and arrows, spears,
javelins, and a short curved sword somewhat resembling a sickle.[80]

They fought on horseback as well as on foot, and it is said that they
sent showers of poisoned arrows into the ranks of their enemies. Of
their further proceedings in war as well as in peace we shall have
occasion to speak hereafter. About the year 10 B.C. the Emperor
Augustus sent one of his generals, Cn. Lentulus, to punish them for
having entered and devastated Pannonia under a chief Kotiso, but the
expedition was ineffectual, and for a long series of years they
continued to harass the Empire, often threatening to overrun whole
provinces. One such enterprise is mentioned by Tacitus:--

'Commotions about the same time broke out amongst the Dacians, a
people never to be relied on, and since the legions were withdrawn
from Moesia there was no force to awe them. They, however, watched
in silence the first movements of affairs. But when they heard that
Italy was in a blaze of war, and that all the inhabitants were in
arms against each other, they stormed the winter quarters of the
cohorts and the cavalry, and made themselves masters of both banks
of the Danube. They then prepared to raze the camp of the legions,
when Mucianus sent the sixth legion to check them, having heard of
the victory at Cremona, and lest a formidable foreign force should
invade Italy on both sides, the Dacians and the Germans making
irruptions in opposite quarters. On this, as on many other
occasions, fortune favoured the Romans in bringing Mucianus and the
forces of the East into that quarter, and also in that we had
settled matters at Cremona in the very nick of time.'[81]

It was in the reign of the Emperor Domitian, however, that the inroads
of the Dacians assumed their most formidable proportions. About this
time it is probable that the Dacians were divided into several tribes,
and that one leader more powerful than the rest had secured the
chieftainship of the whole nation. Thia chief is known to historians as
'Decebalus,' although there is great difference of opinion as to whether
that was his name or his title.[82] In the year 86 A.D., he
gathered together a great host, and, crossing the Danube into Moesia,
defeated and killed the praetor Oppius or Appius Sabinus, seizing several
of the Roman fortresses and driving their army to the foot of Mount
Haemus. As soon as the defeat