Romans and natives in the Danubian provinces (1st-6th C. AD)

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]

The Roman provinces of the Balkan peninsula, sometimes referred to as the “Danubian provinces,” have attracted strong intere st in recent scholarship. In response, more publications from Central and Southeastern Europe are becoming accessible, enriching our understanding of a region where new archaeological and epigraphic discoveries are ongoing. These publications have generated new approaches to investigating the material as well as revising old frameworks, especially regarding culture and identity of the Roman and pre-Roman populations of the Danubian provinces. In particular, they help us explore questions such as how did the Roman presence in the Danubian provinces affect the identity of the local population? How does one describe cultural exchange between the two groups? What happened to cultural traditions of the local population after the Roman Empire provincialized the area?

Lucrețiu Mihailescu-Bîrliba and Ioan Piso have both made major contributions to the understanding of the Danubian provinces and have helped make their rich evidence widely accessible to scholars. Their sizable volume is the product of the 5th International Conference on Roman Danubian Provinces, which was held at the “Alexandru Ion Cuza” University of Iași (Romania) in November 2019. It presents the most current research on Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia, Moesia Inferior, and Thrace and analyzes these provinces within the framework of Roman and pre-Roman identity. Although the contents are targeted at a more specialized audience, any scholar interested in postcolonial revisions of “Romanization” will find the volume useful.

After a brief introduction, followed up by a memorial article dedicated to the late Angela Donati, the book divides its chapters into four geographically-oriented sections. Part I takes a thematic approach, providing the volume’s general framework for establishing “Roman” identity versus “native” identity. Part II covers Dalmatia and Pannonia, Part III Dacia, and Part IV Moesia and the southern Danube regions. Parts II and III are rather short in length, with only three chapters in Part II and four in Part III, which means that discussions lean heavily towards Moesia Inferior, and to some extent Dacia.

This imbalance does not detract from the volume’s main objective, as Mihailescu-Bîrliba and Piso succeed in including a wide range of sources and methods – including literature, epigraphy, archaeology, and onomastics – which is nicely reflective of the Danubian provinces as an area that is a point of convergence for multiple identities.

Karl Strobel’s article, “Romans and ‘Natives’: Einige grundsätzliche Überlegungen,” establishes a strong framework for the rest of the volume and offers a convincing argument for the discontinuation of the term “native” to describe population resident in Danubian provincial territory before the arrival of Rome. In arguing that the term “native” invokes “eine simplifizierte Bipolarität auf die Donauprovinzen des Imperium Romanum bzw. auf den römischen Balkanraum zu übertragen,” Strobel reminds us of the challenges in using colonial frameworks to describe sociocultural dynamics in the Roman provinces (13). His argument rightly demonstrates that such frameworks do not account for how the local populations participated in Roman institutions and expressed their identity within a Roman context, whether they were Roman citizens, served in the Roman army, participated in the epigraphic habit, or included Roman luxury wares among their burial goods (13-14). Strobel emphasizes that neither Roman nor pre-Roman identity were culturally homogeneous and that frameworks used to describe provincial identity should account for this fact. A number of articles support Strobel’s arguments, focusing on topics such as rural settlements, religion, the role of women in provincial society, topography, the Roman army, and trade. In what remains, I cover only some while the rest are cataloged in the table below.

Coriolan Horațiu Opreanu’s “Barbarians from Dacia’s Northern Frontiers: Enemies or Trading Partners? Daily Life Sequences at Porolissum” examines the functions of the customs building at Porolissum beyond its role as a military center including its use as a trading post that functioned as a point of convergence between Rome and Barbaricum. This reinterpretation of the customs building, in addition to the 71 coins, 15 writing instruments, and an iron branding tool discovered within it, demonstrates that Porolissum was important for commercial exchanges between the Romans in Dacia and the merchants of Barbaricum (335-36). In other words, Opreanu’s reconsideration of the function of the customs building at Porolissum extends the crafting of Roman identity to the role of inhabitants in Barbaricum.

Rada Varga’s “Population Dynamics and Interactions at Germisara (Geoagiu-Băi, Hunedoara County)” analyzes 48 inscriptions found in Germisara, a resort town in Dacia known for its thermal springs and spas. Varga’s presentation of the epigraphic evidence not only offers insights to the Greco-Roman healing gods whom the provincials venerated, but also sheds light on religious practices of the pre-Roman local population (352-53). This insight is rare, given how little material there is attesting to pre-Roman religious practices from before the Dacian Wars. Two notable inscriptions attest to traces of Dacian identity: the golden leaflet which Decebalus Luci dedicated to the Nymphs and the poetic bilingual Latin-Greek votive altar of Caius Sentius Julius, centurion of Legio V Macedonica. First, Varga provides a careful analysis of the onomastics of the name Decebalus, arguing it might not immediately suggest Dacian ethnicity and considering that “Decebalus Luci” might denote servile status (352). Nonetheless, she argues that the evidence presented showcases how Decebalus became a popular name within the area after the war (352). Caius Sentius Julius’ votive offering further complements the golden leaflet Decebalus left behind. Not only is the inscription itself unique given that the text is bilingual, but it is also unique given the fact that the poem includes mentions of Getici fontes and the Divina Nympha Odrysta, who is nowhere else attested (353). These votive offerings show that despite the sharp decline in Dacian presence after Trajan’s Dacian Wars, evidence from the archaeological sources suggest that Dacian identity can still be traced and are sometimes presented within a Roman context.

Part IV is by far the largest section of the volume and contains a number of insightful works on Moesia and Thrace. Here I draw attention to those that focus on the role women played in shaping daily life in the Danubian provinces. Annamária-Izabella Pászint’s and Roxana-Gabriela Curcă’s studies on the role women played in daily life in Moesia Inferior sheds greater insight into a currently understudied demographic. Both authors in their respective articles highlight the role women – especially those from the provincial elite – played in shaping a provincial identity that included not only the local population but also members of the Roman elite from areas such as Greece and Asia Minor, who moved to Moesia Inferior to start a new life with their families. Pászint’s catalogue of names of the 171 women epigraphically attested in Tomis especially useful in understanding how women in the city were honored and remembered. In Tomis alone the names denote a variety of origins including Greek, Roman, and Thracian (445-47). Likewise, Pászint’s data shows that women were mostly honored in funerary monuments for their roles in the domestic sphere, although there were some cases where women were honored as priestesses (451). Curcă’s analysis on the suffixal derivatives of the women’s name throughout Moesia Inferior also added useful names to Pászint’s lists. While her article primarily focuses on the most frequent suffixes used in female onomastic records as well as their semantic and grammatical function, the examples she provides of the roles wealthy women played in Moesia Inferior were particularly illuminating, showcasing the role they played in conflicts over the delineation of territory and demonstrating the number of mixed marriages in the province (549). In all, both articles demonstrate that the role women played in the Danubian Provinces must factor in discussions of what it means to be “Roman” in this region of the Roman Empire.

While the volume is to be commended for offering such broad coverage of complex questions,  readers might wish for more information on Dalmatia. Likewise, there were a number of spelling and editorial errors that might have been avoided with further editing.

Overall, this volume is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the Danubian provinces and succeeds in critiquing past colonialist frameworks. The evidence presented from each article demonstrates that the local identity of each province was, much like Roman identity, not culturally homogeneous. The volume is to be commended for extending research in the Danubian provinces into neglected or overlooked aspects of daily life, focusing less on the Roman army and imperial administration and more on rural settlements and the role women played in crafting a localized identity. As such, this volume contributes to the ongoing effort to reconstruct a more in-depth history of the Danubian provinces under Roman rule.

Authors and Titles

Introduction (Lucrețiu Mihailescu-Bîrliba & Ioan Piso)

Angela Donati studiosa delle province danubiane (Attilio Mastino)

Part 1: General Issues

1. Romans and “Natives”: Einige grundsätzliche Überlegungen (Karl Strobel)
2. Le guerre balcanico-danubiane di Crasso (Davide Redaelli)
3. Langfristige Nachwirkungen: Die Aelii in den Donauprovinzen (Radu Ardevan)
4. Zum Kultprofil der Legio XIII Gemina: Die Suche nach geeigneten Parametern (Manfred Hainzmann)
5. Die administrative Lage der Donauprovinzen zur Zeit Mark Aurels (Leszek Mrozewicz)
6. Familles de Barbares dans la tourmente et reliefs des colonnes historiées (Mihai Popescu)
7. Donations édilitaires des esclaves et des affranchis dans les provinces de Dacie et Mésie Inférieure (Ana Honcu)

Part II: Dalmatia and Pannonia

8. Sentona und Ika – Histrische oder liburnische Gottheiten: Ein Perspektivwechsel zu den indigenen ostadriatischen Kulten (Mirjana Sanader)
9. Romans and Natives in North-Western Pannonia: The Exemplary Reconstruction of Rural Population Structures Using Iconographic, Epigraphic and Archaeological Sources (Lucia Clara Formato)
10. Where Did the Gods Live? On the Role of Urbanization in Religious Life of Roman Pannonia (1st – 3rd Centuries AD) (Zofia Kaczmarek)

Part III: Dacia

11. I Daci dopo la conquista (Livio Zerbini)
12. La Dacie Poétique (I) (Ion Piso)
13. Barbarians from Dacia’s Northern Frontier: Enemies, or Trading Partners? Daily Life Sequences at Porolissum (Coriolan Horațiu Opreanu)
14. Population Dynamics and Interactions at Germisara (Geoagiu-Băi, Hunedoara County) (Rada Varga)

Part IV: Moesia and the South Danubian Space in the Early Roman Empire and in the Late Antiquity

15. Romans and Natives in Ratiaria: Historical Sources and New Data from the Field of Archaeology (Zdravko Dimitrov)
16. New Data on the Topography of Ratiaria (Ivo Topalilov)
17. Roman Merchandise Before and After the Roman Conquest (Milica Tapavički-Ilić)
18. Contribution à la prosopographie de Tomis: Les femmes (Annamária-Izabella Pázsint)
19. I munera come sintomo di romanizzazione: Gli organizzatori di spettacoli gladiatori in Moesia Inferior e Thracia (Lyuba Radulova)
20. A New Military Diploma from Ibida (Moesia Inferior) (August 14th 99 AD) (Lucrețiu Mihailescu-Bîrliba & Dorel Paraschiv)
21. Municipia c. R. e latina nel II secolo: alcune considerazioni intorno alla lex Troesmensis (Antonio Ibba)
22. Società e cultura nel Municipium Tropaeum (Moesia Inferior) (Claudio Farre)
23. Moesia Inferior: Trilingualism Premises and Indicators (Marius Alexianu)
24. Female Anthroponymy in Moesia Inferior: Derivational Suffixes (Roxana-Gabriela Curcă)
25. Gab es im Jahr 238 n. Chr. zwei dakische Provinzen südlich der Donau? Zur Lesung und Deutung der Inschrift AE 1912, 200 = ILBulg 188 (Fritz Mitthof & Florian Matei-Popescu)
26. Die Palastbauten des Kaisers Galerius als Zeugnis für die kaiserliche Machtpräesentation in der Metropole und in der Provinz (Gerda von Bülow)
27. Le comunità dei cristiani nelle fortezze sul Danubio: alcune considerazioni sulle evidenze archaeologiche nella provincia Scythia (Alessandro Teatini)