Macedonia

Lastly Macedonia along with Epirus and Hellas lay in greater desolation and decay than almost any other part of the Roman empire.  Dyrrhachium, Thessalonica, and Byzantium had still some trade and commerce; Athens attracted travellers and students by its name and its philosophical school; but on the whole there lay over the formerly populous little towns of Hellas, and her seaports once swarming with men, the calm of the grave.  But if the Greeks stirred not, the inhabitants of the hardly accessible Macedonian mountains on the other hand continued after the old fashion their predatory raids and feuds; for instance about 697-698 Agraeans and Dolopians overran the Aetolian towns, and in 700 the Pirustae dwelling in the valleys of the Drin overran southern Illyria.  The neighbouring peoples did likewise.  The Dardani on the northern frontier as well as the Thracians in the east had no doubt been humbled by the Romans in the eight years’ conflicts from 676 to 683; the most powerful of the Thracian princes, Cotys, the ruler of the old Odrysian kingdom, was thenceforth numbered among the client kings of Rome.  Nevertheless the pacified land had still as before to suffer invasions from the north and east.  The governor Gaius Antonius was severely handled both by the Dardani and by the tribes settled in the modern Dobrudscha, who, with the help of the dreaded Bastarnae brought up from the left bank of the Danube, inflicted on him an important defeat (692-693) at Istropolis (Istere, not far from Kustendji).  Gaius Octavius fought with better fortune against the Bessi and Thracians (694).  Marcus Piso again (697-698) as general-in-chief wretchedly mismanaged matters; which was no wonder, seeing that for money he gave friends and foes whatever they wished.  The Thracian Dentheletae (on the Strymon) under his governorship plundered Macedonia far and wide, and even stationed their posts on the great Roman military road leading from Dyrrhachium to Thessalonica; the people in Thessalonica made up their minds to stand a siege from them, while the strong Roman army in the province seemed to be present only as an onlooker when the inhabitants of the mountains and neighbouring peoples levied contributions from the peaceful subjects of Rome.

The New Dacian Kingdom

Such attacks could not indeed endanger the power of Rome, and a fresh disgrace had long ago ceased to occasion concern.  But just about this period a people began to acquire political consolidation beyond the Danube in the wide Dacian steppes—­a people which seemed destined to play a different part in history from that of the Bessi and the Dentheletae.  Among the Getae or Dacians in primeval times there had been associated with the king of the people a holy man called Zalmoxis, who, after having explored the ways and wonders of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests and of the Greek