Second Dacian War and annexation of Dacia

Trajan learned from the first war. When Decebalus broke terms, Rome answered with a machine built over three seasons: fortified depots, a permanent bridge at Drobeta designed by Apollodorus of Damascus, and seasoned legions that knew the passes by the smell of their pines. In 105, the columns moved again, shields bright as they climbed toward Sarmizegetusa [18][14].

The Danube’s new stone bridge changed tempo. Supply trains rolled faster from Moesia’s river ports—Drobeta, Viminacium—into the Dacian interior. At Tapae, the sounds were familiar: the thud of pila, the metallic scream of blades meeting blades. But this time Rome did not stop at leverage. It cut into the hill-forts, encircled Sarmizegetusa, and took the capital after a grim siege. Decebalus fled and died; resistance collapsed into the forests [14].

The annexation created the province of Dacia. With it came mines that mattered. Bullion—gold and silver—flowed south, coin dies worked overtime in Rome and Lugdunum, and the alimenta child-support loans expanded in Italian towns from Liguria to Umbria, tied in part to the fiscal windfall and to hypothecated loans on estates [13][18]. The empire converted iron victories into bronze and silver coin, and those into marble, roads, and social programs.

Across the empire, the news traveled in numbers. In the Forum Romanum, citizens stared up at civic inscriptions that would soon include boasts turned to stone; in Ostia, shipments for Rome’s building crews thickened; in Antioch, the East calculated that the Danube was quiet—and funds might be available elsewhere.

By 106, the Danube frontier sat behind a Roman shield that reached into the Carpathians. Trajan had balanced the books he opened in 101. The sound in Rome was the ring of coin on stone, and the color was the gold of victory wreaths reflected in the Tiber’s green water [18][14][13].