om the left bank of the Danube, inflicted
on him an important defeat (692-693) at Istropolis (Istere, not far
from Kustendji). Gaius Octavius fought with better fortune
against the Bessi and Thracians (694). Marcus Piso again (697-698)
as general-in-chief wretchedly mismanaged matters; which was
no wonder, seeing that for money he gave friends and foes whatever
they wished. The Thracian Dentheletae (on the Strymon) under his
governorship plundered Macedonia far and wide, and even stationed
their posts on the great Roman military road leading from Dyrrhachium
to Thessalonica; the people in Thessalonica made up their minds
to stand a siege from them, while the strong Roman army in the province
seemed to be present only as an onlooker when the inhabitants
of the mountains and neighbouring peoples levied contributions
from the peaceful subjects of Rome.

The New Dacian Kingdom

Such attacks could not indeed endanger the power of Rome, and a fresh
disgrace had long ago ceased to occasion concern. But just about
this period a people began to acquire political consolidation
beyond the Danube in the wide Dacian steppes--a people which seemed
destined to play a different part in history from that of the Bessi
and the Dentheletae. Among the Getae or Dacians in primeval times
there had been associated with the king of the people a holy man
called Zalmoxis, who, after having explored the ways and wonders
of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly
studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests
and of the Greek Pythagoreans, had returned to his native country
to endhis life as a pious hermit in a cavern of the "holy mountain."
He remained accessible only to the king and his servants, and gave
forth to the king and through him to the people his oracles
with reference to every important undertaking. He was regarded
by his countrymen at first as priest of the supreme god and ultimately
as himself a god, just as it is said of Moses and Aaron that the Lord
had made Aaron the prophet and Moses the god of the prophet.
This had become a permanent institution; there was regularly associated
with the king of the Getae such a god, from whose mouth everything
which the king ordered proceeded or appeared to proceed.
This peculiar constitution, in which the theocratic idea had become
subservient to the apparently absolute power of the king, probably
gave to the kings of the Getae some such position wit