Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/240

 218 HISTORY OF GREECE, competent to supply this exigency than any other people in Greece. The joint expedition against the Chalkidians was finally resolved. But the forces of Sitalkes, collected from many different portions of Thrace, were tardy in coming together. He summoned all the tribes under his dominion, between Haemus, Rhodope, and the two seas : the Getae, between Mount Haemus and the Danube, equipped like the Scythians, their neighbors on the other side of the river, with bow and arrow on horseback, also joined him, as well as the Agrianes, the Laeaei, and the other Paeonian tribes subject to his dominion ; lastly, several of the Thracian tribes called Dii, distinguished by their peculiar short swords, and main- taining a fierce independence on the heights of Rhodope, were tempted by the chance of plunder, or the offer of pay, to flock to his standard. Altogether, his army amounted, or was supposed to amount, to one hundred and fifty thousand men, one third of it cavalry, who were for the most part Getaea and Odrysians proper. The most formidable warriors in his camp were the independent tribes of Rhodope ; but the whole host, alike numer- ous, warlike, predatory, and cruel, spread terror amidst all those who were within even the remote possibilities of its march. Starting from the central Odrysian territory, and bringing with him Agnon and the other Athenian envoys, he first crossed the uninhabited mountain called Kerkine, which divided the Pseoni- ans on the west from the Thracian tribes called Sinti and Maedi on the east, until he reached the Pasonian town or district called prince Seuthes, described in the Anabasis, vii, chapters 1 and 2. It appears that even at that time, B.C. 401, the Odrysian dominion, though it had passed through disturbances and had been practically enfeebled, still ex- tended down to the neighborhood of Byzantium. In commenting upon the venality of the Thracians, the Scholiast has a curious comparison with his own time Kal oi>x rjv -i TrpaS-ai trap 1 aitrotc rbv P.TI didovra ^p7///ara- OTT ep ci vvv iv 'P ufiaiois. The Scholiast here tells us that the venality in :s time as to public affairs, in the Roman empire, was not less universal : oi what century of the Roman empire he speaks, we do not know : perhaps about 500-600 A.D. The contrast which Thucydidtjs here draws between the Thracians and the Persians is also illustrated by what Xenophon says respecting the habits of the younger Cyrus: (Anabas. i, 9, 22): compare also the romance of ^he Cyropaedia, viii, 14, 31, 32.