settled in the Empire, and it received the name of Aelia later. However, some authors question the attribution of the stele to a Dacian warrior. The Draco was not the exclusive symbol of the Dacians, but of the Sarmatians too. The Dacians usually wore a soft Phrygian cap, but in the stele, the cavalryman wears a tall and conical Spangenhelm-type helmet of Sarmatian origin. Some metal helmets of Dacian origin have been found, and they are considerably different from the one represented on the stele. The Dacians presumably wore long loose hair and thick beards, but the Chester cavalryman appears beardless and with short hair. The Dacians were characterized by the curved sickle sword as a peculiar element of the armament, but the cavalryman of Chester carries a straight sword. Furthermore, the Cohors I Aelia Dacorum reported as evidence for the presence of the Dacians in Britain was an infantry unit, and the Dacians had no tradition as a cavalry one. There also were no Dacian units in service at the Castrum of Deva Victrix (Chester, England), where the stele was found. Use in the Roman army The first sculptural representation of a draco borne by a Roman soldier dates from the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (r.161 to 180 AD). Scholars believe that the draco was adopted by the Roman army following their conquest of the Dacians. Some scholars such as Osborne (1985) and Ashmore (1961) consider that the draco was adopted by the Romans from the Dacians. It became the standard of the cohort in the same way that the aquila or Imperial eagle was the standard of the Roman legion. The adopted standard in the Roman cavalry was borne by a draconarius. Later, the draco became an imperial ensign. The only copy left is a dragon-like gilded head of the late Roman standard found at the Niederbieber, Germany. The draco was specific not only to Roman occupied Dacia but also to the Sarmatian and Parthian regions. As a result, some alternative origins for the Roman army's draco have been proposed. According to Franz Altheim, the appearance of such ensigns in the Roman army coincided with the recruitment of nomad troops from Central and Southern Asia, and it was from this region that the image passed into Iran and subsequently to Europe. Thus, based on Altheim's theory, the Dacians and Germans would then have inherited it from the