…Tomis (present-day Constanta), founded in the seventh century BCE by Greek settlers from Miletus in Anatolia.

Hellenic culture heavily influences the Getae, especially the ruling class, from about 300 BCE.

One Basileus Dromichaites, having organized the Getae of the Lower Danube into a state by about 300 BCE, repulses an attack by Lysimachus.

Hereafter, native Getian leaders protect the coastal urban centers that have developed from Greek colonies.

Agathocles is sent by his father against the Getae in about 292 BCE but is defeated and taken prisoner.

He is kindly treated by Dromichaetes, and sent back to his father with presents; but Lysimachus, notwithstanding, marches against the Getae, and is taken prisoner himself.

He too is also released by Dromichaetes, who received in consequence the daughter of Lysimachus in marriage.

According to some authors it was only Agathocles and according to others only Lysimachus, who was taken prisoner.

The place of Ovid’s exile is Tomis, a primitive town on the Black Sea (near modern Costanza, Romania).

Arriving there in spring of 9, Ovid battles his loneliness and longing for his friends and beloved Rome by writing poetry about exile.

His Tristia, addressed to anonymous Roman friends and written between 8 and 12, and From the Black Sea, four books of elegiac letters addressed to named friends and written between 12-16, display Ovid's talents in adapting to his personal tragedy.

The Getae have commercial contact as well as military conflicts with many peoples besides the Greeks.

Ovid writes that for many years Getian tribesmen would steer their plows with one hand and hold a sword in the other to protect themselves against attacks by Scythian horsemen from the broad steppe lands east of the Dniester River.

The Roman province of Moesia had been created in about CE 5, but the Dobruja, under the name Ripa Thraciae, had remained part of the Odrysian kingdom, while the Greek cities on the coast formed Praefectura orae maritimae.

In 46 CE, Thracia becomes a Roman province and the territories of present Dobruja, known to the Romans as Scythia Minor, are absorbed into the province of Moesia.

The Iranian-speaking Sarmatians, a combination of tribes who have overwhelmed and replaced the Scythians, their distant kinsmen, in eastern Europe, penetrate the Roman province of Lower Moesia (present Bulgaria) during the time of Nero's rule (54-68).

Like the Scythians, the Sarmatians are highly developed in horsemanship and warfare.

Their administrative capability and political astuteness contribute to their gaining widespread influence.

Owing to their common nomadic and Central Asian heritage, Sarmatian society parallels that of the Scythians, but there are many differences.

The Scythian gods are those of nature, while the Sarmatians venerate a god of fire to whom they offer horses in sacrifice.

In contrast to the reclusive, domestic role of Scythian women, unmarried Sarmatian females, especially in the society's early years, take arms alongside men.

Sarmatian female warriors may have inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons.

The Crimean Goths and the Heruls, a Germanic people from northern Europe, dare to venture on the seas beginning in 253, ravaging the shores of the Black Sea in violation of a treaty signed with Rome.

The Huns, led by Attila, attack Constanţa (in modern Romania), one of the few remaining Roman forts on the northern bank of the Danube and designated as a secure trading post.

On a crowded market day, the Huns take the town by surprise and slaughter the garrison.

The Dobruja comes under the domination of the Ottoman Turks, who in 1417 attach directly to their empire the regions of …

Tsar Nicholas I, responding to an Austrian ultimatum, orders the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Principalities on July 26, 1854.

Also, in late July 1854, following up on the Russian retreat, the French stage an expedition against the Russian forces still in Dobruja, but this is a failure.

The Constanta-Cernavoda rail line opens in the Ottoman-held Dobruja in 1860.