’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about the same time broke out amongst the Dacians, a people never to be relied on, and since the legions were withdrawn from Moesia there was no force to awe them.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 and the position of the Roman forces became known, Domitian collected an army in Illyria and placed it under the command of Cornelius Fuscus, a general of more bravery than experience, who entered Moesia, and, finding that Decebalus, according to precedent, had retired across the Danube, followed him into his own country, only, however, in his turn to be defeated and slain.  Upon this the Romans again recrossed the river, leaving behind them their baggage and many prisoners.  Tacitus writes in great indignation concerning these reverses:—­

’So many armies in Moesia, Dacia, Germany, and Pannonia, lost through the temerity or cowardice of their generals; so many men of military character with numerous cohorts defeated and taken prisoners; whilst a dubious contest was maintained, not for the boundaries of the Empire and the banks of the bordering rivers, but for the winter quarters of the legions and the possession of our territories.’[83]

Whilst these events were occurring, Domitian is said to have been making progresses and indulging in all kinds of excesses, but; fortunately for him and for the honour of the Roman arms, another general succeeded in stemming the tide of invasion, and eventually (A.D. 89) in assuming the offensive.  This was Tertius