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 ( ro, Moldova, or , literally "The Country of Moldavia"; in Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, Romanian Cyrillic: or ; chu, Землѧ Молдавскаѧ; el, Ἡγεμονία τῆς Μολδαβίας) is a historical region and for ...

. 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 lette ...

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 ...

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 manuscript occurrence in the works of

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the ''Res Gestae ...

Characteristics

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. 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

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

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