Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1212

 118S THEACIA. sued for peace, which was at length granted to lain (B.C. 188) on condition of his abandoning all his dominions west of the Taurus (Liv. xxxviii. 38). The Romans gave the Chersonesus and its depend- encies to their ally Eumenes (ib. 39). As indica- tive of the internal condition of Thrace, even along the great southern road, the account which Livy (ib. 40, seq.) gives of the march of the consul JIanlius' army through the country on its return from Asia Minor, is highly interesting. The army was loaded with booty, conveyed in a long train of baggage- waggons, which presented an irresistible temptation to the predatory tribes through whose territories its route lay. They accordingly attacked the army in a defile, and were not beaten off until they had suc- ceeded in theirobject of shaiing in the plunder of Asia. The possession of the Chersonesus by Eumenes soon led to disagreements with Philip, who was charged by Eumenes (b.c. 18.5) with having seized upon Maroneia and Aenus, places which he coveted for himself. (Liv. xxxix. 24, 27). The Romans insisted upon the withdrawal of the Macedonian garrisons (b.c. 184), and Philip, sorely against his will, was obliged to obey. He wreaked his anger upon the defenceless citizens of Maroneia, by con- niving at, if not actually commanding, the massacre of a great number of them {ib. 33, 34). In the course of the disputes about these cities, it was stated that at the end of the war with Philip, the Roman commissioner, Q. Fabius Labeo, had fixed upon the king's road, which is described as nowhere approaching the sea, as the S. boundary of Philip's possessions in Thrace; but that Philip had after- wards formed a new road, considerably to the S., and had thus included the cities and lands of the Maronitae in his territories («6. 27). In the same year, Philip undertook an expedition into the interior of Thrace, where he was fettered by no engagements with the Romans. He defeated the Thracians in a battle, and took their leader Amadocus prisoner. Before returning to Mace- donia he sent envoys to the barbarians on the Danube to invite them to make an incursion into Italy {ib. 35). Again in b.c. 183, Philip marched against the Odrysae, Dentheletae and Bessi, took Philippopolis, which its inhabitants had abandoned at his approach, and placed a garrison in it, which the Odrysae, however, soon afterwards drove out (*. 53). In B.C. 182, Philip removed nearly all the inhabitants of the coast of Macedonia into the interior, and supplied their places by Thracians and other barbarians, on whom he thought he could more safely depend in the war with the Romans, which he now saw was inevitable (Liv. xl. 3). He had done something of the same kind a few years before (Id. xxxix. 24). Philip's ascent of the Haemus, already referred to, took place in b. c. 181 : on the summit he erected altars to Jupiter and the Sun. On his way back his ai-my plundered the Dentheletae ; and in Blaedica he took a town called Petra. (Liv. xl. 21, seq.) Philip died in b. c. 179, and his successor Perseus continued the preparations which his father had made for renewing the war with Rome, which did not begin, however, till B.C. 171. The Romans had formed an alliance the year before with a number of independent Thracian tribes, who had sent ambassadors to Rome for the purpose, and who were likely to be formidable foes to Perseus. The Romans took care to send valuable presents to the principal Thracians, their ambassadors having no THRACIA. doubt impressed upon the senate the necessity for compliance with this national custom. (Liv. xlii. 19.) The advantage of this alliance was soon seen. Cotys, king of the Odrysae, vfas an ally of Perseus, and marched with him to meet the Romans in Thessaly, but with only 1000 horse and 1000 foot, a force which shows how greatly the power of the Odrysian monarchy had declined since the reign of Sitalces {ib. 51). Cotys commanded all the Thra- cians in Perseus's army in the first engagement with the Roman cavalry, which was defeated {ib. 57, seq.). When Perseus retreated into Macedonia a report was brought that the Thracian allies of Rome had invaded the dominions of Cotys, whom Perseus was therefore obliged to dismiss for their protection {ib. 67), and he does not seem to have per- sonally taken any further part in the war, though he probably sent part of his forces to assist Perseus (xliv. 42). His son Bitis fell into the hands of the Romans, after the battle of Pydna (b.c. 168), which put an end to the Slacedonian king- dom. Cotys sent ambassadors to Rome to endea- vour to ransom his son, and to excuse himself for having sided with Perseus. The senate rejected his offers of money, but liberated his son, and gave a considerable sum to each of the Thracian ambas- sadors. The reason it assigned for this generosity was the old friendship which had existed between Rome and Cotys and his ancestors. The Romans were evidently unwilling to engage in a war with the Thracian jieople at this time; and were anxious to secure friends among them for the sake of the peace of Macedonia, which, though not yet nominally made a province, was completely in their power. They sent (b.c. 167) three commissioners to con- duct Bitis and the other Thracians home; and at the same time, no doubt, to make observations on the state of that country. (Liv. xlv. 42). After the fall of Perseus, the senate divided his dominions into four districts {reffiunes), the first of which included the territory between the Strymon and the Nestus, and all the Macedonian possessions east of the latter, except Aenus, Maroneia, and Ab- dera: Bisaltica and Sintice, west of the Strymon, also belonged to this district, the capital of which was Amphipolis. {Ib. 29.) It is important to re- collect that the Thrace spoken of by the Latin historians subsequently to this time does not include the territories here specified, which thenceforth con- stituted an integral part of Macedonia. From the year b. c. 148, when the Romans undertook the direct government of that country, they were brought into contact with the various barbarous nations on its frontiers, and were con- tinually at war with one or another of them. Fur some years, however, their chief occupation was with the Scordisci, a people of Celtic origin which bad settled south of the Danube, and often made devasta- ting incursions into the more civilised regions of the south. They are sometimes called Thracians (e. g. by Florus, iii. 4 ; cf. Amm. xxvii. 4. § 4), which is the less surprising when we remember that great numbers of Celts had settled in Southern Thrace, and would soon be confounded under a common name with the other occupants of the country. The liis- tory of all this period, up to the time of Augustus, is very obscure, owing to the loss of so great a part of Livy's work ; enough, however, appears in other writers to show that Thrace was left almost entirely to its native rulers, the Romans rarely interfering with it except when provoked by the predatory incursions