Thrace in the modern boundaries ofBulgaria,Greece, andTurkeyThe physical–geographical boundaries of Thrace: theBalkan Mountains to the north, theRhodope Mountains (highlighted) and theBosporusThe Roman province of Thracec. 200 ADThe Byzantine thema of ThraceMap of Ancient Thrace made byAbraham Ortelius in 1585, stating both the names Thrace and EuropeThrace and the ThracianOdrysian Kingdom underSitalces c. 431–424 BC, showing the territories of several Thracian tribesThrace in theOdrysian Kingdom showing several Thracian tribes.Sapeia was Northern Thrace andAsteia was Southern Thrace
The wordThrace, fromancient GreekThrake (Θρᾴκη),[1] referred originally to theThracians (ancient GreekThrakes Θρᾷκες),[2] an ancient people inhabiting Southeast Europe. The nameEurope (ancient Greek Εὐρώπη), also at first referred to this region, before that term expanded to include itsmodern sense.[3][4]
It has been suggested that the nameThrace derives from the name of the principal river of the region, theHebros. The river's name may be derived from the Indo-Europeanarg "white river" (the opposite ofVardar, meaning "black river").[5] According to an alternative theory, Hebros means "goat" inThracian.[6]
Sixth century geographerStephanus of Byzantium claimed that, long before the ancient Greeks started referring to the region asThrace, it was known as Aria (Αρια) and Perki (Περκη).[7][8]
In Turkish, Thrace is commonly referred to asRumeli, meaning "Land of the Romans", which was the name traditionally given by Turkic societies to theByzantine Empire andOrthodox Christians.
In Greek mythology, Thrace is named after the heroine and sorceressThrace, who was the daughter ofOceanus and Parthenope, and sister ofEuropa.
The historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. Theancient Greeks employed the term "Thrace" to refer to all of the territory which lay north ofThessaly inhabited by theThracians,[9] a region which "had no definite boundaries" and to which other regions (likeMacedonia and evenScythia) were added.[10] In one ancient Greek source, the very Earth is divided into "Asia, Libya, Europa and Thracia".[10] As the Greeks gained knowledge of world geography, "Thrace" came to designate the area bordered by theDanube on the north, by the Euxine Sea (Black Sea) on the east, by northern Macedonia in the south, and byIllyria to the west.[10] This largely coincided with the ThracianOdrysian kingdom, whose borders varied over time. After the Macedonian conquest, this region's former border with Macedonia was shifted from theStruma River to theMesta River.[11][12] This usage lasted until the Roman conquest. Henceforth, (classical) Thrace referred only to the tract of land largely covering the same extent of space as the modern geographical region.[clarification needed] In its early period, theRoman province of Thrace was of this extent, but after the administrative reforms of the late 3rd century, Thracia's much reduced territory became the six small provinces which constituted theDiocese of Thrace. The medievalByzantinetheme of Thrace contained only what today isEast Thrace.
Ancient Greek mythology provides the Thracians with a mythical ancestorThrax, the son of the war-godAres, who was said to reside in Thrace. The Thracians appear inHomer'sIliad asTrojan allies, led byAcamas andPeiros. Later in theIliad,Rhesus, another Thracian king, makes an appearance.Cisseus, father-in-law to the Trojan elderAntenor, is also given as a Thracian king.
Homeric Thrace was vaguely defined, and stretched from the RiverAxios in the west to theHellespont andBlack Sea in the east. TheCatalogue of Ships mentions three separate contingents from Thrace: Thracians led by Acamas and Peiros, fromAenus;Cicones led byEuphemus, from southern Thrace, nearIsmaros; and from the city ofSestus, on the Thracian (northern) side of the Hellespont, which formed part of the contingent led byAsius. Ancient Thrace was home to numerous other tribes, such as theEdones,Bisaltae,Cicones, andBistones in addition to the tribe that Homer specifically calls the "Thracians".
Thrace is mentioned inOvid'sMetamorphoses, in the episode ofPhilomela,Procne, andTereus: Tereus, the King of Thrace, lusts after his sister-in-law, Philomela. He kidnaps her, holds her captive, rapes her, and cuts out her tongue. Philomela manages to get free, however. She and her sister, Procne, plot to get revenge, by killing her sonItys (by Tereus) and serving him to his father for dinner. At the end of the myth, all three turn into birds – Procne into aswallow, Philomela into anightingale, and Tereus into ahoopoe.
IndigenousThracians were divided into numerous tribes. The firstGreek colonies in coastal Thrace were founded in the 8th century BC.[14]The first to take greater control of Thrace, in part or whole, were theAchaemenianPersians in the late 6th century BC. The region was incorporated into their empire as theSatrapy of Skudra, after theScythian campaign of Darius the Great.[15] Thracian soldiers were used in Persian armies and are depicted in carvings of thePersepolis andNaqsh-e Rostam. Persians' presence in Thracia lasted up untile the rise of theDelian league. In the 4th century BC most of Thrace was conquered byPhilip II of Macedon and his sonAlexander the Great. Notably, Thracian troops are known to have accompanied Alexander when he crossed theHellespont which abuts Thrace, during the invasion of theAchaemenid Empire. It then passed toLysimachus when Alexander's empire was divided between his generals. Lysimachus ruled as king up until his defeat fromSeleucus I Nicator in 281 BC at thebattle of Corupedium.
Thracians recorded no collective name for themselves; terms such asThrace andThracians were assigned by the Greeks.[16]
Divided into separate tribes, the Thracians did not form any lasting political organizations until the founding of theOdrysian state in the 4th century BC. LikeIllyrians, the locally ruled Thracian tribes of the mountainous regions maintained a warrior tradition, while the tribes based in the plains were purportedly more peaceable. Recently discovered funeral mounds in Bulgaria suggest that Thracian kings did rule regions of Thrace with distinct Thracian national identity.[citation needed]
During this period, a subculture ofcelibateascetics called theCtistae lived in Thrace, where they served as philosophers, priests, and prophets.
Sections of Thrace particularly in the south started to become hellenized before thePeloponnesian War as Athenian and Ionian colonies were set up in Thrace before the war. Spartan and otherDoric colonists followed them after the war. The special interest of Athens to Thrace is underlined by the numerous finds of Athenian silverware in Thracian tombs.[17] In 168 BC, after theThird Macedonian War and the subjugation of Macedonia to the Romans, Thrace also lost its independence and became a tributary to Rome. Towards the end of the 1st century BC Thrace lost its status as a client kingdom as the Romans began to directly appoint their kings.[18] This situation lasted until 46 AD, when the Romans finally turned Thrace into a Roman province (Romana provincia Thracia).[19]
During the Roman domination, within the geographical borders of ancient Thrace, there were two separate Roman provinces, namely Thrace ("provincia Thracia") and Lower Moesia ("Moesia inferior"). Later, in the times of Diocletian, the two provinces were joined and formed the so-called "Dioecesis Thracia".[20] The establishment of Roman colonies and mostly several Greek cities, as was Nicopolis, Topeiros, Traianoupolis, Plotinoupolis, and Hadrianoupolis resulted from the Roman Empire's urbanization. The Roman provincial policy in Thrace favored mainly not the Romanization but the Hellenization of the country, which had started as early as the Archaic period through the Greek colonisation and was completed by the end of Roman antiquity.[21] As regards the competition between the Greek and Latin language, the very high rate of Greek inscriptions in Thrace extending south ofHaemus Mountains proves the complete language Hellenization of this region. The boundaries between the Greek and Latin speaking Thrace are placed just above the northern foothills of Haemus Mountains.[22]
During the imperial period many Thracians – particularly members of the local aristocracy of the cities – had been granted the right of theRoman citizenship (civitas Romana) with all its privileges. Epigraphic evidence show a large increase in such naturalizations in the times of Trajan and Hadrian, while in 212 AD the emperor Caracalla granted, with his well-known decree (constitutio Antoniniana), the Roman citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire.[23]During the same period (in the 1st–2nd century AD), a remarkable presence of Thracians is testified by the inscriptions outside the borders (extra fines) both in the Greek territory[24] and in all the Roman provinces, especially in the provinces of Eastern Roman Empire.[25]
By the mid-5th century, as theWestern Roman Empire began to crumble, Thracia fell from the authority of Rome and into the hands of Germanic tribal rulers. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Thracia turned into a battleground territory for the better part of the next 1,000 years. The surviving eastern portion of theRoman Empire in the Balkans, later known as theByzantine Empire, retained control over Thrace until the 7th century when the northern half of the entire region was incorporated into theFirst Bulgarian Empire and the remainder was reorganized in theThracian theme.The Empire regained the lost regions in the late 10th century until the Bulgarians regained control of the northern half at the end of the 12th century. Throughout the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century, the region was changing in the hands of the Bulgarian and the Byzantine Empire (excluding Constantinople). In 1265, the area suffered a Mongol raid from theGolden Horde, led byNogai Khan, and between 1305 and 1307 the area was raided by theCatalan company.[26]
Protagoras (c. 490–420 BC) was a Greek philosopher fromAbdera, Thrace. An expert inrhetorics and subjects connected to virtue and political life, often regarded as the firstsophist. He is known primarily for three claims: (1) that man is the measure of all things, often interpreted as a sort ofmoral relativism, (2) that he could make the "worse (or weaker) argument appear the better (or stronger)" (seeSophism), and (3) that one could not tell if the gods existed or not (seeAgnosticism).
Herodicus was a Greek physician of the fifth century BC who is considered the founder ofsports medicine. He is believed to have been one ofHippocrates's tutors.
Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) was a Greek philosopher and mathematician fromAbdera, Thrace. His main contribution is theatomic theory, the belief that all matter is made up of various imperishable indivisible elements which he calledatoms.
Spartacus was a Thracian who led a large slave uprising in what is now Italy in 73–71 BC. His army of escapedgladiators and slaves defeated severalRoman legions in what is known as theThird Servile War.
^Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth.The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 1515. "From the 8th century BC the coast Thrace was colonised by Greeks."
^TheCambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC by John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, and N. G. L. Hammond,ISBN0-521-22717-8,1992, page 597: "We have no way of knowing what the Thracians called themselves and if indeed they had a common name...Thus the name of Thracians and that of their country were given by the Greeks to a group of tribes occupying the territory..."
^D. C. Samsaris, Le royaume client thrace aux temps de Tibere et la tutelle romaine de Trebellenus Rufus (Le stade transitif de la clientele a la provincialisation de la Thrace), Dodona 17 (1), 1988, p. 159-168
^[1] D. C. Samsaris, The Hellenization of Thrace during the Greek and Roman Antiquity (Diss. in Greek), Thessaloniki 1980, p. 26-36
^D. C. Samsaris, Historical Geography of Western Thrace during the Roman Antiquity (in Greek), Thessaloniki 2005, p. 7-14
^[2] D. C. Samsaris, The Hellenization of Thrace, passim
^[3] D. C. Samsaris, The Hellenization of Thrace, p. 320-330
^D. C. Samsaris, Surveys in the history, topography and cults of the Roman provinces of Macedonia and Thrace (in Greek), Thessaloniki 1984, p. 131-302
^D. C. Samsaris, Les Thraces dans l' Empire romain d' Orient (Le territoire de la Grèce actuelle). Etude ethno-démographique, sociale, prosopographique et anthroponymique, Jannina (Université) 1993, pp. 372
^D. C. Samsaris, Les Thraces dans l' Empire romain d' Orient (Asie Mineure, Syrie, Palestine et Arabie). Etude ethno-démographique et sociale, VIe Symposium Internazionale di Tracologia (Firenze 11–13 maggio 1989), Roma 1992, p. 184-204 [= Dodona 19(1990), fasc. 1, p. 5-30]
^La Venjança catalana. Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana.
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