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260 John nandriŞ
I Dida son of Damanaus, by birth of the Volcae,
Eques of the Ala Vocontiorum in the squadron of
Maturus, fortified the station in five months 39
to the glory of the Emperor. Good Fortune.
the bisyllabic name Dida is thracian, and indeed he is sometimes cited
as “Daqus” 40 , while “Volqvs” may be of the same derivation as the many
other manifestations of the term “Vlah” 41 , such as wealh, Wales, Wallachia,
olah, &cc. presumably his Celtic father Damana had married a thracian
woman. André Bernand [1972 ; 48-51] 42 tentatively dates the inscription to
the reign of trajan, who invaded and conquered Dacia at the beginning of the
second century AD; but the Ala Vocontiorum is attested in egypt in the later
first century, as well as in Britain. this five-hundred strong cavalry unit was
recruited from the tribe of the Vocontii in Gallia narbonensis, inhabiting the
orange district of southern France on the eastern banks of the rhône. 43
At the opposite limits of the empire, Dacians came to mediate between
the British and their northern neighbours. the Cohors Prima Dacorum/
Primus Cohors Aelia Dacorum, was a milliary cohort of a thousand men
stationed to guard hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain, first at the outpost
of Benwell then at Birdoswald. their centurion was again one Aelius Dida,
a compatriot of the men under his command. the curved Dacian falx, was
a weapon of the Dacians, as much feared by their opponents as the rather
similar Gurkha kukhri of the British Army was in the Argentine war. It was
adopted for use by the gladiators in rome, and is represented on inscriptions
along hadrian’s wall, along with the names of Dacian settlers including one
Saxa; and gratifyingly enough a certain Decebal [– “no relation”]. Dacians
are also mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum.
A notable contribution to Balkan and european history was made by the
Moldavian voievodes, who resisted the advances into europe of the ottomans
as best they could in the absence of effective european support. they
supported the monasteries of Sinai and Athos in post-Byzantine times with
generous subventions of bullion, buildings, and grants of income from metohia
in the romanian lands, for example Sinaia on the Carpathian pass of predeal.
39 or as Bernand [fn. 40] has it: “… did duty for five months in this station”.
40 FuChS, G., (1988) cites Dida as a Dacian… DIDA DAMAnAI FIlIuS
nAtIonIS DAquS... Die arabische Wüste (Agypten) und ihre historische Bedeutung von
der Vorgeschichte bis in der römerzeit. Antike Welt (Basel) 19 Jhg./4;15-30, citing: “L’Année
Epigraphique, 1911, no. 121, with minor differences.”
41 For examples see NANdriŞ, j.G., Quaderni di Studii Arabi, 8 (1990).
42 BeMAnD, A., De Koptos a Kuseir (Brill, 1972).
43 http://www.roman-britain.org/places/trimontium.htm