l. The great historian, whose views can only be
rejected on what we may call a political or partisan theory, believed
the Roman colonists to have been industrious agriculturists; for when he
speaks, in another place, of the temptations which led the wandering
Goths in the first instance to cast longing eyes upon Dacia, he says:
'But the prospects of the Roman territory were far more alluring, and
the fields of Dacia were covered with a rich harvest, sown by the hands
of an _industrious_, and exposed to be gathered by a warlike
people.'[108]

In bringing the history of the Roman occupation of Dacia to a close, we
have therefore to acknowledge that, far from being inhabited by the scum
of the earth as Carra supposed, the country was at first in the hands of
an industrious, though probably a sparse peasantry, and, as Gibbon has
said, 'only those who had nothing to lose accompanied the Roman army,'
leaving the remainder, a large body of industrious Daco-Roman
agriculturists, ruled over by a tribe of warlike barbarians. What these
and their posterity suffered, will be seen from the narrative in our
next chapter.

[Illustration: DACIAN TROPHIES. (FROM TRAJAN'S COLUMN.)]

[Footnote 97: According to certain writers, Transylvania was _Dacia
mediterranca_; the Banate, _D. ripensis_; and Roumania, _D.
transalpina_; but Smith (_Geography_, 'Dacia') gives those names to
divisions of Moesia after the withdrawal of the Romans from Dacia; and
later historians mate no reference to the divisions. Dicrauer (p. 103)
only refers to one or two leading colonies, and Roesler (p. 45) says
that Trajan did not subdivide his conquest at all, but that under
Antoninus Pius (168 A.D.) there existed three non-political
divisions: _D. Apulensis_, _D. Porolissensis_, and _D. malvensis._
Gibbon (chap. i. pp. 7 and 8) gives what he calls 'the natural
boundaries,' and says the province was about 1,300 miles in
circumference.]

[Footnote 98: Neigebaur (p. 43) gives a list of twenty-eight towns known
(and many doubtful ones) in Trajan's Dacia, built during the Roman
occupation. Of these the ruins of some still remain, and on the site of
others modern towns have been built, whose names vary but little from
the Roman appellations, _e.g._ Zernes, now Cernetz; Caracalla, Karakal;
Castra Severum, Turnu Severunul (where there is an old Roman tower);
Ardeiscus, Ardeish or Ardges; Pallada, Berlad; Kallatia, Galatz; Thermae
ad Medias, Mehadia.]

[Footnote 99: