Burebista | |
---|---|
Directed by | Gheorghe Vitanidis |
Written by | Mihnea Gheorghiu |
Produced by | Gheorghe Pîrîu |
Starring | George Constantin Ion Dichiseanu Emanoil Petruț Alexandru Repan |
Edited by | Iolanda Mîntulescu; Cristina Ionescu |
Music by | Theodor Grigoriu |
Release date |
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Running time | 137 minutes |
Country | Romania |
Language | Romanian |
Burebista (1980) is a Romanian historical epic film about the life of the ancient Dacian king Burebista, depicting his battle to unify his nation and to resist Roman incursions.
The film was made to commemorate the supposed 2,050th anniversary of the founding of the "unified and centralized" country that was to become Romania. Ceaușescu himself was a great nationalist and saw in Decebal, Burebista, and Mihai Viteazul models to follow.
The film begins with a shot of a rocky outcrop, shaped like a human head, apparently gazing out over the Carpathian Mountains. A voice-over explains that the expansion of Roman power is beginning to threaten the borders of the kingdom of Dacia under its "enigmatic" ruler Burebista.
The high priest Deceneus convinces the Dacian lords to swear allegiance to Burebista as king of a unified Dacia. He promises to keep Dacia free from the increasing power of Rome. A rigorous regime of military training is introduced by the king. Some refugees from Rome arrive, including Calopor, a former gladiator who had served with Spartacus. Burebista welcomes them, asking Calopor to tell him about Spartacus' exploits. Burebista also learns about the ambition of the young Julius Caesar, and his rivalry with Pompey.
Messengers from Mithridates VI of Pontus and from Greece arrive to ask Burebista's help in resisting the advance of Roman forces. Burebista agrees to help. Calopor is sent to assess the situation in Greece. While there he meets his former girlfriend Lydia, who has been forced to marry the arrogant Roman aristocrat Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Hybrida demands games in his honour. Calopor takes part as a gladiator, planning to kill Hybrida. When Calopor throws a trident at him, Hybrida pulls Lydia in front of his body, and the trident kills her. Horrified, Calopor leaps up and stabs Hybrida to death, giving the signal for a general uprising. With the Romans in confusion, Burebista launches his cavalry against their retreating forces, defeating them.
Burebista celebrates his victory with a festival in Dacia. He learns from a messenger that Mithridates has killed himself to avoid being captured by Pompey, but is given a letter in which the dead king encourages him to continue to resist Rome. Another letter also arrives, from Pompey. Pompey is now asking Burebista's help to curb Caesar. He ponders trouble to come.
The Boii, a Celtic tribe, raids Dacia, capturing and enslaving villagers with the help of a Dacian traitor. Burebista discovers that the raid succeeded because guards were drunk. He orders the destruction of grapevines. He attempts to negotiate with the Celts, telling them that Dacians and Celts need to cooperate to preserve independence from Rome. The Celts, influenced by their fanatical Druid Breza, refuse to negotiate. Forced to fight, Burebista is worried that the war will weaken both sides, giving Caesar an opportunity to invade. The Celts, meanwhile, threaten to kill all their Dacian captives. Deceneus tells Burebista that there will soon be a solar eclipse. Burebista decides to use this to frighten the Celts with the power of the Dacian gods. He tells them that the gods will darken the sun. The eclipse terrifies the Celts, who agree to surrender the captives. Breza flees, pursued by Calopor. When Calopor follows him into a building, Breza stabs him in the back. As he dies, Calopor reveals that he is Burebista's illegitimate son. Breza is captured and executed by being thrown into an altar pyre of the goddess Epona.
With Celtic tribes now acknowledging his rule, Burebista has created a strong kingdom. In Gaul, Caesar announces that he has conquered the country and absorbed it into the Roman empire. After he has defeated Pompey, he will proceed to absorb Dacia too. As, some time later, Burebista ponders Caesar's vow, he is told that the threat is over — Caesar has been assassinated. Deceneus speaks of the transience of life. Burebista says that all kings must die, but the unity of the nation he has created should be immortal. He gazes over the mountains, and his head fades into a merge with the rock with which the film began.
The film was made to coincide with celebrations of the founding of a unified state, presented as the model for modern Romania. According to historian Lucian Boia, Burebista was constantly compared to Ceaușescu,
even a professional historian like Ion Horațiu Crișan did not hesitate to write words of homage addressed to the Dacian king in the manner of those addressed to the communist dictator. Thus Burebista was "animated by the burning desire to raise up his folk. To them he dedicated his entire activity, in internal and external affairs, his entire life." [1]
Doru Pop argues that Ceaușescu's "national-communist ideology" needed the support of claims that he "descended from a long line of Romanian (!) historical figures, beginning with Burebista, the illusory ruler of the Dacian empire." [2]
The Boii were a Celtic tribe of the later Iron Age, attested at various times in Cisalpine Gaul, Pannonia, present-day Bavaria, in and around present-day Bohemia, parts of present-day Slovakia and Poland, and Gallia Narbonensis.
The Romanian state was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. During World War I, after declaring its neutrality in 1914, Romania fought together with the Allied Powers from 1916. In the aftermath of the war, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Transylvania, and parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș became part of the Kingdom of Romania. In June–August 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Second Vienna Award, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union and Northern Transylvania to Hungary. In November 1940, Romania signed the Tripartite Pact and, consequently, in June 1941 entered World War II on the Axis side, fighting against the Soviet Union until August 1944, when it joined the Allies and recovered Northern Transylvania.
This article concerns the period 69 BC – 60 BC.
This article concerns the period 79 BC – 70 BC.
Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians, its core in Transylvania, stretching to the Danube in the south, the Black Sea in the east, and the Tisza in the west. The Carpathian Mountains were located in the middle of Dacia. It thus roughly corresponds to present-day Romania, as well as parts of Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
The Dacians were the ancient Indo-European inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. They are often considered a subgroup of the Thracians. This area includes mainly the present-day countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Ukraine, Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and Southern Poland. The Dacians and the related Getae spoke the Dacian language, which has a debated relationship with the neighbouring Thracian language and may be a subgroup of it. Dacians were somewhat culturally influenced by the neighbouring Scythians and by the Celtic invaders of the 4th century BC.
Decebalus, sometimes referred to as Diurpaneus, was the last Dacian king. He is famous for fighting three wars, with varying success, against the Roman Empire under two emperors. After raiding south across the Danube, he defeated a Roman invasion in the reign of Domitian, securing a period of independence during which Decebalus consolidated his rule.
Burebista was the king of the Getae and Dacian tribes from 82/61 BC to 45/44 BC. He was the first king who successfully unified the tribes of the Dacian kingdom, which comprised the area located between the Danube, Tisza, and Dniester rivers, and modern day Romania and Moldova. In the 7th and 6th centuries BC it became home to the Thracian peoples, including the Getae and the Dacians. From the 4th century to the middle of the 2nd century BC the Dacian peoples were influenced by La Tène Celts who brought new technologies with them into Dacia. Sometime in the 2nd century BC, the Dacians expelled the Celts from their lands. Dacians often warred with neighbouring tribes, but the relative isolation of the Dacian peoples in the Carpathian Mountains allowed them to survive and even to thrive. By the 1st century BC the Dacians had become the dominant power.
Gaius Antonius Hybrida was a politician of the Roman Republic. He was the second son of Marcus Antonius and brother of Marcus Antonius Creticus; his mother is unknown. He was also the uncle of the famed triumvir Mark Antony. He had two children, Antonia Hybrida Major and Antonia Hybrida Minor.
The Getae or Gets were a Thracian-related tribe that once inhabited the regions to either side of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria and southern Romania. Although it is believed that the Getae were related to their westward neighbours, the Dacians, several scholars, especially in the Romanian historiography, posit that the Getae and the Dacians were the same people.
Dacianism is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe, largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretation, an idealized past to the country as a whole. While particularly prevalent during the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, its origin in Romanian scholarship dates back more than a century.
The history of Dacian warfare spans from c. 10th century BC up to the 2nd century AD in the region defined by Ancient Greek and Latin historians as Dacia, populated by a collection of Thracian, Ionian, and Dorian tribes. It concerns the armed conflicts of the Dacian tribes and their kingdoms in the Balkans. Apart from conflicts between Dacians and neighboring nations and tribes, numerous wars were recorded among Dacians too.
Teurisci was a Dacian tribe at the time of Ptolemy. They were originally considered a branch of the Celtic Taurisci (Noricum), who moved to Upper Tisza. However, the archaeology shows that Celts have been absorbed by Dacians, at some point creating a Celto-Dacian cultural horizon in the upper Tisza.
Argidava was a Dacian fortress town close to the Danube, inhabited and governed by the Albocense. Located in today's Vărădia, Caraș-Severin County, Romania.
The appearance of Celts in Western Romania can be traced to the later La Tène period . Excavation of the great La Tène necropolis at Apahida, Cluj County, by S. Kovacs at the turn of the 20th century revealed the first evidence of Celtic culture in Romania. The 3rd–2nd century BC site is remarkable for its cremation burials and chiefly wheel-made funeral vessels.
This section of the timeline of Romanian history concerns events from Late Neolithic until Late Antiquity, which took place in or are directly related with the territory of modern Romania.
The Antiquity in Romania spans the period between the foundation of Greek colonies in present-day Dobruja and the withdrawal of the Romans from "Dacia Trajana" province. The earliest records of the history of the regions which now form Romania were made after the establishment of three Greek towns—Histria, Tomis, and Callatis—on the Black Sea coast in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. They developed into important centers of commerce and had a close relationship with the natives. The latter were first described by Herodotus, who made mention of the Getae of the Lower Danube region, the Agathyrsi of Transylvania and the Sygannae of Crişana.
The Battle of Histria, c. 62–61 BC, was fought between the Bastarnae peoples of Scythia Minor and the Roman Consul Gaius Antonius Hybrida. The Bastarnae emerged victorious from the battle after successfully launching a surprise attack on the Roman troops; Hybrida escaped alongside his cavalry forces leaving behind the infantry to be massacred by the Bastarnian-Scythian attackers.
The history of Dacia comprises the events surrounding the historical region roughly corresponding to the present territory of Romania and Moldova and inhabited by the Getae and Dacian peoples, with its capital Sarmizegetusa Regia.