to 107. After two severe reverses, the Romans, under Tettius Julianus, gained a signal advantage, but were obliged to make peace owing to the defeat of Domitian by the Marcomanni. Decebalus restored the arms he had taken and some of the prisoners and received the crown from Domitian’s hands, an apparent acknowledgment of Roman suzerainty. But the Dacians were really left independent, as is shown by the fact that Domitian agreed to purchase immunity from further Dacian inroads by the payment of an annual tribute.
To put an end to this disgraceful arrangement, Trajan resolved to crush the Dacians once and for all. The result of his first campaign (101–102) was the occupation of the Dacian capital Sarmizegethusa (Várhely) and the surrounding country; of the second (105–107), the suicide of Decebalus, the conquest of the whole kingdom and its conversion into a Roman province. The history of the war is given in Dio Cassius, but the best commentary upon it is the famous column of Trajan. According to Marquardt, the boundaries of the province were the Tibiscus (Temes) on the W., the Carpathians on the N., the Tyras on the E., and the Danube on the S., but Brandis (in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie) maintains that it did not extend farther eastwards than the river Olt (Aluta)—the country beyond belonging to lower Moesia—and not so far as the Theiss westwards, being thus limited to Transylvania and Little Walachia. It was under a governor of praetorian rank, and the legio xiii. gemina with numerous auxiliaries had their fixed quarters in the province. To make up for the ravages caused by the recent wars colonists were imported to cultivate the land and work the mines, and the old inhabitants gradually returned. Forts were built as a protection against the incursions of the surrounding barbarians, and three great military roads were constructed to unite the chief towns, while a fourth, named after Trajan, traversed the Carpathians and entered Transylvania by the Roteturm pass. The two chief towns were Sarmizegethusa (afterwards Ulpia Trajana) and Apulum (Karlsburg). With the religion the Dacians also adopted the language of the conquerors, and modern Rumanian is full of Latin words easily recognizable.
In 129, under Hadrian, Dacia was divided into Dacia Superior and Inferior, the former comprising Transylvania, the latter Little Walachia, with procurators, probably both under the same praetorian legate (according to Brandis, the procurator of Dacia inferior was independent, but see A. Domaszewski in Rheinisches Museum, xlviii., 1893). Marcus Aurelius redivided it into three (tres Daciae): Porolissensis, from the chief town Porolissum (near Mojrad), Apulensis from Apulum and Maluensis (site unknown). The tres Daciae formed a commune in so far that they had a common capital, Sarmizegethusa, and a common diet, which discussed provincial affairs, formulated complaints and adjusted the incidence of taxation; but in other respects they were practically independent provinces, each under an ordinary procurator, subordinate to a governor of consular rank.
The Roman hold on the country was, however, still precarious. Indeed it is said that Hadrian, conscious of the difficulty of retaining it, had contemplated its abandonment and was only deterred by consideration for the safety of the numerous Roman settlers. Under Gallienus (256), the Goths crossed the Carpathians and drove the Romans from Dacia, with the exception of a few fortified places between the Temes and the Danube. No details of the event are recorded, and the chief argument in support of the statement in Ruf(i)us Festus that “under the Emperor Gallienus Dacia was lost” is the sudden cessation of Roman inscriptions and coins in the country after 256. Aurelian (270–275) withdrew the troops altogether and settled the Roman colonists on the south of the Danube, in Moesia, where he created the province Dacia Aureliani. This was subsequently divided into Dacia Ripensis on the Danube, with capital Ratiaria (Arcar in Bosnia), and Dacia Mediterranea, with capital Sardica (Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria), the latter again being subdivided into Dardania and Dacia Mediterranea.
See J. D. F. Neigebaur, Dacien aus den Überresten des klassischen Alterthums. (Kronstadt, 1851); C. Gooss, Studien zur Geographie und Geschichte des trajanischen Daciens (Hermannstadt, 1874); E. R. Rösler, Dacier und Romanen (Vienna, 1866), and Romänische Studien (Leipzig, 1871); J. Jung, Römer und Romanen in den Donauländern (Innsbruck, 1877), Die römanischen Landschaften des römischen Reiches (1881), and Fasten der Provinz Dacien (1894); W. Tomaschek, “Die alten Thraker,” in Sitzungsberichte der k. Akad. der Wissenschaften, cxxviii. (Vienna, 1893); J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, i. (1881), p. 308; T. Mommsen in Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, iii. 160, and Provinces of Roman Empire (Eng. trans., 1886); C. G. Brandis in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, iv. pt. 2 (1901); W. Miller, The Balkans in “The Story of the Nations,” vol. 44; on the boundaries of the Roman province of Dacia, see T. Hodgkin and F. Haverfield in English Historical Review, ii. 100, 734. (See also Vlachs.)
DACIER, ANDRÉ (1651–1722), French classical scholar, was born at Castres in upper Languedoc, on the 6th of April 1651. His father, a Protestant advocate, sent him first to the academy of Puy Laurens, and afterwards to Saumur to study under Tanneguy Lefèvre. On the death of Lefèvre in 1672, Dacier removed to Paris, and was appointed one of the editors of the Delphin series of the classics. In 1683 he married Anne Lefèvre, the daughter of his old tutor (see below). In 1695 he was elected member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and also of the French Academy; not long after, as payment for his share in the “medallic” history of the king’s reign, he was appointed keeper of the library of the Louvre. He died two years after his wife, on the 18th of September 1722. The most important of his works were his editions of Pompeius Festus and Verrius Flaccus, and his translations of Horace (with notes), Aristotle’s Poetics, the Electra and Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles, Epictetus, Hippocrates and Plutarch’s Lives.
His wife, Anne Lefèvre (1654–1720), French scholar and translator from the classics, was born at Saumur, probably in March 1654. On her father’s death in 1672 she removed to Paris, carrying with her part of an edition of Callimachus, which she afterwards published. This was so well received that she was engaged as one of the editors of the Delphin series of classical authors, in which she edited Florus, Dictys Cretensis, Aurelius Victor and Eutropius. In 1681 appeared her prose version of Anacreon and Sappho, and in the next few years she published prose versions of Terence and some of the plays of Plautus and Aristophanes. In 1684 she and her husband retired to Castres, with the object of devoting themselves to theological studies. In 1685 the result was announced in the conversion to Roman Catholicism of both M. and Mme Dacier, who were rewarded with a pension by the king. In 1699 appeared the prose translation of the Iliad (followed nine years later by a similar translation of the Odyssey), which gained for her the position she occupies in French literature. The appearance of this version, which made Homer known for the first time to many French men of letters, and among others to A. Houdart de la Motte, gave rise to a famous literary controversy. In 1714 la Motte published a poetical version of the Iliad, abridged and altered to suit his own taste, together with a Discours sur Homère, stating the reasons why Homer failed to satisfy his critical taste. Mme Dacier replied in the same year in her work, Des causes de la corruption du goût. La Motte carried on the discussion with light gaiety and badinage, and had the happiness of seeing his views supported by the abbé Jean Terrasson, who in 1715 produced two volumes entitled Dissertation critique sur l’Iliade, in which he maintained that science and philosophy, and especially the science and philosophy of Descartes, had so developed the human mind that the poets of the 18th century were immeasurably superior to those of ancient Greece. In the same year Père C. Buffier published Homère en arbitrage, in which he concluded that both parties were really agreed on the essential point—that Homer was one of the greatest geniuses the world had seen, and that, as a whole, no other poem could be preferred to his; and, soon after (on the 5th of April 1716), in the house of M. de Valincourt, Mme Dacier and la Motte met at supper, and drank together to the health of Homer. Nothing of importance marks the rest of Mme Dacier’s life. She died at the Louvre, on the 17th of August 1720.
See C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ix.; J. F. Bodin, Recherches historiques sur la ville de Saumur (1812–1814); P. J. Burette, Éloge de Mme Dacier (1721); Mémoires de Mme de Staël
