A shifting of the proportions of power to the disadvantage of Rome set in under Domitian,[128] or rather the consequences of the insufficient frontier-defence were then reaped. According to the little we know of the matter, the change of affairs hinged, quite like the similar one in Caesar's time, upon a single Dacian man; what king Burebista had planned, king Decebalus seemed destined to execute. How much the real moving-spring lay in his personality, is shown by the story that the Dacian king Duras, in order to bring the right man into the right place, retired from his office in favour of Decebalus. That Decebalus first of all organised in order to strike, is shown by the reports as to his introduction of Roman discipline into the Dacian army, and his enlisting people of capacity among the Romans themselves, and even by the condition proposed by him to the Romans after the victory, that they should send him the necessary workmen to instruct his people in the arts of peace as of war. On what a great scale he set to work is shown by the connections which he formed, westward and eastward, with the Suebi and the Jazyges, and even with the Parthians. The assailants were the Dacians. The governor of the province of Moesia, who first went to oppose them, Oppius Sabinus, lost his life on the field of battle. A number of smaller camps were conquered; the larger were threatened, the possession of the province itself was at stake. Domitian in person resorted to the army, and his representative--he himself was no general and remained in the background--the commandant of the guard, Cornelius Fuscus, led the army over the Danube; but he paid for the incautious proceeding by a severe defeat, and he too, the second in supreme command, fell before the enemy. His successor, Julianus, a capable officer, defeated the Dacians in their own territory in a great battle near Tapae, and was on the way to achieve lasting results. But, while the struggle with the Dacians was in suspense, Domitian had threatened the Suebi and Jazyges with war, because they had omitted to send to him a contingent against the former; the messengers, who came to excuse this, he caused to be executed.[129] Here too misfortune pursued the Roman arms. The Marcomani achieved a victory over the emperor himself; a whole legion was surrounded by the Jazyges and cut down. Shaken by this defeat, Domitian, in spite of the advantages gained by Julianus over the Dacians, hastily concluded with these a peace, which did not indeed prevent him from conferring the crown upon the representative of Decebalus in Rome, Diegis, just as if the latter were a vassal of the Romans, or from marching as victor to the Capitol, but which in reality was equivalent to a capitulation. What Decebalus, on the advance of the Roman army into Dacia, had scoffingly offered--to dismiss to his home uninjured every man for whom a yearly payment of two asses was promised