page_title: Roman Dacia
section_title: Last decades of Dacia Traiana (235–271/275)
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Dacia / Last decades of Dacia Traiana (235–271/275)
caption_attribution_description: English: This specific Antoninianus was issued during the reign of Marcus Julius Philippus I who reigned from 244 - 248. It says: "IMP M IUL PHILIPPUS AUG" which translates to English as: Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus Augustus.
context_page_description: Roman Dacia was a province of the Roman Empire from 106 to 271–275 AD. Its territory consisted of the regions of Oltenia, Transylvania and Banat. During Roman rule, it was organized as an imperial province on the borders of the empire. It is estimated that the population of Roman Dacia ranged from 650,000 to 1,200,000. It was conquered by Trajan after two campaigns that devastated the Dacian Kingdom of Decebalus. However, the Romans did not occupy its entirety; Crișana, Maramureș, and most of Moldavia remained under the Free Dacians.
  After its integration into the empire, Roman Dacia would see a constant administrative division. In 119, it was divided into two departments: Dacia Superior and Dacia Inferior. Between 124 and around 158, Dacia Superior was divided into two provinces, Dacia Apulensis and Dacia Porolissensis. The three provinces would later be unified in 166 as a single one known as Tres Daciae due to the ongoing Marcomannic Wars. The area was the focus of a massive and organized Roman colonization. Therefore, new mines were opened and ore extraction intensified, while agriculture, stock breeding, and commerce flourished in the province.
context_section_description: The 230s marked the end of the final peaceful period experienced in Roman Dacia. The discovery of a large stockpile of Roman coins (around 8,000) at Romula, issued during the reigns of Commodus and Elagabalus, who was killed in 222 AD, has been taken as evidence that the province was experiencing problems before the mid-3rd century. Traditionally, the accession of Maximinus Thrax (235–238) marks the start of a 50-year period of disorder in the Roman Empire, during which the militarization of the government inaugurated by Septimius Severus continued apace and the debasement of the currency brought the empire to bankruptcy. As the 3rd century progressed, it saw the continued migration of the Goths, whose movements had already been a cause of the Marcomannic Wars, and whose travels south towards the Danubian frontier continued to put pressure on the tribes who were already occupying this territory. Between 236 and 238, Maximinus Thrax campaigned in Dacia against the Carpi, only to rush back to Italy to deal with a civil war. While Gordian III eventually emerged as Roman Emperor, the confusion in the heart of the empire allowed the Goths, in alliance with the Carpi, to take Histria in 238 AD before sacking the economically important commercial centres along the Danube Delta.
  Unable to deal militarily with this incursion, the empire was forced to buy peace in Moesia, paying an annual tribute to the Goths; this infuriated the Carpi who also demanded a payment subsidy. Emperor Philip the Arab (244–249) ceased payment in 245 AD and the Carpi invaded Dacia the following year, attacking the town of Romula in the process. The Carpi probably burned the castra of Răcari between 243 and 247. Evidence suggests the defensive line of the Limes Transalutanus was probably abandoned during Philip the Arab's reign, as a result of the incursion of the Carpi into Dacia. Ongoing raids forced the emperor to leave Rome and take charge of the situation. The mother of the future emperor Galerius fled Dacia Malvensis at around this time before settling in Moesia Inferior.
  But the other Maximian (Galerius), chosen by Diocletian for his son-in-law, was worse, not only than those two princes whom our own times have experienced, but worse than all the bad princes of former days. In this wild beast there dwelt a native barbarity and a savageness foreign to Roman blood; and no wonder, for his mother was born beyond the Danube, and it was an inroad of the Carpi that obliged her to cross over and take refuge in New Dacia.
  — Lactantius: Of the Manner in which the Persecutors Died – Chapter IX
  At the end of 247 the Carpi were decisively beaten in open battle and sued for peace; Philip the Arab took the title of Carpicus Maximus. Regardless of these victories, Dacian towns began to take defensive measures. In Sucidava, the townspeople hurriedly erected a trapezoidal stone wall and defensive ditch, most likely the result of a raid by the barbarian tribes around 246 or 247 AD.  In 248 AD, Romula enhanced the wall surrounding the settlement, again most likely as an additional defensive barrier against the Carpi. An epigraph uncovered in Apulum salutes the emperor Decius (reigned 249–251 AD) as restitutor Daciarum, the "restorer of Dacia". On 1 July 251, Decius and his army were killed by the Goths during their defeat in the Battle of Abrittus (modern Razgard, Bulgaria). Firmly entrenched in the territories along the lower Danube and the Black Sea's western shore, their presence affected both the non-Romanized Dacians (who fell into the Goth's sphere of influence) and Imperial Dacia, as the client system that surrounded the province and supported its existence began to break apart.
  Decius appeared in the world, an accursed wild beast, to afflict the Church, – and who but a bad man would persecute religion? It seems as if he had been raised to sovereign eminence, at once to rage against God, and at once to fall; for, having undertaken an expedition against the Carpi, who had then possessed themselves of Dacia and Moesia, he was suddenly surrounded by the barbarians
caption: Emperor Philip the Arab (244–249)
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