Until the conquest of Dacia under Trajan, the Danube represented the frontier between the Roman world and various barbarian kingdoms that had not yet been subjugated by the Romans. The first Roman Emperor Augustus proudly declared that he had extended the frontier of Illyricum (the western Balkans) to the banks of the Danube (... protulique fines Illyrici ad ripam fluminis Danuvi). In the area of the Iron Gate (the Djerdap Canyon, Serbia) the Danube had to cut its way through the Carpathian Mountains, flowing between several hundred meters high cliffs where rapids made navigation dangerous until the construction of the water-dam in 1970. The water-dam flooded five or six inscriptions commemorating construction of a narrow tow path, cut in the bedrock, under the Emperors of the 1st century AD (Tiberius, Claudius, and Domitian) in the Upper Canyon (Gornja Klisura).
However, large-scale construction works were undertaken by Trajan before his first Dacian war (101–102), illustrated by two inscriptions from the Lower Canyon. The area must have always looked spectacular: “It is great to stand on the bank of the Danube (Magnum est stare in Danubii ripa)” were the words of Pliny the Younger in his panegyric to Trajan.
Tabula Traiana from AD 100 (on the cliff at Ogradina, near Transdierna, modern Tekija, Moesia Superior) informs us about the road in the canyon:
Imp(erator) Caesar divi Nervae f(ilius) / Nerva Traianus Aug(ustus), Germ(anicus), / pontif(ex) maximus, trib(unicia) pot(estate) IIII, / pater patriae, co(n)s(ul) III, / montibus excisi[s] anco[ni]bus / sublat[i]s via[m r]e[fecit]. (HD011474)
“The Emperor Caesar Trajan Augustus, son of the deified Nerva, victor over the Germans, chief priest, holder of the tribunician power four times, father of his country, consul for the third time, had the road restored by cutting it into the mountain rocks and making it larger by the wooden beams.” (EAGLEWIKI11098)
The second is a slab found near Karataš (the fort of Diana), commemorating Trajan’s canal at the Iron Gate, dug in AD 101 (HD011477):
Imp(erator) Caesar divi Nervae f(ilius) / Nerva Traianus Aug(ustus), Germ(anicus), / pontif(ex) maximus, trib(unicia) pot(estate) V, p(ater) p(atriae), co(n)s(ul) IIII / ob periculum cataractarum / derivato flumine tutam Da/nuvi navigationem fecit. (HD011477)
“The Emperor Caesar Trajan Augustus, son of the deified Nerva, victor over the Germans, chief priest, holder of the tribunician power five times, father of his country, consul for the fourth time, had the navigation along the Danube, dangerous because of the rapids, made safe by having dug a new channel.” (EAGLEWIKI11099)
Trajan’s construction works were crowned by a stone bridge across the Danube, built by the Greek engineer and architect Apollodorus from Damascus before the second war against the Dacian king Decebalus (105–106). The bridge, which connected Pontes (Kostol) on the right bank of the river (in Serbia) with Drobeta (Turnu Severin) on the left bank (in Romania), is depicted on Trajan’s column in Rome. It was 1,135 m long and the historian Cassius Dio remarked: “Trajan has a stone bridge constructed over the Ister, for which I cannot sufficiently admire him.”
Links
- Cf. M. Mirković, Ancient Rome and the Danube (Djerdap Pages 6), Beograd 2011.
- UEL15228
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