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We had two short rides from our camp­ing spot, one from a doc­tor, anoth­er from a sales­man from Hune­doara who was deliv­er­ing a door to a vil­lager. The door was tied to the roof of his Dacia [which is real­ly a Renault, with a dif­fer­ent body]. The door turned out to be the wrong one, which result­ed in a long dis­cus­sion about the accu­ra­cy of the sales cat­a­log. I was sur­prised at how easy it was to pick up the gen­er­al sense of a con­ver­sa­tion in Roman­ian, which is as obvi­ous­ly of Latin deriva­tion as Ital­ian or Span­ish. In fact, apart from the odd­i­ty of hear­ing the Slav­ic loan word “da” for “yes” used repeat­ed­ly, often in strings (“da-da-da!”), it sound­ed a lot like Ital­ian. This would prove very use­ful. In a pinch, I found that I could make a stab at guess­ing a Roman­ian word by call­ing up an Ital­ian word and replac­ing the end­ing with “u” or “e”, and the lis­ten­er could usu­al­ly guess what I was dri­ving at.

But the two rides brought us only a small por­tion of the way. The farm­lands van­ished as we fol­lowed the course of the Orăştie Riv­er into the moun­tains. It quick­ly became a steep and nar­row val­ley, clothed in a thick for­est of beech and spruce, occa­sion­al­ly break­ing into small patch­es of alpine pas­ture. At one point, we were blocked by a bull­doz­er which had stalled in a crit­i­cal­ly squeezed por­tion of the road. It was nec­es­sary for anoth­er doz­er to arrive and shove it enough for its motor to start. The road quick­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed, and our last ride let us off at the point where a four-wheel dri­ve vehi­cle would be advis­able. From there on, it would be exclu­sive­ly on foot. It proved to be a long, tir­ing climb, with the road reach­ing an absurd degree of steepness.

At about the half-way point, we are already foot­sore and appre­ci­ate a cool moun­tain stream.

I should explain that I am out of shape, after years sit­ting at home, work­ing on a com­put­er. I had an excel­lent old tent for hitch-hik­ing, which had served well for many years, but when I set out for this trip, I dis­cov­ered that it had dis­in­te­grat­ed beyond util­i­ty. So I am tak­ing anoth­er tent. Its an excel­lent tent I acquired for the arc­tic and north­ern bush coun­try, but it is three times as heavy as the oth­er one, and not real­ly prac­ti­cal for hitch-hik­ing. I also have the fool­ish habit of acquir­ing books and oth­er need­less­ly heavy items. For­tu­nate­ly, we did­n’t have to car­ry much water, as there were springs along the way. But, all in all, I am not in shape for this kind of thing any more. We took our time, stop­ping now and then to rest and bathe our feet in the riv­er, which quick­ly reduced to not much more than a moun­tain stream. We passed through high­er and high­er mead­ows, sum­mer pas­tures for hors­es and sheep. As the day­light dwin­dled, the inter­mit­tent pas­tures van­ished, the road nar­rowed to a bro­ken car-track, the for­est dark­ened and closed in, and the grade var­ied between twen­ty and forty per­cent, nev­er lev­el­ing off. It would be a tir­ing walk with­out any­thing on your back, but we were over­loaded. Still, I felt per­fect­ly com­fort­able most of the way. But some­where along the way, I pulled a ten­don, or did some­thing to my back, and sud­den­ly all the ener­gy drained out of me. Every step for­ward was exhaust­ing and painful. I bul­lied through as long as I could, but just a few kilo­me­ters from our goal, Isaac sug­gest­ed that we camp for the night and reach the site in the morn­ing. This met with my full appro­ba­tion. We select­ed a spot in the woods, pitched our tents, and I dropped into imme­di­ate unconsciousness.

“It’s just a lit­tle bit farther…!”

My (tem­po­rary) Water­loo. I could­n’t make one more step.

In the morn­ing, we start­ed out again. It was obvi­ous that I had done some major dam­age to my back, because walk­ing was still quite painful for me. The grade con­tin­ued to steep­en. Final­ly, we set down our packs at the last kilo­me­ter from our goal, and agreed to vis­it the site in relays. Isaac went first, return­ing after a while with the news that there was plen­ty to see, fresh water, and some­one at the site. I then went up myself.

After walk­ing through the roman for­ti­fi­ca­tion, the walls of which snaked through the for­est, I entered a clear­ing in which the Dacian ruins were spread out in the gold­en sun­light. This was Sarmizege­tusa. I had expect­ed to see the sort of thing that is nor­mal at an archae­o­log­i­cal site: a few vague out­lines, some lumps in the soil and frag­ments of stone. Instead, I found quite spec­tac­u­lar struc­tures, includ­ing a huge cir­cu­lar tablet some­thing like an Aztec sun-wheel, tem­ple sanc­tu­ar­ies, and mas­sive tum­bled pil­lar frag­ments. This was quite amaz­ing, con­sid­er­ing their antiq­ui­ty and loca­tion on a remote moun­tain top.

But the most delight­ful sur­prise was that the man on the site turned out to be Dr. Con­stan­tin, the archae­ol­o­gist in charge of exca­vat­ing the site. He was flu­ent in French, so he gave me a detailed tour.

This was no mere for­ti­fied mil­i­tary out­post or remote reli­gious sanc­tu­ary. It was a city — a pros­per­ous city sur­round­ed by exten­sive agri­cul­tur­al set­tle­ment. Dr. Con­stan­tin showed me how the entire moun­tain­side had been ter­raced for farm­ing. What is now thick for­est was, when the Roman legions came, a land­scape teem­ing with human activity.

I should explain why it was that I endured such an exhaust­ing climb to vis­it a Dacian archae­o­log­i­cal site. I grew up read­ing his­to­ry books in which there was a con­sis­tent image. Europe, north of the Roman Empire, was por­trayed as a kind of primeval for­est, inhab­it­ed by prim­i­tive trib­al Celts and Ger­mans, who would lurk behind the trees, lis­ten to mys­tic ora­cles, and make bloody sac­ri­fices, but who built noth­ing. The Romans then arrived, and after a few rip-roar­ing bat­tles, installed indoor plumb­ing and Roman Law. The cow­er­ing natives were only too glad to earn the right to dress up in togas and imi­tate their betters.

This was, no doubt, how the Romans saw things. It’s also how the British saw things when their empire was strong. It was how King George III thought about his Amer­i­can sub­jects. And it’s how many Amer­i­cans now think about their con­quest of Afghanistan. But this ver­sion of his­to­ry nev­er sat well with me.

In ancient Dacia, we have a clear exam­ple of a Euro­pean peo­ple, north of the Danube, who built an urban civ­i­liza­tion out­side the Empire, before they were con­quered and absorbed by Rome. I will explain more about the Dacians, and their role in his­to­ry, in the next posting.