![Roman Byzantine Gothic Walls Romania Plain](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Roman_Byzantine_Gothic_Walls_Romania_Plain.svg)
The Upper Trajan's Wall is the modern name given to a fortification located in the central area of modern
Moldavia
Moldavia ( ro, Moldova, or , literally "The Country of Moldavia"; in Romanian Cyrillic: or ; chu, Землѧ Молдавскаѧ; el, Ἡγεμονία τῆς Μολδαβίας) is a historical region and former principality in Centr ...
. Some scholars consider it to be of
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
origin, while others think it was built in the third/fourth century by the Germanic
Greuthungi
The Greuthungi (also spelled Greutungi) 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 pe ...
to defend their borders against the
Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...
.
Peter Heather
Peter John Heather (born 8 June 1960) is a British historian of late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Heather is Chair of the Medieval History Department and Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He specialises in the fall ...
, ''The Goths'', Blackwell Publishing, 1998, p. 100 It may also have been called Greuthungian Wall in later Roman accounts, but this is uncertain owing to a single
polysemic
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a single ...
manuscript occurrence in the works of
Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally Anglicisation, anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Ancient history, antiquity (preceding Procopius). His w ...
.
Characteristics
The wall stretches 120 kilometres from the
Dniester River
The Dniester, ; rus, Дне́стр, links=1, Dnéstr, ˈdⁿʲestr; ro, Nistru; grc, Τύρᾱς, Tyrās, ; la, Tyrās, la, Danaster, label=none, ) ( ,) is a transboundary river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and th ...
in the
Teleneşti district to the
Prut River
The Prut (also spelled in English as Pruth; , uk, Прут) is a 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.
Characteristics
The Prut originates ...
. In Romania the remains of the wall can be found in Tiganasi, Carniceni, Sendreni and Tocsomeni.
Some scholars, such as Vasile Nedelciuc, 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
Trajan ( ; la, Caesar Nerva Traianus; 18 September 539/11 August 117) was Roman emperor from 98 to 117. Officially declared ''optimus princeps'' ("best ruler") by the senate, Trajan is remembered as a successful soldier-emperor who presi ...
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
Tyras ( grc, Τύρας) was an ancient Greek city on the northern coast of the Black Sea. It was founded by colonists from Miletus, probably about 600 BC. The city was situated some 10 km from the mouth of the Tyras River, which is no ...
.
Others, such as the historian
Peter Heather
Peter John Heather (born 8 June 1960) is a British historian of late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Heather is Chair of the Medieval History Department and Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He specialises in the fall ...
, affirm it was built by the local Germanic tribes, mainly as a defense against raiders from Central Asia (
Attila
Attila (, ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European traditio ...
's Huns).
Historian Thomas S. Burns is more reluctant, and wishes for better dating data.
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.
Historian
Herwig Wolfram
Herwig Wolfram (born 14 February 1934) is an Austrian historian who is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Vienna and the former Director of the . He is a leading member of the Vienna Scho ...
questions the
emendation given to the passage in Ammianus Marcellinus necessary to read it as being about a wall.
See also
*
Trajan's Wall
Trajan's Wall (''Valul lui Traian'' in Romanian) 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 bui ...
*
Southern Trajan's Wall (in Bessarabia)
*
History of Moldova
The history of Moldova can be traced to the 1350s, when the Principality of Moldavia
Moldavia ( ro, Moldova, or , literally "The Country of Moldavia"; in Romanian Cyrillic: or ; chu, Землѧ Молдавскаѧ; el, Ἡγεμονί ...
References
Further reading
* Emanuel Constantin Antoche, Marcel Tanasache, (1990) "Le Vallum (Troian) de la Moldavie centrale" in ''Etudes Roumaines et Aroumaines''. Sociétés européennes, no. 8, Paris ; Bucharest :
.n pp. 130–133, ;
Sudocbr>
087572664
External links
Roman castra and walls from Romania/Moldovia - Google MapsEarthVideo of Roman Walls in Moldova (in Moldovan)
{{coord missing, Moldova
Roman fortifications in Moldova
Goths
Germanic archaeology
Ancient history of Romania
Roman Dacia
Roman walls in Romania
Roman frontiers