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The Thracians

Author(s): Lionel CassonSource: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 35, No. 1, The Thracian(Summer, 1977), pp. 2-6Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3258667

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T h e ThraciansLionelCassonChairmanDepartmentof ClassicsNew YorkUniversityWhen Hector led the army of Troy against the Greekinvaders, he had allies from far and near fighting at hisside. There was even a king from distant Thrace whoarrived,asa charactern the Iliad reported,with

thebiggestand handsomest orsesI eversaw,whiter hansnowandswifterthanthewinds,anda chariotfinelywroughtwithsilverandgold.The arms that he brought were also of gold. A taste

for war, for silver and gold, and for fine horses-Homerneatly caught the characteristics hat were the hallmarkof Thracian aristocratsthroughout ancienthistory.The earliest tracesof man in Thrace-roughly speak-ing what is today part of northeasternGreece and south-easternYugoslavia, Bulgaria, and EuropeanTurkey-goback to Paleolithic times, forty thousand years ago. Byabout 6000 B.C. its fields were being tilled by a settledagricultural population; Thrace had entered the Neo-lithic Age. Two thousand yearslater some of the inhab-itants discovered the riches under the soil, abundantdeposits of minerals, and turned to mining and metal-work. In centralBulgaria archaeologistshave come uponshafts sunk deep into the earth to extractcopper ore andhave excavated numerous copper tools, weapons, andornaments, all dating from this remote period. By 3000B.C. Thrace's precocious smiths were working in gold-probably panned from rivers rather than mined-andwere fashioning the rings, bracelets,plaques, and otheradornments that were among the earliest gold objects tocome out of Europe.Sometime around 1500 B.C. there swept in upon thisland the Thracians Homer wrote about, the hard-riding,opulently equipped warriors.They spoke an Indo-Euro-pean language-one akin to Latin and Greek and mostof the other languages that now prevail in Europe-sothey must have been part of the vast movement thatbrought speakers of Indo-European from their home-land, wherever it was, into southern Europe and AsiaMinor. The new arrivals established themselves as a

ruling aristocracyand indulged fully in that fondness forgold which Homer observed. Some fifty years ago theowner of a farm at Vulchitrun in northern Bulgariawhile turning the soil, stumbled upon a hoard that musthave belonged to one of these Thracian chieftains, acollection of solid-gold bowls, cups, lids, and a strangethree-partvessel, with an aggregateweight of more thantwenty-sevenpounds; one bowl alone weighs nearlynine.The Thracians,both the nobles and the peasants,werecaught up in the churning of peoples that took place be-tween 1200 and 1000 B.C. as the curtain came down onthe Bronze Age in the Mediterranean. When the IronAge opened, there was a new castof characters, ncludingthe Greeks of Classical times and later, those whom weknow so well from their renownedintellectual and artistic achievements. Thanks to these Greeks, the Thracianfinally stepped out of the dim shadows of prehistoryandinto the light of recordedhistory.About 700 B.C. Greek emigrants began planting col-onies along the strip of Thrace that bordersthe northernMediterranean and the Black Sea. The first years werehard: the Thracians were tough fighters,and much bloodwas spilled before they gave up their rights of possessionand grudgingly retreatedinto the mountains and valleysthat lay behind the coastal plain. But by 600 B.C. aline of Greek cities had been firmly established, and anactive trade developed between them and the "barbarians" in the hinterland. By "barbarian"Greeks usuallymeant anyone who did not speak Greek, but in the caseof the Thracians,they meant it the way we do today. Forthe Thracians, instead of living in cities as all Greekthought civilized peoples should, clung to their age-oldtribal organization, clustering in hamlets that were merecollections of huts and existing on meager farming augmented byherding, hunting, and brigandage.Around 450 B.C. that tireless and observant traveleHerodotus found himself in Thrace. Herodotus has beencalled the Father of History; he might equally aptly bedubbed the Father of Anthropology: his chapterson the

Opposite: Thracian soldierand a woman holding a harpe (sickle), detail of an Attic red-figuredbellkraterby the Painterof LondonE 497. About 440 B.C. MetropolitanMuseum,FletcherFund,24.97.30

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Thracians and their neighbors are a milestone in West-ern literature, the first eyewitness account of primitivepeoples living beyond the pale of civilization. He re-ported, among other matters, the Thracians' belief inimmortality and their curious sexual and marital cus-toms. Men had not one but several wives, and the wives,upon the death of their jointly held husband, competedas to who had been his favorite; the winner gained theprivilege of being killed and placed at the side of thecorpse in the grave, which was in a tomb covered by aprominent mound. We may believe what he says, forarchaeological excavation has confirmed his words. Allover Thrace have been found the burial mounds he men-tions, tumuli containing chambers that were carefullybuilt, lavishly decorated,and filled with precious objectsto serve the deceased in the next life. A recently dis-covered tomb at Vrasta revealed that more than onefavorite might accompanyher lord to the hereafter: inthe inner chamber archaeologists found the bodies of ayoung couple, the woman with a knife through herbreast, and, in an outer, a second woman transfixed bya spear.Paintings on Greek vases, such as one on the fifth-centuryB.C. bell krater on page 2, confirm Herodotus'sdescriptionof the dress and armorof a Thracian soldier:"They wear fox-skin caps on their heads, tunics next tothe body, and over this long cloaks of many colors. Legsand feet arein fawn-skin boots. They carry avelins, lightshields, and short daggers."

Any Thracians who could afford it, Herodotus re-ported, had nothing but contempt for the life of a farmerand considered fighting, above all brigandage, as theonly proper way to earn a living. This attitude soonbrought them out of their mountain fastnesses and intocontactwith the Greek world, for here, they discovered,there was plenty of opportunity for employing their war-like talents. Greek armies depended almost exclusivelyon the heavy-armed infantryman, the famed hoplite;they were chronicallyshort of cavalry,and had no light-armed troops at all. Thracians were born horsemen and,so far as foot soldiers were concerned, they had onlylight-armed men, dressed, as Herodotus described, withnothing but a light shield as defensive armor.The shieldwas crescent-shaped and made of wicker covered withhide; it was called a pelta, and the men who carried it,like the soldier illustrated at the right, were peltasts.Completely mobile, they made ideal guerrillas-and,through bitterexperience, the Greeks discoveredthat theonly way to protect their solid, slow-moving lines ofhoplites from the hit-and-run peltasts was to fight firewith fire and have some of these agile troops on theirown side. Thracianpeltasts and cavalrymen began hiring

out as mercenariesto Greek commanders as early as thesixth century B.C. Within a hundred years there werecontingents of them in most Greek armies, and they be-came so common a sight in Greek cities that Aristo-phanes could crack jokes about them: in his Lysistrataone of the characters ells how she saw a Thracian buckswagger into the marketplace

and,brandishing eltaandjavelin,makesome fruitvendorso afraidshe runs orherlife-and letshimtakeher totalstock n trade.Thracian slaves were an equally familiar sight. He-rodotus mentioned the Thracians' habit of selling theirchildren into slavery abroad. In addition, any malestaken as prisoners of war generally ended up on theauction block. Consequently, considerable numbers ofThracian men and women were to be seen in the serviceof Greek households, where, being tall and gray-eyedand either fair-haired or red-haired, they must havestood out among their shorter, dark-complexioned own-ers. The plays of Aristophanes and Menander and otherwriters of Greek comedy often have slaves namedThratta or Geta in the cast of characters; Thratta is

simply Greek for "Thracian girl" and the Getai wereone of the most important Thracian tribes. In a comedyby Menander, a slave named Geta delivers a bit ofethnic humor: he holds forth on how much better off hiscountrymen are than the ordinary run of males whomust make do with only one wife; Thracians, he de-clares,can'tget along with less than "ten, eleven, twelve,even more. Why, back home, any poor devil who hasonly four or five doesn't even count as married."Toward the end of the fifth century B.C. Thrace be-gan making an impact on the Greek world in moresignificant ways than supplying it with mercenariesandslaves. The tribes were continually squabbling and grad-ually the heads of the stronger, conquering their weakerneighbors, promoted themselves from chieftains tokings. Eventually, around 420 B.C., a king named Sital-kes managed to subjugatethe whole country,not except-ing the Greek cities along the coast, which put him in aposition to play a hand in international politics. Hismoves affected even Athens: though the mightiestamong the Greek city-states,she wooed him assiduously,going so far as to grant this barbarian'sson honoraryAthenian citizenship. Sitalkes's successormanaged to dojust as well, building up the total revenues-tributelevied on the tribes and Greek cities he controlled plus"presents" they were constantly being invited to givehim-to a grand total of 800 talents, a considerablygreater sum than Athens collected from all her subjects

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Thracianpeltast,detail of an Attic red-figuredkylix in themannerof Onesimos.About 480 B.C. Fogg Art Museum,HarvardUniversity, Bequestof David M. Robinson,1959.219

during Pericles'sheyday,equivalent in purchasingpowerto perhaps $24,000,000 or more. These parvenu rulersgrew so wealthy that they were able to turn the tablesand hire contingents of Greek mercenariesto fight forthem. Indeed, we get our next firsthandglimpse of theThraciansfrom the leader of one suchgroup, the soldier-writerXenophon. In 400 B.C. he arrivedin Thrace withthe bulk of the 10,000 Greeks he had led to safetyacrossAsia Minor's rugged terrain and through its hos-tile tribes. An ambitious king named Seuthes hiredpractically all of them, figuring-rightly, as it turnedout-that, with his local cavalryand peltasts stiffened bythis hardbitten collection of hoplites, he would have notroubledefeating all rivals.

By this time Thrace was showing clear signs of thecenturiesof contactwith Greeks. Archaeological excava-tion of Thracian tombs reveals that, from the fifth cen-tury B.C. on, the objects buried with the dead includedmany either imported from Greece or made by residentGreek craftsmen, while those made by native craftsmenoften mingled Greekand local elements. In fact, Helleni-zation had gone so far that, as we can see from Xeno-phon's account, many a Thracian spoke some Greek. Atcourt banquets, at least one of the wine servers was ableto take orders directly from the Greek guests. Seutheshimself, though he used interpreters,could follow mostof a Greek conversation. The language even penetrateddeep into the hinterland: once, when Xenophon and hismen were passing the night in the huts of a mountain

village, they were surrounded by a hostile local forcewho knew enough Greek to shout, "Xenophon, come onout and die like a man!"But Xenophon's account shows equally clearly thatGreek influence was only superficial, that the Thracianswere still very much their old primitive selves. At courtbanquets Seuthes served his guests by tossing-literally

tossing-chunks of bread and meat at them. Wine wasdrunk from horns, and the custom was, after draininga hornful, to splash the last drops over oneself. Musicwas supplied by army trumpets and by what Xenophondescribes as "trumpetsof raw oxhide," which may havebeen bagpipes. When the music started during a courtoccasion, Seuthes leaped up and went into a solo wardance. Another war dance was a pas de deux in whichthe performersmimed a duel with sabers, and often didit with such verisimilitude that, when one fell at the end,audiences thought he really was dead. A form of enter-tainment that actually did at times end in death was asort of Thracian equivalent of Russian roulette. A manclutching a Thracian short sword would stand on a stoneand put his head in a hangman's noose. Someone wouldkick the stone away, and the trick was to slash the cordbefore it was too late. Those not fast enough drew a biglaugh from the crowd for theirunfortunate lackof skill.When Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., hisspectacularconquests introduced changes that marked anew age for the Aegean and Near East. The Greek citystates such as Athens and Sparta, who for so long haddirectedthe flow of history, lost their power and becamesubject to the whims of Alexander's successorsruling asabsolute monarchs over large empires. Inevitably theGreek part of Thrace along the shore was affected-butnot the interior: there the tribal leaders maintained theirindependence and, with it, the freedom to carryon theirinterminable fighting with each other. In the secondcenturyB.C. a new and mighty power, Rome, made itsweight felt in the area. For a long while the Romanswere content to do as the Greeks had, confine their attention to the coastal strip and let the rest of the countrygoits own way. All they requiredfrom the various Thracianchieftains was the right to recruit cavalrymen and pel-tasts to serve with the Roman armiesand the opportunityto acquire slaves. Rugged young Thracian males wereespecially in demand since the Romans had discoveredthat they made first-rategladiators.During the great dayof the Roman Empire, no program of gladiatorial combats was complete without a duel in which a Thrax tookpart. The one gladiator most of us know by name, Spartacus,was a Thracian.

Then, shortly before the middle of the first centurA.D., the tribal squabbling created such unrest that the

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The "Thracian Horseman" (see colorplate 17)Opposite: Horsemanattackinga lion.Silver,partly gilt, 7.5 cm. (2 7/8 in.);weight 38 gr. End of the 4th century,Loukovit.ArchaeologicalMuseum,Sofia,Inv. No. 8213

Roman emperors decided they had to do somethingabout it, and began marching the legions into the hinter-land. And so, civilization finally came to this region asarmy bases and administrativecenters began to rise anda networkof roadsconnecting them began to be laid out.Like Gaul in the wake of Caesar'sconquest, Thrace wasbecomingtamed.The extensive Roman ruins visible today show howpervasive the process was. At Oescus on the northernboundary of Bulgaria, where a legion was stationed,there are the remains of a fort, two aqueducts, and abath. At Nicopolis, not far from Veliko Turnovo innorth central Bulgaria, are the remains of a theater,colonnade, forum, council house, and paved streets. Ser-dica, today Sofia, site of a Thracian village which wasselected as an administrative center, was garnished withagovernor'spalace, fort, baths,and temples.The Romans carried out their programwith character-istic organization and thoroughness. Yet, despite this,something of old Thrace tenaciously managed to lingeron, especially in the remoter sections. Language is a casein point. In the plains and along the valleys where ur-banization had progressed relentlessly, the Thracian lan-guage was scarcelyheard any longer, having given wayto Greek. But up in the mountains it was still spokenand continued to be, right up to the sixth century A.D.

when the Slavs arriveden masse and took over the land.In religion, too, some Thracians clung to traditionalways. In the new Roman settlements there sprang uptemples and chapels for the worship of the Roman em-perors, of Serapis, Mithras, and the multifarious otherdeities to whom Rome's subjectsaddressed their prayers.But in the back country the ancient gods and forms ofworship held their own. Old-fashioned landowners stillhad themselves buried in the time-honored way, laid torest in their tombs with a funerary chariot and sur-rounded by grave goods, and, as marker over it all, aprominent mound. Peasants still made obeisance to thegods of their ancestors, particularly one we call the"ThracianHorseman," since he is invariablyrepresentedon horsebackcharging with a spearat some wild animal.When Christianity finally reached these backwaters,thelocals simply shifted their allegiance to Saint George.Like so many of the lands around the Mediterranean,Thrace was, so to speak, an archaeological ledger. Theearliest entries are the dim traces of Paleolithic man.Then come the entries of the Neolithic population, thehumble stone tools of the farmers and the fine copperand gold objects of the precocious smiths, and then, thetombs of Thrace's opulent horse-loving aristocracy.Thelatest entries-at least of ancient date-are the bricks andmortar of the structuresof the Romans.

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