Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1209

 THRACIA. belonging to him '(vas emptied, the stones were se- p,irately counted, and his life pronounced to have been happy or the reverse, as the white or the black were more numerous. V. HisTOKY. — Thrace is one of those countries whose people, not being sufficiently civilised to esta- blish a national government or to possess a na- tional literature, cannot have histories of their own. We become acquainted with the Thracians at second hand, as it were, through the narrations of foreigners, who necessarily make them subordinate to their own countrymen ; and therefore it is only in connection with foreign states that their liistory has been recorded. Hence it is fragmentary, and, consequently, often obscure; nor would its import- ance, indeed, repay the labour that might be em- ployed in elucidating it, even if we possessed the requisite materials. Destitute of union, the Thra- cians, notwithstanding their numbers, their wide diffusion, their powers of endurance, and their con- tempt of death, exerted no perceptible influence upon the general course of history; but were re- duced, in spite of their wild love of independence, to assist, as humble allies or subjects, in the ag- grandisement of the more civilised or politic races with which they came in contact. These were the Greeks, the Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans, with the successors of the last in the Eastern Empire. We shall now briefly state the leading points of their history, as connected with that of the nations just mentioned ; referring the reader for details, especially as to the little that is known of their purely internal affiiirs, to the articles in tliis work wliieh relate to the Bessi, Odhysae, and other prominent Thracian tribes. We pass over the alleged conquest of Thrace by Sesostris (Herod, ii. 103; Diod. i. 53), and that said to have been effected by the Teucri and Wysi before the Trojan War (Herod, vii. 20 ; cf. Eurip. Rhes. 406, seq.), and come at once to the strictly historical periods. The first connection of the Greeks with Thrace was through colonies planted upon its various coasts, the original object of which seems generally to have been of a commercial kind. Only an ap- proximation to the date of most of these can be made, since the majority were established long be- fore the commencement of aathentic history. By- zantium and Selymbria, colonies of Megara, belong to the seventh century b. c, the year 675 b. c. being assigned for the foundation of the former. In 651 B. c. an unsuccessful attempt is said to have been made by settlers from Clazomenae to establish themselves at Abdera (Solin. x. 10); but that city was not actually founded till 560 b. c, and then by emigrants from Teos. (Ilerod. i. 168.) Jlesembria, on the Euxine, was a colony of the Byzantians and Chalcedonians, who abandoned their cities on the approach of the Phoenician fleet, B. c. 493. (Id. vi. 33). When Dicaea, Maronea, and Aenus, all on the south coast, were established, is not known; which is the case also with Cardia and Sestus in the Chersonesus. That these settlements were generally exposed to the hostility of their Tliracian neighbours, there can be no doubt, though we rarely have their infimt struggles so fully re- corded as in the instance of Amphipolis. The Athenians sent no less than 10,000 men (b. c. 465) to found a colony there; and they succeeded in driving off the Edonians who occupied the country; but having advanced into the interior, they VOL. II. THRACIA. 1135 were defeated at Drabescus by the natives, and com- pelled to abandon the country. About thirty years afterwards, however, the Atlienians returned, and this time overcame all resistance. Sometimes the relation between the Greeks and the Thracians was of a more friendly description. Thus, in the time of Peisistratus, the Dolonci, who dwelt in the Cherso- nesus, invited Jliltiades (the elder) to rule over them, as they were unable to cope with their neigh- bours the Apsinthii; and this led to the Athenians obtaining a firm footing in that most important and valuable district. (Herod, vi. 34, seq.) By these various means, the Greeks had obtained possession of nearly the whole coast of Thrace, a considerable period before the commencement of the great contest between tliemselves and the Persian empire. Of the interior they appear to have known scarcely any- thing whatever; and although in some cases the surrounding barbarians may have been brought into subjection (Byzantium is said to have reduced the Bithynian Thracians to tiie condition of tributary perioeci), yet this was rarely the case. On the con- trary, it is clear from Thucydides (ii. 97), th.at the Greeks sometimes paid tribute to the native kings. The Greeks, even when dwelling among hostile strangers, showed their tendency to separation rather than to union; and hence their settlements on the Thracian coast never gained the strength which union would have conferred upon them. Each city had a government and to a great extent a history of its own; and we must therefore refer the reader for information respecting those states to the sepa- rate articles in this work devoted to them. The first Persian expedition to Thrace was that of Darius, who crossed the Bosporus with his army about B. c. 513 (or 508, as some authorities hold). As the principal object of Darius was to cha.stise the Scythians for their invasion of Asia in the reign of Cyaxares, he took the shortest route through Thrace, where he met with no opposition. The Greeks whom he found there were required to follow in his train to the Danube: among them was the younger Miltiades, the destined hero of Marathon, who then ruled over the Chersonesus, as his uncle had for- merly done, and who had married the daughter of a Thracian king. (Herod, vi. 39.) * On re- turning from the north, Darius directed his march to the Hellespont, and before crossing from Sestus into Asia, erected a fort at Doriscus, near the mouth of the Hebrus. (Herod, iv. 89—93, 143. 144, vii. 59.) Megabazus was left with 80,000 men to subdue the whole of Thrace, a task which he began by besieging Perinthus, wiiich, though previously weakened by the attacks of the Paeonians, made a brave but fruitless resistance. After this, Mega- bazus reduced the country into subjection, though perhaps only the districts near the sea. (Herod, v. 1, 2, 10.) That his conquests extended as far as the Strymon ai>jears from Darius's grant of a district upon that river to llistiaeus, who founded there the town of Myrcinus. (Herod, y. 11.) Megabazus soon returned to Asia ; ami it seems probable that he took with him the greater part of his army; for if the Persians bad niainlaineJ riage of Greeks with Thracians: thus the wife of Sitalces was a d;uighter of Pythes, a citizen of Ab- dera (Thucyd. ii. 29); and Iphicratcs married a daughter of the Thracian king Colys. (Nep. Iph. 4 o
 * Instances occur in later times of the intermar-