Gaius Mesius Fifth Decius , born in Budalia, Illyria (Martinci, Serbia) in 201, reached the highest imperial dignity in 249 AD. A great admirer of the first Hispanic emperor since his years as governor of Tarraconense, he adopted the name of Decius Trajan as soon as he was invested as emperor by the Senate. Clearly determined to recover the damaged situation of the Empire, he set out to reform the state to get it out of the deep crisis in which he was mired. He persecuted Christians bitterly, being considered by the Church as "a fierce tyrant". With a similar mentality to Trajan, and to the later Aurelian and Julian, he was convinced that Christianity was a cancer for the Empire and of the absolute necessity of returning to the cult of the native gods. But unfortunately, Rome did not only have internal problems. His predecessor on the throne, the weak Marcus Julius Philippi , Philip the Arab , he had solved the Goth problem by paying huge tributes in exchange for peace, but Cniva , the new leader of the barbarians who arrived from the Baltic, understood that said treaty expired with his supporter. So, in the spring of 250, the Goths crossed the Danube at Novae (Svishtov, Bulgaria), taking it by storm and then ravaging half of Moesia in their wake. This very complicated situation forced the new regent of the Empire to leave his reformist program on hold, put himself at the head of the legions and march towards the Danube willing to tackle the Gothic problem.
Decius
The barbarians had Nicopolis ad Istrum (Nikyup, Bulgaria) surrounded when the imperial banners appeared in the distance, surprising the besiegers. Cniva, unwilling to give battle to the emperor on such unfavorable ground, hurriedly raised his siege and fell back. What seemed like an escape turned into a trap, as the Goths surrounded Mount Haemus and surprised Decius, storming his camp, looting it and scattering the legions. It was the first time that a Roman emperor had fled from a barbarian leader, a dangerous precedent that would worsen during that same campaign. The bewilderment in the Roman ranks was used simultaneously by both the barbarian enemy and the political opponents of Decius. At the beginning of the summer of 251, Cniva ordered Philippolis to be stormed with the utmost cruelty. Thousands of citizens were enslaved or killed during the terrible pillage. Meanwhile, the brother of Philip the Arab, Gaius Julius Priscus , had himself proclaimed emperor in neighboring Thrace. The problem of that inopportune usurper solved itself, since Priscus was assassinated shortly after, but the ugly Goth matter did not seem to have such an easy solution.
Decius, horrified and emboldened by the testimonies of the few survivors who were able to escape the horror of Philippolis, regrouped his troops in front of that city, trying to encircle Cniva. The Gothic leader, aware of the difficulty of maintaining a siege with tired men within a massacred population without food, chose to withdraw with the enormous spoils of war and the noble captives to a place that would allow him to have an open path to the Danube, dividing his army in small groups difficult to capture due to their great mobility. Decius followed them, unknowingly leading himself into a death trap. The place where Cniva decided that the time had come to gather and fight was a boggy spot in the Ludogorie ("the region of the wild forests" in Dobruja, present-day northeastern Bulgaria), near the small town of Abrittus, also known as Forum Terebronii (one kilometer from present-day Razgrad). The Gothic king knew the terrain very well, surpassing his adversary in it. This insignificant place next to a thick Moesian swamp was about to go down in history.
There is a disparity of dates according to the sources consulted, from the second week of June to mid-August, although the most referred to is the first of July 251. Whenever it was, the men of Cniva, most likely hungry and desperate, faced with the legions commanded by the emperor Decius in that immense swamp of Abrittus. Cniva divided his army into three parts, hiding the largest of them in the swamp. According to Jordanes, at the beginning of the battle, Herennius Etruscan , the son of the emperor, was hit by an arrow, with such bad luck that it caused his death. As a gesture of integrity to encourage his men, it was said that his own father exclaimed:
Let no one cry; the death of a soldier is not a great loss for the Republic
Perhaps encouraged by the courage of the emperor, perhaps stubborn in an atypical fight for the iron Roman military discipline, or perhaps attracted by Cniva's trick of appearing weak when the bulk of his army remained waiting crouched in that quagmire, the imperial army left sinking deeper and deeper into that pool of Abrittus, deluded by his early success, and ended up struggling in the mud until the Goth's trick reversed the balance. The Roman army was totally annihilated. Emperor Decius died alongside his men in that disastrous battle. With these words the historian Sexto Aurelio Víctor reflected:
… Decius, while pursuing the barbarians across the Danube, died for treachery at Abritus after reigning two years… Many say that his son fell in battle while leading an attack too boldly; his father, on the other hand, had stated forcefully that the loss of a soldier seemed too insignificant to worry about. And so he went on with the war, and died in a similar way while fighting vigorously...
And this is how Lucio Celio Lactantius described it years later, a Christian historian and, therefore, an enemy of the memory and courage of the pagan emperor:
… He was suddenly surrounded by the barbarians, and they killed him, along with much of his army; he could not be honored with the rites of burial, but, stripped and naked, he lay to be devoured by wild beasts and birds, a fitting end for the enemy of God...
As the architect of the Abrittus massacre, Cniva entered history as the first Gothic king to face the legions within the limes , defeat them and be the executioner of an emperor of Rome. Decius was the first emperor to die leading his troops during a battle , something so deplorable for an Empire that was beginning to run out morally and economically that, perhaps because of this ignominy, or as a result of other calamities that came later, on the Decii a damnatio memoriae fell . Gallic Trebonian he had no choice but to agree with Cniva an enormous compensatory tribute before having to cede Roman territory to them. Nothing else was heard of him. At his death seven years after the battle of Abrittus, his people were divided into two large groups, the Goths of the East (Ostrogoths) and those of the West (Visigoths)
The intrepid King Cniva had opened a path of no return for other barbarian leaders to come:Rome was not invincible, her emperors could also die in combat and the provinces of the Empire could perhaps be their new lands...
Decius, the first emperor of Rome killed in combat by Canva Presentations
Source:Archenemies of Rome