Decebalus Rex is the biggest stone sculpture in Europe, along the Danube river.
The party placed Ceausescu in a pantheon of heroes that still included Marx, Engels and Lenin, but also Burebista and
Decebalus, Kings of ancient Dacia (which had eventually been vanquished by the Romans), as well as later Romanian heroes Stephen the Great and prince Alexandru Cuza.
The state created during and at the initiative of Burebista was dismembered into four to five political formations and, even though Decebalus had the same initiative, the Geto-Dacian state never had the same borders again.
Even if the Geto-Dacian state did not maintain the same borders after Burebista's death, his successors, culminating with Decebalus, attempted at the the same unification policy, in order to prevent that Dacia would be transformed into a Roman province.
The emperor himself is shown in a wide variety of situations--addressing his troops, interrogating a prisoner, and receiving the severed heads of Dacian warriors--while the defeated king
Decebalus is about to commit suicide by slitting his throat.
A rock-hewn likeness of his opponent,
Decebalus, the king of Dacia (now Transylvania), commands equal attention on the wooded slopes of the opposite bank, part of Romania.
In the First and early Second Centuries, the Dacians, from what is now Romania, were the tough enemies of Rome under their king
Decebalus. Eventually, the Emperor Trajan triumphed over the Dacians whose fighting qualities impressed the Romans so much that they were recruited as auxiliary soldiers.
Some of the Dacians' names are recorded on gravestones, including that commemorating a child named
Decebalus, after the Dacian king.