Rome once paid the Dacian king Decebalus to keep the peace
After Decebalus's Dacians defeated a Roman army in the mountain pass of Tapae, Emperor Domitian, stretched by wars elsewhere, agreed to pay him eight million sesterces a year and even lent him engineers. Rome's own money and expertise went into strengthening the kingdom north of the Danube until Trajan decided to end the arrangement.
Almost nothing is known of Decebalus's early life. A Dacian pot inscribed Decebalus per Scorilo has been read as Decebalus son of Scorilo, though the historian Lucian Boia says that idea began as a scholarly joke. He rose at the court of King Duras, possibly his uncle, and was probably the commander Roman writers called Diurpaneus when Dacian raids into the province of Moesia killed its governor in the mid-80s AD.
Domitian drove the raiders back, but his praetorian prefect Cornelius Fuscus pushed on into Dacia and was killed when his legions were ambushed at Tapae. Duras then stepped aside and Decebalus became king. The historian Dio Cassius praised him as a master of both ambush and pitched battle who knew when to attack and when to retreat. A Roman victory near Tapae in 88 did not change the outcome, because Domitian needed his troops against other enemies; he agreed terms, and Decebalus's brother Diegis travelled to Rome to receive a crown for him.
Decebalus used the peace to centralise power, build fortresses and siege engines, court neighbouring tribes and shelter Roman deserters. Trajan, resenting the payments, invaded in 101. Decebalus lost at a second battle of Tapae and at Adamclisi and accepted harsh terms in 102, but soon rearmed and attacked in 105, even plotting to assassinate Trajan.
Trajan's final campaign took the capital, Sarmizegetusa, in 106. Decebalus fled into the Carpathians and, when Roman cavalry cornered him, took his own life rather than be paraded in Rome, a scene shown on Trajan's Column. In the nineteenth century Romanians recast him as a national hero, and he and Trajan appeared together on Romanian banknotes.
Source: Decebalus
