Dacians - History - Relations With Germanic Tribes

Relations With Germanic Tribes

The Goths, a confederation of east German peoples, arrived in the southern Ukraine no later than 230. During the next decade, a large section of them moved down the Black Sea coast and occupied much of the territory north of the lower Danube. The Goths' advance towards the area north of the Black Sea involved competing with the indigenous population of Dacian-speaking Carpi, as well as the indigenous Iranian-speaking Sarmatians, and Roman garrison forces. The Carpi, often called "Free Dacians", continued to dominate the anti-Roman coalition made up of themselves, Taifali, Astringi, Vandals, Peucini and Goths until 248, when the Goths assumed the hegemony of the loose coalition. The first lands taken over by the Thervingi Goths were in Moldavia, and only during the fourth century did they move in strength down into the Danubian plain. The Carpi found themselves squeezed between the advancing Goths and the Roman province of Dacia. In 275 AD, Aurelian surrendered the Dacian territory to the Carpi and the Goths. Over time, Gothic power in the region grew, at the Carpi’s expense. The Germanic-speaking Goths replaced native Dacian-speakers as the dominant force around the Carpathian mountains.. Large numbers of Carpi, but not all of them, were admitted into the Roman empire in the twenty-five years or so after 290 AD. Despite this evacuation of the Carpi around 300 AD, substantial elements of the old indigenous populations (Dacians, Sarmatians and others) remained in place under Gothic domination. The Greuthungi and Thervingi Goths never settled all of Dacia.

There is some reason for thinking that the Dacians were not reduced to slavery, but that instead, the Goths learned to respect the superior civilization of their neighbours, and that the native inhabitants and the new settlers gradually became united into one people. This would explain how a Gothic historian of the sixth century could reckon the heroes and sages of ancient Dacia among the ancestral glories of his own nation. Goths mingled to some extent with the native inhabitants, but they were different peoples.

In 330 the Gothic Thervingi contemplated moving to the Middle Danube region, and from 370 relocated with their fellow Gothic Greuthungi to new homes in the Roman Empire. The Ostrogoths were still more isolated, but even the Visigoths preferred to live among their own kind. As a result, the Goths settled in pockets. Finally, although Roman towns continued on a reduced level, there is no question as to their survival.

In 336 AD, Constantine took the title Dacicus Maximus ("The great victory over Dacians"), implying at least partial reconquest of Trajan Dacia. In an inscription of 337, Constantine was commemorated officially as Germanicus Maximus, Sarmaticus, Gothicus Maximus and Dacicus Maximus, meaning he had defeated the Germans, Sarmatians, Goths and Dacians.

One historical source refers to "Carpo-Dacians" north of the Danube after 378, when the Thervingi who dominated the Carpathian region had already left, and there is no sign that all Chernyakhov culture settlements and cemeteries came to a sudden halt at that date. Alongside this world of the Goths "proper", there were also many communities descended from the older indigenous populations of the region. They had certainly been subdued by the Goths, and may well have paid various kinds of tributes, but were probably largely autonomous.