In 1980, the Ceausescu regime organized a peculiar event. It was the celebration of the 2050th anniversary of the unification of Dacia, a presumed state that encompassed the current Romania -but which would also have incorporated possessions of other related peoples, such as the Thracians and the Getae-, establishing a propagandistic parallelism between the figure of the Conducator himself with that of the man who led that historical episode:King Burebista.
The Dacians, who not only lived in the current Romanian and Moldovan territories but also extended to areas of Mesia (a region south of the Danube that coincides, more or less, with what are now Serbia, Kosovo, the northern parts of Macedonia and Bulgaria and even the southern limits of Poland and Ukraine, as well as Slovakia and Hungary), are considered a subgroup of the Thracians with initial cultural influences from Scythians and Celts.
Herodotus calls them Getae to distinguish them within Thrace ("the most courageous and just of the Thracian tribes" ) and Strabo says that they spoke the same language, while other classical authors, by contrast, clearly differentiated between the two peoples. The key would be in the region they inhabited:according to Strabo, the Dacians were Getae from the so-called Pannonian Plain and Transylvania, assigning the Getae to Scythia Minor, on the Black Sea coast. In other words, Dacians and Getae would be Northern Thracians, maintaining contact, we said, with Scythians and Celts but also with Germans and Sarmatians.
From the fourth century B.C. Until the middle of the 2nd century BC, the Dacian peoples, whose language reveals an Indo-European or Proto-Indo-European origin, were strongly influenced by the fourth and last phase of La Tène, a Celtic culture that spread from the Alpine area from the Iron Age . However, it was inevitable that the greatest influence would come from classical culture, first the Greek -something that is appreciated above all in the religious pantheon- and then the Roman, which would end up assimilating them by force despite famous rebellions such as that of Decebalus (1st century AD).
They also fought, almost always with adverse luck, Alexander, his successor Lysimachus and the Gauls, thanks to which we know from Strabo that they could mobilize some two hundred thousand warriors in total, a number that would allow us to deduce that their population would be around two million (figure considered almost certainly excessive by historians). Finally, under the reign of Rubobostes (in about 168 BC) they were able to push back the Celts or perhaps they merged with them -or both- so that they were able to maintain their independence.
The mountainous orography played a determining role in this, which protected them defensively but did not prevent them from maintaining commercial or political relations, based on intertribal marriage alliances; A good example of the latter would be those made by Rubobostes himself. Thus, with a certain stability and the prosperity of its gold and copper mines, everything was ready for the emergence of some charismatic individuality capable of uniting and centralizing all the tribes under his command, something possible when an indigenous dynasty became established. And Burebista appeared.
He was probably a member of the Geto-Dacian high nobility who had the support of other aristocrats and the religious elite, forcibly overruling other rivals and forming a Hellenistic-inspired courtly state with a permanent semi-professional army. Strabo recounts that «become the leader of a people exhausted by frequent wars, Burebista took them out of that state through military exercises, the prohibition of wine and obedience to orders, achieving a powerful state in a few years» .
All this was achieved through a legislative code that not only dealt with legal issues but also covered multiple fields such as ethics, science, astronomy, etc. The person in charge of drafting these laws was also the main pillar of the monarch in the government:Deceneus, a sorcerer trained in Egypt and practically converted into a viceroy, as well as a high priest, thanks to whom that new Dacia became a unifying crucible.
There is no agreement among historians to determine the date on which Burebista achieved this union -there are those who believe that he did not do so in the strict sense, as regional diversity was maintained-, establishing a large segment between the years 60 B.C. and 82 BC This is due to the scarcity of sources:there is hardly an epigraphic (a decree on a stela preserved in the National Museum of Sofia) and two documentaries, these being the Geography of Strabo -contemporary of the facts- and the Getica (De origine actibusque Getarum listen)) by Jordanes (much later, 6th century AD).
In any case, by the first date Burebista felt strong enough to launch a campaign against neighboring tribes, first defeating the Celtic confederation of Boii and Theurisques, who inhabited present-day Bavaria, Bohemia, and Slovakia (plus parts of Austria and Hungary). ), then to the Bastarne Germans of the eastern Carpathians, and finally to the Scordisco Celts of southern Pannonia. He also made raids against Thracian and Illyrian tribes and even attacked Roman settlements in Macedonia. That triumphal march did not stop and continued towards the eastern seaboard.
After five years, he took advantage of the absence of a dominant power in the East since the fall of Mithridates VI to annex one after another the Greek cities of the Black Sea:Olbia (which still exists), Apollonia (current Sozopol), Tiras, Istros ( Istria), Tomis (Constance), Calatis (Mangalia), Odessos (Varna) and Mesembria (Nessebar), signing an alliance with another, Dionysus (Balchik). In this way, he linked the Transylvanian Dacians with the Moldavian and Wallachian Getae, which made it possible to unify all the tribes from east to west from the current Morava River to the lower course of the Bug and from north to south from the Carpathians to the coast. western Black Sea.
He even established the capital at Argedava. It is believed that the extension of the archaeological ruins found in the Popești locality, in the south of Romania, as well as their strategic location on the road to Dionysus, constitute an indication that they could correspond to that dava (city). However, the sources do not mention a specific location and another possible site would be Varadi, a western commune close to the border with Serbia, because another city called Argidava was there and that slight variant in the name is the one that appears in the aforementioned decree of Dionysópolis.
The sources do not clarify the issue by not mentioning the specific location of Burebista's capital. The stele is damaged and the word Argedauon it presents could originally have been Sargedauon (or Zargedauon), which would relate it to the Zargidaua cited by Ptolemy in his Geography placing it somewhere else.
But, in addition, two other notes must be taken into account:the Tabula Peutingeriana (a medieval copy of a map of the road network of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century AD) also reviews a city called Argidava in Varadi; and in imperial times, the capital of Dacia was located very close, in Sarmizegetusa Regia, a citadel on top of a mountain (not to be confused with the Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa founded by Trajan some forty kilometers later).
Let us now return to Dionysus because its main leader, Akornio, is the protagonist of the aforementioned epigraphic decree, which also includes another important piece of information:thanks to his good relationship with the Dacian monarch, of whom he became an adviser (literally «first friend» ), he was named Burebista's ambassador to Pompey in 48 BC, offering him his support in the civil war against Julius Caesar in exchange for the Dacian monarch being recognized as king of kings in the Hellenistic world. One of his paragraphs says: «… and in recent times, Burebista became the first and greatest among the kings of Thrace and owner of all the territories beyond and on the Danube…» .
Pompey gladly accepted this reinforcement, but of course that meant two things. On the one hand, the involvement of the Dacians in the conflict, which had broken out in 49 B.C. and it would last until 44 BC; on the other, having chosen the wrong side trusting in the Pompeian victory in Dyrrachium because the winner in the end was precisely the enemy. According to Suetonius, Julius Caesar learned of the pact on the eve of the battle of Pharsalia (it is not known whether Geto-Dacian troops intervened), which would be Pompey's decisive defeat, and after obtaining victory he planned a campaign against the Dacians. His assassination in 44 BC, three days before it began, forced its cancellation.
Ironically, Burebista would suffer a similar fate later that year. Apparently, it was a plot by some Dacian nobles who considered a centralized state dangerous for their privileges and longed for the times when they fished in troubled rivers, without a strong authority to control them.
As happened with Alexander, that "empire" was the result of such an individual initiative that at his death it disintegrated into four smaller kingdoms (later five) and controlled by a religious elite (Deceneus ruled one and is considered to have served as the main link until the rise of Decebalus). Only one enclave remained faithful to his project:the main nucleus, which was in the surroundings of the Orastia mountains.
We said before that Sarmizegetusa Regia, Dacian capital since the 1st century BC, was on a peak, at an altitude of 1,200 meters. This is part of that mountain chain in which a total of six fortresses were built until the 1st century AD, constituting the defensive base of the state against the Romans. Because Augustus did launch a campaign against the Getae, turning the Dacians into an objective of the empire, which would lead to the Dacian Wars:the first, during the reign of Domitian (86-89 AD) and two others in Trajan's ( AD 101-106), facing a new charismatic king, Decebalus.
As a reminder of those turbulent times and the ephemeral moment of Dacian splendor, there are the stone archaeological remains of these fortresses in Costeşti, Blidaru, Piatra Roşie and Băniţun. Also the statues and films that, together with a nationalist review of history, served to exalt the Ceaucescu regime's propaganda by comparing it to Burebista in that picturesque celebration of the anniversary that we mentioned at the beginning.