Roman Byzantine Gothic Walls Romania Plain

The Upper Trajan's Wall is the modern name given to a fortification located in the central area of modern

Moldavia Moldavia (, or ; in Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, Romanian Cyrillic: or ) is a historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River. An initially in ...

. 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 Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

origin, while others think it was built in the third/fourth century by the Germanic

Greuthungi The Greuthungi (also spelled Greutungi) were a Goths, Gothic people who lived on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, Pontic steppe between the Dniester River, Dniester and Don river, Don rivers in what is now Ukraine, in the 3rd and the 4th centuries. T ...

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 centuries AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was par ...

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 (semiotics), sign (e.g. a symbol, morpheme, word, or phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word h ...

manuscript occurrence in the works of

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus, occasionally anglicized as Ammian ( Greek: Αμμιανός Μαρκελλίνος; born , died 400), was a Greek and Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquit ...

Characteristics

The wall stretches 120 kilometres from the

Dniester River The Dniester ( ) is a transboundary river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and then through Moldova (from which it more or less separates the breakaway territory of Transnistria), finally discharging into the Black Sea on Uk ...

in the Teleneşti district to the

Prut River The Prut (also spelled in English as Pruth; , ) is a river in Eastern Europe. It is a left tributary of the Danube, and is long. Part of its course forms Romania's border with Moldova and Ukraine. Characteristics The Prut originates on the eas ...

. 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, because it has a ditch facing north, away from Roman territory. Under this hypothesis Emperor

Trajan Trajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September 53) was a Roman emperor from AD 98 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier ...

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 () 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 now called the Dn ...

. Others, such as the historian

, affirm it was built by the local Germanic tribes, mainly as a defense against raiders from Central Asia (

Attila Attila ( or ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in early 453. He was also the leader of an empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Gepids, among others, in Central Europe, C ...

'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 Schoo ...

questions the emendation given to the passage in Ammianus Marcellinus necessary to read it as being about a wall. HartafocsaniSmall

References

External links

Roman castra and walls from Romania/Moldovia - Google Maps

Earth

Video 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

Characteristics

See also

References

Further reading

External links