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Thread: Roman settlement in early Romania

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    Default Roman settlement in early Romania

    There's some misconception that exists regarding the origin of Romanians and where/when they got their Romance language. There are some claims that Romanians got their language from migrants from the Balkans (south of the Danube) and that is where the origins of Romanians lie. However, there's no proof of any mass migration occurring from the Balkans to Romania so I'll use this thread to post proof of Roman settlement in Romania from the Romans (of Italy/Rome) occurring by mentioning the existence of a few ancient Roman artifacts and other archaeological evidence in Romania (dating to the early Roman colonization of Romania) as well as some historical background first to go along with it.




    When the Romans conquered "Dacia", they only conquered King Decebal's kingdom. Outside of his kingdom still lived Dacians such as the Costobocs in northern Transylvania or the Tyragetae in Bessarabia. The Roman province of Dacia in 106 AD was just comprised of eastern & southeastern Transylvania, Banat, and Oltenia. Most Dacians did live in the Roman province of Dacia though. The Dacians who lived in lands outside this administered province were known as "Free Dacians". Their lands took about 130 years to incorporate into Roman Dacia. So peripheral Dacian lands took 130 years to conquer. Other parts of modern day Romania were inhabited by Sarmatians btw. In total, the conquest took 160+ years.

    After Dacia was conquered, it was named Dacia Felix, meaning "Dacia the Blessed". Romans from other parts of the empire were told that Dacia Felix was a rich and beautiful land with a lot of opportunities so began coming there en masse. From there on, a lot of Romans began migrating to Dacia to help develop the place into a proper Roman city. These were largely civil servants, engineers, doctors, and other specialists. But also normal citizens as well. There were also a large number of military men imported there to help defend it against the Free Dacians and other invading "barbarians". About 100 fortifications were set up. The Romans that settled in Dacia in the early second century ended up living there and starting a family. They mixed with Dacians and created a hybrid Daco-Roman people (although the Roman genetic contribution may have been minimal, their cultural contribution was immense).

    Towards the mid-late third century when the Roman Empire was in trouble, Emperor Aurelian took out a lot of Romans from Dacia, but at this point, Dacia had already been Romanized to a large extent. Dacians were an illiterate people with the only references to their language being Greek sources talking about them. The Romance-speaking people mostly lived in towns whereas the villagers were mostly Dacian-speaking. Over time, the Geto-Dacians adopted the Latin language since the people speaking it were upperclassmen without any need to learn Dacian. Its like how Vlachs in Serbia learn Serbian but Serbs don't learn Aromanian. For the peasant/low class Dacians to communicate with the upper class, they had to learn Latin. I don't think that 100% of Romania's population became Latin-speaking by the time Aurelian pulled out, but the ruling aristocrats were Latin-speaking Romans and they would have finished the job after Dacia was separated from the Roman Empire. I also heard that Roman missionaries went to Dacia after the split.




    It was built in the 7th century with additions made in the 13th century on the site of a 2nd-century Roman temple, with some materials from the Dacian Sarmizegetusa fortress. It has a stone tower above the naos. Inside the church there are 15th century mural paintings that show Jesus wearing Romanian traditional clothes.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densu%C8%99_Church

    Milliarium of Aiton is an ancient Roman milestone (milliarium) discovered in the 1758 in Aiton commune, near Cluj-Napoca, Romania.[1] Dating from 108 AD, shortly after the Roman conquest of Dacia, the milestone shows the construction of the road from Potaissa to Napoca, by demand of the Emperor Trajan. It indicates the distance of ten thousand feet (P.M.X.) to Potaissa. This is the first epigraphical attestation of the settlements of Potaissa and Napoca in Roman Dacia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliarium_of_Aiton

    Glycon (Ancient Greek: Γλύκων Glıkon, gen: Γλύκωνος Glıkonos), also spelled Glykon, was an ancient snake god. Having a large and influential cult within the Roman Empire in the 2nd century

    One single marble statue of Glycon snake was found in excavations done under the site of the former Pallas railway station in Constanța, Romania. The statue is 0.66 metres high and the snake dimension is 4.76 metres.[4] The Romanians commemorated this unique sculpture on a postage stamp in 1974, and on a bank note of 10.000 lei in 1994.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycon

    Inscriptions and sculpture in Dacia reveal a wide variety in matters of religion. Deities of the official state religion of Rome appear alongside those originating in Greece, Asia Minor, and Western Europe;[192] of these, 43.5% have Latin names.[1] The major gods of the Roman pantheon are all represented in Dacia:[192] Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Venus, Apollo, Liber, Libera, and others.[193] The Roman god Silvanus was of unusual importance, second only to Jupiter.[194] He was frequently referred to in Dacia with the titles silvester and domesticus, which were also used in Pannonia.[195]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Dacia

    Porolissum was an ancient Roman city in Dacia. Established as a military camp in 106 during Trajan's Dacian Wars, the city quickly grew through trade with the native Dacians and became the capital of the province Dacia Porolissensis in 124. The site is one of the largest and best-preserved archaeological sites in modern-day Romania. It is 8 km away from the modern city of Zalău, in Moigrad-Porolissum village, Mirsid Commune, Sălaj County.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porolissum

    The first settlements in the area can be found in the time of the Dacians, in the 1st century BC, as shown by archeological discoveries. After the Roman conquest, the Romans built the fort of Germisara in the 2nd century, however, it kept the original Dacian name. Germisara was defended by the Legio XIII Gemina.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoagiu

    Relevant parts are bolded. There is more evidence that I didn't list above, but these should be enough to get my point across. The links above should be enough proof that modern day Romania became Romanized as a result of being incorporated in the Roman Empire rather than because of some unrecorded Vlach migrants from the Balkan Peninsula. They're almost all dated to the 2nd century which is shortly after Trajan conquered Romania from the Geto-Dacians.

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    It's important to note that even though Roman administration left temporarily in 275, people remained behind. The Roman cities in Dacia functioned as such until the beginning of the 7th century. And so did the Roman fortresses, which show changes made to them, throughout centuries (2nd to 7th century). In fact, Emperor Constantine retook the territory of the Southern and Central Romania. He even built a second bridge across the Danube, which was a major expense. Also the Roman cities show the typical social changes experienced in the Roman empire, including the spread of early Christianity, persecution of Christians and the final adoption of Christianity.

    Then, there is a 2 century gap, from which we don't have many sources of what happened, 8th to 9th century, during the Avar rule.
    After that we have Bulgarian sources, which have many references to Vlachs living North of Danube.

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    How Romanian came to be spoken NORTH of Danube, when all evidence shows that the brief Roman occupation did not result into assimilation of local people, is one of Balkans' great mystery. Probably there was some major event South of Danube during the Dark Ages that caused masses of Romance speakers to migrate first via Carpathians, then much later on in lowlands.

    Here are some indisputable ingredients that may solve the mystery:
    1. Only partial occupation of Dacia, for a brief period with seemingly little participation of local inhabitants to Roman life. The probability latter emerged into Romans (including regions never under Roman control) after Roman retreat is virtually zero!
    2. Long occupation south of Danube (almost 400 years), lots of Roman administration and urban life there: enough time for locals to assimilate with ample evidence that proves it. That is the only viable candidate for urheimat of Romanian language, but WHERE EXACTLY?
    3. Substrate language in Romanian seems to be related/identical to ancestor of Albanian. Even if similarities came from language contact (VERY unlikely, since the two languages share more than just words, but also structural similarities), it still proves the two peoples lived nearby during their formation.
    4. Ancient Romanian placenames are very sparse, both North and South of Danube, so they cannot be used as evidence for either of claims.
    5. Area of highest linguistic diversity is South of Danube, in places where Albanian is certain to have been spoken when Slavs came (Nish-Scopje-Shtip)

    In my opinion, solving Albanians' mystery yields Romanians' one as well

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    Hence why they're Romanian

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    Last edited by Daco Celtic; 10-19-2019 at 05:03 AM.

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    There was a lot of Roman infrastructure south of the Danube - Via Egnatia, Via Militaris, as two examples..

    Given Greece's location, and the reasonable supposition that Greek activity would have been a major distributor of Rome's/Romance in the Balkans, it seems only prudent to consider the likelihood of Romance investing the territory of modern Romania, from the south.

    To say nothing of the Adriatic, and how any Caesar might have skipped a stone by hand, across from Italy to the Balkans..
    Last edited by Dna8; 10-19-2019 at 05:12 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by aherne View Post
    How Romanian came to be spoken NORTH of Danube, when all evidence shows that the brief Roman occupation did not result into assimilation of local people, is one of Balkans' great mystery. Probably there was some major event South of Danube during the Dark Ages that caused masses of Romance speakers to migrate first via Carpathians, then much later on in lowlands.
    Don't you think if such an event occurred, there would be mention of it? We have records of so many events occurring from that time period. Why would such a significant migration be unheard of?

    In any such case, at least we can say that the links above prove without a doubt that Romanians/Vlachs were in Transylvania before others.

    1. Only partial occupation of Dacia, for a brief period with seemingly little participation of local inhabitants to Roman life. The probability latter emerged into Romans (including regions never under Roman control) after Roman retreat is virtually zero!

    2. Long occupation south of Danube (almost 400 years), lots of Roman administration and urban life there: enough time for locals to assimilate with ample evidence that proves it. That is the only viable candidate for urheimat of Romanian language, but WHERE EXACTLY?
    Dacia was fully conquered eventually, and most of it was ruled for over a century where it was treated as a province that needed to be colonized.

    South of the Danube in the eastern Balkans was mainly Greek-speaking. If we go by the Jirechek Line, the only part of the eastern Balkans south of the Danube that was mainly Latin-speaking was northern Bulgaria. There was obvious Roman influence in regions south of that, but it was more Greek-influence than Roman-influenced.

    There was a large scale migration from the western part of the Roman Empire (around Italy) to modern Romania. Dacia was named Dacia Felix ("Dacia the Blessed") specifically to encourage large scale Roman migration to that region. Just notice how all the Romanian members here get Italian regions on 23andMe.

    Once the numbers of the Romans got large enough, they passed their language onto the peasants. When richer Roman landowners needed to communicate with the Dacian peasants, the language of the dominant group would be used. Over time, this language spread to the lower classes and became the dominant language.

    To reiterate, the Roman migration was very significant. It wasn't a tiny 1% elite imposing their language on a 99% majority. There were lots of Romans in Romania by the time Dacia split off from the rest of the Roman Empire. Eventually, the interactions between the Roman upper class & the Dacian lower class, and the need of a common language to communicate led to Latin becoming the dominant language over time.

    3. Substrate language in Romanian seems to be related/identical to ancestor of Albanian. Even if similarities came from language contact (VERY unlikely, since the two languages share more than just words, but also structural similarities), it still proves the two peoples lived nearby during their formation.

    4. Ancient Romanian placenames are very sparse, both North and South of Danube, so they cannot be used as evidence for either of claims.

    5. Area of highest linguistic diversity is South of Danube, in places where Albanian is certain to have been spoken when Slavs came (Nish-Scopje-Shtip)

    In my opinion, solving Albanians' mystery yields Romanians' one as well
    Everything you're saying applies to Dacians (pre-Romance inhabitants of the region) rather than Romanians. The linguistic similarities to Albanian likely have to do with either contact between Dacian and Albanian or them both stemming from a common Proto-Thraco-Illyrian language.

    In any case, Dacians originating south of the Danube doesn't necessarily mean Romanians did.

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    Romania isn't hard to explain, it undertook 100's of years of Roman rule. If it wasn't for the Slavs then most of the west balkans would be speaking a latin derived language as well. We can see these language shifts within our modern world so it's not really a huge mystery. Look at all the African countries which speak French but are 100% SSA genetically; look at Jamaicans speaking English, etc.

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