For the ancient world, Dacia as a land sourrounded by the Carpathians, as the country of the fierce warriors and blessed by Zamolxis, has been, until its conquest by Traian, a rough and mysterious place. No one really knew who were the people living in those mountains. Everybody called them "Dacians" or "Getae"...and the Greeks thought they were "the most brave and just among the Thracians"-and said that Ares (who was at the beggining the god of blizzard) or Mars, had been born among the Dacians. However, they knew that this might be only a legend; another mighty god ruled this people's destiny. The Dacians worshiped Zamolxis. Plato himself said that Zamolxis was making the Dacians immortal.
Messenger sent to Zamolxe-drawing by Radu Oltean www.historyarts.ro
This people-Dacians or Getae-and their
country were simply hermetic to the other ancient peoples.The Greeks
approached them only as far as the coasts of the Black Sea, they never
ventured inside the land. The Romans knew only the Dacian warriors. The
Danube was feared by the ancient people. It was a hyperborean boundary, once
passed they would reach the land guarded by the Dacian stars-Getici
sidera pigra poli. Martial (40-104 A.D) described in his poems images
from this land that would inspire fear and mystery- for at that time, the
emperor Domitian himself knew some hard luck in military areas. It was a
land of hard winters with the wild Peuce and the rustling Hister :
"Hiberna quamvis Arctos et rudis Peuce
Et ungularum pulsibus calens Hister”
The obsession of the Getae warrior and the feared Danube which he crossed riding, when its waters were frozen ,was in every ancient European people's minds, it was in the writings of poets and in the ancient books which told the story of that barbarian, fierce country, hostile to Romans. Lucan, a Hispanic had also a story about "the barbarian Cone, where the Hister, through one thousand openings, lost his Sarmatian waves into the sea and flooded the Island of Peuce", about the wild people that lived on the Black Sea shores and about the feared and famous Getae bow. In one single place, Pharsala, the name of the Dacian, of the Iberian and of the Getae are one, in the same line :
"Hinc Dacus premet inde Getes ocurrat Hiberis".
This line was
analyzed by Isidor of Sevilla and he thought that Spain was going to be
invaded by Getae. And as we will see further on, this interpretation of the
line was correct. The whole world was invaded by Getae, not only Spain, the
whole world was going to be re-created all over again by them: the Getae.
The true history of the Getae, the history of the Getic myth
is not yet written. It is a bigger and more important history than that of
the pure facts we call historical facts. The fact is consumed, it doesn't
serve you but to tell a story. The myth is immortal and even if it has
unusual and unthinkable hidden forms it is there, influencing the future.
The Getic idea is one of the most obsessing and strong ideas in the ancient
imagination. For the Romans that lived in the first century A.D, who thought
that the end of the world was near, the feared Danube was, surely the one
which would unchain the chaos. Another Hispanic, the most popular actually,
Seneca, wrote a grand piece of art about the "fatal day" when
the Danube would let its waters grow and reach the sky and then, in one
abrupt whirl "will cover a great surface with land and fortresses"...It
was a prophecy this writing of Seneca. It would come true, but not through
the waters of the Danube, but through the Goths' rage and violence, which-a
strange thing-with the name of the Getae and with their history suddenly
transformed in their Gothic history, with their god, Zamolxe-not some god of
Walhalla- would overthrow the ancient world and would reach in their rage,
Spain. It was the thing Lucan feared most and Isidor of Sevilla never
doubted! How can you doubt the reality when the reality itself takes care of
revealing the myth which Isidor, with all his
Histories and Etymologies had been looking restlessly. The secret of the
Getae was, even in Seneca's time, impenetrable. The phylosopher did not know
but to speak with certain knowledge about the river of Danube which
sourrounded the country and about the Greek
fortresses on the Black Sea shores. Everything else was mystery, except the
fierce Getic arrow and of course the poisonous plants that Medeea used in
her witchcraft. Seneca was however convinced that that country was very rich
in gems and this was another part of witchcraft, indeed. The gems were
thought to have important magical powers. This was all Seneca knew and no
one had more knowledge about this mysterious land. The Danube kept her
secrets well locked. The people hide in the mountains-Daci, montibus in
haerent-the woods were dark and all that land was covered with dangers.
"The Sphinx" from Bucegi
The Dacian forest. The terrifying Dacian forest. It was the shelter of those
people and it was the source of the Dacian myth, that still exists in
Romania and it's still invoked in folk songs by the words "foaie verde"
(green leaf). The Romans scarcely knew these forests, they usually took a
roundabout way; where were some cases in which legions or famous generals
died in one of these terrifying forest. When this happened, the shadows of
the Dacian forests reached Rome, poems and songs were written about it and
everybody feared the disasters that happened there. In 74 B.C, Caius
Scribonius Curio, who had beaten the Dardani in Thracia, wanted to conquer
the Dacians too and with this purpose he reached the Danube. He was so
frightened of the woods he saw, that he returned, giving up his plans :
Curio Dacia tenus venit, sed tenebras saltuum expavit-Curio returned
from Dacia, frightened of its (forests') darkness, says Florus. Other time,
Rome was overwhelmed with emotion at Cornelius Fuscus' death who had burried
himself and his legion in the cursed Dacian forest. Martial wrote in Fuscus'
epitaph:
"Here lies Fuscus...
The gravestone does not fear hostile threats anymore
The victorious shadow of the general rules triumphantly the obedient forest".
The poet was more than tragical. The general
had died without a victory, without any trace of him and his legion.
Terrifying, the forest hadn`t moved: it lay still, silent and dark, full of
its secrets. For the ancient people there wasn`t only myth in all this, but
something magical too, which had its source in the genius of that people and
which protected it, hiding the reality. The forest was the dark place in
which the secret was born. This strange people, which worshiped his god on
solitary cliffs, had the science secrets, so powerful that even today
historians can't really separate the myth from true facts. That god,
although solar, was hidden. No one knows neither his face nor his altars.
Following some magical rules, in those times
people did not paint the divine person, but the thing that opposed it : the
dragon with a wolf's head which served and protected the land but also
fought up in the skies, rebelling against Zamolxe. The Dacians made him
their flag, worshiped him but they also threw arrows at him when
thunderstorms broke loose. This dragon, this "draco" has been adopted by
some Roman military units too and
it was worshiped in some parts of Italy.
 |
It
is also interesting that the Goths' apostle, Wulfila, Cappadoccian
-Thracian, for that matter-had got his name in Dacia, where he
preached, his Gothic name meaning "wolf". Such name could have a
secret meaning to the people in that country. The god of this people
hide himself in everything that was connected to his cult and his
name. They called him Zamolxes or Zamolxis and later, who would have
thought? in an inscription, Jupiter Optimus Maximus Paternus
Aepilofius. |
The
last of his names betrays him: "the god from the rock". That was a
shrewd god; he had gotten out of Dacia, substituded himself for another god
and he was worshiped among foreigners. This way of hiding himself from the
world in a name, of drawing things in a double way (even if sometimes the
words are Greek or Roman) it is another way of the Dacian hermetism:
Zamolxe-Gebeleizis, Danubius-Hister, Carpathus-Caucasus,
Decebalus-Diurppaneus, Dacian-Dai-Getae. A lot of speculations could be made
on this issue, not necesarily etymologycal. Such speculations could lead one
to the fact that the Dacians had
a special thing for hiding their own personality and the things in their
country; they also had the power of casting on the foreigners the magic of
names which hides the true nature of one. The same way guides us to the
myth. Everything that belongs to that country and we know from different
historical sources we have to doubt. We have to show criticism in order to
separate the two planes of the Dacian and Getic world, not enough observed
by the historians-the real plane of direct approach which belonged mainly to
the Romans because of the frequent wars and the archaeological proves and
the other plane, of myths,highly popular among Greeks and then adopted by
Romans. The myth frequently took the place of reality. The Dacians and the
Danube belong to the real plane. The other one is the world of the Getae
with the sacred Hister, the Caucasian mountains, the wild Peruce, the Danube
Delta with one thousand openings and the calm stars of the Getic pole.
Alexandru Busuioceanu
Translated and adjusted Codruta aka Pãdure
Grupul Sarmizegetusa
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