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The Thracians (; grc, Θρᾷκες ''Thrāikes''; la, Thraci) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Eastern and Southeastern Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied the area between northern Greece, southern Russia, and north-western Turkey. They shared the same language and culture... There may have been as many as a million Thracians, diveded among up to 40 tribes." Thracians resided mainly in the Balkans (mostly modern day Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece) but were also located in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and other locations in Eastern Europe.

The exact origin of Thracians is unknown, but it is believed that proto-Thracians descended from a purported mixture of Proto-Indo-Europeans and Early European Farmers, arriving from the rest of Asia and Africa through the Asia Minor (Anatolia). The proto-Thracian culture developed into the Dacian, Getae, and several other smaller Thracian cultures.

Thracian culture was described as tribal by the Greeks and Romans. They remained largely disunited, with their first permanent state being the Odrysian kingdom in the fifth century BC. They faced subjugation by the Achaemenid Empire around the same time. Thracians experienced a short period of peace after the Persians were defeated by the Greeks in the Persian Wars. The Odrysian kingdom lost independence to Macedonia in the late 4th century BC, and never regained total independence following Alexander the Great's death.

The Thracians faced conquest by the Romans in the mid second century BC under whom they faced internal strife. They composed major parts of rebellions against the Romans along with the Macedonians until the Third Macedonian War. The last reported use of a Thracian language was by monks in the sixth century AD.

Thracians were described as " warlike" and "barbarians" by the Greeks and Romans and were favored as mercenaries. Ancient descriptions of a vicious people are disputed and archaeology has been used since the mid-twentieth century in southern Bulgaria to identify more about them. Both Romans and Greeks called them barbarians since they were neither Romans nor Greeks, and to the perceived backwardness of their culture. The perceived primitiveness may be related to their living simple lives in open villages. Some authors noted that even after the introduction of Latin they still kept their "barbarous" ways. While the Thracians were perceived as unsophisticated by their contemporaries, they reportedly "had in fact a fairly advanced culture that was especially noted for its poetry and music."

Thracians spoke the extinct Thracian language and shared a common culture. The Thracians made cultural interaction with the people surrounding them: Greeks, Persians, Scythians, Celts and later on Turks, but although they were indeed influenced by each of these cultures, this influence affected only the circles of the aristocratic elite, not Thracian culture as a whole. Among their customs was tattooing, common among both males and females. They followed a polytheistic religion. The study of the Thracians is known as Thracology.

Etymology

The first historical record of the Thracians is found in the ''Iliad'', where they are described as allies of the Trojans in the Trojan War against the Ancient Greeks. The ethnonym ''Thracian'' comes from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ (plural Θρᾷκες; , ) or Θρᾴκιος (; Ionic: Θρηίκιος, ), and the toponym Thrace comes from Θρᾴκη (; Ionic: Θρῄκη, ). These forms are all exonyms as applied by the Greeks.

Mythological foundation

In Greek mythology, '' Thrax'' (by his name simply the quintessential Thracian) was regarded as one of the reputed sons of the god Ares. In the ''Alcestis'', Euripides mentions that one of the names of Ares himself was "Thrax" since he was regarded as the patron of Thrace (his golden or gilded shield was kept in his temple at Bistonia in Thrace).

Origins

The origins of the Thracians remain obscure, in the absence of written historical records before they got into contact with the Greeks. Evidence of proto-Thracians in the prehistoric period depends on artifacts of material culture. Leo Klejn identifies proto-Thracians with the multi-cordoned ware culture that was pushed away from Ukraine by the advancing timber grave culture or Srubnaya. It is generally proposed that a proto-Thracian people developed from a mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age when the latter, around 1500 BC, mixed with indigenous peoples. According to one theory, their ancestors migrated in three waves from the northeast: the first in the Late Neolithic, forcing out the Pelasgians and Achaeans, the second in the Early Bronze Age, and the third around 1200 BC. They reached the Aegean islands, ending the Mycenaean civilization. They did not speak the same language. During the Iron Age (about 1000 BC) Dacians and Thracians began developing from proto-Thracians. The diverse topography didn't make it possible for a single language to form.

Ancient Greek and Roman historians agreed that the ancient Thracians, who were of Indo-European stock and language, were superior fighters; only their constant political fragmentation prevented them from overrunning the lands around the northeastern Mediterranean. Although these historians characterized the Thracians as primitive partly because they lived in simple, open villages, the Thracians in fact had a fairly advanced culture that was especially noted for its poetry and music. Their soldiers were valued as mercenaries, particularly by the Macedonians and Romans.

Identity and distribution

Divided into separate tribes, the Thracians did not manage to form a lasting political organization until the Odrysian state was founded in the fifth century BC. A strong Dacian state appeared in the first century BC, during the reign of King Burebista. The mountainous regions were home to various peoples, including the Illyrians, regarded as warlike and ferocious Thracian tribes, while the plains peoples were apparently regarded as more peaceable. The most prominent tribe, the Moesians only achieved importance under Roman rule.

Thracians inhabited parts of the ancient provinces of Thrace, Moesia, Macedonia, Beotia, Attica, Dacia, Scythia Minor, Sarmatia, Bithynia, Mysia, Pannonia, and other regions of the Balkans and Anatolia. This area extended over most of the Balkans region, and the Getae north of the Danube as far as beyond the Bug and including Pannonia in the west.
There were about 200 Thracian tribes.

Thucydides mentions about a period in the past (from his point), when Thracians have inhabited the region of Phocis, known also as the location of Delphi; he defines it by the lifetime of Tereus – mythological Thracian king and son of god Ares.

History

Homeric period

The Thracians are mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', meaning that they were already present in the eighth century BC.

Archaic period

The first Greek colonies along the Thracian coasts (first the Aegean, then the Marmara and Black Seas) were founded in the eighth century BC. Thracians and Greeks lived side-by-side. Ancient sources record a Thracian presence on the Aegean islands and in ''Hellas'' (the broader "land of the Hellenes").

At some point in the 7th century BC, a portion of the Thracian Treres tribe migrated across the Thracian Bosporus and invaded Anatolia. In 637 BC, the Treres under their king Kobos ( grc, Κώβος ; la, Cobus), in alliance with the Cimmerians and the Lycians, attacked the kingdom of Lydia during the seventh year of the reign of the Lydian king Ardys. They defeated the Lydians and captured the capital city of Lydia, Sardis, except for its citadel, and Ardys might have been killed in this attack. Ardys's son and successor, Sadyattes, might possibly also have been killed in another Cimmerian attack on Lydia. Soon after 635 BC, with Assyrian approval the Scythians under Madyes entered Anatolia. In alliance with Sadyattes's son, the Lydian king Alyattes, Madyes expelled the Treres from Asia Minor and defeated the Cimmerians so that they no longer constituted a threat again, following which the Scythians extended their domination to Central Anatolia until they were themselves expelled by the Medes from Western Asia in the 600s BC.

Achaemenid Thrace

In the 6th century BC the Persian Achaemenid Empire conquered Thrace, starting in 513 BC, when the Achaemenid king Darius I amassed an army and marched from Achaemenid-ruled Anatolia into Thrace, and from there he crossed the Arteskos river and then proceeded through the valley-route of the Hebros