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The Dacians were a Thracian people who lived in modern-day Romania and came into conflict with Rome as the empire expanded. Rome invaded Dacia several times: first in 86–88 CE under Emperor Domitian, and again in 101–102 CE and 105–106 CE under Emperor Trajan. In 106 CE, Rome finally conquered Dacia and incorporated it into the empire as a new province. To commemorate this victory, Trajan commissioned several monumental building projects, most famously Trajan’s Column, which depicts the Dacian Wars in detailed narrative reliefs. In these monuments, the Dacians are shown as a defeated enemy and are consistently portrayed wearing Phrygian caps, trousers, boots, and unkempt beards, often carved from colored marbles. Images of Dacians were later reused as symbolic decorative elements on other Roman monuments, most notably on the Arch of Constantine.
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Cite this page as: Darius Arya, The American Institute for Roman Culture, “The Dacian,” Ancient Rome Live. Last modified 1/10/2026. https://ancientromelive.org/the-dacian/
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Created by The American Institute of Roman Culture, published on 10/24/2019 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
