Limes Dacicus
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How it came to be
Dacia became a Roman province in 106, after Trajan's Dacian Wars. It was the only Roman province lying entirely north of the Danube. Organisation went quickly under the first governor, Decimus Terentius Scaurianus, and coins struck from 112 to 114 bear the words DACIA AVGVST PROVINCIA.
Other provinces lined their troops along the Rhine or the Danube, but Dacia's mountains and rivers suited neither method, and it took some ten years to build a workable line of forts across the mountains, passes and rivers. The frontier combined watchtowers, earth ramparts, forts lying a few kilometres behind and legionary fortresses further back, and served more to monitor traffic than to repel armies. Defence centred on two points, Angustia in the east and Porolissum in the west, and the line also controlled access to gold and salt.
In 119 Hadrian handed the southeastern part to the king of the Roxolani. UNESCO dates the working life of the frontier from 106 to 271. In 2024 the Dacian Limes, with 277 component parts, was inscribed on the World Heritage List.
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