This is a Friends of History debating society. I am Gaius John Bachelors, Michael Vlayhos.

Dramaticus, we've been talking about the dations that frustrate our Emperor Demission.

And we know that he bribes them and doesn't

have the confidence to leave Rome,

to lead an army and the Danube.

The Dations are a strong people. They're not barbarians. They're tall

and blue-eyed and red-headed and they're very good metal workers. They make swords and

knives to be envied.

They have a fortress in the mountains that will one day be called the Carpathian Mountains.

And we know that once Trajan is Emperor, he will settle the score because there will be

rebellion and the nations will throw off the money they've been paid and start raiding our

outposts again so they have to be resolved and the way Trajan resolved

is to point the legions at Sormagatusa, Regia, their capital

built in the mountains.

And because that has value, it has a sacred site, and he told the army to destroy it.

And the army did.

They distorted in a typical Roman fashion. They didn't storm the gates.

They built a wall all the way around it and starved it to death.

And then they took the population, killed the men, sold the women and children into slavery, and

reduced it stone by stone, so much so that in the 21st century it's a ghost of a city in a national forest in Transylvania. But that

style worked for America's empire once upon a time. In the first war we pointed our legions at the Germans and

broke them. Even more so in the second war we pointed our legions at Tokyo and

...