Dacii / Dacians - Romanian Movie Trailer History Romania

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Uploaded by on Oct 23, 2010

The Dacians, situated north of the lower Danube in the area of the Carpathians and Transylvania, are the earliest named people from the present territory of Romania. They are first mentioned in the writings of Ancient Greeks, in Herodotus (Histories Book IV XCIII - "[Getae] the noblest as well as the most just of all the Thracian tribes") and Thucydides (Peloponnesian Wars, Book II - "[Getae] border on the Scythians and are armed in the same manner, being all mounted archers").

Later the Dacians were mentioned in the Roman documents (Caesar's De Bello Gallico, Book VI 25,1 - "The Hercynian Forest [...] stretches along the Danube to the areas of the Daci and Anarti"), and also under the name Geta (plural Getae). Strabo in his Geography, Book VII 3,12 tells about the Daci-Getae division "Getae, those who incline towards the Pontus and the east, and Daci, those who incline in the opposite direction towards Germany and the sources of the Ister". In Strabo's opinion, the original name of the Dacians was "daoi", which Mircea Eliade in his De Zalmoxis à Genghis Khan explained with a possible Phrygian cognate "Daos", the name of the wolf god. This assumption is enforced by the fact that the Dacian standard, the Dacian Draco, had a wolf head.

In ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks - the North-Danubian branches of the Thracians. Dacia had in the middle the Carpathian Mountains and was bounded approximately by the Danubius river, in Greek sources Istros (the Danube) or, at its greatest extent, by the Haemus Mons (the Balkan Mountains) to the south--Moesia (Dobrogea), a region south of the Danube, was a core area where the Getae lived and interacted with the Ancient Greeks--Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea) and river Danastris, in Greek sources Tyras (the Dniester) to the east (but several Dacian settlements are recorded in part of area between Dniester and Hypanis river (the Bug), and Tisia (the Tisza) to the west (but at times included areas between Tisza and middle Danube). It thus corresponds to modern countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as smaller parts of Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, and Ukraine.

Dacians and Getae were North Thracian tribes. Dacian tribes had both peaceful and military encounters with other neighboring tribes, such as Celts, Ancient Germanics, Sarmatians, and Scythians, but were most influenced by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. The latter eventually conquered, and linguistically and culturally assimilated the Dacians. A Dacian Kingdom of variable size existed between 82 B.C. until the Roman conquest in 106 A.D. The capital of Dacia, Sarmizegetusa, located in modern Romania, was destroyed by the Romans, but its name was added to that of the new city (Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa) built by the latter to serve as the capital of the Roman province of Dacia.

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