Two Weddings and a Funeral

Our paper aims at bringing more facts to light over one of the Lower Danube forts – i.e. Cius (Gârliciu), by using all available data, including cartographic information, archive mentions by Pamfil Polonic, other epigraphic and numismatic elements, or aero-photogrammetric high-resolution imagery. In early 3rd century AD it was mentioned in Itinerarium Antonini Augusti 224.5, at a distance of 10000 steps from Carsium (Hârșova) and another 14000 steps from Beroe (Piatra Frecăței). Both forts identified at Cius are situated on Hissarlık Hill, at the end of a 1.5 km long narrow peninsula mentioned by Themistius in the 4th century AD, almost surrounded by water and wetland. In ancient times, it must have had direct contact to the river and very likely had its own port. Nobody knows anything on the earlier 2nd-3rd century castellum and if it stood on the same plateau or if it exploited some other vantage point in the area. On the contrary, Late Roman Cius (120 : 120 m) was built, as most of the fortifications along the Lower Danube frontier, in the last decades of the 3rd – early decades of the 4th century. Equipped with U-shaped towers and possibly with a splayed fan-shaped or rectangular (?) corner-tower projecting outward, the larger fortification presents typical Tetrarchic/ Constantinian characteristics, revealed by interpreting recent aerial photos. A second, smaller fort (85 : 60 m) has been identified at the end of the peninsula towards the Hasarlâc Lake. With its Bauinschrift dated 369 AD found somewhere in the middle of its northern side, the latter must be the one explicitly mentioned by Themistius in his On the Peace – 10th Oration, as being built on a personal initiative of Emperor Valens, during its Gothic war against Athanaric.

Procopius of Caesarea inserts numerous events of symbolic and prognostic character in his Gothic Wars. In Bella 5(1).20.1-4 he describes a game of competition between young Samnite shepherds imitating the current political situation. The loser was hung from a tree by them taking the common Late Roman punishment on the furca as a model. Due to the contingent appearance of a wolf he was not rescued and died. The tragic event is subsequently attributed predicting significance.