Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/238

 216 HISTORY OF GREECE. above many other presents of manufactured articles and orna- ments. These latter came from the Grecian colonies on the coast, which contributed moreover largely to the tribute, though in what proportions we are not informed : even Grecian cities not in Thrace sent presents to forward their trading objects, as purchasers for the produce, the plunder, and the slaves, acquired by Thracian chiefs or tribes. 1 The residence of the Odrysians properly so called, and of the princes of that tribe now ruling over so many of the remaining tribes, appears to have been about twelve days' journey inland from Byzantium,2 in the upper re- gions of the Hebrus and Strymon, south of Mount Hoemus, and northeast of Rhodope. The Odrysian chiefs were connected by relationship more or less distant with those of the subordinate tribes, and by marriage even with the Scythian princes north of the Danube : the Scythian prince Ariapeithes 3 had married the daughter of the Odrysian Teres, the first who extended the do- minion of his tribe over any considerable portion of Thrace. The natural state of the Thracian tribes in the judgment of Herodotus, permanent and incorrigible was that of disunion and incapacity of political association ; were such association possible, he says, they would be strong enough to vanquish every other nation, though Thucydides considers them as far inferior to the Scythians. The Odrysian dominion had probably not reached, at the period when Herodotus made his inquiries, the same development which Thucydides describes in the third year of the Peloponnesian war, and which imparted to these tribes an union, partial indeed and temporary, but such as they never reached either before or afterwards. It has been already men- tioned that the Odrysian prince Sitalkes, had taken for his wife, or rather for one of his wives, the sister of Nymphodorus, a 1 See Xcnophon, Anabas. vii, 3, 16; 4, 2. Diodorus (xii, 50) gives the revenue of Sitalkes as more than one thousand talents annually. This sum is not materially different from that which Thucydides states to be the annual receipt of Seuthes, successor of Sitalkes, revenue, properly sc called, and presents, both taken together. Traders from Parium, on the Asiatic coast of the Propontis, are among those who come with preserts to the Odrysian king, Mtklokus (Xenophon vt supra).
 * Xenoph. Anabas. 1. c. * Herodot. iv, 80.