Thrace

“ The barbarians having been put into possession of Thrace, and securely enjoying that Roman province, were unable to bear their good fortune with moderation; but committing hostile aggressions upon their benefactors, devastated all Thrace and the adjacent countries. ”

“ That a number of Thracian, especially Odrysian, princes coined in part even at a very early period, proves only that they ruled over places on the coast with a Greek or half–Greek population. A similar judgment must be formed as to the tetradrachms of the “Thracians,” which stand quite isolated (Sallet, Num. Zeitschrift, iii. 241) .—The inscriptions also found in the interior of Thrace are throughout of Roman times. ”

“ Homer does not mention this Pytho in the Iliad; he mentions in the Odyssey an oracle delivered by Apollo upon Parnassus. For a long time, the peoples of Greece, accustomed to receive from the ancient mountains of Thrace both their oracles and their instructions, turned toward that country and neglected the new sacred mount. This is why the most ancient traditions place in Thrace, with the supremacy of cult and sacerdotalism, the cradle of the most famous poets and that of the Muses who had inspired them: Orpheus, Musæus, Thamyris, and Eumolpus were Thracians. ”

“ Be it so, Phrygian Zemel, the earth, is Greek Semele, the earth-mother of the son of the sky, Zeus. But "Dionysus in Greek mythology is closely connected with Thrace," and Lycurgus, the enemy of Dionysus in Iliad, vi., is a Thracian king. Now "the result of recent philological inquiries is to show a close connection between the Thracian and Phrygian tongues, which are found to be both Aryan." [15] Again, Attica, if ever her legends deviate into truth, was closely connected with Thrace; and Homer himself treats the Thracian Chersonese as an ally of Troy, [16] and Rhesus brings in his levies. ”

“ Perinthus being taken, Megabazus marched his army through Thrace, subduing to the king’s will every city and every people of that region. For this was the charge given him by Darius, even the conquest of Thrace.
3. The Thracians are the biggest nation in the world, next to the Indians; were they under one ruler, or united, they would in my judgment be invincible and the strongest nation on earth ”

“ When they settled in Thrace, they introduced their arts, and their worship, among the barbarous [1045] natives, by whom they were revered for their superior knowledge. They likewise bequeathed many memorials of themselves, and of their forefathers, which were probably some emblematical sculptures upon wood or stone: hence we read of the tablets of Orpheus preserved in Thrace, and particularly upon mount [1046] Hæmus. The temple which they built upon this mountain seems to have been a college, and to have consisted of a society of priests. ”

“ Hence the temple of the Deity may have been originally called Cu-Cœl-Ops, Domus Cœli Pythonis; and the priests and people Cucelopians. But whatever may have been the purport of the name, the history of these personages is sufficiently determinate.
There was a place in Thrace called [589] Cuclops, where some of the Cyclopian race had settled; for many of the Amonians came hither. Hence Thrace seems at one time to have been the seat of science: and the Athenians acknowledged, that they borrowed largely from them. The natives were very famous ”

“ Under the discouragement arising from the death of the stratêgus, Hippokratês, and one thousand citizens, the idea of a fresh expedition to Thrace would probably have been intolerable to Athenian hoplites: the hardships of a winter service in Thrace, as experienced a few years before in the blockade of Potidæa, would probably also aggravate their reluctance. In Grecian history, we must steadfastly keep in mind that we are reading about citizen soldiers, not about professional soldiers ”

“ No more to receive them, when back they returned from the Thracian folk,
Our towers within, that so they might heed the right, or begone
Hence to another land, even they and their thralls war-won.
Then required they of us their sons, even what manchild soe’er
Had been left in the town, and returned unto Thrace; and to this day there
The Lemnian men on the snowy Thracian corn-lands dwell.
Then tarry ye sojourning here: and if haply it please thee well
To abide in the land, and it seem to thee good, of a surety thine
Shall be Thoas my father’s honour. ”

“ Perinthus and the cities on the northern shore of the Propontis were reduced and punished, and then Darius gave orders, according to Herodotus, for the reduction of Thrace. "And Megabyzus marched through Thrace, and reduced every nation and every city into submission to the king. The nation of the Thracians is the greatest after the Indians, and if it were united or governed by one man, it would be invincible, and in my opinion the strongest of all nations. But as this [Pg 309] is impossible, and can never be brought about, they are weak. ”

“ The north-eastern portion of the ^Egean, owing to its proximity to the coast of Thrace, was known as the Thracian Sea, and in this were situated the islands of Thasos, Samo thrace, and Imbros.
There is no sufficient evidence to determine the ethnological affinities of the Thracian race. Their language has perished, and the information respecting them which has come down to us hardly furnishes more than material for conjecture, so that the most that we can affirm on the subject is that they belonged to the Indo-European family. ”

“ The Thracians were looked upon as a cruel and barbarous nation; they were naturally brave and warlike, addicted to drinking and venereal pleasures, and they sacrificed without the smallest humanity their enemies on the altars of their gods. Their government was originally monarchical, and divided among a number of independent princes. Thrace is barren as to its soil. It received its name from Thrax the son of Mars, the chief deity of the country. The first inhabitants lived upon plunder, and on the milk and flesh of sheep. It forms now the province of Romania. Herodotus, bk. ”

“ Then Ulysses and Diomede leaped on the backs of the horses, as they had not time to bring away the chariot, and they galloped to the ships, stopping to pick up the spear, and bow, and cap of Dolon. They rode to the princes, who welcomed them, and all laughed for glee when they saw the white horses and heard that King Rhesus was dead, for they guessed that all his army would now go home to Thrace. ”

“ And the whole race may be said to present a character more Asiatic than European; especially in those ecstatic and maddening religious rites, which prevailed not less among the Edonian Thracians than in the mountains of Ida and Dindymon of Asia, though with some important differences. The Thracians served to furnish the Greeks with mercenary troops and slaves." G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 26. "Under Seuthes [B. C. 424] Thrace stood at the height of its prosperity. It formed a connected empire from Abdera to the Danube, from Byzantium to the Strymon. ... ”

“ ON THE CHERSONESE § 9. The argument is, 'if Philip is not committing hostilities so long as he keeps away from Attica, Diopeithes is not doing so, so long as he keeps away from Macedonia, and only operates in Thrace.'
drive the vessels, &c. See Speech on the Peace, § 25 n.
§ 14. passing the time: i.e. until a convenient season for an attack arrives.
those who are on the spot: i.e. in Thrace, and who had doubtless sent messages to Athens. Others think that the words mean 'those who are here from Thrace'. ”

“ The associations of the story dimly indicate a Thracian origin.239.3 And it is in the range of the Greek Dionysiac {240} cult, which according to the most probable view was adopted from Thrace, that we find imprinted on legend and ritual the tradition of a savage type of sacrament, in which the human or animal incarnation of the god was devoured. ”

“ The men seem well inclined to the new ruling powers, and many apply at once to be furnished with wings. But the state of things in the celestial regions soon gets so intolerable, owing to the stoppage of all communication with earth and its good things, that certain barbarian deities, the gods of Thrace, who are—as an Athenian audience would readily understand—of a very carnal and ill-mannered type, break out into open rebellion, and threaten mutiny against the supremacy of Jupiter, unless he can come to some terms with this new intermediate power. ”

“ So they went on across the plain and came to where the men of Thrace lay sleeping, and by each man were his arms in fair array, and his horses; but in the midst lay King Rhesus, with his horses tethered to the chariot-rail. ”

“ The climate of Thrace was regarded by the Greeks as very severe, and that country was spoken of as the home of the north wind, Boreas. The coast in the direction of the Euxine also was greatly feared by sailors, as the harbours were few and the sea proverbially tempestuous; but the southern shore was more attractive to navigators, and here we find the Greek colonies of Abdera and Mesambria on the Aegean, Perinthus on the Propontis, and, the most famous of all, Byzantium, at the meeting-point of that sea and the Bosporus. ”

“ The transformation of the women of Thrace into trees, for the murder of Orpheus, is probably an allegory intended to show that these furious and ill-conditioned females did not escape punishment for their misdeeds; and that they were driven by society to pass the rest of their lives in woods and caverns. ”

“ As Roman implements and ornaments have been found in some of them, it is plain that this mode of burial continued to be practised until a late period. The deity whose worship prevailed most extensively in the country was Dionysus. The most powerful Thracian tribe was that of the Odrysse, whose king, Teres, in the middle of the 5th century B.C. extended his dominion so as to include the greater part of Thrace. ”

“ The undying authority of Homer informs us that these countries were formerly extended over an immense space of tranquil plains and high rising grounds; since that poet represents both the north and the west wind as blowing from thence: a statement which is either fabulous, or else which shows that the extensive district inhabited by all those savage tribes was formerly included under the single name of Thrace. ”

“ There was a certain land of Thrace, which the god Mars loved beyond all other lands, whereof in time past the fierce Lycurgus, who would have slain Bacchus, was king. Here, therefore, for the men of the land were friendly, or, at the least, had been before evil days came upon Troy, Æneas builded him a city, and called it after his own name. But, after awhile, [Pg 30] as he did sacrifice on a certain day to his mother, even Venus, that he might have a blessing on his work, slaying also a white bull to Jupiter, there befell a certain horrible thing. ”

“ In the heart of Thrace some ten miles north of the Rhodope mountains, there is a valley which is named Harpessus, after the stream which runs down it. Through this valley lies the main road from the east to the west, and along the road, returning from an expedition against the Alani, there marched, upon the fifth day of the month of June in the year 210, a small but compact Roman army. It consisted of three legions—the Jovian, the Cappadocian, and the men of Hercules. ”

“ He was to go to savage Thrace and there destroy the man-eating horses of King Diomedes; afterward he was to go amongst the dread women, the Amazons, daughters of Ares, the god of war, and take from their queen, Hippolyte, the girdle that Ares had given her; then he was to go to Crete and take from the keeping of King Minos the beautiful bull that Poseidon had given him; afterward he was to go to the Island of Erytheia and take away from Geryoneus, the monster that had three bodies instead of one, the herd of red cattle that the two-headed hound Orthus kept guard over ”

“ In six generations more, they were, he conceives, expelled by the Ætolians and Locrians, then called Curetes and Leleges, and were dispersed into various quarters: indeed, here the tradition seems to become wholly vague or mythical, and to have [206] gathered into one mass most of the places in which there appeared signs of Pelasgic occupancy: it includes the report of a great migration to Italy.
Marsh [392] considers Thrace as the original seat in Europe of the Pelasgi; but the data on which he proceeds are too narrow; they have reference only to the islands of Lemnus, Imbrus, and Samothrace. ”

“ These, however, were the very doctrines of the Orphics, who declared that the body was the grave of the soul, and that the life of the world to come was the only one worth living. Hence the mythical Orpheus was said to have been a Thracian, and the worship of Bacchus or the Theban Dionysos as the god of wine to have come into Attica from Thrace by way of Boeotia, a theory which derives some colour from the orgiastic dances and ravings of the Maenads and Bacchanals, who seem therein to have reproduced the rites of the savage Thracians [419] . ”

“ We will relate only what we have learnt from ancient accounts, and the reports made in our times.
[Pg 453] 2. The Greeks indeed considered the Getæ to be Thracians. They occupied either bank of the Danube, as also did the Mysians, likewise a Thracian people, now called the Mœsi, from whom are descended the Mysians, settled between the Lydians, the Phrygians, and the inhabitants of the Troad. Even the Phrygians themselves are the same as the Briges, a people of Thrace, as also are the Mygdones, the Bebryces, the Mædobithyni, the Bithyni, the Thyni, and, as I consider, also are the Mariandyni. ”