Marcus Piso again (697-698) as general-in-chief wretchedly mismanaged matters; which was no wonder, seeing that for money he gave friends and foes whatever they wished.

The Thracian Dentheletae (on the Strymon) under his governorship plundered Macedonia far and wide, and even stationed their posts on the great Roman military road leading from Dyrrhachium to Thessalonica; the people in Thessalonica made up their minds to stand a siege from them, while the strong Roman army in the province seemed to be present only as an onlooker when the inhabitants of the mountains and neighbouring peoples levied contributions from the peaceful subjects of Rome.
The New Dacian Kingdom Such attacks could not indeed endanger the power of Rome, and a fresh disgrace had long ago ceased to occasion concern.

But just about this period a people began to acquire political consolidation beyond the Danube in the wide Dacian steppes--a people which seemed destined to play a different part in history from that of the Bessi and the Dentheletae.

Among the Getae or Dacians in primeval times there had been associated with the king of the people a holy man called Zalmoxis, who, after having explored the ways and wonders of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests and of the Greek Pythagoreans, had returned to his native country to endhis life as a pious hermit in a cavern of the "holy mountain." He remained accessible only to the king and his servants, and gave forth to the king and through him to the people his oracles with reference to every important undertaking.

He was regarded by his countrymen at first as priest of the supreme god and ultimately as himself a god, just as it is said of Moses and Aaron that the Lord had made Aaron the prophet and Moses the god of the prophet.
This had become a permanent institution; there was regularly associated with the king of the Getae such a god, from whose mouth everything which the king ordered proceeded or appeared to proceed.
This peculiar constitution, in which the theocratic idea had become subservient to the apparently absolute power of the king, probably gave to the kings of the Getae some such position with respect to their subjects as the caliphs had with respect to the Arabs; and one result of it was the marvellous religious-political reform of the nation, which was carried out about this time by the king of the Getae, Burebistas, and the god Dekaeneos.