Dacians

Dacians were the ancient Indo-European inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea.

Illustration of Dacian men in traditional dress

Quotes:

• Already Herodotus called our ancestors: "The immortal Dacians". Our Getothracian ancestors had as faith, even before Christianity, the immortality and indestructibility of the soul, which proves their orientation towards spirituality. Roman colonization added to this element the Roman spirit of organization and form. All the following centuries have made our people miserable and disintegrated: but just as the nobility of its breed can be recognized in a sick and frustrated horse, so too in what the Romanian people are yesterday and today we can recognize the latent elements of this double inheritance. (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu)
• The Dacians who stretched from the Dniester to Bohemia gradually appear as the ancestors of the West and as the European precursors of the one God. They were Romanized and Christianized without resistance, because they were the begetters of their conquerors. We have always been there. It is the nobility of the farmer of the Danube, the one who gave Pan to the Greeks, the God whose death a voice announced at the moment in which Jesus expired on the cross and was born in our souls. [...] When the history of the Dacians is as well known as that of Athens or Rome, the West will find a new foundation in it , the oldest and closest, the one that will justify its evolution towards a tirelessly current future. And it won't scare anyone. (Vintilă Horia)

Ion Heliade Rădulescu:

• Among the Dacian weapons we see the spear and the halberd; their sword is usually found curved upwards and inwards like the sickle. The shield, the bow and the sling are of Scythian provenance; their helmets imitate the shape of the Phrygian caps. Since one man can be distinguished from another by the head, and so also by the clothes, the origin of a people can be better traced by the cap, if they still retain their primitive clothes. The Dacian standard was square in shape, like the standards of the eastern churches; and they represented a flying dragon.
• The Dacians were a brave people, simple and jealous of their freedom, good arrows and good knights; mostly shepherds or nomads, like today's Mocani. Zalmose was their legislator, he instituted their customs and celebrations, made them believe in the unity of God and in the immortality of the soul.
• The Dacians were very rich; but they had a horror of luxury, which they considered as a vice of foreigners; and wine they abhorred on religious principle.
• The Dacians remained with their customs, with their customs, with their crafts, and because the ancient authors say that the Dacians were rather shepherds, it is probable that the Mocani of today are descendants of the Dacians who took refuge in the mountains and in the caverns; especially because their dress reminds us of the costumes of the Dacians who can be seen represented on Trajan's column. The Mocans ordinarily wear the Phrygian cap, the sarica and the hood; their art is shepherding; and Romanian farmers still do not willingly intermarry with them.
• The Dacians, according to the institutions of Zalmose, were divided into four classes: the families of the princes or royals; the priests, who were not allowed to marry; the old ones, from whom the Senate was formed; and the people in general, from which the three first classes were elected.

Related entries:

• Romania