The Getae or Dacians engaged in many wars of defence or of conquest, both against the barbarian neighbouring tribes, whom they subdued and compelled to live in peace, and against the Egyptians, the Persians, the Macedonians and the Romans
     The Egyptian pharaoh Sesostris sent his fleet to the mouth of the Danube to compel the Getae to accept the settlement in their river ports and seaports of colonists enjoying the same rights as the Greek colonists from Miletus who had founded and developed the fortified harbour towns of the Black Sea coast: Dionysopolis (Balcic), Callatis (Mangalia), Tomis (Constanta), Histria, etc.
     The army of Darius, King of the Persians, marching against the Scythians, passed through the country of the Daco-Getae (Dobrogea). On reaching the shores of the Danube (Bessarabia), it was beaten and forced to retreat in haste over the bridge guarded by the Greeks who had thrown it across the river at the point known today as Isaccea.
     In his narrative of this adventurous expedition of the Persian king, Herodotus says:

     "Before reaching the Ister (Danube), the first people which he subdued were the Getae, who believe themselves to be immortal. The Thracians who occupy the region of Salmisad, who live to the north of the fortified cities of Apollonia and Mesembria and who call themselves Secermiaz and Nipsei, submitted to Darius without struggle. But the Getae, who were determined to put up a stubborn resistance were promptly subdued, though they are braver and more just than the Thracians."¹

     The praise which Herodotus bestows upon the Getae for their bravery and for their spirit of equity is repeated and emphasised by the poet Horace, who celebrates their character and their virtues in one of his odes:

     "Happier are the austere Getae, whose boundless fields produce bounteous crops and all the gifts of Ceres; they do not cultivate the same piece of ground more than one year..."²

     Another passage shows that the Getae were very war-like and greatly feared by the Romans, who suffered serious defeats in their wars against them on the banks of the Danube:

     "While Rome busies herself with intrigues and disputes, she falls, smitten by the Dacians and by the Ethiopians, the former striking terror because of their fleet, the latter no less because of their arrows."³

     The Celts invaded Dacia in 280 BC. They dominated the country for some time, but were then obliged to turn back to the west.
     The Daco-Getae fought especially against the Romans. The latter had established a protectorate over Scythia Minor and a part of the plain to the west of the Danube, following upon the victorious expedition of the general Licinius Lucullus (72-71 BC). They wished to extend these conquests. This was the origin of the numerous wars, in which the Romans were beaten by the Dacians.
     In the reign of the Dacian ruler Burebista (1st century BC), the Dacian kingdom extended from the sources of the Danube in the west to the Black Sea and the Bug River in the east, and from the northern Carpathians to the gorges of the Haemus Mountains (Balkans) in the south; it thus occupied a larger area than the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914.
     According to Strabo and Dion Cassius, Burebista, who was feared by Rome, could mobilise nearly 200,000 men in time of war. Strabo gives the following account of him:

     "Burebista, who was of Getic origin, had been called to govern his people, which he found weakened by many wars. But his adminstration and his constant vigilance enabled him in a few years to become very powerful and to subdue several of his neighbours. He became the terror of the Romans. He boldly crossed the Danube and plundered Thrace, Macedonia and Illyria; he then crushed the Celts allied to the Thracians and Illyrians and destroyed the Boii and their king Critassir, as well as the Tauristi. To keep the Getic nation under his rule, Burebista had recourse to the aid of Decenaeus, a priest and augur who had travelled in Egypt and knew a few prophetic signs. By these artifices he persuaded his compatriots, who had formerly worshipped Zamolxis, to regard him as divine. The Getae were so submissive that Burebista made them destroy their vines and prevented them from drinking wine. The Getae could easily raise an army of 40,000 men, and 200,000 in case of need."
 
     The last Dacian king, Decebalus, compelled the Romans to pay him tribute and to send him engineers and skilled workmen to build roads and fortifications; this action had an adverse effecton the prestige of Rome. Florus states that the Dacians had introduced in their army the discipline and the fighting methods of the Romans. Decebalus had a well organised army and many forts of earth and stone about his capital, Sarmizegetusa, which was situated in the southwest part of what is now Transylvania, in a region surrounded by mountains, as well as at other strategic points.
     The Romans fully realized the Dacian peril. They were aware that the least weakness with regard to their bold neighbours to the north of the Danube would destroy the military and political prestige which kept other peoples subject to them, and would cause them to lose the provinces to the south of the Danube,which the Dacians had the intention of conquering. For these reasons, and for the purpose both of relieving Rome of the humiliating tribute imposed by Decebalus and of securing for the Empire sovereignty over the Danube and over the mountains to the north, which formed a natural fortress (Transylvania), the Emperor Trajan, a Spaniard by origin and a famous general, was authorized by the Senate to undertake a campaign against Dacia.
     The Dacians and their heroic king offered an extremely vigorous resistance. Trajan, who had led his best legions to the Danube, was obliged to make two expeditions. The first (101/102) ended in a peace which Decebalus violated. The second (105/106), during which the bridge over the Danube at Drubeta was built, ended in the final defeat of the Dacians and in the Roman
conquest.
     After the brilliant victory of 106, the Column of Trajan was set up at Rome in the Forum of the Emperor. Its bas-reliefs narrate in stone the history of the war of the Romans against the Dacians and of the renown won by the great general in Dacia.
     Economic interests and the desire to spread Roman influence north of the Danube determined Trajan to undertake a methodical and extensive colonization immediately after the conquest. He called Roman settlers from various parts of the Empire in order to create a Roman life in the new province and thus to denationalize the Dacians as rapidly as possible.

The Romans in Dacia
     The colonists who settled in Roman Dacia came from Italy, Dalmatia, Lower Pannonia, Syria and other parts of the Roman Empire. Eutropius says:

     "As Dacia had been emptied of men by the protracted war with Decebalus, Trajan, in order to people this province (a thousand miles in circumference), brought in from all parts of the Roman world a vast multitude of people to dwell in the fields and the towns."⁴

     Trajan died in 117. His successors continued to bring in more colonists, who, together with the soldiers, veterans and imperial officials who were settled here with their families, implanted the Roman spirit in Dacia. Wax tablets found in Transylvania show us that many colonists came from Dalmatia to work the gold mines of the Apuseni Mountains.
     Guglielmo Ferrero writes:

     "Trajan colonised the conquered territory on a large scale. Colonists were brought in from all directions. Contractors were engaged to work the mines. Wheat-growing and water transport on the Danube made great progress. In a short time, the old kingdom of Decebalus was transformed into an important Roman province. The old language gave way completely to the speech of Rome, which has been preserved here down to our own day."⁵

     The French historian, Victor Chapot, also writes:

     "To fill the gaps left by the war and to spread the Latin spirit in the country as quickly as possible, the Romans, contrary to their usual procedure, threw in at once a multitude of colonists recruited over a wide area,notably in the Greek countries, in the Thraco-Illyrian peninsula. Miners were brought from Dalmatia, soldiers from the Celtic provinces. Trajan also transplanted to the new province 12,000 Dacian families from the unsubdued regions surrounding the Carpathians. Finally, many Italians were attracted by the gold mines; and mixed marriages brought the various elements together. The colonization took place almost exclusively along the rivers; the Olt (Alutus), the Mures (Marissus), the Somes, and their tributaries. In the end, the native stock was outnumbered; we dare not use the term fusion; the same inscriptions name side by side a municipium and a colonium at Apulum, the most important city. The Latin language spread, thanks to the army and to the growth of associations and the unions of the watermen (utricularii) who transported the riches of the country - salt, iron and marble."⁶

     The Romanisation of the people of Scythia Minor (the Dobrogea) was practically complete at the time of Trajan's wars against Decebalus. The inhabitants of these provinces (Daco-Getae and Bessi) had been subjects of Rome since the reign of Claudius (46 AD).
    The prosperity of the Dacians under Roman rule was so great that their country was called Dacia Felix.
     The Latinisation of the people was so intense and so profound that it reached even the rural population. Within a few decades after the loss of their independence, the Dacians had adopted Latin - at first merely the official language - and had begun to adapt themselves to Roman life and habits.
     If the Latinisation of Dacia had been superficial (as some historians contend), it is certain that, after the evacuation of this province in the time of Aurelian, the Dacian nation would have reappeared with its language, its customs, its traditions and its religious beliefs. That did not happen. The Rumanians appeared in place of the Dacians. The Rumanian people were born of a fusion of the Dacians and the Romans and of the multiplication of the old Latin or Latinised colonists introduced by Trajan and by his successors. The Dacians and their language disappeared from history and from ethnography; the Rumanian people was born on the same territory. This clearly proves that Latinisation was complete when Aurelian, in 275, recalled the legions and the imperial officials into pseudo-Dacia (south of the Danube), Moesia (Dacia Ripensis - the region of the Danube) and "Mediterranean" Dacia.
     The German writer, Dr. Julius Jung, reaches the same conclusion:

     "...Transylvania, the Banat, Oltenia and a part of Muntenia, though inhabited by a large Dacian population, were very rapidly Latinised. The Daco-Roman population at this period spoke a peasant dialect of Latin (romanisches Bauerndialekt)."⁷

How Dacia was Abandoned
     Dacia was one of the most flourishing provinces of the Empire. Its population was completely Latinised and pacified. From the military viewpoint, it served as a rampart against the attacks of the Germanic peoples from the west and against the assaults of the barbarians from the east.
     The majority of the historians invoke military and political motives. The frontiers of the Empire were too extended and therefore vulnerable. Dacia formed a dangerous salient. Because of the repeated attacks of the Goths, the evacuation of this province and the consolidation of the Danubian frontier became necessary.
     Moreover, the internal weakness of the Empire and the imperious urging of the Senate, which demanded the recall of the legions and of the officials who had been sent to distant provinces, especially into the provinces which had been annexed after the victorious expeditions of Trajan, may have determined this retreat. The Empire, with less extended frontiers, might certainly be able to defend itself better against the attacks of the barbarians which had begun after the death of Trajan.
     ...But how could the evacuation of Dacia have prevented further attacks of the barbarians, whether in Italy or in other territories of the Empire? The proof of the contrary is that, after this event, the attempted aggressions became increasingly bold.
     The frontiers of the Empire, moreover, had been violated before this period: Italy had been invaded and its capital menaced, but no one had demanded the evacuation of Dacia.
     A situation quite as critical had arisen in 166, 59 years after the annexation of Dacia. In that year, the Roman frontier of the Danube had been crossed by a coalition of Germanic armies which had invaded Dacia, Pannonia, Noricum, Rhaetia and Italy. The Germanic bands had crossed the Alps and, after besieging Aquileia, had advanced to the Piave and were threatening Rome.
     What did the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius do after the second war against the Germans? He wanted to push back the northern frontier of Dacia to the central Carpathians, in order to guarantee the province against barbarian incursions; to this end he strengthened the garrisons in the interior and reorganised the administration. He never thought, at any rate, of abandoning the country; and, because he had protected them, the grateful Daco-Romans raised a monument to him.
     A further proof of the strategic importance of the Dacian territory for the Romans is furnished by the war undertaken against the Germans between 167 and 178.
     ...Rome approved the evacuation of Dacia in 275. Yet the situation of that part of the Empire was in no way more serious than in 166. Does this measure indicate the decline of Roman power?
     ...That is what happened in the Roman Empire at the end of the 3rd century. Its timorous leaders were unable to organise the defence of all the frontiers or to strengthen the army against the danger of barbarian invasions from the north and the east. They began to abandon provinces which had been conquered, Latinised and developed by Caesar and the glorious generals of former times. The latter, by their imperialistic policies and their victories, had developed and strengthened the Roman state; they had succeeded in raising and securing its prestige in the world.
     This surrender of Dacia was, furthermore, a tragedy for the province itself. After the departure of the legions and the officials, the Dacian population were left to their fate. We do not know what happened after this sad event. Rome did not cede Dacia to another state, so that, in the absence of any transmission of sovereignty, the Empire remained at least the nominal possessor of the country. But it no longer felt obliged to make any provision for administration, police or justice; and it no longer protected the inhabitants or their property against brigandage and against the possible attacks of the barbarians.
     It is certain that, in abandoning Dacia, the Romans did not announce that they were withdrawing permanently. Being men of order, they must have handed over the administration and the distribution of justice to Latinised provincials remaining in the country.
     ...Some historians claim that the entire population crossed the Danube and abandoned the province at the same time as the legions and the imperial officials. It is obviously impossible that all the natives should have left in this way. It is barely possible that some of the inhabitants of the cities might have been able to follow the legions across the Danube. But the peasants attached to the land of their ancestors certainly remained where they were, whatever the conditions of existence may have been and however insecure  may have been the country, exposed as it was to the barbarian invasions. There is no example of a sedentary population, living in the country of its ancestors, abandoning en masse its homes, its cities, its villages, its houses, its farms, all its wealth, out of fear of a probable or possible invasion.
     ...No doubt the Roman authorities did not announce to the Dacian people that their withdrawal was final, that the state renounced the exercise of its sovereign rights over the province. Such a confession might have provoked serious disorders. The legions left the country gradually; the civil servants and magistrates, as they were recalled, were replaced by native elements in order to maintain public order and justice on the basis of Roman law. It is certain that the Romans let it be supposed that they would continue to exercise their protectorate under a new form. If the population had left Dacia at the same time as the legions, it would have been evacuated in due time by the Roman authorities. But that was not the case; no chronicler has related anything of the sort.
     If no document exists giving evidence of a partial or complete evacuation of Dacia in 275, we have proof, on the other hand, that Latin life continued after the departure of the legions and of the imperial officials. The Roman law long remained enforced; Christianity spread from the 4th century on; and the Latin language was still being used by the native population when, somewhat later, the Rumanian language began to take shape.
     In the 6th century, the preservation of this Latin life north of the Danube, as well as political and military interests, led Emperor Justinian to occupy and fortify the left bank of the river in old Dacia. He even wished to reoccupy the whole of the Dacia of Trajan. Unfortunately, he was unable to carry out this project.
     Roman fortresses with strong garrisons existed on the left bank of the Danube, at Drubeta and in other places, not only under Justinian but under his predecessors. This part of Dacia had remained under the real control of Rome after 275.
     Vasile Pa^rvan, the Rumanian historian, writes:

     "We may accept as probable the existence of a genuine Roman province north of the Danube from the 4th to the 6th century. It included a large part of the Banat to the west and of Oltenia to the east. This province, like Pannonia, lost in 380, was sometimes completely separated from the Empire; sometimes placed indirectly under its authority by the presence of barbarians ruling it as allies (foederati) of the new Rome; and sometimes really Roman, as in the time of Justinian."⁸

     The spread of Latin Christianity in Dacia through the intermediary of bishops who preached in Latin - the language spoken by the Daco-Romans - is a further proof that this people had not left the country. Many terms of Latin origin have thus remained in the Rumanian liturgical vocabulary.
     We read in L. Homo:

     "All that part of the population which lived in the neighbourhood of the camps - legionaries, soldiers' families, retired veterans, merchants, etc. - followed the army to the right bank of the Danube. But there must have remained in the province a large number of the old inhabitants, who lived on good terms with the Goths and who had no interest in abandoning the province. A complete evacuation, moreover, could probably not have been carried out without another war: the Goths would not have acquiesced in the departure of the whole civilian population. If that population accepted a new regime, Aurelian had no reason to adopt a more intransigent attitude."⁹

The Origins and the Continuity of the Rumanian People in theTerritory of Ancient Dacia
     All the old medieval chronicles - none of which is Rumanian - mention the existence of the Rumanians in the territory of ancient Dacia and in the Balkan peninsula, under various names, such as Volochi, Vlachi, Blachi and others, as well as under the names of the different Rumanian districts and lands.
     a) The Russian Chronicle of Nestor (10th century) speaks of the Rumanians (Volochi) as settled long since in the regions which they still inhabit at the time of the Magyar invasion of Pannonia.
     b) The Chronicle of the Anonymous Notary of King Bela written in the 13th century, mentions the existence of a native Rumanian population before the arrival of the Magyars in Pannonia, as well as the existence of Rumanian principalities and duchies between the Tisza and the Carpathians.
     c) The Hungarian chronicler, Simon of Geza, in the 13th century, likewise mentions the presence of Rumanians in the same districts before the Hungarian invasion.
     d) The Anonymous Chronicle of 1308,¹⁰ attributed to a Catholic ecclesiastic, speaks of the Rumanians of Pannonia, whom the Huns (Hungarians) had encountered on their arrival in that country. It mentions also the Rumanians of the Balkan peninsula, who have the same Roman origin.
     e) In the Niebelungenlied of the Middle Ages, the following peoples are mentioned: Russians, Poles, Wallachians, Kievans and Petchenegs. Among the princes who come to the court of Attila, the prince of the Wallachians is also mentioned.
     f) In the Chronicon pictum Vindobonense and in the Chronicon Posoniense as well as in the medieval writings of Thomas of Spalato, Ricardus, Odo of Deogilo and others, we find confirmation of the statements of the Anonymous Chronicler of King Bela and of the other Hungarian chroniclers concerning the continuity of the Rumanian people in the territory of ancient Dacia.
     g) In a charter dated 1222, Andrew II, King of Hungary, decreed that the Teutonic Knights of the Tara Ba^rsei (Brasov region) as well as the Saxons should be exonerated from all tribute when they passed through the country of the Siculi (Szekels) or the country of the Rumanians (Terra Blachorum).

1. The Russian Chronicle of Nestor

     The Russian chronicle known as the Chronicle of Nestor was written toward the end of the 10th century or the beginning of the 11th. It states that the country of the Varangians, situated on the shore of the sea of the same name, extends to the territory of the Angles and to that of the Volochi:

     "Near this sea of the Varangians, live the Varangians, to the east, toward the land of Shem. They likewise live to the west, also near this sea, as far as the confines of the land of the Angles and of the Volochi. Among the descendants of Japhet are likewise numbered the Varangians, the Suevi, the Norwegians, the Goths, the Russians, the Angles, the Galicians, the Volochi, the Germans, the Carolingians, the Venetians, the Franks and other tribes. They are settled from the west to the south and are neighbours of the peoples descendant from Ham... 
    And when the Volochi attacked the Slavs of the Danube and settled among them and oppressed them, the Slavs departed and settled on the Vistula, under the name of Leshi."

     The significant point is that the author of this chronicle, written soon after the Hungarians settled in Pannonia, mentions the existence of the Rumanians at that time in the very regions where they live today. He recalls the struggles which took place between the Rumanians and the Slavs, on the one hand, and between the Rumanians and the Hungarians on the other:

    In 6396, 6397, 6398, 6400, 6401, 6402, 6403, 6404, 6505, and 6406¹¹ (888-897 AD), the Hungarians passed near Kiev, near the mountain which is still called today Ugors Koie, and when they had reached the banks of the Dnieper, they set up their tents there, for they were nomads, as the Polovitsi still are today. Coming from the east, they marched in haste over the high mountains which are called the mountains of the Ouguri, and began to fight against the Volochi and the Slavs who inhabited those countries.The Slavs had been settled there before, and the Volochi had subdued the country of the Slavs. Later, however, the Hungarians drove out the Volochi, took possession of this country,and settled in the same places as the Slavs, whom they had subdued. Since then that region is called Hungary.

     Although certain historians have claimed that these Volochi of the Chronicle of Nestor were Franks or Bulgars, Schlozer says:

     "These Volochi are neither Rumanians nor Bulgarians nor "Walsche" but "Vlachi", descendants of the great and very ancient family of Thracians, Dacians and Getae, who still possess today their own language, and, in spite of all persecutions, live by millions in Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania and Hungary. It is true that they are nowhere mentioned under this name before the 11th century. They nevertheless inhabited a district which for several centuries remained a terra incognita after Aurelian withdrew all the Roman colonists from Dacia and abandoned the region north of the Danube. It is infinitely unlikely that these nations have completely vanished since then. They were probably long subject to the Goths, then to the Huns and to yet other peoples; but they always freed themselves. As to what happened next in their great native country between the 5th and the 9th centuries, history is informed only imperfectly or not at all. And what it tells us is at least not in contradiction with what Nestor states namely, that there was a time when the Vlachi attacked Pannonia and ended by subjugating the Slav inhabitants who peopled the region at that time."

2. Chronicle of the Anonymous Notary of King Bela of Hungary

     The chronicle of the Anonymous Notary of King Bela (Bela II or Bela III) of Hungary is not without importance, for it records the presence of Rumanians in Transylvania and other districts even before the invasion of Pannonia by the Hungarian tribes.
     The author informs us that the Hungarian hordes made their way into the Ardeal by the defile of Ciucea and that they fought against the Rumanian Voivode Gelu. The Magyar troops were commanded by Tuhutum. After the death of Gelu the Rumanians "voluntarily made peace and chose as their lord Tuhutum, the father Horta".

The "Dark Millenary" in the History of the Romanians as Seen by Constantin C. Giurescu; by Virgil Ca^ndea
     ...And the fact that during that millenary 70 percent of Dacia's hills and plains were covered with forests (which were only cleared in the comparatively recent past), enables the historian to oppose an older theory according to which the Daco-Romans and subsequently the Romanians had taken shelter in the mountains when the migratory population overran their territory, and to prove that the ideal place of refuge before invasions was the forest, which the migratory populations used to the steppe, avoided. In the shelter of the forests, the Romanians continued in their ancient pursuits, inherited from Roman civilization. Giurescu illustrates this by the persistence in Dacia of watermills, a typically Roman grinding installation, described by Vitruvius in De architectura (1st century BC), which the Romanians could not have come to know only in the 8th or the 12th centuries but had used it uninterruptedly ever since the Roman period. In proof of it stands the terminology, which is exclusively of Latin origin, as well as toponymy and the proverbs which include the words `to grind` (a macina in Romanian) and `mill` (moara in Romanian, from the Latin machina and mola).

     Giurescu corrects the misrepresentation of Dacia as a plain offering vast arable areas by showing that until a few centuries ago, those areas were covered with age-old forests the clearing of which continued up to the 19th century. No one but the natives of the country could find their bearings in the thick of those forests. Foreign armies were wary of venturing into them. In  75-74 BC, Gaius Scribonius Curio, Proconsul of Macedonia, reached the Danube, but did not venture to cross it, fearing "the darkness of the woods" (Curio Dacia tenus venit, sed tenebras saltuum expavit). In 87 AD, Cornelius Fuscus, another Roman general, did make his way into Dacia's forests, but was defeated by King Decebalus. During the two wars waged to conquer Dacia in 101-102 and 105-106, the Romans often fought in thickly wooded areas, as shown on Trajan's Column. The only lines of communication that made it easier for the migratory populations to make their way into Dacia were the river valleys. Being used to the steppe, these populations avoided the forests and their misleading thickness.The Cumans named Teleorman (mad forest) the extensive forests in the southwest of Wallachia, and the Turks gave the same name (Deliorman) to the forests in the south of Dobrudja. The migratory populations were awed by the country's forests and many of the toponymy of foreign origin on Dacia's territory designate varieties of forests and of trees.
     Inter-Carpathian Dacia was named Erdely - wooded land - by the Hungarians (whence the Romanian term Ardeal is derived; Transylvania, which is of Latin origin, means "beyond the forest"); southern Transylvania is named Sylva Blacorum et Bissenorum (the forest of the Romanians and of the Petchenegs) in a Magyar document of the year 1224; the Slavs named Vlasca (the Romanians' land) the wooded area of Wallachia and Moldavia, and the also named Vlasia (the same meaning) the widespread forest north of Bucharest. Rivers, counties and geographic areas bear names of the same family given by the Slav migrators: Bucovina (from the Slav buk - beech); dumbrava (from dyb - oak); Ilfov (from elha - alder); Tutova (from tut - blackberries); zavoi (river-side woods), and so forth. Forests were natural defense works and, according to testimonies of the 16th century  and of the 17th century, this was one of the reasons why the Turks decided against occupying the Romanian countries. During the invasions (in the "dark millenary" and also later at the time of the Tatar and the Ottoman onslaughts), the Romanians withdrew into the forests. After a first clash, they would arrive at some peaceful form of cohabitation with the invaders to whom they ceded part of their agricultural produce or of their livestock. Forests not only afforded protection, but also excellent living conditions, considering the stage of the economy in those days, from cattle-breeding and hunting, to tillage, fruit-growing, and bee-keeping (in glades and clearings), also providing materials for housebuilding, fortifications and a varied cottage industry.

     The forests not only did duty as the Romanians' providential shelter from invasions, they also offered the Romanians an advantage they made good use of in their relations with the migrating populations who, without the cooperation of the natives, who knew their ins and outs, could not have travelled easily over the occupied territory. In Strategicon (XI, 4, 30 and 38) Mauricius proves that he knows the two functions of the forest for the inhabitants north of the Danube, when he writes about the Slavs and Ants who, living in the vicinity of forests, easily sought refuge in them (obviously those were Slavs who had become sedentary and had adopted the ways of life of the Romanians); then, as a warning against the "refugees" (rhephougous) "sent to show us the way" - ie., the Romanized people who had withdrawn south of the Danube and who were used as guides by the Byzantine forces in their expeditions north of that river, he writes: "even though they are Romans," they may mislead the Byzantines. That the Romanians were employed for such jobs is also recorded by Anna Comnena, who stated that in 1094 the Cumans "had learned from theWallachians the paths through the forests" and had thus ben able to cross the Balkan Mountains and to fall upon the Byzantines.¹²

¹ Melpomene, IV
² Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Odes, Lib. III, 24.
³ ibid., III, 6.
⁴ Book VIII
⁵ Nouvelle Histoire Roumaine, Paris, p. 234.
⁶ Le Monde Roumain, Paris, 1927, pp. 431 and 432.
⁷ Die Anfange der Romanen.
⁸ Contributions epigraphiques a l'histoire du christianisme daco-romain, p. 192.
⁹ Essai sur le regne de l'empereur Aurelien.
¹⁰ Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis.
¹¹ These dates probably derive from the assumed date of creation.
¹² Alexias X, II, 3
 

 
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