in Dobrogea, Romania
Capidava fortress or the fortress of the turn – in the place where the Danube makes a wide bend (hence the name), the Getae erected more than two millennia ago a fortress that they called Capidava. Subsequently, given its strategic importance, the Romans built a strong fortress and a port, in the time of Emperor Trajan, to control the Danube valley in that area of Scythia Minor, before the invasion of Dacia.
The military fortification, which sheltered a flourishing port city, lasted uninterruptedly for almost half a millennium, until the 6th century, when following the destruction caused by migrating cutrigurs (year 559) it was finally abandoned. Later, in the 10th century, the Byzantine Empire took over the city and attempted a revival of trade, but it was short-lived, being abandoned again after a devastating Pecheneg conquest in 1036.
Why is this caster so important? In addition to the fact that this was the area where the earliest Dobrogei (tithes) lived, the novelty is a ceramic vase, which contains an inscription considered to be the first epigraphic attestation of the Romanian language. Its story contains some strange coincidences: the vessel was brought to the surface in the summer of 1967 by a herd of pigs belonging to a local man named Petre, who had entered the site excavated by archaeologists.
The jar dates back to the end of the first millennium C.E., and when the archaeologists examined it, they found unusual inscriptions on it – in addition to Greek letters, the 10th-century potter wrote his name on it: PETER. The peasant who had found the vessel was also called Petre, and the archaeologist who had dug the ground that the pigs had entered was called Petre the Deacon.
A local legend says that on the slopes of Topalu, especially in dry summers, rocks protrude from the water like spikes, the last vestiges of a great stone bridge across the Danube. There is no archaeological or documented certainty in this regard, but what is certain is that there were two ancient roads that led to the Danube bank exactly where the bridge is supposed to have been built, and the Polish archaeologist Pamfil, who worked a lot at the fortress of Capidava, argues that it is very possible that in this place, where it could be built without problems, there really was a large stone bridge.
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