The Thracians, a Thracian-speaking people, occupied territory north and west of the Black Sea, including present-day Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova; eastern Serbia; northern Greece; and northwestern Turkey. They were associated with ancient Thrace, defined by the ancient Greeks as that part of the Balkans bounded by the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea to the west, the Danube River to the north, and the Aegean Sea to the south; on the east by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and on the west by the Morava and Vardar Rivers. The Romans later defined Thrace as a province extending only as far as the Balkan Mountains in the north and the Rhodope Mountains in the west.
The geographical term Thrace is still used for the Greek province of Thrace; and the name Eastern Thrace for European Turkey, including the Gallipoli Peninsula, and southern Bulgaria. The Maritsa River separates the Greek and Turkish parts; the Turkish part is sometimes called Eastern Thrace. About one-tenth of Thrace lies in Greece, about one-fourth in Turkey, and the rest in Bulgaria. Thracian can thus refer to a language family or people of a geographical region.
Origins
The Thracians perhaps were in the Balkans by the end of the second millennium B. C.E. The Greek poet Homer of the ninth or eighth century B. C.E. wrote about the Thracians as participants in the Trojan War. The Getae and Dacians, perhaps the same people at different points in history, were among the more than 200 Thracian tribes. To the west of the Thracians, separated by the Morava and Vardar River valleys, were the Illyrians.
The Thracians never developed an alphabet of their own. On the basis of proper names, Greek writings, and inscriptions on coins and other artifacts from as early as the sixth century B. C.E. it is generally assumed that Thracian was an Indo-European language. It is possible that elements of it have survived in modern Armenian by way of the Phrygians, an ancient people of Asia Minor.
From the eighth century B. C.E. the Greeks settled coastal cities on Thracian lands along the Aegean and Black Seas. Many Greek city-colonies had Thracian names, including Byzantion—named after Byzas, a Thracian— which eventually became the capital of Byzantium (see Byzantines). The Greek historian Herodotus of the fifth century b. c.e. describes the Thracians as the most numerous people in Europe. Yet their continuing dynastic struggles made them vulnerable to invaders.
In about 516-510 b. c.e. most Thracians were subjects of the Persians out of present-day Iran. By the beginning of the fifth century, a number of Thracian tribes had united into the state of Odrys in the Rhodope region with a capital along the Lower Maritsa River. In the mid-fourth century b. c.e. this state broke up into three smaller confederacies. In 356 b. c.e. the Macedonians under Philip II of Macedon began a campaign against the Odrysae (or Odrisi); although eventually pacified, they continued to be a political factor in the region. Philip’s son, Alexander, defeated the Getae soon after his ascendancy in 336 b. c.e. Other peoples occupied some Thracian territory, including the Scythians in the fifth century, the Sarmatians in the fourth century, and the Celts in the third century b. c.e.
Roman Thrace
By the second century b. c.e. the Romans became dominant in the region, assigning parts of Thrace to the kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor and the province of Macedonia. A Thracian tribe referred to as Odrisi battled the Romans in 26 C. E. In 46 C. E. the emperor Claudius I annexed the Thracian kingdom, making it a Roman province. During their reigns in the first half of the second century the emperors Trajan and Hadrian founded cities in Thrace, including Sardica (modern Sofia) and Hadrianopolis (modern Edirne, Turkey). In about 300 C. E. Emperor Diocletian reorganized the area between the Lower Danube and the Aegean into the diocese of Thrace.
Thrace was invaded by numerous peoples over the ensuing centuries, including the Germanics, Huns, Slavs, and Bulgars.
Slaves, Mercenaries, and Emperors
The Thracians also played a part in ancient history as individuals. One of these was Spartacus (see sidebar, p. 800), a Thracian who had been captured and trained as a gladiator and had escaped to lead a slave uprising, referred to as the Gladiatorial War, against the Romans in 73-71 B. C.E. Many of his followers were Thracians and Gauls.
Known as brave and skilled warriors, many Thracians served as mercenaries in the armies of the region. Some of them rose to high rank among the Romans. One of them, Maximinus Thrax, known for his size and strength, was made emperor by his troops on the Rhine (after the murder of Emperor Alexander Severus by his own soldiers) and served in 235-238 C. E. before being deposed by the senate.
Spartacus was born in Thrace in about 109 B. C.E., possibly of the Medi tribe living along the Strouma River. He was captured and sold as a slave to a gladiatorial training school at Capua. In 73 B. C.E. he and about 70 fellow gladiators successfully revolted against enslavement and escaped to Mt. Vesuvius. The rebels grew in numbers and pillaged their way across southern Italy, twice defeating Roman armies. Spartacus intended to lead his followers across the Alps out of Italy to the homelands of many of them, but they chose to continue the campaign of plunder, apparently with the hope of marching on Rome itself. They returned to southern Italy and captured the town of Thurii on the Gulf of Taranto. The Roman army, commanded by Marcus Licinius Crassus and Pompey, finally defeated Spartacus and his men. Spartacus died in battle in71 B. C.E. Supposedly 6,000 captured prisoners were crucified along the Appian Way as a warning to other rebellious slaves. Because of his quest for freedom and his humane leadership, Spartacus has been glorified as a social revolutionary.
Economy
In their early history the Thracians’ economy was based on the production of foodstuffs and raw materials, for sustenance as well as for export to peoples of the Aegean Sea, Asia Minor, and the Near East. They also kept livestock. In later years the Thracians carried out extensive trade in artifacts, especially metalwork.
The Thracians lived in open villages of free community farmers and artisans, organized tribally. A council of tribal representatives met for group decisions. When united, the tribes were under a supreme ruler who was also the supreme priest (called basileus by the Greeks; the Thracian word is not known). Taxes were collected from citizens in the form of gold, silver, bronze, cloth, and artifacts. A dragon decorated the standard of the Thracians. The Thracians practiced slavery but on a smaller scale than did the other powerful civilizations with which they had contact.
The Thracians were considered both skilled horsemen and masters of light infantry and were valued as mercenaries by the Greeks, Persians, Macedonians, and Romans.
The period from the end of the sixth century until the early third century B. C.E. is considered the Golden Age of Thracian state and culture, its objects revealing a high level of workmanship. Yet Thracian gold masks are known to date to the fourth millennium B. C.E. Some ancient Thracian tomb paintings have survived.
The Thracians were known throughout the Mediterranean region for their music and poetry.
The Thracians had numerous cults, celebrating many different deities. Many bronze statuettes represent the Horseman and his female counterpart, Bendida. Known as Heros in many Greek reliefs and inscriptions, the Horseman was a god of hunting and fertility, but in a larger sense, of life itself and death. The Dionysian cult originated in Thrace, where Dionysus was considered the god of nature and of infinite creativity; then spread to the Greek world, where Dionysus was the god of fertility and wine and became associated with drunken and orgiastic worship. The god Orpheus, at the center of the Orphean cult, was celebrated in Greek mythology as a Thracian musician.
After 313 C. E., when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, some Thracians also converted.
In the shadow of the Greek and Roman Empires the Thracians do not receive the same degree of attention in studies of European history and culture. Yet they played a major role in the shaping of the ancient world, in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond.
Further Reading_
Stanley Casson. Macedonia, Thrace and Illyria: Their Relations to Greece from the Earliest Times Down to the Time of Philip, Son of Amyntas (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971).
Irina Florov. The 3000-Year-Old Hat: New Connections with Old Europe: The Thraco-Phrygian World (Vancouver, Canada: Golden Vine, 2001). Alexander Fol. Thracians (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Ralph E Hoddinott. Thracians (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981).
B. H. Isaac. The Greek Settlements in Thrace until the Macedonian Conquest (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic, 1997).
Ivan Marazov. Ancient Gold: The Wealth of the Thracians (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998). Dragoslav Srejovic. The Illyrians and the Thracians (Valletta, Malta: Midsea, 1998).
Margarita Tacheva. Ancient Thrace and South-Eastern Europe (Bulgaria 1300 Years) (Sofia, Bulgaria: Sofia, 1976).
Nikola Theodossiev. North-Western Thrace from the Fifth to First Centuries B. C. (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2001).
Christopher Webber. The Thracians 700 b. c.-a. d. 46. Men-at-Arms series (Oxford: Osprey, 2001).
World History
