A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1962-1964 (Debrecen, 1965)

Tanulmányok - Marjai Márton: A „Devil’s Trench” in the Great Forest of Debrecen

Márton Marjai A „Devil's Trench" in the Great Forest of Debrecen One of the largest survivals of prehistoric times in the Danubian basin is the extensive system of trenches to be found in Transdanubia, upper Hungary, Slovakia and Transylvania. Its longest stretch encircles with a three- or four-fold line the region beyond the Tisza and the territory between this river and the Danube and extends as far as the lower reaches of the latter. The total length of this system of earthworks is about 1000 statute miles (1600 kms). Its origin is unknown. Popular tradition attributes its origin, because of its extraordinary dimensions, to superhuman agents and calls it the „devil's trench". The southern section, extending from the river Maros to the Lower Danube, is called Roman Trench. Its most detailed description is to be found in a paper by F. Römer, entitled Compte-rendu 1876. — Les fosses du diable en Hongrie. This system of earthworks is generally considered to be a line of fortifications. There is, however, another opinion according to which it had been a network of roads for stockbreeding nomad peoples. This latter opinion is entirely unfounded. A more fruitful approach to the question of the origin of these fortifications may be offered by assuming that such a gigantic work could be executed only by a centrally organized agricultural state of slaveholders. In the ancient Danubian basin there existed no such state except the Roman Empire which conquered Pannónia and, a century later, Transylvania. In the century between the conquest of Pannónia and Dacia, Sarmatian-Yazigian tribes became wedged between that Roman province and the Dacián Empire. These tribes first formed an alliance with the Dacians. But the Romans did not lay claim to the Great Plain, then unsuited for agriculture and mining, so the frontier of their province was stabilized on the line of the Danube. Roman diplomacy gradually won over the Sarmatian tribes, threatened by Dacians, and made them side with Rome. Decebal, as we know, successfully asked for Roman engineers and training squads, in return for his garantees of peace. This could have been possible only if the Romans had at even earlier dates sent training squads and field engineers to their Sarmatian allies. The construction of the huge system of trenches in the Great Plain must, consequently, have been directed by these engineers, the trenches serving as a defence Hne of the Sarmatian-held Great Plain, i. e.the adjoining territory of Pannónia. Sarmatian-Yazigian tribes took part in Trajan's Dacián campaign as the allies of Rome (as commemorated on the reliefs of Trajan's Column). The northern section of this system of fortifications continued to play a very important part in the defence of the access to the territory between the Tisza and the Danube, because this had become the strategically most vulnerable point of the whole empire, broken through later by the subsequent waves of the great migrations. The Sarmatian cemeteries on the 2nd an

d 3

rd centuries A.D., dug up in the Hortobágy area and published by L. Zoltai (L. Zoltai: Die Hügelgräber der römischen Kaiserzeit in Hortobágy; M. Párducz: Die nähere Bestimmung der Hügelgräber der römischen Kaiserzeit in Hortobágy. — Both no place or date), yield rich material concerning Romano-Sarmatian cultural relations. A section of the "devil's trench" cuts through the Great Forest of Debrecen in a northwestern-south-eastern direction. This section was probably built, together with the whole system in the Great Plain, not by Roman soldiers but by their Sarmatian allies in the middle of the 1

st century A.D., similarly to the limes and wall of Thuringia. 93