrows as far as 200 meters.

                  It was used as an attack weapon: in static attacks, by the pedestrians and in quick ones, by the horsemen. The Dacian horsemen frequently used an armour, as Sarmatians did, and they were named "catafractari", using skillfuly the bow when riding the horse.
       

Dacians archers--scene from the movie  "Burebista"

                 The arrows made of wood or rarely of cane were 0,80-0,90 m long and they had pointed metalic heads. The heads could be manufactured with 3 edges , with 2, or some of them were conic, also having a "thorne". A skilled archer could launch 12 arrows a minute. These arrows, wore in scabbards, reached a number of 16-24 , they were beautifuly designed and painted but also dipped in poison. The Dacians used the arrows already
thrown from the battlefield or those of the prisoners when they were left without.
     The arrow heads first copied the stone and bone ones. Those made of bronze and iron started to be manufactured only in the VII and VI th centuries B.C, when the Scythians began to raid the Dacian teritories. The long pyramidal shaped, three edged heads, first used by the Scythians, were intensely used by the Dacians too. The arrows with a tube and two thorns are, however, a particular characteristic of the Dacians.

                     Author             Cătălin Borangic  aka Burebista

        Translated and adjusted Codruta aka Pãdure 
 
        Bibliography
 
     ---Armata geto-dacă ; Col. Dr. Gheorghe Tudor ; Editura Militară, 1986
   ---Istoria infanteriei române; Col. Dr. Gheorghe Romanescu; Editura ştiinţifică şi pedagogică; 1985
      ---Istoria militară a poporului român; Nic. Densuşianu; Editura Vestala; 2002
     ---Dictionar de istorie veche a României; D.M. Pippidi; Editura ştiinţifică şi pedagogică; 1976
     ---Istoria românilor din Dacia Traiana ; A.D. Xenopol ; 1913
     ---Istoria românilor; Academia Românã; Editura Enciclopedică; 2001
 
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