Commentaria archaeologica et historica (IV)

1. Navigating on the Danube, from Ptolemy the son of Lagus to Neacșu of Câmpulung. The year 2021 marks the 500 anniversaries of the moment when Neacșu of Câmpulung wrote his letter, which many specialists considers to be the earliest attested document written in Romanian language. Since this is an important document for the history of Romanian literature, the following note will also be written in Romanian language. The sender of this letter, Neacșu of Câmpulung, was a merchant who was sending information to Hans Benkner, the mayor of Brașov, about the movements of Ottoman army along the Danube in the summer of 1521. Among the information are some regarding the way in which ships coming from the Bosphorus and the Black Sea navigated upstream on the Danube, through the Iron Gates, to Belgrade. This story echoes a quite similar one that happened eighteen centuries and a half earlier – the expedition of Alexander the Great to the Danube in 335 BC. The events were described by one witness who was part of the expedition: Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, a general of Alexander and future king of Egypt. The fragments describing the Danubian expedition are preserved in later works by Arrian and Strabo. According to them, while preparing the expedition to the east, Alexander the Great sought to first stabilize and pacify the northern territories of the kingdom. Therefore, in the spring of 335 BC, Alexander left Amphipolis to initiate a new expedition against the Triballi, who were chased up to the Danube. Led by king Syrmos, they took refuge on an island of the river, being also helped by the Getae living on the left bank of the Danube. Upon reaching the river, Alexander the Great met the “big ships” that came to help him from Byzantium, through the Black Sea and along the Danube (Arrian I, 3, 3). The alliance of the Getae and Triballi motivated Alexander to organize a one-day punishing raid to the north of the Danube. Several hypotheses have been proposed over time regarding the entire campaign and the location of the island on which the Triballi led by Syrmos took refuge, or the area where Alexander crossed the Danube (Fig. 1). F. Medeleţ had convincingly demonstrated that the army led by Alexander the Great reached the Danube near the Morava confluence. Al. Vulpe has objected to this hypothesis, mostly bringing into discussion the supposed difficulties encountered by the Macedonian fleet when attempting to navigate through the Iron Gates. However, the problem of passing through the Iron Gates cataracts was already solved in ancient time by towing the ships. The difficult conditions for the navigation through the cataracts were similar both before and after the Roman times, and until the modern age. Therefore, the information provided by Neacșu of Câmpulung about the Ottoman campaign along the Danube in 1521 is important. His description confirms that the Ottoman ships were towed, also indicating the way in which passage through the Danube’s Iron Gates was organized. Consequently, the idea suggesting that the “big ships” from Byzantium navigated upstream the Iron Gates while coming to support Alexander the Great in 335 BC is plausible. This hypothesis, proposed by Florin Medeleț, continues to be the most convincing one, ahead of all others proposed so far. 2. “Panoplies” of weapons and warrior identities from the “Celtic” to the “Dacian horizon” in Transylvania. The Late Iron Age in Transylvania was defined by two cultural and chronological horizons: the “Celtic horizon” (between ca. 350 and 190/175 BC) and the “Dacian horizon” (between ca. 190/175 BC and AD 106). One aspect that has seldom been discussed is the way these “panoplies” defined a particular social identity of these elites during each of the aforementioned cultural and chronological horizons which characterized the inner Carpathians region during the Late Iron Age. The comparison of the “standard” panoplies of weapons specific to the “Celtic” and the “Dacian horizon” indicates the existence of both similarities and differences. More precisely, these panoplies are quite similar in what concerns their functionality. In funerary contexts, these weapons are meant to define symbolically the warlike identity. However, the ways in which martial identity was constructed and expressed within the social environment differed from one horizon to another. The “Celtic” warrior was closely connected to the community within which he lived, being buried alongside other members of the community, in an area belonging to his group, clan or family, using all markers of his social status and identity. On the other hand, the “Dacian” warrior belonged to a hierarchic society that was defined by the emergence of hilltop fortresses surrounded by a dependent rural hinterland. Therefore, despite the apparent similarities in the functional structure of the panoplies of weapons, the warriors of these two horizons belonged to two very different models of social organization.