Besides the unusually rich illustrations (over 190 colored images: illustrations, artifacts, maps, monuments), this book offers a fresh view on the Dacian-Roman wars, eliminating as much as possible from the ideological nationalist ballast that came to burden the Romanian view of history. Radu Oltean gathered and adapted most archaeological findings and historical studies, old and new, for a wider public of history lovers. He avoided too much speculation on events that remain unclear for history, but made frequent use of words like "perhaps" and "probably". On occasion, Oltean ventured possible scenarios for the rare instances when historical or archaeological sources were more generous. Some readers may be surprised to discover that events or their interpretation are not at all as learned in school or seen in dramatized movies, in old books and magazines or even in certain museums.

This book focuses on lived ancient religious communication in Roman Dacia. Testing for the first time the ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ approach in terms of a peripheral province from the Danubian area, this work looks at the role of ‘sacralised’ spaces, known commonly as sanctuaries in the religious communication of the province.

Providing a detailed consideration of previous theories of native settlement patterns and the impact of Roman colonization, Dacia offers fresh insight into the province Dacia and the nature of Romanization. It analyzes Roman-native interaction from a landscape perspective focusing on the core territory of both the Iron Age and Roman Dacia. Oltean considers the nature and distribution of settlement in the pre-Roman and Roman periods, the human impact on the local landscapes and the changes which occurred as a result of Roman occupation. Dealing with the way that the Roman conquest and organization of Dacia impacted on the native settlement pattern and society, this book will find itself widely used amongst students of ancient Rome.

In this volume the author presents a full study of the topography and landscape of Roman Dacia (roughly present-day north-central and western Romania). The work begins with investigations of the Roman road network and a discussion of the Roman geographical perception of Dacia before and after the conquest, which entailed the construction of the first roads. The author then examines the ancient sources concerning the roads of Roman Dacia, using the 'Tabula Peutingeriana', itineraries and other literary sources, the archaeological remains, and the 'Tabula Traiana', to reconstruct the main roads of Roman Dacia. Further chapters widen the topic by discussing roads and rural settlements, focussing on Potaissa and its surroundings, and on Napoca and beyond, with an excursus on Roman bridges. These detailed studies enable the author to suggest a recreation of the landscape of Roman Dacia, using a combination of historical 19th-century cartography, digital data and GIS.

This book tells the little known story of Dacia, the powerful and rich land that became Transylvania and Romania. This kingdom was once the cornerstone of Eastern Europe. By A.D. 1, Dacia was the third largest military power in Europe, after the Romans and Germans. Most historians mistook the Dacians for Sarmatians, Scythians, even Slavs. This book revives the Dacian history and contributes to our understanding of the region as it is today. The wars, economy, and traditions of this Transylvanian land permeate the geopolitics of today's Balkan countries. To understand what is happening today in Modern Europe, we need to return to the study of this area. This book provides the context for the invasions that molded the Balkan and Eastern European nations that continue to redraw their borders and impose ethnic domination on each other.

Using Eutropius' remark that Trajan, after the Dacian conquest, brought colonists from all the Roman world (ex toto orbe Romano), the author analyses the phenomenon of immigration into Roman Dacia. The approach is both epigraphic and archaeological, but from both points of view, questions remain without a (precise) answer. The list of persons who are mentioned in inscriptions is divided into three main categories: the elites, the mining population (very particular in relation to the whole population), and persons belonging to middle and lower classes. The sample does not include elements of the non-stable population, such as active soldiers or members of the Roman administration in the province. In many cases, the names of people in the epigraphic sources do not indicate the origin of such persons, and only a few natives are attested. On the other hand, archaeological evidence indicates the presence in Dacia of some stone-workers from other provinces or circulating there in consequence of various wars, although it is impossible to be precise about the circulation of the latter folk. In the end, one of the main questions is: where are the natives? In both epigraphic and archaeological sources their presence is weakly attested. The author accepts that the colonisation of Dacia was indeed intense and that Eutropius' affirmation could be true; on the other hand, combining some literary evidence with the results of the present analysis and with the author's earlier demographic research, it can be said that the Romans found Dacia to be a sparsely populated territory. This is why the colonisation was not only intense but had such a strong effect in the Romanisation of the province.