Founding of Rome
The tale of the Founding of Rome is recounted in traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves as the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth. The most familiar of these myths, the most famous of all Roman myths, is the story of Romulus and Remus, twins who were suckled by a she-wolf as infants in the 8th century BC. Another account, set earlier in time, claims that the Roman people are descended from Trojan War hero Aeneas, who escaped to Italy after the war, whose son, was the ancestor of the family of Julius Caesar; the archaeological evidence of human occupation of the area of modern-day Rome, Italy dates from about 14,000 years ago. The national epic of mythical Rome, the Aeneid of Virgil, tells the story of how Trojan prince Aeneas came to Italy; the Aeneid was written under Augustus, who claimed ancestry through Julius Caesar and his mother Venus. According to the Aeneid, the survivors from the fallen city of Troy banded together under Aeneas and underwent a series of adventures around the Mediterranean Sea, including a stop at newly founded Carthage under the rule of Queen Dido reaching the Italian coast.
The Trojans were thought to have landed in an area between modern Anzio and Fiumicino, southwest of Rome at Laurentum or, in other versions, at Lavinium, a place named for Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus whom Aeneas married. This started a series of armed conflicts with Turnus over the marriage of Lavinia. Before the arrival of Aeneas, Turnus was betrothed to Lavinia, who married Aeneas, starting the war. Aeneas killed Turnus; the Trojans won the right to assimilate with the local peoples. The young son of Aeneas, Ascanius known as Iulus, went on to found Alba Longa and the line of Alban kings who filled the chronological gap between the Trojan saga and the traditional founding of Rome in the 8th century BC. Toward the end of this line, King Procas was the father of Amulius. At Procas' death, Numitor became king of Alba Longa, but Amulius captured him and sent him to prison. Forests have a prominent role in the founding myth-when Aeneas arrives at the site that would become Rome it is still forest: Evander goes on to explain that from that "first time" the god Saturn brings these scattered people laws and bestows upon them the name Latium.
The myth of Aeneas was of Greek origin and had to be reconciled with the Italian myth of Romulus and Remus, who would have been born around 771 BC if taken as historical figures. They were purported to be sons of Rhea Silvia and either Mars, the god of war, or the demi-god hero Hercules, they were abandoned at birth, in the manner of many mythological heroes, because of a prophecy that they would overthrow their great-uncle Amulius, who had overthrown Silvia's father Numitor. The twins were abandoned on the river Tiber by servants who took pity on the infants, despite their orders; the twins were nurtured by a she-wolf until a shepherd named Faustulus found the boys and took them as his sons. Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia raised the children; when Remus and Romulus became adults, they killed restored Numitor. They decided to establish a city. Thus, Rome began with a fratricide, a story, taken to represent the city's history of internecine political strife and bloodshed. Strabo writes that there is an older story, about the founding of Rome, than the previous legends that he had mentioned.
The city was founded by Evander. Strabo writes that Lucius Coelius Antipater believed that Rome was founded by Greeks. Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes that the people who came to the lands that became the city of Rome were first, the Aborigines, who drove the Sicels out of these lands, were from the Arcadia the Pelasgians, who came from Thessaly, third those who came into Italy with Evander from the city of Pallantium in Arcadia, after them the Epeans from Elis and Pheneats from Pheneus, who were part of the army commanded by Heracles who decided to stay there while they were returning from the expedition at the Erytheia, with whom a Trojan element was commingled and last of all, the Trojans who had escaped with Aeneas from Ilium and the other Trojan cities. Dionysius mentions that the Trojans, were Greek people who were from the Peloponnesus, he adds that Romans say that the Pallantium was founded by Greeks from Pallantium of Arcadia, about sixty years before the Trojan war and the leader was Evander.
At the sixteenth generation after the Trojan war the Albans united these places into one settlement, surrounding them with a wall and a ditch. The Albans were a mixed nation composed of all the above people. Dionysius adds that it is that a barbarian element from among the neighboring people or a remnant of the ancient inhabitants of the place were mixed with the Greek, but all these people, having lost their national identity came to be called by one common name, after Latinus, the king of the country. The leaders of the colony were the twin brothers Remus. Another story told how a son of Odysseus and Circe, was the one who founded Rome. Martin P. Nilsson speculates that this older story was becoming a bit embarrassing as Rome became more powerful and tensions with the Greeks grew. Being descendants of the Greeks was no longer preferable, so the Romans settled on the Trojan foundation myth instead. Nilsson further speculates that the name of Romos was changed by the Romans to the native name Romulus, but the name Romos was never forgotten by the people
Borders of the Roman Empire
The borders of the Roman Empire, which fluctuated throughout the empire's history, were a combination of natural frontiers and man-made fortifications which separated the lands of the empire from the countries beyond. A limes was a border fortification system of the Roman Empire; the Latin noun limes had a number of different meanings: a path or balk marking off the boundaries of fields. Hence it was utilized by Latin writers to denote fortified frontiers; the name given to proper Walls was vallum. In Britannia the Empire built two walls one behind the other. In other places, such as Syria and Arabia Petraea, there was no continuous wall. In Dacia, the limes between the Black Sea and the Danube were a mix of the latter and the wall defenses: the Limes Moesiae was the conjunction of two, sometimes three, lines of vallum, with a Great Camp and many minor camps spread through the fortifications, it is now more common to accept that this is an anachronistic terminology, reflecting the views of modern scholars more than Roman reality.
Limes was not used to indicate a fortified border. After the third century it was an administrative term, indicating a military district, commanded by a dux limitis. In continental Europe, the borders were well defined following the courses of major rivers such as the Rhine and the Danube; those were not always the final border lines. In Great Britain both Hadrian and Antoninus Pius built defences to protect the province of Britannia from the Caledonians. Hadrian's Wall, constructed in 122 held a garrison of 10,000 soldiers, while the Antonine Wall, constructed between 142 and 144, was abandoned by 164 and reoccupied in 208, under the reign of Septimius Severus; the eastern borders changed many times, as the Roman Empire was facing two major powers, The Parthian Empire and the Sasanian Empire. The Parthians were a group of Iranian peoples ruling most of Greater Iran, in modern-day Iran, western Iraq and the Caucasus; the Sasanians succeeded the Parthians in 224–226 and were recognised as one of the leading world powers alongside its neighbouring arch-rival the Roman Empire for a period of more than 400 years.
At the greatest extent of the Empire, the southern border lay along the deserts of Arabia in the Middle East and the Sahara in North Africa, which represented a natural barrier against expansion. The Empire controlled the mountain ranges further inland; the Romans attempted twice to occupy the Siwa Oasis and used Siwa as a place of banishment. However Romans controlled the Nile many miles into Africa up to the modern border between Egypt and Sudan. In Africa Romans controlled the area north of the Sahara, from the Atlantic Ocean to Egypt, with many sections of limes. In the south of Mauritania Tingitana Romans made a limes in the third century, just north of the area of actual Casablanca near Sala and stretching to Volubilis. Septimius Severus expanded the "Limes Tripolitanus" even holding a military presence in the Garamantian capital Garama in 203 AD. Much of the initial campaigning success was achieved by Quintus Anicius Faustus, the legate of Legio III Augusta. Following his African conquests, the Roman Empire may have reached its greatest extent during the reign of Septimius Severus, under whom the empire encompassed an area of 2 million square miles.
Limes Roman Empire Antonine Wall Hadrian's Wall Roman military frontiers and fortifications Hannibal De Agostini. Atlante Storico De Agostini. Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini. ISBN 88-511-0846-3. Camer and Renato Fabietti. Corso di storia antica e medievale 1. ISBN 88-08-24230-7. Grant, Michael. Atlas of Classical History. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-19-521074-3. Scarre, Chris; the Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-051329-9. Breeze, David J. 2011. The Frontiers of Imperial Rome. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword. Cordovana, Orietta Dora. 2012. "Historical Ecosystems. Roman Frontier and Economic Hinterlands in North Africa." Historia 61.4: 458-494. Dyson, Stephen. 1985. The Creation of the Roman Frontier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Gambash, Gil. 2015. Rome and Provincial Resistance. London: Routledge. Heckster and Ted Kaizer, eds. 2011. Frontiers in the Roman World: Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Hingley, Richard. 2012. Hadrian’s Wall: A Life. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Isaac, Benjamin. 2000. The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Keppie, Lawrence. 2012. The Antiquarian Rediscovery of the Antonine Wall. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Sterk, Andrea. 2010. "Mission from Below: Captive Women and Conversion on the East Roman Frontier." Church History 79.1:1-39. Zietsman, J. C. 2009. "Crossing the Roman frontier: Egypt in Rome." Acta Classica 52: 1-21
Roman infantry tactics
Roman infantry tactics refers to the theoretical and historical deployment and maneuvers of the Roman infantry from the start of the Roman Republic to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The article first presents a short overview of Roman training. Roman performance against different types of enemies is analyzed. A summation of what made the Roman tactics and strategy militarily effective through their long history is given below, as is a discussion of how and why this effectiveness disappeared; the focus below is on Roman tactics - the "how" of their approach to battle, how it stacked up against a variety of opponents over time. It does not attempt detailed coverage of things like army equipment. Various battles are summarized to illustrate Roman methods with links to detailed articles on individual encounters. For in depth background on the historical structure of the infantry relevant to this article, see Structure of the Roman military. For a history of Rome's military campaigns see Campaign history of the Roman military.
For detail on equipment, daily life and specific legions see Roman legion and Roman military personal equipment. Roman military tactics and strategy evolved from that typical of a small tribal host seeking local hegemony, to massive operations encompassing a world empire; this advance was affected by changing trends in Roman political and economic life, that of the larger Mediterranean world, but it was undergirded by a distinctive "Roman way" of war. This approach included a tendency towards standardization and systematization, practical borrowing and adapting from outsiders, flexibility in tactics and methods, a strong sense of discipline, a ruthless persistence that sought comprehensive victory, a cohesion brought about by the ideal of Roman citizenship under arms - embodied in the legion; these elements waxed and waned over time. Some key phases of this evolution throughout Rome's military history include: Military forces based on heavy citizen infantry with tribal beginnings and early use of phalanx-type elements Growing sophistication as Roman hegemony expanded outside Italy into North Africa and the Middle East Continued refinement and streamlining in the period associated with Gaius Marius including a broader based incorporation of more citizenry into the army, more professionalism and permanence in army service Continued expansion and sophistication from the end of the republic into the time of the Caesars Growing barbarization and weakening of the heavy infantry units in favour of cavalry and lighter troops Demise of the Western Empire and fragmentation into smaller, weaker local forces.
This included the reversal of status of infantry in the Eastern Empire. Cataphract forces formed an elite, with infantry being reduced to auxiliaries. Numerous scholarly histories of the Roman military machine note the huge numbers of men that could be mobilized, more than any other Mediterranean power; this bounty of military resources enabled Rome to apply crushing pressure to its enemies, stay in the field and replace losses after suffering setbacks. One historian of the Second Punic War states: "According to Polybius, the total number of Roman and allied men capable of bearing arms in 225BC exceeded 700,000 infantry and 70,000 cavalry. Brunt adjusted Polybius’ figures and estimated that the population of Italy, not including Greeks and Bruttians, exceeded 875,000 free adult males, from whom the Romans could levy troops. Rome not only had the potential to levy vast numbers of troops, but did in fact field large armies in the opening stages of the war. Brunt estimates that Rome mobilized 108,000 men for service in the legions between 218BC and 215BC, while at the height of the war effort Rome was able to mobilize 230,000 men.
Against these mighty resources Hannibal led from Spain an army of 50,000 infantry and 9,000 cavalry... Rome’s manpower reserves allowed it to absorb staggering losses yet still continue to field large armies. For example, according to Brunt, as many as 50,000 men were lost between 218BC and 215BC, but Rome continued to place between 14 and 25 legions in the field for the duration of the war. Moreover, as will be discussed below, Roman manpower allowed for the adoption of the so-called "Fabian strategy", which proved to be an effective response to Hannibal’s apparent battlefield superiority. Put the relative disparity in the number of available troops at the outset of the conflict meant that Hannibal had a much narrower margin for error than the Romans." See Roman military personal equipment and Roman legion for more information on equipment, individual legions and structure A legionary carried around 27 kilograms of armour and equipment. This load consisted of armour, a sword, called a gladius, a shield, two pila and 15 days' food rations.
There were tools for digging and constructing a castra, the legions' fortified base camp. One writer recreates the following as to Caesar's army in Gaul: Each soldier arranged his heavy pack on a T or Y-shaped rod, borne on his left shoulder. Shields were protected on the march with a hide cover; each legionary carried about 5 days worth of wheat, pulses or chickpeas, a flask of oil and a mess kit with a dish and utensil. Personal items might include a dyed horsehair crest for the helmet, a semi-water resistant oiled woolen cloak and breeches for cold weather and a blanke
Limes Germanicus
The Limes Germanicus was a line of frontier fortifications that bounded the ancient Roman provinces of Germania Inferior, Germania Superior and Raetia, dividing the Roman Empire and the unsubdued Germanic tribes from the years 83 to about 260 AD. At its height, the limes stretched from the North Sea outlet of the Rhine to near Regensburg on the Danube; those two major rivers afforded natural protection from mass incursions into imperial territory, with the exception of a gap stretching from Mogontiacum on the Rhine to Castra Regina. The Limes Germanicus was divided into: The Lower Germanic Limes, which extended from the North Sea at Katwijk in the Netherlands along the main Lower Rhine branches The Upper Germanic Limes started from the Rhine at Rheinbrohl across the Taunus mountains to the river Main along the Main to Miltenberg, from Osterburken south to Lorch in a nearly perfect straight line of more than 70 km; the total length was 568 km. It included 900 watchtowers; the weakest, hence most guarded, part of the Limes was the aforementioned gap between the westward bend of the Rhine at modern-day Mainz and the main flow of the Danube at Regensburg.
This 300-km wide land corridor between the two great rivers permitted movement of large groups of people without the need for water transport, hence the heavy concentration of forts and towers there, arranged in depth and in multiple layers along waterways, fords and hilltops. Roman border defences have become much better known through systematic excavations financed by Germany and through other research connected to them. In 2005, the remnants of the Upper Germanic & Rhaetian Limes were inscribed on the List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites as Frontiers of the Roman Empire, with lower Limes being placed on the tentative list in 2011, aiming to extend the world heritage site to the whole limes; the Saalburg is a reconstructed museum of the Limes near Frankfurt. The first emperor who began to build fortifications along the border was Augustus, shortly after the devastating Roman defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD. There were numerous Limes walls, which were connected to form the Upper Germanic Limes along the Rhine and the Rhaetian Limes along the Danube.
These two walls were linked to form a common borderline. From the death of Augustus until after 70 AD, Rome accepted as her Germanic frontier the water-boundary of the Rhine and upper Danube. Beyond these rivers she held only the fertile plain of Frankfurt, opposite the Roman border fortress of Moguntiacum, the southernmost slopes of the Black Forest and a few scattered bridge-heads; the northern section of this frontier, where the Rhine is deep and broad, remained the Roman boundary until the empire fell. The southern part was different; the upper Rhine and upper Danube are crossed. The frontier which they form is inconveniently long, enclosing an acute-angled wedge of foreign territory between the modern Baden and Württemberg; the Germanic populations of these lands seem in Roman times to have been scanty, Roman subjects from the modern Alsace-Lorraine had drifted across the river eastwards. The motives alike of geographical convenience and of the advantages to be gained by recognising these movements of Roman subjects combined to urge a forward policy at Rome, when the vigorous Vespasian had succeeded Nero, a series of advances began which closed up the acute angle, or at least rendered it obtuse.
The first advance came about 74 AD, when what is now Baden was invaded and annexed and a road carried from the Roman base on the upper Rhine, Straßburg, to the Danube just above Ulm. The point of the angle was broken off; the second advance was made by Domitian about 83 AD. He pushed out from Moguntiacum, extended the Roman territory east of it and enclosed the whole within a systematically delimited and defended frontier with numerous blockhouses along it and larger forts in the rear. Among the blockhouses was one which by various enlargements and refoundations grew into the well-known Saalburg fort on the Taunus near Bad Homburg; this advance necessitated a third movement, the construction of a frontier connecting the annexations of AD 74 and AD 83. We know the line of this frontier which ran from the Main across the upland Odenwald to the upper waters of the Neckar and was defended by a chain of forts. We do not, know its date, save that, if not Domitian's work, it was carried out soon after his death, the whole frontier thus constituted was reorganised by Hadrian, with a continuous wooden palisade reaching from Rhine to Danube.
The angle between the rivers was now full. But there remained further fortification. Either Hadrian or, more his successor Antoninus Pius pushed out from the Odenwald and the Danube, marked out a new frontier parallel to, but in advance of these two lines, though sometimes, as on the Taunus, coinciding with the older line; this is the frontier, now visible and visited by the curious. It consists, as we see it today, of two distinct frontier works, known as the Pfahlgraben, is a palisade of stakes with a ditch and earthen mound behind it, best seen in the neighbourhood of the Saalburg but once extending from the Rhine southwards into southern Germany; the other, which begins where the earthwork stops, is a wall, though not a formidable wall, of stone, the Teufelsmauer.
Alb Limes
The Alb Limes is a Roman frontier fortification or limes of the late 1st century AD in the Swabian Jura known as the Swabian Alb. The Alb Limes runs for just under 135 kilometres from Rottweil in the southwest to Heidenheim an der Brenz in the northeast. Regina Franke: Die Kastelle I und II von Arae Flaviae/Rottweil und die römische Okkupation des oberen Neckargebietes. Stuttgart, 2003, ISBN 3-8062-1787-4. Jörg Heiligmann: Der "Alb-Limes". Ein Beitrag zur römischen Besetzungsgeschichte Südwestdeutschlands. Stuttgart, 1990, ISBN 3-8062-0814-X. Friedrich Hertlein/Peter Goessler: Die Straßen und Wehranlagen des römischen Württemberg, Band 2 Straßen. In: Die Römer in Württemberg, Teil 2. Stuttgart, 1930 Rainer Kreutle: Römische Straßen im Ulmer Raum In: B. Reinhardt, K. Wehrberger: Römer an Donau und Iller. Neue archäologische Forschungen und Funde. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen, 1996 ISBN 3-7995-0410-9 Oscar Paret: Württemberg in vor- und frühgeschichtlicher Zeit. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart, 1961 Limes Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes
Roman military engineering
The military engineering of Ancient Rome's armed forces was of a scale and frequency far beyond that of any of its contemporaries'. Indeed, military engineering was in many ways institutionally endemic in Roman military culture, as demonstrated by the fact that each Roman legionary had as part of his equipment a shovel, alongside his gladius and pila. Fabri were workers, craftsmen or artisans in Roman society and descriptions of early Roman army structure attributed to king Servius Tullius describe there being two centuriae of fabri under an officer, the praefectus fabrum. Roman military engineering took both routine and extraordinary forms, the former a proactive part of standard military procedure, the latter of an extraordinary or reactionary nature; each Roman legion had a military legionary fort as its permanent base. However, when on the march in enemy territory, the legion would, after a day's marching, construct a fortified camp or castra, requiring as raw materials only earth and timber.
Camp construction was the responsibility of special engineering units to which specialists of many types belonged, officered by architecti, from a class of troops known as immunes since they were excused from or immune from, regular duties. These engineers would requisition manual labor from the soldiers at large as required. A legion could throw up a camp under enemy attack in as little as a few hours. Judging from the names, they used a repertory of camp plans from a set textbook, selecting the one appropriate to the length of time a legion would spend in it: tertia castra, quarta castra: "a camp of three days", "four days", etc; the engineers built bridges from both timber and stone depending on required permanence, time available etc. Some Roman stone bridges survive to this day. Stone bridges were made possible by the innovative use of the keystone to allow an arch construction. One of the most notable examples of military bridge-building in the Roman Empire was Julius Caesar's Bridge over the Rhine River.
This bridge was completed in only ten days and is conservatively estimated to have been more than 100 m long. The construction was deliberately over-engineered for Caesar's stated purpose of impressing the Germanic tribes, who had little experience of engineering, to emphasise that Rome could travel wherever she wished. Caesar was able to cross over the completed bridge and explore the area uncontested, before crossing back over and dismantling the bridge. Caesar relates in his War in Gaul that he "sent messengers to the Sugambri to demand the surrender of those who had made war on me and on Gaul, they replied that the Rhine was the limit of Roman power"; the bridge was intended to show otherwise. Although most Roman siege engines were adaptations from earlier Greek designs, the Romans were adept at engineering them swiftly and efficiently, as well as innovating variations such as the repeating ballista; the 1st century BC army engineer Vitruvius describes in detail many of the Roman siege machines in his manuscript De Architectura.
When invading enemy territories, the Roman army would construct roads as they went, to allow swift reinforcement and resupply, as well as a path for easy retreat if necessary. Roman road-making skills are such. Michael Grant credits the Roman building of the Via Appia with winning them the Second Samnite War; the Roman army took part in building projects for civilian use. There were sound reasons for the use of the army in building projects: that if they weren't directly engaged in military campaigns, the legions were unproductive, costing the Roman state large sums of money, but the involvement of the soldiers in building works, kept them not only well accustomed to hard physical labour, but kept them busy, since it was the held belief that busy armies weren't plotting to mutiny, whereas idle armies were. Of both military and civilian use was the construction of roads within the boundaries of the Empire, in which the army was involved, but so too were soldiers put to use in the construction of town walls, the digging of shipping canals, the drainage of land, harbours in the cultivation of vineyards.
In some rare cases soldiers were used in mining work. They were skilled in conducting mining operations such as building the many aqueducts needed for prospecting for metal veins, in methods like hydraulic mining, the building of reservoirs to hold the water at the minehead, it is that they were capable of building and operating mine equipment such as water mills, stamp mills and dewatering machines. It is that they were involved in exploiting gold resources such as those at Dolaucothi in south west Wales, it was developed soon after conquest of the region under Frontinus, the local auxiliary troop came from north-west Spain, a country where gold mining developed on a large scale in the early part of the first century AD. The knowledge and experience learned through such routine engineering lent itself to any extraordinary engineering projects required by the army, it is here that the scale of Roman military engineering exceeded that of any of its contemporaries in both imagination and scope.
One of the most famous of such extraordinary constructions was the circumvallation of the entire city of Alesia and its Celtic leader Vercingetorix, within a massive length of double-wall – one inward-facing to prevent escape or offensive sallies from the city, one outward-facing to prevent attack by Celtic reinforcements. This wall is estimated to have been over 20 km long. A second example would be the massive ramp built using thousands of ton
Trajan's Wall
Trajan's Wall is the name used for several linear earthen fortifications found across Eastern Europe, in Moldova and Ukraine. Contrary to the name and popular belief, the ramparts were not built by Romans during Trajan's reign, but during other imperial periods. Furthermore, the association with the Roman Emperor may be a recent scholarly invention, only entering the imagination of the locals with the national awakening of the 19th century. Medieval Moldavian documents referred to the earthworks as Troian in reference to a mythological hero in the Romanian and Slavic folklore; the other major earthen fortification in Romania, Brazda lui Novac, is named after a mythological hero. There are three valla in Romania, in south-central Dobruja, extending from the Danube to the Black Sea coast. While the relative chronology of the complex is accepted, the exact dating of each fortification is under dispute. Scholars place their erection at different dates in the Early Mediaeval period, in the second half of the first millennium.
In what regards the builders, two theories have gained acceptance, with supporters split, to a large degree, along national lines. Thus, Bulgarian historiography considers the fortifications were built by the First Bulgarian Empire as a defence against the various nomad groups roaming the North-Pontic steppes. On the other hand, several Romanian historians have tried to attribute at least part of the walls to the Byzantine Empire under emperors John I Tzimisces and Basil II, which controlled the region in the second part of the 10th century and throughout the 11th; the oldest and smallest vallum, the Small Earthen Dyke, is 61 km in length, extending from Cetatea Pătulului on the Danube to Constanţa on the sea coast. Made of earth, it has no defensive constructions built on it, but has a moat on its southern side; this feature has been interpreted as indicating construction by a population living to the north of the earthwork, in order to protect itself from an enemy in the South. The second vallum, the Large Earthen Dyke, 54 km in length, overlaps the smaller one on some sections.
It follows the Carasu Valley and ends at Palas, west of Constanţa. Its average height is 3.5 m, it has moats on both sides. On it are built 63 fortifications: 35 larger, 28 smaller; the average distance between fortifications is 1 km. The vallum shows signs of reconstruction; the last vallum to be built, the Stone Dyke, is made of earth, but has a stone wall on its crest. It is 59 km in length, extending from south of Axiopolis to the Black Sea coast, at a point 75 m south of the little earth wall; the agger is about 1.5 m in height. It has a moat on its northern side and 26 fortifications, the distance between them varying from 1 to 4 km; the commune Valu lui Traian is named after the vallum. In the Northern part of Dobrogea, on South bank of Danube there was a wall built by Trajan; the wall was constructed between today ancient town of Halmyris on the East. The wall was discovered by means of aerial photographs The remnants in Moldova comprise earthen walls and palisades. There are two major fragments preserved in Moldova: Southern Trajan's Wall.
The Southern Trajan's Wall in Moldova is thought to be dated by the 3rd century, built by Athanaric and stretches from Romania: Buciumeni-Tiganesti-Tapu-Stoicani and in after that another 126 km from the village of Vadul in Cahul district by the Prut River stretches into Ukraine and ends at Lake Sasyk by Tatarbunar. The Coat of Arms of Cahul district of Bessarabia, Russian Empire, incorporated Trajan's Wall; some academics like Dorel Bondoc and Costin Croitoru think that it was done by the Romans, because -to be done- it required plenty of knowledge and workforce that barbarians like Athanaric did not have. The Upper Trajan's Wall is thought to be constructed in the 4th century by Greuthungi Goths in order to defend the border against the Huns, it stretches 120 km from Dniester River by Chiţcani in Teleneşti district to Prut River and exetend till Tiganesti Sendreni in Romania. Fragments of Trajan's Wall are found by Leova; the rampart known as Trajan's Wall in Podolia and stretches through the modern districts of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Nova Ushytsia and Khmelnytskyi.
A part of the Moldavian Lower Trojan's Wall ends in Ukraine. See Serpent's Wall; the historian Alexandru V. Boldur regards this "Trajan's Wall" as the western limit of the territories of the 13th-century Bolokhoveni. Upper Trajan's Wall Southern Trajan's Wall Limes Moesiae Limes Romanus Limes Transalutanus Pietroasele Rădulescu Adrian, Bitoleanu Ion, Istoria românilor dintre Dunăre şi Mare: Dobrogea, Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 1979
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