For the modern Romani ethnic group, seeSinti. For the Scythian tribe, seeSindi people.
Approximate location of the Sinti
TheSintians (Ancient Greek:Σίντιες) were a group of people who were known to the Greeks aspirates and raiders.[1][2] They are also referred to as aThracian people[3][4] who once inhabited the area ofSintice[5] and the island ofLemnos which was also called in ancient timesSinteis.[6]
The Sintians worshippedHephaestus. They are mentioned inHomer: in theIliad[7] as the folk who had tendedHephaestus inLemnos after the lame smith god was let fall to earth; the Sintians "of wild speech" (ἀγριόφωνοιagriophonoi) also appear in theOdyssey;[8] in the tradition reported by Homer it was understood by their incomprehensible speech that they were among the non-Hellenic peoples of theAegean.[9] "Because the Sintians have no place in the immediate context (that is, they are not asking the god for anything), we may suspect that they were the ones who in some pre-Homeric myth rescued the god."[10] In 2002 the city ofHeraclea Sintica was accidentally discovered at the foot of an extinct volcano on the land ofRupite, Bulgaria.[11]
^"Warlike" toAnacreon (fr. eleg. West 3), who had spent some time in Thrace, often referenced in his poetry (Onofrio Vox, "I Sinti in Anacreonte",Hermes122.1 (1994:116–118).
^Guy Hedreen, The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity, Cambridge University Press, 2016,ISBN1107118255, p. 137.
^"Hephaistos is most at home among the Sintians of Lemnos, who do not even speak Greek," observes Guy Hedreen, in "The Return of Hephaistos, Dionysiac Processional Ritual and the Creation of a Visual Narrative",The Journal of Hellenic Studies124 (2004:38–64) p. 39.
^Bruce Karl Braswell, "Mythological Innovation in the Iliad",The Classical Quarterly, New Series,21.1 (May 1971:16–26) p. 20.
^Heraclea Sintica: from Hellenistic Polis to Roman Civitas: (4th C. BC - 6th C. AD); Proceedings of a Conference at Petrich, Bulgaria, September 19–31, 2013, Volume 2 of Papers of the American Research Center in Sofia, Contributor Ljudmil Ferdinandov Vagalinski.
