Following its conquest of the Illyrians and those Dacian tribes south of the Danube river, Rome established the province of Moesia and inevitably came into conflict with the Dacian Kingdom. That the Dacians were brave warriors was never in question, but their ferocious tenacity in the face of the Legions set them apart from other peoples of the time. At their most powerful under King Burebista, who in the 1st century BC ruled over almost half a million square kilometres of territory occupied by two million subjects, Dacia successfully resisted Rome for well over a century. During this time, Roman armies were annihilated and, disastrously, Eagles were lost to Dacian forces on more than one occasion. Despite fierce resistance, the Emperor Trajan finally defeated and conquered the Dacians in AD106. Their last independent ruler, King Decebalus, committed suicide rather than face the ignominy of being marched through Rome as part of the victor's triumphal procession.
