The Upper Trajan's Wall is the modern name given to a fortification located in the central area of modern Moldavia. Some scholars consider it to be of Roman origin, while others think it was built in the third/fourth century by the Germanic Greuthungi to defend their borders against the Huns. [1] It may also have been called Greuthungian Wall in later Roman accounts, but this is uncertain owing to a single polysemic manuscript occurrence in the works of Ammianus Marcellinus. [2]
The wall stretches 120 kilometres from the Dniester River in the Teleneşti district to the Prut River. In Romania the remains of the wall can be found in Tiganasi, Carniceni, Sendreni and Tocsomeni. [3]
It crosses Moldova from the Prut River to the Nistru River, from the town of Leova to that of Teghina, going past the villages of Trojan Ialpugeni, Caracui, Sărăţica Nouă (Leova), Pervomaisk, Gradiste, Coştangalia, Satu Nou (Cimislia), Ciufleşti, Baimaclia, Salcuta, Marianovca-de-sus, Zaim, Causeni, Chircăieşti (Causeni), Chitcani and Copanca. According to I. Hîncu, it has a length of 120 km, its original height ranged between 3-4 m, width - 10-15m, being augmented by a trench dug to the north, depth: 2-3 m. Currently its height is 0.5 m. [4]
Some scholars, such as Vasile Nedelciuc, [5] argue that the turf Wall was built initially by the Romans, owing to the fact that it has a ditch facing north, away from Roman territory. Under this hypothesis Emperor Trajan made the first construction of the turf wall around 110 AD, in order to protect the coastal area from the Danube delta as far as Tyras.
Others, such as the historian Peter Heather, affirm it was built by the local Germanic tribes, mainly as a defense against raiders from Central Asia (Attila's Huns). [1] Historian Thomas S. Burns is more reluctant, and wishes for better dating data. [6] The identification of the geographical feature in Moldavia with the passage in Ammianus Marcellinus has been proposed by the Romanian historian Radu Vulpe in 1957. [1] [7] Historian Herwig Wolfram questions the emendation given to the passage in Ammianus Marcellinus necessary to read it as being about a wall. [2]
The Goths were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe.
The Ostrogoths were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who had settled in the Balkans in the 4th century, having crossed the Lower Danube. While the Visigoths had formed under the leadership of Alaric I, the new Ostrogothic political entity which came to rule Italy was formed in the Balkans under the influence of the Amal Dynasty, the family of Theodoric the Great.
The Gepids were an East Germanic tribe who lived in the area of modern Romania, Hungary and Serbia, roughly between the Tisza, Sava and Carpathian mountains. They were said to share the religion and language of the Goths and Vandals.
Ermanaric was a Greuthungian Gothic king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia inhabited by the Goths at the time. He is mentioned in two Roman sources: the contemporary writings of Ammianus Marcellinus, and in Getica by the sixth-century historian Jordanes. He also appears in a fictionalized form in later Germanic heroic legends.
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Oium was a name for Scythia, or a fertile part of it, roughly in modern Ukraine, where the Goths, under a legendary King Filimer, settled after leaving Gothiscandza, according to the Getica by Jordanes, written around 551.
Farnobius was a Gothic chief who was killed in a battle with the Roman army of Frigeridus while trying to cross the mountains from Thrace into Illyricum.
Trajan's Wall is the name used for several linear earthen fortifications (valla) found across Eastern Europe, in Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. Contrary to the name and popular belief, the ramparts were not built by Romans during Trajan's reign, but during other imperial periods. Furthermore, the association with the Roman Emperor may be a recent scholarly invention, only entering the imagination of the locals with the national awakening of the 19th century. Medieval Moldavian documents referred to the earthworks as Troian, likely in reference to a mythological hero in the Romanian and Slavic folklore. The other major earthen fortification in Romania, Brazda lui Novac, is also named after a mythological hero.
Between 376 and 382 the Gothic War against the Eastern Roman Empire, and in particular the Battle of Adrianople, is commonly seen as a major turning point in the history of the Roman Empire, the first of a series of events over the next century that would see the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, although its ultimate importance to the Empire's eventual fall is still debated. It was one of the many Gothic Wars with the Roman Empire.
The Thervingi, Tervingi, or Teruingi were a Gothic people of the plains north of the Lower Danube and west of the Dniester River in the 3rd and the 4th centuries.
The Goths, Gepids, Vandals, and Burgundians were East Germanic groups who appear in Roman records in Late Antiquity. At times these groups warred against or allied with the Roman Empire, the Huns, and various Germanic tribes.
The Greuthungi were a Gothic people who lived on the Pontic steppe between the Dniester and Don rivers in what is now Ukraine, in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. They had close contacts with the Tervingi, another Gothic people, who lived west of the Dniester River. To the east of the Greuthungi, living near the Don river, were the Alans.
The Taifals or Tayfals were a people group of Germanic or Sarmatian origin, first documented north of the lower Danube in the mid third century AD. They experienced an unsettled and fragmented history, for the most part in association with various Gothic peoples, and alternately fighting against or for the Romans. In the late fourth century some Taifali were settled within the Roman Empire, notably in western Gaul in the modern province of Poitou. They subsequently supplied mounted units to the Roman army and continued to be a significant source of cavalry for early Merovingian armies. By the sixth century their region of western Gaul had acquired a distinct identity as Thifalia.
Michael Kulikowski is an American historian. He is Professor of History and Classics and Head of the History Department at Pennsylvania State University. Kulikowski specializes in the history of the western Mediterranean world of late antiquity. He is sometimes associated with the Toronto School of History and was a student of Walter Goffart.
The Moesian Limes or Limes Moesiae is the modern term given to a collection of Roman fortifications between the Black Sea shore and Pannonia, present-day Hungary, consisting primarily of forts along the Danube to protect the Roman provinces of Upper and Lower Moesia south of the river.
Athanaric's Wall, also called Lower Trajan's Wall or Southern Trajan's Wall, was a fortification line probably erected by Athanaric, between the banks of river Gerasius and the Danube to the land of Taifali. Most probably, Athanaric's Wall has reused the old Roman limes called Limes Transalutanus.
Balamber was ostensibly a chieftain of the Huns, mentioned by Jordanes in his Getica. Jordanes simply called him "king of the Huns" and writes the story of Balamber crushing the tribes of the Ostrogoths in the 370s; somewhere between 370 and more probably 376 AD.
The Prut is a 953 km (592 mi) long river in Eastern Europe. It is a left tributary of the Danube. In part of its course it forms Romania's border with Moldova and Ukraine.
Vithimiris was a king of the Greuthungi, ruling for some unspecified time in the area of present-day southern Ukraine. He succeeded to Ermanaric, meaning that he probably reigned in 376. Ammianus Marcellinus, the only known source on him, states that after Ermanaric's death he tried to resist the Alani, who were allied with the Huns, with the help of other Huns hired as mercenaries. He did so "for some time", but eventually, "after many defeats", he died in battle. It is then assumed that he most probably ruled in 376, possibly also in 375.
Frigeridus was Roman general of Germanic descent. Under Valentinian I he was the military commander (dux) of Pannonia. Following the Battle of Marcianople, he was directed by Gratian, Valentian's successor, to lead forces from Pannonia to Thrace to deal with the invading Goths. He did not command his own forces in the Battle of Ad Salices, ostensibly due to an attack of gout.