title: Meropenem

text: The most common adverse effects are diarrhea (4.8%), nausea and vomiting (3.6%), injection-site inflammation (2.4%), headache (2.3%), rash (1.9%) and thrombophlebitis (0.9%). Many of these adverse effects were observed in severely ill individuals already taking many medications including vancomycin. Meropenem has a reduced potential for seizures in comparison with imipenem. Several cases of severe hypokalemia have been reported.


title: Meropenem

text: Meropenem rapidly reduces serum concentrations of valproic acid. As a result, people who use valproic acid for epilepsy are at increased risk of seizures during treatment with meropenem. In situations where the use of meropenem cannot be avoided, prescription of an additional anticonvulsant should be considered.


title: Meropenem

text: Meropenem is bactericidal except against "Listeria monocytogenes", where it is bacteriostatic. It inhibits bacterial cell wall synthesis like other β-lactam antibiotics. In contrast to other beta-lactams, it is highly resistant to degradation by β-lactamases or cephalosporinases. In general, resistance arises due to mutations in penicillin-binding proteins, production of metallo-β-lactamases, or resistance to diffusion across the bacterial outer membrane. Unlike imipenem, it is stable to dehydropeptidase-1, so can be given without cilastatin.


title: Meropenem

text: In 2016, a synthetic peptide-conjugated PMO (PPMO) was found to inhibit the expression of New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, an enzyme that many drug-resistant bacteria use to destroy carbapenems.


title: Stan (service)

text: Stan (stylized as Stan.) is an Australian over-the-top streaming service. It was launched on 26 January 2015. Stan originally was founded as StreamCo Media, a 50/50 joint venture between Nine Entertainment Co. and Fairfax Media. In August 2014, each company invested A$50 million in StreamCo. StreamCo was renamed Stan Entertainment in December 2014, prior to the January 2015 launch of the streaming service. Nine Entertainment would ultimately acquire Fairfax Media in 2018, making Stan a wholly owned subsidiary of Nine Digital.


title: Stan (service)

text: The service offers a broad range of film and television content from both local and foreign productions, particularly from the United States and United Kingdom. Stan also includes a growing library of their own original film and television content. With over 2.3 million subscribers, as of August 2020 Stan is the third largest streaming service in Australia, behind Disney+ and Netflix.


title: Stan (service)

text: Stan's original comedy "No Activity" became the first SVOD program ever nominated for a Logie Award at the 2016 ceremony.


title: Stan (service)

text: At launch, the first major programming announcement was the exclusive rights to the premiere season of "Better Call Saul" as well as the rights to "Breaking Bad", which previously aired on Foxtel. It also held the rights to "Transparent" and "Mozart in the Jungle".


title: Stan (service)

text: The company has a content partnership deal with Sony Pictures, ABC, SBS and its World Movies subsidiary, Paramount Global, MGM, BBC Worldwide, Showtime, CBS, Village Roadshow, and Warner Bros. International Television Distribution. In December 2014, Stan signed non-exclusive agreements with ABC Commercial and Viacom, with the latter covering Comedy Central, MTV, and Nickelodeon programming.


title: Stan (service)

text: In August 2015, Stan signed a multi-year deal with Warner Bros. International Television Distribution, bringing several new U.S. series to the platform, including Australian premiere series "A to Z" and "Selfie", as well as the third season of "The Following" (the first two seasons aired on the Nine Network). In 2016, Stan reached an exclusive multi-year deal with CBS Corporation, which included exclusive rights to Showtime original programs (before the launch of Paramount+ in August 2021).


title: Stan (service)

text: On 13 December 2018, Stan reached a content agreement with Disney to carry films and television series. The agreement ended in late-2019 due to the launch of Disney+. On 20 August 2019, Stan reached an agreement with Paramount Pictures, carrying some of its films, and series such as "The Great" and "Looking for Alaska". In August 2020, Stan reached a multi-year agreement with NBCUniversal for rights to content from Sky Studios and its U.S. streaming service Peacock.


title: Stan (service)

text: Stan has commissioned its parent company, the Nine Network, to produce original Australian drama series exclusive to the service and has approached ABC and SBS on the possibility of co-producing shows and films. On 16 February 2015, Stan announced it was developing two original series—a "Wolf Creek" series and a political drama based on the life of High Court judge Lionel Murphy titled "Enemies of the State", with additional productions to be announced in the coming months. On 10 March 2015, it was announced Stan had acquired "Plonk", a comedic wine program which had formerly aired on Eleven, premiering season two on 18 June 2015. On 1 May 2015, Stan announced its first commissioned series, a comedy titled "No Activity"; which premiered on 22 October 2015. Stan renewed "No Activity" on 15 December 2015 for a second season.


title: Stan (service)

text: In November 2020, Stan began to acquire sports rights in association with Nine's Wide World of Sports. These events are carried in a new add-on subscription known as Stan Sport, while the Nine Network holds free-to-air rights to portions of these packages.


title: Stan (service)

text: In 2021, Stan and Nine began a three-year contract with Rugby Australia to air rugby union on the Nine Network and Stan. Ending a long-standing agreement with Fox Sports and Network 10, Stan holds the pay television rights, streaming all Super Rugby and Super W matches live and ad-free, as well as coverage of inbound tests involving Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, and South Africa, club matches, The Rugby Championship, the Bledisloe Cup, and the Shute Shield, among others.


title: Stan (service)

text: In June 2021, Stan announced the acquisition of the rights to UEFA club competitions, including the UEFA Champions League beginning in August of 2021. In the same announcement it was also revealed that the Australian Open would be broadcast on the platform.


title: Stan (service)

text: Parent company Fairfax Media claimed they were approaching 100,000 customers by March 2015, however, many of these customers were on a 30-day trial period. In May 2015, Fairfax announced the service was nearing 200,000 subscribers and had a target of 300,000 to 400,000 by the year's end.


title: Stan (service)

text: In May 2015, Roy Morgan Research found that Netflix had 1.039 million Australian users, compared to 97,000 for former competitor Presto and 91,000 for Stan. In October 2015, Nine Entertainment claimed that Stan had between 150,000 and 200,000 paying subscribers, which they said was ahead of Presto's estimated 100,000 customers.


title: Stan (service)

text: One year after its launch, CEO Mike Sneesby announced that 1.5 million users had used the service across almost 700,000 subscriptions. In December 2016 Stan claimed to have 600,000 active subscribers. In November 2017 it was reported that the service had over 800,000 active subscribers and revenue topping $100 million a year.


title: Stan (service)

text: Stan reached 1 million active subscribers in June 2018. By December 2019, the service had over 1.8 million subscribers.


title: Stan (service)

text: As of August 2020, Stan passed the 2 million subscriber mark reaching 2.1 million subscribers in total.


title: Stan (service)

text: As of May 2021, Stan passed 2.3 million active subscribers and more than 4 million people that had entered their credit card details on the platform. Stan gained nearly 150,000 sport subscribers since it began broadcasting rugby union matches earlier this year.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The Federation Council ( – "Soviet Federatsii", common abbreviation: Совфед – "Sovfed"), or Senate (officially, starting from July 1, 2020) (), is the upper house of the Federal Assembly of Russia (the parliament of the Russian Federation), according to the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Each of the 89 federal subjects of Russia (including two annexed in 2014 and four more in 2022, that are not recognized by the international community) – consisting of 24 republics, 48 oblasts, nine krais, three federal cities, four autonomous okrugs, and one autonomous oblast – sends two senators to the Council, for a total membership of 178 Senators. In addition, the Constitution also provides for senators from the Russian Federation, which can be no more than 30 (up to seven of them for life), as well as (optionally) former presidents as life senators ( there are no such life senators).


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The council holds its sessions within the Main Building on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street in Moscow, the former home of the Soviet State Building Agency (Gosstroy), with further offices and committee rooms located on Novy Arbat Street. The two houses of the Federal Assembly are physically separated, with the State Duma residing in another part of Moscow on Okhotny Ryad Street. Sessions of the Federation Council take place in Moscow from January 25 to July 15, and from September 16 to December 31. Sessions are open to the public, although the location of sessions can change if the Federation Council so desires, and secure closed sessions may be convoked.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: For purposes of succession, the chairman of the Federation Council is the third-highest position in the Russian Federation, after the president and the prime minister. In the case of incapacity of the President and Prime Minister, the chairman of the Federation Council becomes Acting President of the Russian Federation.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The modern history of the Federation Council begins during the 1993 Constitutional Crisis that pitted President Boris Yeltsin's unpopular neoliberal and governmental structure reforms against the increasingly radical Congress of People's Deputies, the nation's legislature. Throughout the year, the congress had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Yeltsin and his cabinet's management of the floundering Russian economy, as well as with its plans for a new constitution for the Russian Federation to replace the Soviet-era 1978 Russian SFSR Constitution still in effect. In the midst of the increasingly tense crisis, on September 21, Yeltsin issued Presidential Decree No.1400. The decree effectively scrapped constitutional reform then presently in discussion, as well as legally dissolving the Congress of People's Deputies, ordering its replacement with an entirely new federal legislative structure, and granting the president increased executive powers. Following a war of words and acts of defiance from both sides, President Yeltsin abruptly ended the governmental power struggle by ordering the Russian army to bombard and storm the White House of Russia, the legislative building, between October 2–4, 1993.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Following the crushing of the Congress of People's Deputies and other members of the federal and territorial governments who had initially supported what he viewed as a rebellious legislature, Yeltsin proceeded to present a new constitution. With the events of 1993 very much in mind, Yeltsin drafted a constitution that called for increased executive branch powers in prime ministerial appointments, veto overrides, and a stronger executive security council. The constitution also called for the creation of a bicameral Federal Assembly, consisting of a State Duma and a Federation Council. Although a Federation Council had been created by Yeltsin in July 1993 to gather regional representatives (except Chechnya) to support an earlier draft of a replacement constitution to the 1978 document, this Federation Council was to become a permanent part of the legislature.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The procedure of formation of the Federation Council by elections held according to the majority system was defined by Presidential Decrees No. 1626 from October 11, 1993 "On Elections to the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation" and No. 1846 from November 6, 1993 "On Specification to the Resolution on Elections of Deputies to the State Duma and Resolution on Elections of Deputies to the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in 1993".


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Similar to the United States Senate, the Federation Council would consist of two representatives from each of Russia's federal subjects. Unlike the State Duma, which consisted of hundreds of districts across the nation, the Federation Council was to act as more or less the voice of Russia's federated subdivisions. Early debate on its creation centered on whether or not the Federation Council should be elected at all. To solve some problems on the Council's first scheduled election in December, Yeltsin issued Presidential Decree No. 1628 on October 11, stipulating that candidates for the first elections needed at least two percent, or 25,000 signatures—whichever was highest—of their oblast, republic, krai, autonomous okrug, or federal city population. This helped previous territorial elites remain within national politics. The decree also stipulated a single term of two years before new elections in 1995.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The Council's first elections were held on December 12, 1993, simultaneously with State Duma elections and a referendum on the new Constitution of the Russian Federation. With the constitution now in effect after its successful passage, elections for the Council were to be franchised solely to territorial authorities, with one senator elected from the subject's legislature, and the other by the subject's executive branch. This later was codified in 1995 when the Council's first term expired.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The constitution, however, did not specify "how" senators were to be elected. By 1995, using this constitutional anomaly, regional executives could sit "ex officio" in both their own regional executive posts "and" within the Federation Council. While the State Duma did much of the serious debates on Russian policy during this time, the Council became a lobby for regional interests, competing for federal attention.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The ascension of President Vladimir Putin following Yeltsin's resignation on December 31, 1999 brought many new changes to the Federation Council. As part of his top political goals in his first months of office in 2000, Putin proposed a reform law to change the makeup of the Council which would allow regional governors to designate councillors but not sit on the Council themselves, freeing it from what Putin saw as blatant personal cronyism on the part of regional leaders. The Council furiously resisted Putin's plan, conscious that their role in federal politics, their very ability to enjoy the fruits of living within Moscow, and their parliamentary immunity would end. With the State Duma threatening to override a Council veto, and Putin's threats to open federal criminal investigations on regional governors, the Council backed down and grudgingly supported the law in July 2000. In their place, a wave of new Kremlin-friendly senators took the vacated seats, complete with the full backing of Putin. The last of these dual senator-governors were rotated out of office in early 2002.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Following the Beslan school hostage crisis in September 2004, President Putin initiated a radical shakeup of the federal system, proposing that the direct elections of regional governors be replaced by appointments from the president himself. These appointments could later be confirmed or rejected by the regional legislatures. The move further placed more control over the Council by the executive branch, due to laws which stipulate that regional executives have a say in choosing delegates to the Federation council.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Since 2000, the Federation Council has largely remained a stable body. However, critics have charged that Putin's tactics in reforming the Council were blatantly undemocratic and anti-federal, arguing that the reforms created a rubber stamp body for the executive branch and the ruling United Russia party, similar to what the Soviet of Nationalities was during the Soviet period.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: As set in Article 101 of the Russian Constitution, the Federation Council “shall elect among its deputies the chairman of the Council.” Some of the Chairman's official duties include presiding over sessions, formulating and introducing draft agendas, issuing orders and consulting with the Council's various committees, acting as the Council's official representative in the Federal Assembly, and signing resolutions to be passed forth to the president or the State Duma.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Senators are able to retain membership in their respective parties, however they are asked not to bring party factionalism to the floor itself. Since the reforms of 2000, the Council has enjoyed a significantly close relationship with the Kremlin, helping easy passage of key legislation the Kremlin desires.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: According to Article 98, all the members of the Council enjoy immunity from arrest, detainment, and searches. In 2007 the law on the Federation Council was amended, and now a senator must have resided for at least ten years in the territory he is representing.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The status of members of the Federation Council is defined by the Federal Law: "On Status of Members of the Council of Federation and Status of Deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation".


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Unlike the State Duma, with its division of parties and leaders, in 2002 parliamentary groups were forbidden following Mironov's election to the chairmanship and the parliamentary procedures to disband all political factions though the members are affiliated with some major Russian political parties.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Unlike the State Duma and the provincial legislatures throughout Russia, the Council is not directly elected, but instead chosen by territorial politicians, resembling in some respects the structure of the U.S. Senate prior to the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. The only exclusion was the first Federation council (1994–1996), which was elected on December 12, 1993.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: According to Article 95, the Council comprises representatives of each Russian federal subject—two from each. One senator is elected by the provincial legislature, the other is nominated by the provincial governor and confirmed by the legislature. Prior to 2000, all provincial governors and heads of provincial legislatures were also members of the Council. Upon President Putin's ascension to the Russian presidency, this practice was discontinued under pressure from the Kremlin, forbidding governors to hold dual posts.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Terms to the Council are also not nationally fixed, due to the continuing territorial nature of the chamber. Terms instead are determined according to the regional bodies they represent.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: In 2001–2004 regional bodies were able to recall their senator by the same procedure as they've appointed him or her. Such recalls once occurred quite often. But a new law passed in December 2004 required that a recall procedure must be first initiated by the chairman of Federation Council. The procedure hasn't been implemented since.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: On January 1, 2013, the latest Law on the Procedure to Form the Federation Council entered into force: According to the Law, the Federation Council consists of two delegates from each Russian constituent component, one representing the given region's legislative assembly and the other representing the provincial executive authorities. There will be two different election procedures, one for each type of member. (Federal Law No. 229, art. 1.1.) Candidates for the Senator from a constituent component's legislature must be a member of the component region's legislative assembly. He or she will be nominated as a candidate by the chairman of the regional legislative assembly, by one party faction represented in the assembly, or by at least one-fifth of the assembly members. Then, the regional legislative assembly will vote for one of the nominated candidates.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: An amendment to the law was approved in July 2014, which add 17 more senators who are nominated by the president.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The second type of delegate to the Federation Council, the regional executive authority representative, is appointed by the Governor of that constituent component (or the Head of that autonomous republic). The delegate is selected from among three people named by the candidates for the office of governor/head of the concerned region. The winner of the gubernatorial/republican leadership election appoints one of the three he or she previously named for appointment to the Council as a senator of said region.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Federation Council is viewed as a more formal chamber of the Federal Assembly. Because of its federalist design, as well as its voting franchise strictly limited to provincial elites, the Council is viewed as less volatile to radical changes.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: The Council is charged in cooperating with the State Duma in completing and voting on draft laws. Federal laws concerning budgets, customs regulations, credit monitoring, and the ratification of international treaties are to be considered by the Council after they have been adopted from the State Duma, where most legislation is introduced.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: For laws to pass the Federation Council, a vote of more than half of its 187 senators is required. When considering federal constitutional laws, three-fourths of the Council's votes are required for passage. If the Council vetoes a law passed by the State Duma, the two chambers are mandated to form a Conciliation Committee in order to form a compromise document, which would again go under vote by both houses. The Federation Council's veto can be overcome by two-thirds majority of Duma deputies.


title: Federation Council (Russia)

text: Committees form a key component to the structure of the Council. Sixteen committees and seven commissions exist for senators to consider legislation and policy on a number of issues ranging from foreign affairs, federal affairs, and youth and sports. Leadership in these committees are determined by the Council Chairman, who remains in correspondence with their findings. These committees include:


title: History of Romania

text: 34,950-year-old remains of modern humans with a possible Neanderthalian trait were discovered in present-day Romania when the "Peștera cu Oase" ("Cave with Bones") was uncovered in 2002. In 2011, older modern human remains were identified in the UK (Kents Cavern 41,500 to 44,200 years old) and Italy (Grotta del Cavallo 43,000 to 45,000 years old) but the Romanian fossils are still among the oldest remains of "Homo sapiens" in Europe, so they may be representative of the first such people to have entered Europe. The remains present a mixture of archaic, early modern human and Neanderthal morphological features.


title: History of Romania

text: The Neolithic-Age Cucuteni area in northeastern Romania was the western region of one of the earliest European civilizations, known as the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture. The earliest-known salt works is at Poiana Slatinei near the village of Lunca; it was first used in the early Neolithic around 6050 BC by the Starčevo culture and later by the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in the pre-Cucuteni period. Evidence from this and other sites indicates the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture extracted salt from salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage.


title: History of Romania

text: The Dacians, who are widely accepted to be the same people as the Getae, with Roman sources predominantly using the name Dacian and Greek sources predominantly using the name Getae, were a branch of Thracians who inhabited Dacia, which corresponds with modern Romania, Moldova, northern Bulgaria, south-western Ukraine, Hungary east of the Danube river and West Banat in Serbia.


title: History of Romania

text: The earliest written evidence of people living in the territory of present-day Romania comes from Herodotus in Book IV of his "Histories", which was written in 440 BC; He writes that the tribal union/confederation of the Getae were defeated by the Persian Emperor Darius the Great during his campaign against the Scythians, and describes the Dacians as the bravest and most law-abiding of the Thracians.


title: History of Romania

text: The Dacians spoke a dialect of the Thracian language but were influenced culturally by the neighbouring Scythians in the east and by the Celtic invaders of Transylvania in the 4th century.


title: History of Romania

text: Due to the fluctuating nature of the Dacian states, especially before the time of Burebista and before the 1st century AD, the Dacians would often be split into different kingdoms thus having different rulers, known rulers of the Dacians include: Charnabon, king of the Getae as mentioned by Sophocles in Triptolemus in the 5th century BC, Cothelas, father of Meda of Odessa in the 4th century BC, Rex Histrianorum, ruler in Histria, mentioned by Trogus Pompeius and Justinus in 339 BC, Dual in the 3rd century BC, Moskon in the 3rd century BC, Dromichaetes in the 3rd century BC, Zalmodegicus around year 200 BC, Rhemaxos also around year 200 BC, Rubobostes before 168 BC, Zoltes after 168 BC, Oroles in the 2nd century BC, Dicomes in the 1st century BC, Rholes in the 1st century BC, Dapyx in the 1st century BC, Zyraxes in the 1st century BC, Burebista between 82 BC – 44 BC, Deceneus between 44 BC and around 27 BC, Thiamarkos between 1st century BC and 1st century AD, Dacian king (inscription "Basileys Thiamarkos epoiei"), Cotiso between c. 40 BC and c.9 BC, Comosicus between 9 BC and 30 AD, Scorilo between c. 30 AD and 70 AD Coson in the 1st century AD, Duras between c. 69 AD to 87 AD, Decebalus between 87 AD to 106 AD, Dacia becomes a province of the Roman Empire in 106 AD, conquered by Emperor Trajan, however the Free Dacians outside of the Roman Empire remain independent, Pieporus, king of Dacian Costoboci in the 2nd century AD (inscription), possibly Tarbus in the 2nd century AD as Dio Cassius mentioned him without specifying his origin, some authors consider a possible Dacian ethnicity.


title: History of Romania

text: The Dacia of King Burebista (82–44 BC) stretched from the Black Sea to the source of the river Tisa and from the Balkan Mountains to Bohemia. During that period, the Geto-Dacians conquered a wider territory and Dacia extended from the Middle Danube to the Black Sea littoral (between Apollonia and Olbia) and from present-day Slovakia's mountains to the Balkan mountains. In 53 BC, Julius Caesar stated that the lands of the Dacians started on the eastern edge of the Hercynian Forest (Black Forest). After Burebista's death, his kingdom split in four states, later five.


title: History of Romania

text: Geto-Dacians inhabited both sides of the Tisa river prior to the rise of the Celtic Boii and again after the latter were defeated by the Dacians under the king Burebista. It seems likely that the Dacian state arose as a tribal confederacy, which was united only by charismatic leadership in both military-political and ideological-religious domains. At the beginning of the 2nd century BC (before 168 BC), under the rule of king Rubobostes, a Dacian king in present-day Transylvania, the Dacians' power in the Carpathian basin increased after they defeated the Celts, who held power in the region since the Celtic invasion of Transylvania in the 4th century BC.


title: History of Romania

text: A kingdom of Dacia also existed as early as the first half of the 2nd century BC under King Oroles. Conflicts with the Bastarnae and the Romans (112–109 BC, 74 BC), against whom they had assisted the Scordisci and Dardani, greatly weakened the resources of the Dacians. The Roman historian Trogus Pompeius wrote about king Oroles punishing his soldiers into sleeping at their wives' feet and doing the household chores, because of their initial failure in defeating the invaders. Subsequently, the now "highly motivated" Dacian army defeated the Bastarnae and king Oroles lifted all sanctions.


title: History of Romania

text: Burebista (Boerebista), a contemporary of Julius Caesar, ruled Geto-Dacian tribes between 82 BC and 44 BC. He thoroughly reorganised the army and attempted to raise the moral standard and obedience of the people by persuading them to cut their vines and give up drinking wine. During his reign, the limits of the Dacian Kingdom were extended to their maximum. The Bastarnae and Boii were conquered, and even the Greek towns of Olbia and Apollonia on the Black Sea ("Pontus Euxinus") recognized Burebista's authority. In 53 BC, Caesar stated that the Dacian territory was on the eastern border of the Hercynian Forest.


title: History of Romania

text: Burebista suppressed the indigenous minting of coinages by four major tribal groups, adopting imported or copied Roman denarii as a monetary standard. During his reign, Burebista transferred Geto-Dacians capital from Argedava to Sarmizegetusa Regia. For at least one and a half centuries, Sarmizegetusa was the Dacians' capital and reached its peak under King Decebalus. The Dacians appeared so formidable that Caesar contemplated an expedition against them, which his death in 44 BC prevented. In the same year, Burebista was murdered, and the kingdom was divided into four (later five) parts under separate rulers.


title: History of Romania

text: One of these entities was Cotiso's state, to whom Augustus betrothed his own five-year-old daughter Julia. He is well known from the line in Horace ("Occidit Daci Cotisonis agmen", Odes, III. 8. 18).


title: History of Romania

text: The Dacians are often mentioned under Augustus, according to whom they were compelled to recognize Roman supremacy. However they were by no means subdued, and in later times to maintain their independence they seized every opportunity to cross the frozen Danube during the winter and ravaging the Roman cities in the province of Moesia, which was under Roman occupation.


title: History of Romania

text: In fact, this occurred because Burebista's empire split after his death into four and later five smaller states, as Strabo explains, "only recently, when Augustus Caesar sent an expedition against them, the number of parts into which the empire had been divided was five, though at the time of the insurrection it had been four. Such divisions, to be sure, are only temporary and vary with the times".


title: History of Romania

text: During the War of Actium, King Cotiso found himself courted by the two Roman antagonists, Octavian and Mark Antony. Cotiso was in a strong position to dictate terms of any alliance to either of the conflicting parties. Octavian/Augustus worried about the frontier and possible alliance between Mark Antony and the Dacians, and plotted an expedition against Dacia around 35 BC. Despite several small conflicts, no serious campaigns were mounted. King Cotiso chose to ally himself with Mark Antony. According to Alban Dewes Winspear and Lenore Kramp Geweke he "proposed that the war should be fought in Macedonia rather than Epirus. Had his proposal been accepted, the subjection of Antonius might have been less easily accomplished."


title: History of Romania

text: According to Appian, Mark Antony is responsible for the statement that Augustus sought to secure the goodwill of Cotiso, king of the Getae (Dacians) by giving him his daughter, and he himself marrying a daughter of Cotiso. According to Suetonius, Cotiso refused the alliance and joined the party of Mark Antony. Suetonius (LXIII, "Life of Augustus") says Mark Antony wrote that Augustus betrothed his daughter Julia to marry Cotiso ("M. Antonius scribit primum eum Antonio filio suo despondisse Iuliam, dein Cotisoni Getarum regi") to create an alliance between the two men. This failed when Cotiso betrayed Augustus. Julia ended up marrying her cousin Marcus Claudius Marcellus. According to Cassius Dio, the story about the proposed marriages is hardly credible and may have been invented by Mark Antony as propaganda to offset his own alliance with Cleopatra.


title: History of Romania

text: After Augustus's victory in the civil wars, the Romans punished the Dacian ruler, who was apparently defeated in battle around 25 BC. In an ode dedicated to his protector, Horace advises him not to worry about Rome's safety, because Cotiso's army has been crushed. In his account of his achievements as emperor, the "Res Gestae", Augustus claimed that the Dacians had been subdued. This was not entirely true, because Dacian troops frequently crossed the Danube to ravage parts of Pannonia and Moesia. He may have survived until the campaign of Marcus Vinicius in the Dacian area c.9 BC. Vinicius was the first Roman commander to cross the Danube and invade Dacia itself. Ioana A. Oltean argues that Cotiso probably died at some point during this campaign. He may have been killed in the war. According to Jordanes Cotiso was succeeded by Comosicus, about whom nothing is known beyond the name.


title: History of Romania

text: In the 16th century a large number of gold coins were discovered in hoards in Romania. They were patterned after Roman coins, with a depiction of a Roman consul accompanied by lictors apparently copied from coins issued by Marcus Junius Brutus. The coins bore the name "Coson" or "Koson" written in Greek lettering. Theodor Mommsen argued that Koson was probably a Dacian ally of Brutus, since the imagery was taken from Brutus's coins. Recent scholars have argued that he is very likely to be identical to Cotiso, since "Cotiso[n]" is an easy transcription error for Coson. Horace always spells the name with an "n" at the end. Ioana A. Oltean, however, argues that Coson and Cotiso are different people, suggesting that Cotiso was Coson's successor.


title: History of Romania

text: Jordanes refers to Burebista as king of Dacia, but then goes on to discuss a high priest called Dicineus who taught the Dacians astronomy and whose wisdom was revered. He then says that "after the death of Dicienus, they held Comosicus in almost equal honour, because he was not inferior in knowledge. By reason of his wisdom he was accounted their priest and king, and he judged the people with the greatest uprightness. When he too had departed Coryllus ascended the throne as king of the Goths [Getae] and for forty years ruled his people in Dacia."


title: History of Romania

text: King Scorilo was Comosicus' successor and may have been the father of Decebalus. The Roman historian Jordanes lists a series of Dacian kings before Decebalus, placing a ruler called "Coryllus" between Comosicus and the independently attested Duras, who preceded Decebalus as king. Coryllus is supposed to have presided over a long peaceful 40-year rule, however, the name Coryllus is not mentioned by any other historian, and it has been argued that it "is a misspelling of Scorilo, a relatively common Dacian name". On this basis, Coryllus has been equated with the Scorilo named on an ancient Dacian pot bearing the words “Decebalus per Scorilo”. Though far from certain, this has also been translated as "Decebalus son of Scorilo". If so, this might mean that Decebalus was the son of Scorilo, with Duras possibly being either an older son or a brother of Scorilo. A Dacian king ("dux Dacorum") called Scorilo is also mentioned by Frontinus, who says he was in power during a period of turmoil in Rome. From this evidence and references to Dacian kings elsewhere, it is suggested that Scorilo probably ruled from the 30s or 40s AD through to 69–70.


title: History of Romania

text: The Dacians regularly raided into Roman territory in Moesia. The emperors Tiberius and Caligula solved this problem by paying protection money to the Dacians in the form of annual subsidies. This policy appears to have coincided with the reign of King Scorilo. Scorilo's brother was apparently held captive for a period in Rome, but was released in exchange for a promise that the Dacians would not intervene in Rome's volatile power-politics. During the reign of Emperor Nero, troops were withdrawn from the Dacian border, leaving the empire vulnerable. When Nero was overthrown in 69, the empire was plunged into turmoil in the Year of Four Emperors. The Dacians appear to have tried to take advantage of the situation to launch an invasion of Moesia in alliance with the Sarmatian Roxolani. The invasion was ill-timed. Licinius Mucianus, a supporter of Vespasian, was advancing with an army through Moesia towards Rome to overthrow Vitellius. The Dacians unexpectedly encountered his forces and were pushed back, suffering a major defeat. Scorilo appears to have died around this time, perhaps during the campaign.


title: History of Romania

text: King Duras ruled between the years AD 69 and 87, during the time that Domitian ruled the Roman Empire. He was one of a series of rulers following the Great King Burebista. Duras' immediate successor was Decebalus. Duras may be identical to the "Diurpaneus" (or "Dorpaneus") identified in Roman sources as the Dacian leader who, in the winter of 85, ravaged the southern banks of the Danube, which the Romans defended for many years. Many authors refer to him as "Duras-Diurpaneus". Other scholars argue that Duras and Diurpaneus are different individuals, or that Diurpaneus is identical to Decebalus.


title: History of Romania

text: The Roman governor of Moesia, Oppius Sabinus, raised an army and went to war with the Dacians following the Dacian (Getae) raids into Roman territory. Diurpaneus and his people defeated and decapitated Oppius Sabinus. When news of the defeat reached Rome, the citizens became fearful that the conquering enemy would invade and spread destruction further into the Empire. Because of this fear, Domitian was obliged to move with his entire army into Illyria and Moesia, the latter of which was now split into Upper and Lower regions. He ordered his commander Cornelius Fuscus to cross the Danube.


title: History of Romania

text: The Dacians were pushed back across the Danube, but Fuscus suffered a crushing defeat when ambushed by "Diurpaneus". At this point, the probably elderly Duras seems to have ceded power to Decebalus. Duras' concession of leadership was made peacefully. He continued to live in one of the palaces in Sarmizegetusa while serving as an advisor to Decebalus.


title: History of Romania

text: King Decebalus ruled the Dacians between AD 87 and 106. The frontiers of Decebal's Dacia were marked by the Tisa River to the west, by the trans-Carpathians to the north and by the Dniester River to the east. His name translates into ""strong as ten men"".


title: History of Romania

text: When Trajan turned his attention to Dacia, it had been on the Roman agenda since before the days of Julius Caesar when a Roman army had been beaten at the Battle of Histria.


title: History of Romania

text: In AD 85, the Dacians had swarmed over the Danube and pillaged Moesia. In AD 87, the Roman troops sent by the Emperor Domitian against them under Cornelius Fuscus, were defeated and Cornelius Fuscus was killed by the Dacians by authority of their ruler, Diurpaneus. After this victory, Diurpaneus took the name of "Decebalus", but the Romans were victorious in the Battle of Tapae in AD 88 and a truce was drawn up . The next year, AD 88, new Roman troops under Tettius Julianus, gained a significant advantage, but were obligated to make a humiliating peace following the defeat of Domitian by the Marcomanni, leaving the Dacians effectively independent. Decebalus was given the status of "king client to Rome", receiving military instructors, craftsmen and money from Rome.


title: History of Romania

text: To increase the glory of his reign, restore the finances of Rome, and end a treaty perceived as humiliating, Trajan resolved on the conquest of Dacia, the capture of the famous Treasure of Decebalus, and control over the Dacian gold mines of Transylvania. The result of his first campaign (101–102) was the siege of the Dacian capital Sarmizegethusa and the occupation of part of the country. Emperor Trajan recommenced hostilities against Dacia and, following an uncertain number of battles, and with Trajan's troops pressing towards the Dacian capital Sarmizegethusa, Decebalus once more sought terms.


title: History of Romania

text: Decebalus rebuilt his power over the following years and attacked Roman garrisons again in AD 105. In response Trajan again marched into Dacia, attacking the Dacian capital in the Siege of Sarmizegethusa, and razing it to the ground, the defeated Dacian king Decebalus committed suicide to avoid capture. In the following years, a new city was built on the ruins of the Dacian capital named Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa. With part of Dacia quelled as the Roman province Dacia Traiana. Trajan subsequently invaded the Parthian empire to the east. His conquests brought the Roman Empire to its greatest extent. Rome's borders in the east were governed indirectly in this period, through a system of client states, which led to less direct campaigning than in the west.


title: History of Romania

text: The weapon most associated with the Dacian forces that fought against Trajan's army during his invasions of Dacia was the falx, a single-edged scythe-like weapon. The falx was able to inflict horrible wounds on opponents, easily disabling or killing the heavily armored Roman legionaries that they faced. This weapon, more so than any other single factor, forced the Roman army to adopt previously unused or modified equipment to suit the conditions on the Dacian battlefield.


title: History of Romania

text: Some of the history of the war is given by Cassius Dio. Trajan erected the Column of Trajan in Rome to commemorate his victory.


title: History of Romania

text: Roman Dacia, also known as Dacia Felix, was organized as an imperial province on the borders of the empire. It is estimated that the population of Roman Dacia ranged from 650,000 to 1,200,000. The area was the focus of a massive Roman colonization. New mines were opened and ore extraction intensified, while agriculture, stock breeding, and commerce flourished in the province. Roman Dacia was of great importance to the military stationed throughout the Balkans and became an urban province, with about ten cities known and all of them originating from old military camps. Eight of these held the highest rank of "colonia". Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa was the financial, religious, and legislative center and where the imperial "procurator" (finance officer) had his seat, while Apulum was Roman Dacia's military center. The region was soon was settled by the retired veterans who had served in the Dacian Wars, principally the Fifth ("Macedonia"), Ninth ("Claudia"), and Fourteenth ("Gemina") legions.


title: History of Romania

text: While it is certain that colonists in large numbers were imported from all over the empire to settle in Roman Dacia, this appears to be true for the newly created Roman towns only. The lack of epigraphic evidence for native Dacian names in the towns suggests an urban–rural split between Roman multi-ethnic urban centres and the native Dacian rural population. On at least two occasions the Dacians rebelled against Roman authority: first in 117 AD, which caused the return of Trajan from the east, and in 158 AD when they were put down by Marcus Statius Priscus.


title: History of Romania

text: Some scholars have used the lack of "civitates peregrinae" in Roman Dacia, where indigenous peoples were organised into native townships, as evidence for the Roman depopulation of Dacia. Prior to its incorporation into the empire, Dacia was a kingdom ruled by one king, and did not possess a regional tribal structure that could easily be turned into the Roman "civitas" system as used successfully in other provinces of the empire.


title: History of Romania

text: As per usual Roman practice, Dacian males were recruited into auxiliary units and dispatched across the empire, from the eastern provinces to Britannia. The "Vexillation Dacorum Parthica" accompanied the emperor Septimius Severus during his Parthian expedition, while the "cohort I Ulpia Dacorum" was posted to Cappadocia. Others included the "II Aurelia Dacorum" in Pannonia Superior, the "cohort I Aelia Dacorum" in Roman Britain, and the "II Augusta Dacorum milliaria" in Moesia Inferior. There are a number of preserved relics originating from "cohort I Aelia Dacorum", with one inscription describing the "sica", a distinctive Dacian weapon. In inscriptions the Dacian soldiers are described as "natione Dacus". These could refer to individuals who were native Dacians, Romanized Dacians, colonists who had moved to Dacia, or their descendants. Numerous Roman military diplomas issued for Dacian soldiers discovered after 1990 indicate that veterans preferred to return to their place of origin; per usual Roman practice, these veterans were given Roman citizenship upon their discharge.


title: History of Romania

text: In an attempt to fill the cities, cultivate the fields, and mine the ore, a large-scale attempt at colonization took place with colonists coming in "from all over the Roman world". The colonists were a heterogeneous mix: of the some 3,000 names preserved in inscriptions found by the 1990s, 74% (c. 2,200) were Latin, 14% (c. 420) were Greek, 4% (c. 120) were Illyrian, 2.3% (c. 70) were Celtic, 2% (c. 60) were Thraco-Dacian, and another 2% (c. 60) were Semites from Syria. Regardless of their place of origin, the settlers and colonists were a physical manifestation of Roman civilisation and imperial culture, bringing with them the most effective Romanizing mechanism: the use of Latin as the new "lingua franca".


title: History of Romania

text: The first settlement at Sarmizegetusa was made up of Roman citizens who had retired from their legions. Based upon the location of names scattered throughout the province, it has been argued that, although places of origin are hardly ever noted in epigraphs, a large percentage of colonists originated from Noricum and western Pannonia. Specialist miners (the Pirusti tribesmen) were brought in from Dalmatia.


title: History of Romania

text: Although the Romans conquered and destroyed the ancient Kingdom of Dacia, a large remainder of the land remained outside of Roman Imperial authority. Additionally, the conquest changed the balance of power in the region and was the catalyst for a renewed alliance of Germanic and Celtic tribes and kingdoms against the Roman Empire. However, the material advantages of the Roman Imperial system was attractive to the surviving aristocracy. Afterwards, many of the Dacians became Romanised (see also Origin of Romanians). In AD 183, war broke out in Dacia: few details are available, but it appears two future contenders for the throne of emperor Commodus, Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger, both distinguished themselves in the campaign.


title: History of Romania

text: According to Lactantius, the Roman emperor Decius (AD 249–251) had to restore Roman Dacia from the Carpo-Dacians of Zosimus "having undertaken an expedition against the Carpi, who had then possessed themselves of Dacia and Moesia".


title: History of Romania

text: Even so, the Germanic and Celtic kingdoms, particularly the Gothic tribes, slowly moved toward the Dacian borders, and within a generation were making assaults on the province. Ultimately, the Goths succeeded in dislodging the Romans and restoring the "independence" of Dacia following Emperor Aurelian's withdrawal, in 275.


title: History of Romania

text: In AD 268–269, at Naissus, Claudius II (Gothicus Maximus) obtained a decisive victory over the Goths. Since at that time Romans were still occupying Roman Dacia it is assumed that the Goths didn't cross the Danube from the Roman province. The Goths who survived their defeat didn't even attempt to escape through Dacia, but through Thrace. At the boundaries of Roman Dacia, Carpi (Free Dacians) were still strong enough to sustain five battles in eight years against the Romans from AD 301–308. Roman Dacia was left in AD 275 by the Romans, to the Carpi again, and not to the Goths. There were still Dacians in AD 336, against whom Constantine the Great fought.


title: History of Romania

text: The province was abandoned by Roman troops, and, according to the "Breviarium historiae Romanae" by Eutropius, Roman citizens "from the towns and lands of Dacia" were resettled to the interior of Moesia. Under Diocletian, c. AD 296, in order to defend the Roman border, fortifications were erected by the Romans on both banks of the Danube.


title: History of Romania

text: In 328 the emperor Constantine the Great inaugurated the Constantine's Bridge (Danube) at Sucidava, (today Celei in Romania) in hopes of reconquering Dacia, a province that had been abandoned under Aurelian. In the late winter of 332, Constantine campaigned with the Sarmatians against the Goths. The weather and lack of food cost the Goths dearly: reportedly, nearly one hundred thousand died before they submitted to Rome. In celebration of this victory Constantine took the title "Gothicus Maximus" and claimed the subjugated territory as the new province of Gothia. In 334, after Sarmatian commoners had overthrown their leaders, Constantine led a campaign against the tribe. He won a victory in the war and extended his control over the region, as remains of camps and fortifications in the region indicate. Constantine resettled some Sarmatian exiles as farmers in Illyrian and Roman districts, and conscripted the rest into the army. The new frontier in Dacia was along the Brazda lui Novac line supported by Castra of Hinova, Rusidava and Castra of Pietroasele. The limes passed to the north of Castra of Tirighina-Bărboși and ended at Sasyk Lagoon near the Dniester River. Constantine took the title "Dacicus maximus" in 336. Some Roman territories north of the Danube resisted until Justinian.


title: History of Romania

text: Victohali, Taifals, and Thervingians are tribes mentioned for inhabiting Dacia in 350, after the Romans left. Archeological evidence suggests that Gepids were disputing Transylvania with Taifals and Tervingians. Taifals, once independent from Gothia became federati of the Romans, from whom they obtained the right to settle Oltenia.


title: History of Romania

text: In 376 the region was conquered by Huns, who kept it until the death of Attila in 453. The Gepid tribe, ruled by Ardaric, used it as their base, until in 566 it was destroyed by Lombards. Lombards abandoned the country and the Avars (second half of the 6th century) dominated the region for 230 years, until their kingdom was destroyed by Charlemagne in 791. At the same time, Slavic people arrived.


title: History of Romania

text: The "Hellenic chronicle" could possibly qualify to the first testimony of Romanians in Pannonia and Eastern Europe during the time of Attila, implying that the formation of Proto-Romanian (or Common Romanian) from Vulgar Latin started in the 5th century. The poem "Nibelungenlied" from the early 1200s mentions one "duke Ramunc of Wallachia" in the retinue of Attila the Hun. The words ""torna, torna fratre"" (return, return brother) recorded in connection with a Roman campaign across the Balkan Mountains by Theophylact Simocatta and Theophanes the Confessor evidence the development of a Romance language in the late 6th century. The words were shouted "in native parlance" by a local soldier in 587 or 588. The 11th-century Persian writer, Gardizi, wrote about a Christian people "from the Roman Empire" called "N.n.d.r", inhabiting the lands along the Danube. He describes them as "more numerous than the Hungarians, but weaker". Historian Adolf Armbruster identified this people as the Romanians. Hungarian historiography identifies this people as the Bulgarians.


title: History of Romania

text: The Dacians were known as "Geta" (plural "Getae") in Ancient Greek writings, and as "Dacus" (plural "Daci") or "Getae" in Roman documents, but also as "Dagae" and "Gaete" as depicted on the late Roman map "Tabula Peutingeriana". It was Herodotus who first used the ethnonym "Getae" in his "Histories". In Greek and Latin, in the writings of Julius Caesar, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder, the people became known as 'the Dacians'. Getae and Dacians were interchangeable terms, or used with some confusion by the Greeks. Latin poets often used the name "Getae". Vergil called them "Getae" four times, and "Daci" once, Lucian "Getae" three times and "Daci" twice, Horace named them "Getae" twice and "Daci" five times, while Juvenal one time "Getae" and two times "Daci". In AD 113, Hadrian used the poetic term "Getae" for the Dacians. Modern historians prefer to use the name "Geto-Dacians". Strabo describes the Getae and Dacians as distinct but cognate tribes. This distinction refers to the regions they occupied. Strabo and Pliny the Elder also state that Getae and Dacians spoke the same language.


title: History of Romania

text: By contrast, the name of "Dacians", whatever the origin of the name, was used by the more western tribes who adjoined the Pannonians and therefore first became known to the Romans. According to Strabo's "Geographica", the original name of the Dacians was ""Daoi"". The name Daoi (one of the ancient Geto-Dacian tribes) was certainly adopted by foreign observers to designate all the inhabitants of the countries north of Danube that had not yet been conquered by Greece or Rome.


title: History of Romania

text: The ethnographic name "Daci" is found under various forms within ancient sources. Greeks used the forms ""Dakoi"" (Strabo, Dio Cassius, and Dioscorides) and "Daoi" (singular Daos). The form "Daoi" was frequently used according to Stephan of Byzantium.


title: History of Romania

text: There are similarities between the ethnonyms of the Dacians and those of Dahae (Greek "Dáoi", "Dáai", "Dai", "Dasai"; Latin "Dahae", "Daci"), an Indo-European people located east of the Caspian Sea, until the 1st millennium BC. Scholars have suggested that there were links between the two peoples since ancient times. The historian David Gordon White has, moreover, stated that the "Dacians ... appear to be related to the Dahae". (Likewise White and other scholars also believe that the names Dacii and Dahae may also have a shared etymology – see the section following for further details.)


title: History of Romania

text: By the end of the first century AD, all the inhabitants of the lands which now form Romania were known to the Romans as Daci, with the exception of some Celtic and Germanic tribes who infiltrated from the west, and Sarmatian and related people from the east.


title: History of Romania

text: Mircea Eliade attempted, in his book "From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan", to give a mythological foundation to an alleged special relation between Dacians and the wolves:


title: History of Romania

text: The Carpi were a sizeable group of tribes, who lived beyond the north-eastern boundary of Roman Dacia. The majority view among modern scholars is that the Carpi were a North Thracian tribe and a subgroup of the Dacians. However, some historians classify them as Slavs.


title: History of Romania

text: According to Heather (2010), the Carpi were Dacians from the eastern foothills of the Carpathian range – modern Moldavia and Wallachia – who had not been brought under direct Roman rule at the time of Trajan's conquest of Transylvania Dacia. After they generated a new degree of political unity among themselves in the course of the third century, these Dacian groups came to be known collectively as the Carpi.


title: History of Romania

text: The ancient sources about the Carpi, before 104 AD, located them on a territory situated between the western side of Eastern European Galicia and the mouth of the Danube. The name of the tribe is homonymous with the Carpathian mountains. Carpi and Carpathian are Dacian words derived from the root "(s)ker"- "cut" cf. Albanian "karp" "stone" and Sanskrit "kar"- "cut".


title: History of Romania

text: A quote from the 6th-century Byzantine chronicler Zosimus referring to the Carpo-Dacians (Greek: Καρποδάκαι, Latin: "Carpo-Dacae"), who attacked the Romans in the late 4th century, is seen as evidence of their Dacian ethnicity. In fact, Carpi/Carpodaces is the term used for Dacians outside of Dacia proper.


title: History of Romania

text: However, that the Carpi were Dacians is shown not so much by the form Καρποδάκαι in Zosimus as by their characteristic place-names in –"dava", given by Ptolemy in their country. The origin and ethnic affiliations of the Carpi have been debated over the years; in modern times they are closely associated with the Carpathian Mountains, and a good case has been made for attributing to the Carpi a distinct material culture, "a developed form of the Geto-Dacian La Tene culture", often known as the Poienesti culture, which is characteristic of this area.


title: History of Romania

text: The main view is that the "Costoboci" were ethnically Dacian. Others considered them a Slavic or Sarmatian tribe. There was also a Celtic influence, so that some consider them a mixed Celtic and Thracian group that appear, after Trajan's conquest, as a Dacian group within the Celtic superstratum. The Costoboci inhabited the southern slopes of the Carpathians. Ptolemy named the Coestoboci (Costoboci in Roman sources) twice, showing them divided by the Dniester and the Peucinian (Carpathian) Mountains. This suggests that they lived on both sides of the Carpathians, but it is also possible that two accounts about the same people were combined. There was also a group, the Transmontani, that some modern scholars identify as Dacian Transmontani Costoboci of the extreme north. The name Transmontani was from the Dacians' Latin, literally "people over the mountains". Mullenhoff identified these with the Transiugitani, another Dacian tribe north of the Carpathian mountains.


title: History of Romania

text: Based on the account of Dio Cassius, Heather (2010) considers that Hasding Vandals, around 171 AD, attempted to take control of lands which previously belonged to the free Dacian group called the Costoboci. Hrushevskyi (1997) mentions that the earlier widespread view that these Carpathian tribes were Slavic has no basis. This would be contradicted by the Coestobocan names themselves that are known from the inscriptions, written by a Coestobocan and therefore presumably accurately. These names sound quite unlike anything Slavic. Scholars such as Tomaschek (1883), Shutte (1917) and Russu (1969) consider these Costobocian names to be Thraco-Dacian. This inscription also indicates the Dacian background of the wife of the Costobocian king "Ziais Tiati filia Daca". This indication of the socio-familial line of descent seen also in other inscriptions (i.e. Diurpaneus qui Euprepes Sterissae f(ilius) Dacus) is a custom attested since the historical period (beginning in the 5th century BC) when Thracians were under Greek influence. It may not have originated with the Thracians, as it could be just a fashion borrowed from Greeks for specifying ancestry and for distinguishing homonymous individuals within the tribe. Shutte (1917), Parvan, and Florescu (1982) pointed also to the Dacian characteristic place names ending in '–dava' given by Ptolemy in the Costoboci's country.


title: History of Romania

text: Dacians are represented in the statues surmounting the Arch of Constantine and on Trajan's Column. The artist of the Column took some care to depict, in his opinion, a variety of Dacian people—from high-ranking men, women, and children to the near-savage. Although the artist looked to models in Hellenistic art for some body types and compositions, he does not represent the Dacians as generic barbarians.


title: History of Romania

text: Classical authors applied a generalized stereotype when describing the "barbarians"Celts, Scythians, Thraciansinhabiting the regions to the north of the Greek world. In accordance with this stereotype, all these peoples are described, in sharp contrast to the "civilized" Greeks, as being much taller, their skin lighter and with straight light-coloured hair and blue eyes. For instance, Aristotle wrote that "the Scythians on the Black Sea and the Thracians are straight-haired, for both they themselves and the environing air are moist"; according to Clement of Alexandria, Xenophanes described the Thracians as "ruddy and tawny". On Trajan's column, Dacian soldiers' hair is depicted longer than the hair of Roman soldiers and they had trimmed beards.


title: History of Romania

text: Body-painting was customary among the Dacians. It is probable that the tattooing originally had a religious significance. They practiced symbolic-ritual tattooing or body painting for both men and women, with hereditary symbols transmitted up to the fourth generation.


title: History of Romania

text: Dacian religion was considered by the classic sources as a key source of authority, suggesting to some that Dacia was a predominantly theocratic state led by priest-kings. However, the layout of the Dacian capital Sarmizegethusa indicates the possibility of co-rulership, with a separate high king and high priest. Ancient sources recorded the names of several Dacian high priests (Deceneus, Comosicus and Vezina) and various orders of priests: "god-worshipers", "smoke-walkers" and "founders". Both Hellenistic and Oriental influences are discernible in the religious background, alongside chthonic and solar motifs.


title: History of Romania

text: According to Herodotus' account of the story of Zalmoxis or Zamolxis, the Getae (speaking the same language as the Dacians and the Thracians, according to Strabo) believed in the immortality of the soul, and regarded death as merely a change of country. Their chief priest held a prominent position as the representative of the supreme deity, Zalmoxis, who is called also Gebeleizis by some among them. Strabo wrote about the high priest of King Burebista Deceneus: "a man who not only had wandered through Egypt, but also had thoroughly learned certain prognostics through which he would pretend to tell the divine will; and within a short time he was set up as god (as I said when relating the story of Zamolxis)."


title: History of Romania

text: The Goth Jordanes in his "Getica" ("The origin and deeds of the Goths"), also gives an account of Deceneus the highest priest, and considered Dacians a nation related to the Goths. Besides Zalmoxis, the Dacians believed in other deities, such as Gebeleizis, the god of storm and lightning, possibly related to the Thracian god Zibelthiurdos. He was represented as a handsome man, sometimes with a beard. Later Gebeleizis was equated with Zalmoxis as the same god. According to Herodotus, Gebeleizis (*Zebeleizis/Gebeleizis who is only mentioned by Herodotus) is just another name of Zalmoxis.


title: History of Romania

text: By a decree of the oracle of Dodona, which required the Athenians to grant land for a shrine or temple, her cult was introduced into Attica by immigrant Thracian residents, and, though Thracian and Athenian processions remained separate, both cult and festival became so popular that in Plato's time (c. 429–13 BC) its festivities were naturalised as an official ceremony of the Athenian city-state, called the Bendideia.


title: History of Romania

text: Known Dacian theonyms include "Zalmoxis", "Gebeleïzis" and "Darzalas". Gebeleizis is probably cognate to the Thracian god Zibelthiurdos (also "Zbelsurdos", "Zibelthurdos"), wielder of lightning and thunderbolts. Derzelas (also "Darzalas") was a chthonic god of health and human vitality. The pagan religion survived longer in Dacia than in other parts of the empire; Christianity made little headway until the fifth century.


title: History of Romania

text: Between 271 and 275, the Roman army and administration left Dacia, which was invaded later by the Goths. The Goths mixed with the local people until the 4th century, when the Huns, a nomadic people, arrived. The Gepids, the Avars, the Bulgars and their Slavic subjects ruled Transylvania until the 8th century. The territories of Wallachia and Moldavia were under the control of the First Bulgarian Empire from its establishment in 681 until around the time of the Hungarian conquest of Transylvania at the end of the 10th century.


title: History of Romania

text: After the disintegration of Great Bulgaria following Khan Kubrat's death in 665, a large group of Bulgars followed Asparukh, the third son of the great Khan, who headed westwards. In the 670's they settled in the area known as the Ongal to the north of the Danube delta. From there, Asparukh's cavalry in alliance with local Slavs annually attacked the Byzantine territories in the south. In 680, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IV led a large army to fight the Bulgars but was defeated in the battle of Ongal and the Byzantines were forced to acknowledge the formation of a new country, the First Bulgarian Empire. The northern border of the country followed the southern slopes of the Carpathian mountains from the Iron Gates and reached the Dneper river or possibly just the Dniester river to the east.


title: History of Romania

text: The Bulgarians' main rivals in the area were the Avars to the west and the Khazars to the east. The Khazars were a serious threat; they marched westwards after they crushed the resistance of Kubrat's eldest son Bayan and waged a war against Asparukh, who perished in battle in 700. To protect their northern borders, the Bulgarians built several enormous ditches that ran the whole length of the border from the Timok river to the Black Sea.


title: History of Romania

text: In 803, Krum of Bulgaria became Khan. The new, energetic ruler focused on the north-west where Bulgaria's old enemies the Avars experienced difficulties and setbacks against the Franks under Charlemagne. Between 804 and 806, the Bulgarian armies annihilated the Avars and destroyed their state. Krum took the eastern parts of the former Avar Khaganate and took over rule of the local Slavic tribes. Bulgaria's territory extended twice from the middle Danube to the north of present day Budapest to the Dnester, though its possession of Transylvania is debatable. In 813 Khan Krum seized Odrin and plundered the whole of Eastern Thrace. He took 50,000 captives who were settled in "Bulgaria across the Danube".


title: History of Romania

text: During the Middle Ages the Bulgarian Empire controlled vast areas to the north of the river Danube (with interruptions) from its establishment in 681 to its fragmentation in 1371–1422. These lands were called by contemporary Byzantine historians Bulgaria across the Danube, or Transdanubian Bulgaria. Original information for the centuries-old Bulgarian rule there is scarce as the archives of the Bulgarian rulers were destroyed and little is mentioned for this area in Byzantine or Hungarian manuscripts. During the First Bulgarian Empire, the Dridu culture developed in the beginning of the 8th century and flourished until the 11th century. It represents an early medieval archaeological culture which emerged in the region of the Lower Danube. In Bulgaria it is usually referred to as Pliska-Preslav culture.


title: History of Romania

text: The Pechenegs, the Cumans and Uzes are also mentioned by historic chronicles on the territory of Romania until the founding of the Romanian principalities of Wallachia in the south by Basarab I around 1310 in the High Middle Ages, and Moldavia in the east, by Dragoş around 1352.


title: History of Romania

text: The Pechenegs, a semi-nomadic Turkic people of the Central Asian steppes, occupied the steppes north of the Black Sea from the 8th to the 11th centuries, and by the 10th century they were in control of all of the territory between the Don and the lower Danube rivers. During the 11th and 12th centuries, the nomadic confederacy of the Cumans and Eastern Kipchaks dominated the territories between present-day Kazakhstan, southern Russia, Ukraine, southern Moldavia and western Wallachia.


title: History of Romania

text: It is a subject of dispute whether elements of the mixed Daco–Roman population survived in Transylvania through the Dark Ages to become the ancestors of modern Romanians or whether the first Vlachs and Romanians appeared in the area in the 13th century after a northward migration from the Balkan Peninsula. There is also debate over the ethnicity of Transylvania's population before the Hungarian conquest.


title: History of Romania

text: There is evidence the Second Bulgarian Empire, at least nominally, ruled the Wallachian lands up to the Rucăr–Bran corridor until the late 14th century. In a charter by Radu I, the Wallachian voivode requests tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria to order his customs officers at Rucăr and the Dâmboviţa River bridge to collect taxes following the law. The presence of Bulgarian customs officers at the Carpathians indicates Bulgarian suzerainty over those lands, though Radu's imperative tone implies a strong and increasing Wallachian autonomy. Under Radu I and his successor Dan I, the realms in Transylvania and Severin continued to be disputed with Hungary. Basarab was succeeded by Nicholas Alexander and Vladislav I. Vladislav attacked Transylvania after Louis I occupied lands south of the Danube, conceded to recognize him as overlord in 1368 but rebelled again in the same year. Vladislav's rule also witnessed the first confrontation between Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire, a battle in which Vladislav was allied with Ivan Shishman. After the Magyar conquest of the 10th and 11th centuries, Transylvania became an autonomous and multi-ethnic voivodeship that was led by a voivode who was appointed by the King of Hungary until the 16th century.


title: History of Romania

text: Several Kings of Hungary invited settlers from Central and Western Europe, such as the Saxons, to occupy Transylvania. The Székelys were brought to southeastern Transylvania as border guards. Romanians are mentioned by the Hungarian documents of a township called "Olahteluk" in 1283 in Bihar County. The "land of Romanians" ("Terram Blacorum") appeared in Făgăraş and this area was mentioned under the name "Olachi" in 1285. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Transylvania belonged to the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, from which the Principality of Transylvania emerged in 1570 by the Treaty of Speyer.


title: History of Romania

text: Many other small states with varying degrees of independence developed on the territory of today's Romania. In the 14th century, the larger principalities Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Constantinople in 1453.


title: History of Romania

text: Independent Wallachia had been near the border of the Ottoman Empire since the 14th century until it had gradually succumbed to the Ottomans' influence during the next centuries with brief periods of independence. Vlad III the Impaler, () also known as Vlad Dracula was a Prince of Wallachia in 1448, 1456–62, and 1476. Vlad III is remembered for his raids against the Ottoman Empire and his initial success of keeping his small country free for a short time. In the Western world, Vlad is best known for being the inspiration for the main character in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula". The evaluates him as a ferocious but just ruler. the defender of the Wallachian independence and of the European Christianity against Ottoman expansionism.


title: History of Romania

text: Stephen the Great () is thought to be the best voivode of Moldavia. Stephen ruled for 47 years, an unusually long period for that time. He was a successful military leader and statesman, losing only two out of fifty battles; he built a shrine to commemorate each victory, founding 48 churches and monasteries, many of which have a unique architectural style and are listed in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. Stefan's most prestigious victory was over the Ottoman Empire in 1475 at the Battle of Vaslui, for which he raised the Voroneţ Monastery. For this victory, Pope Sixtus IV nominated him as "verus christianae fidei athleta" (a true Champion of the Christian Faith). After Stephen's death, Moldavia also came under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century.


title: History of Romania

text: Although the core religious vocabulary of the Romanian language originated from Latin, many terms were adopted from the Slavic Orthodoxy, showing a significant influence dating from the Bulgarian Empire (681–1396).


title: History of Romania

text: By 1541, the entire Balkan peninsula and northern Hungary became Ottoman provinces. Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania came under Ottoman suzerainty but remained fully autonomous and until the 18th century, had some external independence. During this period, the Romanian lands experienced a slow disappearance of the feudalism and the distinguishing of some rulers like Vasile Lupu and Dimitrie Cantemir in Moldavia, Matei Basarab and Constantin Brâncoveanu in Wallachia, and Gabriel Bethlen in Transylvania. At that time, the Russian Empire appeared to become the political and military power the threatened the Romanian principalities.


title: History of Romania

text: John II, the non-Habsburg King of Hungary, moved his royal court to Alba Iulia in Transylvania and after his abdication from the Hungarian throne, he became the first Prince of Transylvania. His 1568 Edict of Turda was the first decree of religious freedom in the modern European history. In the aftermath, Transylvania was ruled by mostly Calvinist Hungarian princes until the end of the 17th century, and Protestantism flourished in the region.


title: History of Romania

text: Michael the Brave (Romanian: Mihai Viteazul) was the Prince of Wallachia from 1593 to 1601, of Transylvania from 1599 to 1600, and of Moldavia in 1600. For a short time during his reign, Transylvania was ruled together with Moldavia and Wallachia in a personal union. After his death the union dissolved and as vassal tributary states, Moldavia and Wallachia still had internal autonomy and some external independence, which was finally lost in the 18th century.


title: History of Romania

text: The Principality of Transylvania reached its golden age under the absolutist rule of Gábor Bethlen from 1613 to 1629. In 1690, the Habsburg monarchy gained possession of Transylvania through the Hungarian crown. After the failure Rákóczi's War of Independence in 1711 Habsburg control of Transylvania was consolidated, and Hungarian Transylvanian princes were replaced with Habsburg imperial governors. In 1699, Transylvania became a part of the Habsburg monarchy following the Austrian victory over the Turks. The Habsburgs rapidly expanded their empire; in 1718 Oltenia, a major part of Wallachia, was annexed to the Habsburg monarchy and was only returned in 1739. In 1775, the Habsburgs later occupied the north-western part of Moldavia, which was later called Bukovina and was incorporated to the Austrian Empire in 1804. The eastern half of the principality, which was called Bessarabia, was occupied in 1812 by Russia.


title: History of Romania

text: During the Austro-Hungarian rule of Transylvania, Romanians formed the majority of the population. Nationality issues occurred between Hungarians and Romanians due to the Magyarization policy.


title: History of Romania

text: After their defeat to the Russians, the Ottoman Empire restored the Danube ports of Turnu, Giurgiu and Braila to Wallachia, and agreed to give up their commercial monopoly and recognize freedom of navigation on the Danube as specified in the Treaty of Adrianople, which was signed in 1829. The political autonomy of the Romanian principalities grew as their rulers were elected for life by a Community Assembly consisting of boyars, a method used to reduce political instability and Ottoman interventions. Following the war, Romanian lands came under Russian occupation under the governance of General Pavel Kiselyov until 1844. During his rule, the local boyars enacted the first Romanian constitution.


title: History of Romania

text: In 1848, there was a revolution in Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania perpetrated by Tudor Vladimirescu and his Pandurs in the Wallachian uprising of 1821. The goals of the revolutionaries were full independence for Moldavia and Wallachia, and national emancipation in Transylvania; these were not fulfilled but were the basis of the subsequent revolutions. The uprising helped the population of all three principalities recognize their unity of language and interests; all three Romanian principalities were very close in language and geography.


title: History of Romania

text: After the unsuccessful 1848 revolution, the Great Powers rejected the Romanians' desire to officially unite in a single state, forcing the Romanians to proceed alone their struggle against the Turks.


title: History of Romania

text: The aftermath of the Russian Empire's defeat in the Crimean War brought the 1856 Treaty of Paris, which started a period of common tutelage for the Ottomans and a Congress of Great Powers—the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Second French Empire, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Austrian Empire, Prussia, and, though never again fully, Russia. While the Moldavia-Wallachia unionist campaign, which had come to dominate political demands, was accepted with sympathy by the French, Russians, Prussians, and Sardinians, it was rejected by the Austrian Empire, and looked upon with suspicion by Great Britain and the Ottomans.


title: History of Romania

text: Negotiations amounted to an agreement on a minimal formal union, to be known as the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia but with separate institutions and thrones and with each principality electing its own prince. The same convention stated that the army would keep its old flags, with the addition of a blue ribbon on each of them. However, the Moldavian and Wallachian elections for the ad-hoc divans in 1859 profited from an ambiguity in the text of the final agreement, which, while specifying two separate thrones, did not prevent the same person from occupying both thrones simultaneously and ultimately ushered in the ruling of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as "Domnitor" (Ruling Prince) over both Moldavia and Wallachia from 1859 onwards, uniting both principalities.


title: History of Romania

text: Alexander Ioan Cuza carried out reforms including abolishing serfdom and started to unite the institutions one by one in spite of the convention from Paris. With help from unionists, he unified the government and parliament, effectively merging Wallachia and Moldavia into one country and in 1862 the country's name was changed to United Principalities of Romania.


title: History of Romania

text: Romania was created as a personal union that did not include Transylvania, where the upper class and the aristocracy remained mainly Hungarian, although Romanian nationalism clashed with Hungarian nationalism at the end of the 19th century. Austria-Hungary, especially under the Dual Monarchy of 1867, kept the territory firmly in control even in parts of Transylvania where Romanians constituted a vast majority.


title: History of Romania

text: In an 1866 "coup d'état", Cuza was exiled and replaced with Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. He was appointed Domnitor, Ruling Prince of the United Principality of Romania, as Prince Carol of Romania. Romania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire after the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), in which the Ottomans fought against the Russian empire.


title: History of Romania

text: In the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, Romania was officially recognized as an independent state by the Great Powers. In return, Romania ceded the district Bessarabia to Russia in exchange for access to the Black Sea ports and acquired Dobruja. In 1881, the Romania's principality status was raised to that of a kingdom and on 26 March that year, Prince Carol became King Carol I of Romania.


title: History of Romania

text: The period between 1878 and 1914 was one of stability and progress for Romania. During the Second Balkan War, Romania joined Greece, Serbia and Montenegro against Bulgaria. In the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913, Romania gained Southern Dobruja and established the Durostor and Caliacra counties.


title: History of Romania

text: The governments of Britain and the United States repeatedly protested the brutal treatment of Romanian Jews, who were regarded as aliens who had no civil or political rights. The Romanian government tolerated their frequent humiliation and exclusion from many professions and government services. Romania engaged in arbitrary expulsions of Jews as vagabonds and tolerated violent pogroms against Jews, many of whom fled to the United States.


title: History of Romania

text: Due to Romania's unfavorable location between the Russian Empire and Kingdom of Bulgaria as well as King Carol I of Romania's German heritage, Romania had a secret treaty of alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary since 1883. When the war began in 1914, King Carol I summoned an emergency midnight council where he revealed the secret treaty of alliance. While the king favored Germany, the nation's political elite favored the Entente. As such, the crown council took the decision to remain neutral. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire invoked a casus foederis on Romania and Italy linked to the secret treaty of alliance since 1883, both Italy and Romania refused to honor the treaty on the grounds that it was not a case of casus foederis because the attacks on Austria were not ""unprovoked"", as stipulated in the treaty of alliance.


title: History of Romania

text: King Carol I died on 10th of October 1914, and his successor, King Ferdinand I of Romania was much more favorable towards the Entente. Promising during his coronation that ""I will reign as a good Romanian"". In August 1916, Romania received an ultimatum to decide whether to join the Entente ""now or never"". Under the pressure of the ultimatum, the Romanian government agreed to enter the war on the side of the Entente, although the situation on the battle fronts was not favorable. As a consequence of this "betrayal" toward his German roots, Kaiser Wilhelm II had Ferdinand's name erased from the Hohenzollern House register.


title: History of Romania

text: For Romania, the highest priority was taking Transylvania from Hungary, with around 2,800,000 Romanians out of around 5,000,000 people. The Allies wanted Romania to join their side in order to cut rail communications between Germany and Turkey, and to cut off Germany's oil supplies. Britain made loans, France sent a military training mission, and Russia promised modern munitions. The Allies promised at least 200,000 soldiers to defend Romania against Bulgaria to the south, and help it invade Austria-Hungary.


title: History of Romania

text: On 4th August 1916, Romania and the Entente signed the Political Treaty and Military Convention, which established the parameters of Romania's participation in the war. The Allies promised to Romania the Austro-Hungarian regions of Bukovina, Transylvania up to Tisza river and all of Banat. Joining the Entente had large popular support. The Romanian campaign plan (Hypothesis Z) consisted in attacking Austria-Hungary in Transylvania, while defending Southern Dobruja and Giurgiu from Bulgaria in the south.


title: History of Romania

text: The German high command was seriously worried about the prospect of Romania entering the war, Paul von Hindenburg writing:


title: History of Romania

text: It is certain that so relatively small a state as Rumania had never before been given a role so important, and, indeed, so decisive for the history of the world at so favorable a moment. Never before had two great Powers like Germany and Austria found themselves so much at the mercy of the military resources of a country which had scarcely one twentieth of the population of the two great states. Judging by the military situation, it was to be expected that Rumania had only to advance where she wished to decide the world war in favor of those Powers which had been hurling themselves at us in vain for years. Thus everything seemed to depend on whether Rumania was ready to make any sort of use of her momentary advantage.


title: History of Romania

text: On 27 August 1916, the Romanian Army launched an attack against Austria-Hungary, with limited Russian support. The Romanian offensive was initially successful and Romania managed to occupy 1/3rd of Transylvania, but when the German army arrived in Transylvania the Romanians began to be pushed back. While on the southern front, a combined German-Bulgarian-Turkish offensive gradually occupied all of Dobruja and captured Giurgiu. The bulk of the Romanian army managed to escape encirclement from Giurgiu and retreated to Bucharest. As a result of the Battle of Bucharest, the Central Powers occupied Bucharest on 6 December 1916.


title: History of Romania

text: In the summer of 1917, one of the largest concentrations of forces in World War I was present in Romania: 9 armies, 80 infantry divisions and 19 cavalry divisions, totaling 974 battalions, 550 squadrons and 923 artillery batteries. 800.000 combatants and 1.000.000 reservists were present.


title: History of Romania

text: In 1917, a new Central Powers offensive began, leading to the battles of Mărăști, Mărășești, and Oituz, where the Romanian army managed to defeat the Central Powers offensives and take back some territory in a counter-offensive. The motto of the Romanian Army during the battle was "Pe aici nu se trece" (English: "No Trespassing!", literally translated as "One does not pass through here"). Romania lost over 27.000 men while Germany and Austria-Hungary lost over 60.000. Notably, the Romanian heroine Ecaterina Teodoroiu and German General Karl von Wenninger were killed at the end of the Battle of Mărășești. However, shortly after the military victories, the October Revolution threw the Russian Empire out of the war leaving Romania alone on the Eastern Front, completely surrounded by the Central Powers. This forced Romania to drop out of the war, and it signed the Treaty of Bucharest with the Central Powers in May 1918.


title: History of Romania

text: The battles of Mărăști, Mărășești, and Oituz were the most important battle ever fought by the Romanian Army, as it managed to completely stop August von Mackensen's intended invasion of Moldavia. As a result of these operations, the remaining Romanian territories remained unoccupied. Nearly 1,000,000 Central Powers troops were tied down, and The Times was prompted to describe the Romanian front as "The only point of light in the East".


title: History of Romania

text: In 1939, General August von Mackensen would describe the Central Powers offensive from 1917 as following:


title: History of Romania

text: After fighting with the Rumanians in 1916, I thought the Rumanian army had disappeared, that it did not exist in 1917 when I had to make a new effort to conquer the rest of Rumania. But when the battles started in Mărăşeşti, Mărăşti, Oituz, I was told that in front of me was the Rumanian army that I was convinced had disappeared. But the Rumanian army has risen from its ashes like the Phoenix bird. The attacks on the bayonet scared everyone, and they were running, the Germans, who didn't usually run, this time they were running.


title: History of Romania

text: Under the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest, Romania would lose all of Dobruja to Bulgaria, all the Carpathian passes to Austria-Hungary and would lease all of its oil reserves to Germany for 99 years. However, the Central Powers recognized Romania's union with Bessarabia who had recently declared independence from the Russian Empire following the October Revolution and voted for union with Romania in April 1918. The parliament signed the treaty, however King Ferdinand refused to sign it, hoping for an Allied victory on the western front. On October 1918, Romania renounced the Treaty of Bucharest and on 10 November 1918, one day before the German armistice, Romania reentered the war after the successful Allied advances on the Macedonian front and advanced in Transylvania. The next day, the Treaty of Bucharest was nullified by the terms of the Armistice of Compiègne. Total Romanian deaths from 1914 to 1918, military and civilian, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000.


title: History of Romania

text: In Austria-Hungary, ethnic Romanians entered the war from the very beginning, with hundreds of thousands of Transylvanian and Bukovinian Romanians being mobilized throughout the war. Although most Transylvanian Romanians were loyal to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, over time, reactionary sentiments emerged, especially after Romania joined the war in 1916. Many of the previously loyal soldiers decided that it was much better to risk their lives through desertion, rather than shoot their ethnical conationals. According to studies made by the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the dedication of the Romanian military to the interest of Austria-Hungary was reduced, only ethnic Italians of the same empire can compete with them for the last place in a ranking according to devotion to the state per 100 soldiers, out of about 300,000 Austro-Hungarian deserters, 150.000 were ethnic Romanians.


title: History of Romania

text: The Austro-Hungarian Romanian prisoners of war in the Russian Empire would eventually form the Romanian Volunteer Corps in Russia who would eventually be repatriated to Romania in 1917 and take part in the battles of Mărăști, Mărășești and Oituz and the Romanian Legion in Siberia who resisted the Bolsheviks in cooperation with the Czechoslovak Legion and the White movement during the Russian Civil War, these units were ultimately repatriated to Greater Romania in 1920. While the Austro-Hungarian Romanian prisoners of war in Italy would form the Romanian Volunteer Legion from Italy, which joined the fighting during the last battles on the Italian front and later, after the end of the war, participated in the Hungarian-Romanian War. Out of a total of 60.000 prisoners of war of Romanian origin, 37.000 Romanians requested to join the Romanian Legion in Italy. The ranks of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers enlisted in the Romanian Legion were equivalated to those corresponding of the Italian Royal Army. The sedentary part of the Romanian Legion, under the command of Colonel Camillo Ferraioli, was established at Albano Laziale, and the base camp in the Avezzano camp.


title: History of Romania

text: It is estimated that in the period 1914–1918 between 400,000 and 600,000 soldiers of Romanian origin fought on different fronts of Austria-Hungary, which represented a significant percentage of the Romanian ethnics who lived in those times in the Empire. In total, up to 150,000 Romanians were killed in action while fighting as part of the Austro-Hungarian Army.


title: History of Romania

text: Before World War I, the union of Michael the Brave, who ruled over the three principalities with Romanian population (Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia) for a short period of time, was viewed in later periods as the precursor of a modern Romania, a thesis which was argued with noted intensity by Nicolae Bălcescu. This theory became a point of reference for nationalists, as well as a catalyst for various Romanian forces to achieve a single Romanian state.


title: History of Romania

text: The Romanian revolution in 1848 already carried the seeds of the national dream of a unified and united Romania, though the "idea of unification" had been known from earlier works of Naum Ramniceanu (1802) and Ion Budai-Deleanu (1804). The concept owes its life to Dimitrie Brătianu, who introduced the term "Greater Romania" in 1852. The first step in unifying Romanians was to establish the United Principalities by uniting Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859, which became known as Romania since the 1866 Constitution and turned into a Kingdom in 1881, after gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire. However, before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the elite of the Transylvanian Romanians did not support the concept of "Greater Romania", instead they wanted only equality with the other nations in Transylvania. The concept became a political reality when, in 1881, the Romanian National Party of Transylvania gathered Romanians on a common political platform to fight together for Transylvania's autonomy. According to Livezeanu the creation of Greater Romania with ""a unifying concept of nationhood"" started to evolve in the late 1910s. World War I played a crucial part in the development of Romanian national consciousness.


title: History of Romania

text: In 1918, at the end of World War I, the union of Romania with Bukovina was ratified in 1919 in the Treaty of Saint Germain, and some of the Allies recognized the union with Bessarabia in 1920 through the never ratified Treaty of Paris. On 1 December, the Deputies of the Romanians from Transylvania voted to unite Transylvania, Banat, Crișana and Maramureș with Romania by the "Proclamation of Union" of Alba Iulia. Romanians today celebrate this as the Great Union Day, that is a national holiday.


title: History of Romania

text: The Romanian expression "România Mare" (Great or Greater Romania) refers to the Romanian state in the interwar period and to the territory Romania covered at the time. At that time, Romania achieved its greatest territorial extent, almost ), including all of the historic Romanian lands.


title: History of Romania

text: Most of the claimed territories were granted to the Old Kingdom of Romania, which was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon that defined the new border between Hungary and Romania. The union of Bucovina and Bessarabia with Romania was ratified in 1920 by the Treaty of Versailles. Romania also acquired Southern Dobruja territory called "The Quadrilateral" from Bulgaria as a result of its participation in the Second Balkan War in 1913.


title: History of Romania

text: As a result of the peace treaties, most regions with clear Romanian majorities were merged into a single state. It also led to the inclusion of sizable minorities, including Magyars (ethnic Hungarians), Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Bulgarians—about 28% of the country's population. National minorities were recognized by the 1923 Constitution of Romania and supported by laws; they were represented in Parliament and several of them created political parties, although a unique standing of minorities with autonomy on a wide basis, provided for at the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918, was not fulfilled.


title: History of Romania

text: The Romanian expression România Mare (literal translation "Great Romania", but more commonly rendered in English: "Greater Romania") generally refers to the Romanian state in the interwar period, and by extension, to the territory Romania covered at the time. Romania achieved at that time its greatest territorial extent (almost ). At the 1930 census, there were over 18 million inhabitants in Romania.


title: History of Romania

text: The resulting "Greater Romania" did not survive World War II. Until 1938, Romania's governments maintained the form, if not always the substance, of a liberal constitutional monarchy. The National Liberal Party, dominant in the years immediately after World War I, became increasingly clientelist and nationalist, and in 1927 was supplanted in power by the National Peasants' Party. Between 1930 and 1940 there were over 25 separate governments; on several occasions in the last few years before World War II, the rivalry between the fascist Iron Guard and other political groupings approached the level of a civil war.


title: History of Romania

text: Upon the death of King Ferdinand in 1927, his son, Prince Carol, was prevented from succeeding him because of previous marital scandals that had resulted in his renunciation of rights to the throne. After living three years in exile, with his brother Nicolae serving as regent and his young son Michael as king, Carol changed his mind and with the support of the ruling National Peasants' Party he returned and proclaimed himself king.


title: History of Romania

text: Iuliu Maniu, leader of the National Peasants' Party, engineered Carol's return on the basis of a promise that he would forsake his mistress Magda Lupescu, and Lupescu herself had agreed to the arrangement. However, it became clear upon Carol's first re-encounter with his former wife, Elena, that he had no interest in a reconciliation with her, and Carol soon arranged for Magda Lupescu's return to his side. Her unpopularity was to be a millstone around Carol's neck for the rest of his reign, particularly because she was widely viewed as his closest advisor and confidante. Maniu and his National Peasant Party shared the same general political aims of the Iron Guard: both fought against the corruption and dictatorial policies of King Carol II and the National Liberal Party.


title: History of Romania

text: The worldwide Great Depression that started in 1929 and was also present in Romania destabilised the country. The early 1930s were marked by social unrest, high unemployment, and strikes. In several instances, the Romanian government violently repressed strikes and riots, notably the 1929 miners' strike in Valea Jiului and the strike in the Grivița railroad workshops. In the mid-1930s, the Romanian economy recovered and the industry grew significantly, although about 80% of Romanians were still employed in agriculture. French economic and political influence was predominant in the early 1920s but then Germany became more dominant, especially in the 1930s.