Florentina NICOLAE (Universitatea „Ovidius” din Constanța / Institutul de Istorie și Teorie Literară „G. Călinescu”)
IMAGINEA DACILOR ÎN OPERELE ISTORICE ALE LUI DIMITRIE CANTEMIR
Keywords: Dacia, Augustus, Traian, Ovidius, Dacians, Roman history, Romanian people.
Abstract: The Image of the Dacians in Dimitrie Cantemir’s Historical Works. In this paper, we aim to analyze the historiographical work of Dimitrie Cantemir, written in Latin and Romanian, in order to identify the ways in which the image of the Dacians is used in the author’s rhetorical and argumentative strategies. The Dacians are associated with the figures of the emperors Octavianus Augustus and Trajan, which are emblematic in the author’s view, for the ethnogenesis of the Romanian people. Although Cantemir believes that the Dacians were exterminated by the Romans, he uses their image, portrayed with positive, heroic features, as an argument and a proofe regarding the antiquity and nobility of the Romanian people.