Who were the thracians? :The Southeastern Balkans have always been a crossroads of Europe and Asia, and this was true in antiquity. The region known as Thrace in particular, said to be the birthplace of Ophius the Musician, Protagoras the Sophist, and Democritus the Atomist, was also known for its local inhabitants, the Thracians.
These people, appearing as early as the Iliad, were seminal protagonists of ancient history, from Spartacus to King Suthes III, and have produced some of the most incredible archaeological hoards in world history. we will investigate the history of this ancient nation where Thucydides was ostracized to, their magnificent treasure hoards and their endless contributions to the history of the Balkans.
Who were the Thracians?, what gods did they worship and how did they interact with Illyrians, Dacians, Scythians, Celts and Greeks?
The name Thrace is of unclear origin. In Greek mythology, the Thracians were descendants of Thrax, the son of the war god Ares. However, other sources say that the name of the people and the region they came from originated from Thraki, the daughter of ocean god Okeanos.
Today there is a modern region of the Balkans known as Thrace, which is split between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. In the archaeological record, artifacts identified with Thracian material culture appear in this region, but they also have a presence in what is now Romania, Northern Greece and the country of North Macedonia. It is the best answer of the question "Who were the thracians?"
Intriguingly, the region of Bithynia in what is now the northwest of Turkey seems to also have once been a homeland of the ancient Thracians. We must also keep in mind that Thracian is an exonym used by Greeks and may not have been the word the Thracians used to identify themselves. In fact, the Thracians were probably not a homogeneous cultural group and boasted significant internal diversity. It is an outstanding answer of the question "Who were the thracians?"
Evidence for this exists in the accounts of ancient Greek historians like Herodotus Orthokydides, who described the Thracians as being divided into multiple tribal subgroups. The Thracians were a long-lived culture whose presence in the Balkans lasted for over a thousand years, from the Bronze Age into late antiquity.
However, aside from a few scant inscriptions in the archaeological record, we have very few primary sources on Thracian history told by the Thracians themselves. Thus, their history survives through to us almost exclusively through the perspective of Greco-Roman writers. The Thracians are an ancient people, whose origins are unclear but likely go further than textual sources attest.
Archaeologists have found tablets from the Bronze Age Greek site of Mycenae in the Peloponnese discussing trade with the region of Thrace, prompting us to consider that the Hellenic world was very much in contact with the region as far back as over 3000 years ago. It is an answer of the question "Who were the thracians?"
Chronologically, artifact vessels from Bulgaria dating to 1300 BCE also suggest these contacts were present. It's not fully clear if Thracians were present in the region at that time, but archaeologists think it's likely that their culture had its earliest developments during this period.
It is unclear if the earliest ancestors were indigenous to Thrace or if they were migrants from elsewhere. Some historians claim that they may have come from Anatolia or from the steppes of southern Ukraine and Russia, but none of these theories have yet been confirmed. It is also an answer of the question "Who were the thracians?"
The earliest clear mention of the Thracians as a people comes in the Iliad, where Homer describes them as allies of the Trojans, so we know the tribes were attested in the 800s BCE, in the Archaic period.
The Thracian peoples have long been hypothesized to be culturally linked to the Dacian people, who throughout antiquity inhabited the region which roughly corresponds to modern Romania. However, whether these two peoples were of kindred origin is unclear. It is an extraordinary answer of the question "Who were the thracians?"
Whatever the case, the Thracians were a culturally dynamic people, regularly interacting with and drawing influence from the various other peoples in their region. As Greek colonies began to appear in the region of Byzantium and in the Black Sea in the 800s BCE, they came into direct contact with the Thracians who lived in the hinterlands, resulting in high-frequency trade and cultural exchange between the two civilizations, as evidenced by high frequency of Greek amphorae in the region's hinterlands where the Thracians dwelled.
Herodotus, anthropologist extraordinaire of the ancient Mediterranean, described some Thracian customs. According to him, Thracian men practiced polygyny, the custom of multiple wives. When a man died, his favorite wife would be killed to follow her husband into the afterlife.
In the eyes of the Greeks, the Thracians had the stereotype of being a martial, warlike people, and typical of Greek arrogance, were considered to be rustic and illiterate ruffians. However, despite the Hellenes' apparent low opinion of the Thracian people, Greece would be very much influenced by Thrace in cultural terms.
During the era of classical antiquity, cults from Thrace, like that of the mysterious goddess Bendis, would enter Athenian religious milieus and later on the city of Philippi in Roman Macedon had a sanctuary to the god Aulamentis, a deity of Thracian origin. It is all about the lineage and pedigree of Thracians and answer of the question "Who were the thracians?"
Some of the ancient coinage found in Thrace is in the Macedonian design, suggesting strong cultural contacts between the Thracian and Macedonian peoples.
Beyond their cultural connections with the Greeks, the Thracians also had ties to the various peoples of central Europe, such as the nomadic Scythian horse lords of the steppe. Unlike the Greeks and their polis-based society, the Thracians were not an urbanized people.
Common people lived in smaller rural settlements, while Thracian nobles lived in forts. Having talked about the archaic society of the Thracians, we will now talk about the Classical period and the arrival of Persia and Athens in the region. It is very nice explanation on "Who were the thracians?"
Much like the Greeks, the Thracian peoples were faced with a reckoning in the 5th century BCE at the cusp of an era when the mighty Achaemenid Empire of Persia rolled in.
The Persians conquered the region and managed to establish relatively stable rule over the Thracian people. In fact, it was through Thrace that the Persians launched their failed invasions of both Scythia and Greece.
During Persian rule over Thrace, some Thracian nobles began adopting elements of Persian culture. For example, some of the rita or drinking cups show Persian animalistic tropes like griffins. However, this does not mean that all Thracians happily accepted the rule of the Persians.
While the coastal regions of Thrace were under firmer Persian control, the hinterlands were hotbeds of perpetual insurrection against Achaemenid rule. Both Mardonius, the Persian general who fought at the Battle of Marathon, and Xerxes, the Persian king who fought at the Battle of Thermopylae, passed by the region on their way to Greece, and both ended up escaping thereafter their defeats at the hands of the Hellenes.
While the Thracians were under Persian rule, they were also intensifying their trade links with the Greeks, especially in the city of Athens. Miltiades, the famous Athenian statesman, spent some time in the region, and by the 6th century BCE, Thracian nobles were both Hellenizing and Persianizing.
Thracian wives became a common occurrence amongst Athenian aristocrats, and the Thracians living along the Hellespont became important for the production, extraction, and transportation of both grain and precious minerals towards Athens.
As Thracian elites gained power through their control over both Hellenic and Persian trade, they developed the influence to conquer and consolidate the various Thracian tribes in the region. This resulted in the rise of the Thracian kingdom of the Odrysians in the 5th century BCE. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides mentions that the founding king of the Odrysian kingdom was named Tereus and that he had a daughter whom he married off to a Scythian ruler. Tereus' son, the more well-known Sitalchys, further expanded the borders of the Thracian Kingdom.
Sitalchys was an Athenian ally, and when Athens went to war with Sparta during the Peloponnesian Wars, the Thracian king invaded and pillaged the Spartan ally of Macedon during the first phase of the conflict.
After Sitalchys died in battle in 424 BCE, Suthes I came to power. Suthes was less of a war hawk than his predecessor, focusing on increasing the royal wealth of the Adrysian kingdom via integrating the kingdom's economy while being more restrained in foreign affairs.
Despite this, Athens maintained a regional presence in the Thracian realm during his reign. This was evidenced by the famous Athenian general Alcibiades staying in the Thracian realm during his reign. This was evidenced by the famous Athenian general Alcibiades staying in the region and trying to liaise for an alliance to send grain to Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars.
Suthes I was the king that Xenophon, the Greek historian and mercenary, dealt with in his travels back from Asia Minor to Greece, one stop on a grand adventure which we have made an entire members only series on.
After Suthis I's death in 410 BCE, he was succeeded by a succession of kings who presided over short and uneventful reigns. This lasted until the ascension of King Cottis. He empowered the Adrysian kingdom by reunifying it and centralizing royal authority once more. This also meant trying to curtail the increasing influence of Athens, which sponsored counter-factions in the court.
Cottes ended up being murdered by his brothers during a factional struggle, causing a dynastic interregnum, which saw the kingdom fall into disarray. This happened at the worst possible time, for to the west more trouble was brewing. After the death of Suthes I, the Odrysian kingdom broke down into three regional entities.
This provided the opportunity for their neighbors, the Kingdom of Macedon, as well as Athens, to intervene politically. The breakdown developed into a proxy war, where Philip of Macedon attempted to back a king called Cursebliptes against the Athenian-backed Amidocus.
However, these allegiances were fickle, with both regional Thracian rulers proving unreliable allies to their Greek benefactors. In this Thracian war of 342-340 BCE, King Philip invaded and made Thrace a Macedonian vassal state, expelling Athens from the region.
.jpg "who were the thracians? | History of the Thracians")
When Philip passed, the Thracians rebelled against Macedonian rule, only for Philip's son, a certain Alexander the Great, to embark on a campaign into northern Thrace and ensure the borders of the Danube remained under Macedonian control before he embarked on his grand eastward conquests.
After the death of Alexander in Babylon, Lysimachus, one of Alexander the Great's generals, became the satrap of the region and would become a prolific general in the early wars of the Diadochi, as the former generals of Alexander fought one another over the pieces of the massive Eurasian Empire they had helped him conquer.
However, the Thracians were not so easily dragged into these geopolitical shenanigans and revolted against Macedonian rule under the leadership of a native king, Suthis III, who managed to re-establish the Adrysian kingdom's independence in the Thracian hinterlands with the aid of Getae and Scythian allies from the north.
.jpg "who were the thracians? | History of the Thracians")
Lysimachus fought various wars with the Thracians and Getae throughout his reign, all the way to the 280s, when he died in battle fighting the forces of the Seleucid Empire in Corrpidion.
No sooner had the Thracians thrown off the yoke of Macedonian hegemony did a new people arrive in their native homeland, the Celts.
The first contact between these two proud warrior cultures was fierce and bloody, characterized by many conflicts.
However, more peaceful cultural admixture between the two peoples prevailed as well. Throughout this century, the Thracian kingdom of Adrysian Thracians seemed to have once more broken down into regional fiefdoms.
All the while they continued to contend with Hellenic incursions like those of Antigonus Theos, god-emperor of the Seleucids. Various Thracian kings and queens came and went during this period, and the historical record is patchy. Eventually, the gradual decline of the Celtic polities in Thrace allowed for the reassertion of native Thracian authority as the predominant power in Thrace. However, Macedon continued to invade and occupy parts of the region.
Throughout the Hellenistic era, the Thracians had been caught up in a typhoon of geopolitics, pulled in all directions by many different empires and invading foreign tribes. However, across the Adriatic Sea, a certain Latin Republic would emerge onto the scene, rise above all the competition, and establish itself as the master of Thrace.
The Roman Republic entered the fray of Balkan geopolitics mainly through Greece and Illyria, eventually conquering Macedon in 146 BCE and consequently parts of Thrace. Some Thracian kings were hostile to the Latin newcomers from the very beginning, while others decided to become allies of Rome as a means to protect themselves from invasion. Interestingly, the former gladiator turned rebel leader Spartacus was from Thrace.
Born into a Thracian tribe in 102 BCE before being enslaved by the Romans, only to later escape his bonds. Alongside a few other escapees, they organized a slave revolt that led to the Third Servile War before dying in battle in 71 BCE, the revolt being crushed by Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest man in Rome.
.jpg "who were the thracians? | History of the Thracians")
Initially, Roman control in Thrace was strongest along the coast, where local Thracian kings ruled as client kings under Roman suzerainty and proved to be stalwart Roman allies. One Thracian king, Rome Atalces, even fought alongside Augustus in the Battle of Actium.
Eventually, the efforts of both the Thracian kings who had attempted to maintain their independence by fighting the Romans and those who had attempted to maintain their independence by cooperating with them were both proven to have been in vain.
Rome annexed coastal Thrace directly under Roman rule, making it an imperial province in 46 CE. Emperor Claudius followed up on this by incorporating the Thracian hinterlands into the imperial realm. Roman rule in Thrace continued for centuries, and presided over the slow Romanization of the native Thracian elites.
.jpg "who were the thracians? | History of the Thracians")
Although the rural lower classes were slower to Romanize, they maintained their indigenous culture and language for far longer. Rome utilized Thrace for mineral and particularly marble extraction, a fact which led to mass infrastructure development and the acceleration of urbanization in the region.
Throughout Thrace, Roman estates and villas popped up across the countryside, while roads and towns like Philippi were erected in the Roman style, which caused an influx of native Thracians to migrate from the countryside and into the cities.
Before long, Thrace had become a core province of the Roman Empire. In fact, various important Roman citizens of Thracian origin ascended to the imperial purple, with Thraco-Romans like Galerius and Licinius utilizing the stereotype of the Thracians as rowdy warriors and angry people to support their military careers and eventually ascend to emperorship in the land of Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno.
We shall now move on to the culture and religion of the Thracians. Greco-Roman stereotypes saw the Thracians as martial and rowdy people, but they were far from unsophisticated profligates. Soothopolis, an ancient Thracian town excavated by archaeologists, appears to have featured heavy military fortifications and Greek-style gridded streets.
.jpg "who were the thracians? | History of the Thracians")
Additionally, the city is replete with the remains of beautiful fibulae, beads, and gold ornaments, a testament to the industriousness of the Thracians.
Thracian elites, the most visible individuals of Thracian society in the archaeological record, appear in large tombs with dromi, or small pathways leading to large mounds where they are buried in exquisite gold ornaments with animalistic and equestrian themes.
Often the murals inside these tombs contain traces of beeswax, which was a staple ingredient of Hellenistic painting styles, a testament to both Thracian wealth for patronage of art and the penetration of Greek culture in the region.
Equestrian culture seen in the Thracian horseman motif found as far north as Ukraine suggests that Thracian culture was heavily impacted by the nomadic culture of the Scythian horse lords. The Thracians also appeared to have worshipped a mysterious equestrian god whose name has been lost to time.
Unfortunately, very little information survives about the ancient Thracian language besides some words and it can be surmised that it was part of the Paleo-Bulcan language family and distinct from Illyrian, another ancient language we know very little about.
Thracian religion is very interesting in its own right. The ancient Greeks believed that the great musician Orpheus hailed from Thrace. Herodotus claims that the Thracians worshipped a god named Zelmoxis, who the Greeks claim was once a mortal philosopher who studied Pythagorean philosophy.
Modern scholars note that Zalmoxis' worshippers had some sort of rituals where people acted insane and were regulated by some sort of shaman priests, but more research is needed for the details.
The popularity of the images of Dionysus, Heracles and Zeus in the region and its neighbors suggest that ritual beliefs about heroism and strength from a god similar to Heracles, madness as represented by a Dionysus analog, as well as a focus on worship of the sky with a god like Zeus, were prominent among the most important deities of the Thracians.
Other gods like the aforementioned Bendis and Sibel Sirdos were also worshipped by the Thracians.
Another noteworthy Thracian god is Sabazios, who was also worshipped by the Phrygians. From what modern scholars can tell, this Sabazios was linked to horses or the sky and was of paramount importance for the Thracians. Sabazios was connected to Orpheus due to the mythical links of Orpheus to the region.
His Roman form, Sabazius, was even linked to a Jewish-Pagan hybrid cult that syncretized him with the god of Abraham, Yahweh. This cult was comprised mainly by pagans sympathetic to Judaism, but who remained outside of the covenant.
In short, far from being a peripheral people to the grand scheme of ancient history, the Thracians were major contributors to the tapestries of both Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean cultural mosaics. As the Late Antique period began, Thrace found itself next to the new capital of Rome, Constantinople.
Throughout the third and fourth centuries, the Romanized Thracian peoples went through periods of incredible political turmoil, such as the Crisis of the Third Century, which nearly tore the Empire asunder. However, the most important socio-political shift they experienced took place after 380 CE.
That year, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and due to its proximity to Constantinople, Thrace saw the mass construction of churches and was one of the first provinces of the Roman Empire to be subject to heavy Christianization. At first, the Christianization of Thrace occurred mainly in the cities, with Thrace's rural regions remaining faithful to Thracian, Roman, Scythian, Dacian and Greek deities.
However, as the economy of Roman Thrace was centralized and larger cities overtook provincial towns in importance, Christianity's foothold in the region grew ever stronger. Raids by Goths and Huns further accelerated the demographic shift towards urban living, as farmers from the countryside fled the wrath of Attila's hordes to find shelter in the cities.
By the twilight of Eastern Roman rule in the region, Thrace had become a deeply cosmopolitan region, its indigenous peoples having absorbed both Latin and Hellenic customs, while living alongside both the descendants of Roman colonists as well as the remnants of the Celtic and Scythian populations who had been in the region since before the Roman conquest.
Eventually, the region became more and more Christian, and by the end of antiquity, a new people descended on the territory, the Slavs. The Thracians last appeared in the 6th century CE, but we should not assume they merely disappeared.
Rather, they likely Slavicized, Latinized, or Hellenized into the present populations of the region. By then, they had already incorporated much of their Hellenic and Latin neighbors' traits and customs, while maintaining their distinct flair.
As the Slavs established their local communities, Thrace as a region shifted into a new cultural mosaic. It is likely that early Bulgarian states in the 7th century CE still had Thracian populations within them.
However, by the early Middle Ages, indigenous Thracian deities like Salmoxis, Bendis, and Sabazios had given way to the southern Slavic and Turkic gods, while the Holy Trinity also entered the religious picture of Thrace.
But the memory and contributions entered the religious picture of Thrace, but the memory and contributions of the Thracians would be remembered by later southeastern Balkan dwellers.
After the 6th century CE and the full Christianization of the region, the Thracians seemed to fade from history, leaving us only with the geographical name of the region. The eventual coming of Slavic and Turkic groups in the region formed the tapestry of Bulgarians, Greeks, Romanians, Turks, Pokhmaks, and Romani peoples that inhabit the region today.
However, the Thracians were never forgotten, and their treasure hordes impress us to this day. The cities they left behind, archaeological wonders in their own right, are testament to their ingenuity and ability to be as industrious as their Greek neighbors.
Suthis III and Spartacus still loom large in public memory, as Thracians, ever martial and industrious, ensured their culture would leave its mark on Balkan history. While the cults of Salmoxis and Sabazios are long gone, the people who practiced them produce philosophical and cultural contributions that perfume Balkan history, much like the roses of Bulgaria do today. At Last we came to know truth about "Who were the thracians?"
