Devil's Dykes
linear earthworks
The Devil's Dykes (Hungarian: Ördög árok) , also known as the Csörsz árka ("Csörsz Ditch") or the Limes Sarmatiae (Latin for "Sarmatian border") , are several lines of Roman fortifications built mostly during the reign of Constantine the Great (306–337), stretching between today's Hungary, Romania and Serbia.
History
The fortifications consisted of a series of defensive earthen ramparts-and-ditches surrounding the plain of the Tisia (Tisza) river. They stretched from Aquincum (within modern Budapest) eastwards, along the line of the northern Carpathian mountains to the vicinity of Debrecen and then, southwards to Viminacium (near modern Stari Kostolac).
They were probably intended to protect the territory of the Iazyges (a Sarmatian tribe inhabiting the Tisza plain that had been admitted to the Empire and reduced to tributary status by Constantine) from incursions by the surrounding Goths and Gepids.
Some elements of the fortifications, however, date from the 2nd century AD and probably constituted an earlier defensive line constructed under emperor Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180) at the time of the Marcomannic Wars, the previous occasion that the Tisza plain was occupied by the Romans.
The Limes Sarmatiae was intended to expand the Roman Limes and was built at the same time as the Constantine Wall in Wallachia (connected to the Limes Moesiae). It was, however, destroyed after a few years, at the end of the 4th century.
Indeed, in 374 AD, the Quadi, a Germanic tribe in what is now Moravia and Slovakia, resenting the erection of Roman forts of the "Limes Sarmatiae" to the north and east of the Danube in what they considered to be their territory, and further exasperated by the treacherous murder of their king, Gabinius, crossed the river and laid waste to the province of Pannonia.
In 375, emperor Valentinian I retook Pannonia with several legions.
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This entry incorporates text from “Devil's Dykes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.