DACIA is the name of the old territory situated at the north of Danube, inhabited by the Daci or Getae, a people of Thracian stock.

Dacia was roughly equivalent to modern Romania, extending from the Carpathian Mountains in the north to the Danube River in the south and from the Dnestr River in the east to the Tisza River in the west. A kingdom of Dacia existed as early as the 2d century BC.

In the reign of Augustus, emperor of Rome, the Dacians, formidable warriors, began to provoke the Romans. From AD 85 to 89 the Dacians fought two wars with the Romans, compelling them, in the reign of Emperor Domitian, to purchase immunity from Dacian raids by payment of an annual tribute. In a series of campaigns AD 101-107, Emperor Trajan conquered Dacia and converted it into a Roman province.

The Roman occupation of this northern territory lasted until 271 A.D., and left behind a mixed population, the Daco-Romans, the ancestors of the present Romanians. This short historical perspective explains the Latin origin of the Romanian people and language, who form, as one historian had put it "an island of Latinity in a Slavic sea".