At the return of the Spring, when the bridge was completed, the Roman army marched over it, and commenced hostilities. The war was long and difficult, but it terminated in the complete subjugation of the Dacians, and in the death of their king, Decebalus, who, finding it impossible to avoid being made prisoner, killed himself that he might not fall alive into the conquerors’ hands. Dacia was thus converted into a Roman province, and Trajan shortly after sent colonies to increase its population. New cities were built, and pavements were constructed on the high roads, for the greater facility of communication.[1] It was governed by a Roman pro-prætor until the year 274. Under the reign of Gallienus, when the empire was already declining, various parts of Dacia were seized by the Goths, and other barbarous nations. A few Roman legions yet remained in the country, under the reign of the Emperor Aurelian, who, returning from Gaul, came down to Illyria, and finding a great part of Dacia in the hands of the barbarians, foresaw the impossibility of maintaining any possessions in the midst of them, and he withdrew a good number of the Roman inhabitants to the other side of the Danube, and settled them in Mæsia. During the space of a hundred years from that period, those of the natives who had remained behind, and their descendants, were incessantly exposed to the rapacities of a variety of barbarous tribes, who came into the country for plunder. Towards the year 361, the Goths, more powerful than the rest, seemed to have been left in exclusive possession of the province, and were inclined to make a permanent stay in it. They embraced the Christian religion, and established it in Dacia; since when, to the present moment, it has never ceased to be predominant amongst its inhabitants. In 376, the Hunns, having over-run the countries possessed by the Goths, forced Athanaric, King of the Vizigoths, to retire with all his forces to that part of Dacia, situated between the rivers Dniester and Danube, now called Moldavia. He raised a wall between the latter river and the Pruth, by which he thought himself sufficiently protected against the attacks of his enemies. The Hunns, however, were not stopped by it; and their approach spread such consternation among the Goths of the interior, that those who had the means of escaping, to the number of some hundred thousand, fled for refuge into the Roman territory, and were permitted by the Emperor Valens, to settle in Thrace, upon condition that they should live peaceably there, and serve, when required, in the Roman armies.