In Romanian mythology, Baba Dochia, or The Old Dokia, is a name originating from the Byzantine calendar which celebrates the Martyr Evdokia on 1 March. The Romanian Dokia personifies mankind's impatience in waiting for the return of spring. The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered at its capital in Constantinople. ... March 1 is the 60th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (61st in leap years). ... Spring is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. ...

Baba Dochia has a son, called Dragomir or Dragobete, who is married. Dochia ill-treats her daughter-in-law by sending her to pick up berries in the forest at the end of February. God appears to the girl as an old man and helps her in her task. When Dochia sees the berries, she thinks that spring has come back and leaves for the mountains with her son and her goats. She is dressed with twelve lambskins, but it rains on the mountain and the skins get soaked and heavy. Dochia has to get rid of the skins and when frost comes she perishes from the cold with her goats. Her son freezes to death with a piece of ice in his mouth as he was playing the flute.

Dochia is sometimes depicted as a proud woman who teases the month of March, who in return gets its revenge by taking some days from February.

In other sources, Dochia was the daughter of Decebal, King of the Dacians. When the Roman Emperor Trajan was conquering part of the dacian territory, Dochia seeks refuge in the Carpathian Mountains in order to avoid marrying him. She disguises herself as a shepherd but she takes off her lambskin garments and freezes to death with her herd. She is transformed into a stream and her animals into flowers. Decebalus, from the Trajans Column Decebalus (ruled 87-106 CE) (Decebal in Romanian) was a Dacian king. ... Emperor Trajan Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus (September 18, 53 - August 9, 117), Roman Emperor (98 - 117), commonly called Trajan, was the second of the so-called five good emperors of the Roman Empire. ... Alternate meanings: see Dacia (disambiguation) Dacia, in ancient geography the land of the Daci or Getae, was a large district of Central Europe, bounded on the north by the Carpathians, on the south by the Danube, on the west by the Tisa (Tisza river, in Hungary), on the east by... Satellite image of the Carpathians The Carpathian Mountains (Hungarian:Kárpátok; Romanian: Carpaţi; Ukrainian:Карпати, Karpaty; Polish, Czech and Slovak: Karpaty) are the eastern wing of the great central mountain system of Europe curving 1500 km (~900 miles) along the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine. ...