Despre frontiera Dunării de Jos în timpul Principatului
About the Lower Danube frontier during the principate

Summary/Abstract: The scholarly stand point to see the large rivers as borders is due to the imagination of modem historians rather than to the mapping literary, epigraphic, and archaeological data. The achievement of the great historical atlases and their diffusion as teaching and research material, since mid I 91 h c. up to now, has fundamentally influenced the way for reconstructing the historical past. Thus, one of the basic issues was to delimit territories inhabited by various populations, the trend being to separate them by natural borders or barriers. The location of the fortifications on the Danube should not be judged only from the view of the military strategic value, but mainly in terms of the opportunities to set up port facilities, as the river was firstly a supply route. As a result, the significance of the Roman fortification works should be argued by understanding of the communication system. The inclusion of a vast territory located north to the Danube is atypical should we consider the previous enlargement of the Roman borders. The campaigns of the Roman armies carried out in here during the I 51 c. AD were interpreted as being designed to enforce onto the populations in this area a client status. In addition, certain modem authors argued for a so-called "security area/safety space". The article discusses the situation of the limes at the Lower Danube and the related armies during the I st c. AD. The first major moment, involving the displacement of Legions V Macedonica and XI Claudia at Troesmis, respectively at Durostorum is linked to the period between Trajan's two Dacian campaigns, when the extension of the Roman fortifications' network along the Lower Danube may be recorded. The second important moment in the history of the limes in Lower Moesia was the displacement of Legion V Macedonica at Potaissa, during the Marcomannic Wars fought by Marcus Aurelius. Under such circumstances, the limes sector under the surveillance of this legion went under the control of Legion I Italica, stationed at Novae, as evidenced by epigraphic finds.

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