Matthew A. Sears
Athens demonstrated a keen interest in Aegean Thrace for over two centuries, from the time of Peisistratos in the mid sixth century BCE until the rise of Philip of Macedon in the mid fourth. This interest centered primarily on two regions: the Thracian Chersonese, today’s Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey guarding the entrance to the Hellespont; and the lower Strymon River valley just east of modern Thessaloniki. Both regions were strategically important, the former providing land for Athenian settlers and affording control of Black Sea trade, and the latter ensuring ready supplies of the timber and precious metals that were essential for a naval empire. Beyond furnishing material and political advantages, Thrace fascinated the Athenians and had a profound impact on the Athenian imagination. By turns terrifying and alluring, Thrace and the Thracians loom large in Attic literature and art. Traditionally, scholars have focused on the process of “Hellenization” on the part of those Thracians who came into contact with Athenians and other Greeks (see Danov 1976; Baba 1990). Atheno-Thracian interaction, however, was much more complex than any one-way process of assimilation or acculturation. Thrace itself – much like Persia – had a clear influence on the Athenians in terms of politics, society, and culture.
Before examining Athenian relations with Thrace, we must first establish what the Athenians considered Thrace to be. In other words, what would an Athenian conceive of as the geographical extent of Thrace, and what peoples would be counted as Thracians? Several chapters in this volume address these issues with greater depth and scope, so a few words will suffice here. The Athenians, as with most other Greeks, were in the main interested only in those parts of Thrace lying near the sea, particularly along the northern coast of the Aegean, and the eastern and southern coasts of the Black Sea. While they were aware of and sometimes had contact with Thracians from regions further inland, Athenians rarely ventured far from the coast. Some areas which we today do not normally consider to be a part of Thrace were frequently considered so in antiquity. This discrepancy applies especially to northwestern Anatolia, including the area immediately to the south of the Propontis (Sea of Marmara) in what was known as the Troad, and the southern coast of the Black Sea. The Gallipoli Peninsula was home to several tribes considered to be Thracians, whose interaction with settlements lying just across the Hellespont, including Lampsakos, was pronounced enough that we can safely include the northern Troad within a Thracian context. South of the Black Sea lived the Bithynians, whom several ancient Greek sources identify as “Bithynian Thracians” or simply the “Thracians in Asia” (Hdt. 7.75; Xen., Hell. 1.3.2). The western border of Thrace with Macedonia is difficult to define. In the Archaic period it seems that Thracians dwelt even to the west of the Axios River, along the Thermaic Gulf, but the Macedonians gained control of this region by the fifth century.
The Athenians were not major players in the great colonization movements of the Archaic period, but in the late seventh century they did send out an expedition to the city of Sigeion in the Troad. Under the leadership of Phrynon, an Olympic victor in the pankration (no-holds-barred wrestling), the Athenians gained control of the city, securing a base along the southern shore of the Hellespont. Mytilene, the principal city of Lesbos lying just off the coast of the Troad, had also seen the value in such a site, and it was from the Mytileneans that Phrynon wrested power over Sigeion. During the subsequent and long-lasting struggle between the Athenians and Mytileneans, Phrynon was killed in single combat by Pittakos, the renowned leader of Mytilene and one of the seven wise men of Greece (Plut., Mor. 858a–b; Diod. 9.12.1; Diog. Laert. 1.74–81). Evincing the Thracian context of this region, the name Pittakos – shared by a king of the Edonians in the fifth century (Thuc. 4.107) – is distinctly Thracian, and Diogenes Laertius tells us that Pittakos’ father was Thracian (1.74). The Athenians, rebuffed for now, eventually returned to the region, only this time they focused much of their attention on the northern shore of the Hellespont, the Thracian Chersonese.
Around 550, while Peisistratos was tyrant at Athens, another Athenian expedition set out for Thrace, this time to the Chersonese under the leadership of Miltiades the Elder, head of the influential Philaid family. Miltiades had been invited to the region by members of a Thracian tribe, the Dolonkoi, in order to provide them protection against their Thracian rivals, the Apsinthioi (Hdt. 6.34–35). Scholars are divided as to whether Miltiades went to Thrace on his own initiative or was an agent of a larger policy of the Peisistratids to control the Hellespont (Scott 2005, 163–170). Herodotus, perhaps relying too much on a pro-Philaid source, says that Miltiades was dissatisfied with the present political situation in Athens – namely the government of one man – and decided to seek opportunity elsewhere. Shut out of government at Athens, Miltiades was promptly made a tyrant in his own right by the native Thracian inhabitants in the Chersonese, where he ruled until his death over two decades later, about 525. He was succeeded by his elder nephew, Stesagoras, who was in turn succeeded around 516 by his younger brother, Miltiades, who would achieve great fame as the victor of Marathon. Indicative that the Peisistratids eventually did see the merit in having a foothold on the Hellespont, the younger Miltiades had been sent out by Hippias on an official mission to take over as ruler of the Chersonese (Hdt. 6.38–39).
Even before the expedition of the elder Miltiades, Peisistratos might have owed his position as tyrant to the Thracians. As is well known, Peisistratos made three attempts at becoming tyrant, with only the third securing lasting rule. On this third attempt, he won a military engagement at Pallene in Attica backed by allied strongmen. Prior to the battle, Peisistratos had spent several years in Thrace, principally in the north Aegean across from the island of Thasos. There, in the vicinity of the valuable mines of Mount Pangaion, Peisistratos amassed wealth and secured the services of Thracian mercenaries, both of which he continued to exploit as a means of holding on to power at Athens (Hdt. 1.59–64; see also [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 14–15). It is likely that Peisistratos’ Thracian mercenaries not only served as a means of personal protection and a safeguard of his power, but also took part in the decisive engagement at Pallene. The link between the Peisistratids and Thrace continued throughout the following decades, as Hippias and the members of his family fled to Sigeion once they had been expelled from Athens (Hdt. 5.94; Thuc. 6.59).
In the fifth century, we know from the Athenian Tribute Lists that many coastal cities in Thrace were members of the Athenian-led Delian League (Meritt, McGregor, and Wade-Gery 1950, 204–207, 214–223). Despite the official foreign policy objectives of Athens, it is important to note that Athenian links to Thrace during the first half of the century were maintained by none other than Kimon, the son of the younger Miltiades. Kimon represented the third generation of the Philaid family’s interests in Thrace. In 476 Kimon led an expedition to Eion, a city on the mouth of the Strymon River under the control of the Persians. After a destructive siege, during which the Persians left the city in ruins before being expelled from the area, Kimon took control of the city’s beautiful and fertile territory, which he promptly handed over to the Athenian people. The Athenians held Kimon in high honor for providing them with such valuable land. A decade later, Kimon secured for Athens the Thracian Chersonese, which had for a period succumbed to Persian control after the younger Miltiades had left the area in the 490s. After this feat, Kimon put down a revolt on the island of Thasos after a long siege spanning two years between 465–463. In the process he acquired for Athens the lucrative gold mines on the mainland opposite, in the so-called Thasian Peraia (Hdt. 7.107; Thuc. 1.98.1; 100.2; Plut., Kimon 7–8, 14).
A few decades would pass before Kimon’s success was followed. An inscription records that around 445 an Athenian colony was established somewhere in the vicinity of the Strymon at a place called Brea, whose precise location (along with most of its history) is unknown (IG I3 46 = Meiggs and Lewis 1989, 128–133, no. 49). Another site, dubbed Ennea Hodoi (Nine Ways), known to archaeology as Hill 133 commanding a good defensive position at a bend in the Strymon, had been attractive to a series of would-be colonists from the beginning of fifth century (see Pritchett 1980, 298–346). Ennea Hodoi could serve as a depot to collect timber from regions further up the Strymon, and it was located adjacent to the gold mines of Mount Pangaion. Two notable attempts had been made to settle the site in the 490s, respectively by Histiaios the tyrant of Miletus and his nephew, Aristagoras. Histiaios, initially granted the right to settle on the Strymon as a reward for his service to the Persians, was a wily figure, causing many Persians to question whether he should occupy such a strategically valuable position. On the advice of Megabazus, Darius found a pretense to summon Histiaios to duty in Susa. Megabazus’ instincts were proved right when Histiaios later fomented the Ionian Revolt by sending secret messages from Susa to his nephew. For his part, Aristagoras, after leading the Ionians in their failed revolt, retreated to the territory on the Strymon where he met a grisly fate at the hands of the local Thracians (Hdt. 5.124, 126; Thuc. 4.102; Diod. 12.68.1–2). The first Athenian foray to the area occurred in 465, about the same time Kimon was dealing with Thasos. An expedition of some 10,000 Athenian settlers under the command of Sophanes and Leagros attempted to occupy Ennea Hodoi. This group, along with its leaders, was massacred by the local Thracians, mostly of the Edonian tribe, at the nearby site of Drabeskos, marking the third failed Greek attempt to establish a foothold up the Strymon (Hdt. 9.75; Thuc. 4.102; Diod. 12.68; Paus. 1.29.4-5).
The Athenian Hagnon would finally break the curse of Ennea Hodoi. In 437/6 he led another group of Athenians to settle the site. Through a combination of shrewd diplomacy and displays of military might, Hagnon founded a lasting city, which he named Amphipolis because it was surrounded on three sides by the river (Thuc. 4.102–103, 106; Diod. 12.68.3). There is evidence that Hagnon appealed to the local Thracians through measures such as setting up cults to Thracian deities, and he also won several military engagements against the Edonians (see Isaac 1986, 55–58; Archibald 1998, 101, 117). Once the city was established, Hagnon fortified it with a citadel and circuit wall of nearly unparalleled grandeur. Athens, however, would lose the city to the Spartan Brasidas during the first half of the Peloponnesian War. Athens made several diplomatic and military efforts to reacquire the site, both during the Peloponnesian War and for the next several decades. In each case Athens was unsuccessful. The loss of such a strategic site was a devastating psychological blow to the Athenians that they were never able to forget. In conjunction with the Thracian Chersonese, concern for the region of Amphipolis and the mainland opposite Thasos drove much of Athens’ foreign policy well into the fourth century.
At the outset of the Peloponnesian War, Athens allied itself formally with Sitalkes, king of the Odrysians (Thuc. 2.29). The Odrysians were a tribe of Thracians that managed for several decades from the mid fifth century to form a loose confederation of several Thracian groups throughout southeastern Thrace. Despite breaking apart in the early fourth century, the Odrysian kingdom was the longest-lasting and widest-ranging unified Thracian political entity in antiquity, studied in depth by Zofia Archibald (1998). Sitalkes himself was quite rich and powerful, and had an enormous store of soldiers and cavalry on which to call. Though the alliance with Athens started out on the grandest terms – Sitalkes’ son lived in Athens and was made an Athenian citizen – militarily it did not amount to much. Sitalkes planned a large-scale invasion of Macedonia in 429/8, and the Athenians sent along several leading military men, including Hagnon, to serve as generals on the campaign. In the end, however, Athens failed to deliver the agreed level of support for the invasion, and the expedition accomplished little (Thuc. 2.95–101).
Athens did, however, make extensive use of Thracian mercenaries during the Peloponnesian War. Two episodes stand out in particular. For the final engagement leading to the famous capture of some 300 Lakedaimonians on the island of Sphakteria in 425, the Athenian general Demosthenes employed hundreds of light-armed troops from Athens’ northern allies, principally those cities located in Thrace. Many if not most of these troops were Thracian mercenaries, fighting in the light-armed peltast style for which the Thracians were famous. These troops were procured by the infamous demagogue Kleon, who promised the Athenian assembly that he would bring about the defeat of the Spartans stranded on the island using only non-hoplite allied troops (Thuc. 4.26–41).
Thucydides’ account of the year 413 yields a much darker episode in the Athenian use of Thracian soldiers. A group of 1300 Thracians from the independent mountain-dwelling tribe of the Dioi had arrived in Athens to serve on the Sicilian Expedition. The Dioi, however, arrived too late and were sent back to Thrace under the command of an Athenian named Dieitrephes. En route, Dieitrephes led the Thracian mercenaries against the Boeotian town of Mykalessos, lying a few miles from the Euripos Strait separating Boeotia from Euboea. Since Mykalessos was shut off from the sea by range of mountains, its inhabitants did not expect a sea-borne attack – its walls, for instance, had fallen into a state of disrepair. At dawn, after camping out on a mountain pass a short distance from the town, the Dioi burst into Mykalessos and slaughtered all the inhabitants, including men, women, children, and even livestock. In the mayhem, they also burst into a boys’ school and killed all the children inside. Thucydides grimly remarks that the fate of Mykalessos was the most pitiable event of the entire 27-year-long war (Thuc. 7.27, 29–30).
Thrace featured prominently in the last phase of the Peloponnesian War, the naval conflict known as the Ionian War that followed the disastrous Athenian expedition to Sicily. During this period, several Athenian generals, including Thrasyboulos and Alcibiades, were active in the northern Aegean, putting down revolts, securing resources from willing and unwilling states alike, and seeking to maintain control of the Aegean and the trade routes into the Black Sea (see Andrewes 1953). With the help of Persian money, Sparta was eventually able to challenge Athenian naval supremacy. The final engagement of the war saw the Athenian navy crushed in Thrace, along the Chersonese at Aigospotamoi, in 405.
Following the war, Sparta for a time was the undisputed hegemon of much of the Aegean. Athens therefore had little official influence in the north. In this context, the Athenian Xenophon, returning from Asia in 399 with the remnants of the Ten Thousand who had fought as mercenaries for the Persian pretender Cyrus, took up military service with the Thracian dynast Seuthes. The Odrysian kingdom had begun to fragment, and Seuthes was attempting to wrest control and territory away from another Thracian ruler, Amadokos. In a reversal of the typical arrangement, whereby Thracians were employed by the Greeks, Xenophon and some of the Ten Thousand fought as mercenaries on behalf of Seuthes and managed to conquer a fair amount of territory. As a reward for his services, Xenophon was promised his own lucrative estates in Thrace, on which he could have lived as Miltiades and the Philaids had a century earlier. Eventually, however, Xenophon fell out of favor with Seuthes and entered the service of the Spartans instead (Xen., Anab. 7; see Stronk 1995).
The fourth century would see Athens trying to regain much of its former influence in Thrace, while striving to hold on to whatever Thracian territory it still managed to possess. Athens continued to use Thracian mercenaries, and achieved some success with them. Most famously, near Corinth in 390, the Athenian commander Iphikrates managed to defeat an entire division of 600 Spartans using only Thracian peltasts (Xen., Hell. 4.5). This same Iphikrates would later lead an Athenian mission to the Chersonese, only to lose the region once again to the Spartans (Xen., Hell. 4.8.33–35). Thrasyboulos, who had earlier served in Thrace during the Ionian War, returned to the region in the early 380s, this time as Iphikrates’ replacement in the Chersonese. There, Thrasyboulos engineered a rapprochement between the rival Thracian rulers Seuthes and Amadokos, securing for Athens the alliance of both (Xen., Hell. 4.8.26). Iphikrates continued to be called upon for his Thracian connections. He was sent to Thrace once again in the 360s, this time to retake Amphipolis, where he was again unsuccessful. Instead of returning home to face possible prosecution for his military failure, Iphikrates remained in Thrace and acted as the military agent of the Odrysian king Kotys. He even married Kotys’ daughter and perhaps led Kotys’ Thracians in a naval battle against Athens itself (Dem. 23, esp. 130; see Harris 1989).
By the middle of the century, Philip of Macedon emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the north Aegean. Many of Demosthenes’ invective speeches against Philip – particularly the Olynthiacs – protest Athenian inaction in responding to Philip’s gains in Thrace. Athens sent many expeditions to Thrace and forged several alliances with Thracian kings in this period, especially to safeguard its holdings in the Chersonese and support its claims to Amphipolis. A surviving inscription details a treaty made in 357 between Athens and the three Thracian rulers – Kersobleptes, Bersiades, and Amadokos – who squabbled over a divided Odrysian kingdom after the death of Kotys. The treaty guaranteed Athens the right to collect tribute from many of the Greek cities along the northern Aegean coast. The cities in question seem to have been tributary subjects both to the Thracian kings and to Athens, an indication of Athens’ continued ability to assert influence over Thracian territory (IG II2 126 = Rhodes and Osborne 2003, 234–238, no. 47). Despite a measure of Athenian success, Philip eventually annexed virtually the entirety of Thrace to his kingdom. After the Battle of Chaeronea in 338, Athens was deprived of any capability of projecting power across the sea. The Athenians did grant citizenship to Rheboulas, brother of Kotys, in 331/0, which might have been connected to a Thracian revolt against Alexander (IG II2 349; see Schwenk 1985, 225–227), but meaningful Athenian ties to Thrace had essentially come to an end.
Thrace naturally had an impact on the Athenians over the course of such a long interaction. Given that a majority of contact between Athens and Thrace was in some sense military – either adversarial or cooperative – Thracian influence is most readily apparent in the military sphere.
The Thracian peltast, named for his small crescent-shaped shield, or pelte, was a light-armed skirmisher who took advantage of his relative speed and mobility to harass enemy troops with an armament of several javelins. This type of soldier was not only readily available from Athens’ northern allies in the Thracian region, his fighting style provided a nice complement or counterpart to the heavy-armed Greek citizen hoplite, as discussed at length by Jan Best (1969). Peltasts begin to appear in Attic art in the mid to late sixth century – about the time Peisistratos and the elder Miltiades were active in Thrace – but they were not used as a regular feature of Athenian armies until the Peloponnesian War.
In 425 peltasts from Thrace and from Athens’ Greek allies in the north Aegean played a key part in capturing the 300 Lakedaimonians trapped on Sphakteria. In conjunction with Athenian hoplites, the Athenian generals Demosthenes and Kleon deployed hundreds of light-armed troops on the island who were able to harass, wound, and kill the Lakedaimonian hoplites with ease. The Lakedaimonians desperately sought to engage the Athenian hoplites in battle, but upon every Lakedaimonian advance, the Athenians’ light-armed allies swarmed in from all sides. The Lakedaimonians eventually fled to the northernmost point of the island, where steep cliffs protected their rear. An enterprising Messenian ally of the Athenians offered to scale the cliffs with a contingent of light troops to surround the Lakedaimonians, which he succeeded in doing. Outnumbered, exhausted, and utterly confounded by their light-armed opponents, the Lakedaimonians surrendered, cementing the greatest Athenian land victory of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 4.32–38). The Athenian general Demosthenes had first learned the value of light-armed troops during an earlier campaign, in which his hoplites had been roughly handled by the skirmishers of Aetolia (Thuc. 3.94–98). Athens’ ties to Thrace furnished the general with an opportunity to make use of such troops himself. Though the Lakedaimonians poured scorn on the manner of the Athenian victory in 425 (Thuc. 4.40), the usefulness of Thracian-style light-armed troops was manifest.
As a general with the Ten Thousand at the turn of the fourth century, Xenophon proved himself a capable innovator of light-armed tactics. Journeying from deep within the Persian Empire, the Greek hoplites found themselves continually threatened by fast and mobile enemy horsemen. On several occasions Xenophon compensated for the hoplites’ lack of speed and maneuverability by having the numerous peltasts who had accompanied the Ten Thousand occupy the high ground and provide cover for the hoplites’ march. From the heights, the peltasts were more than capable of dealing with the Asiatic enemy, allowing the hoplites to advance in relative safety (see, e.g., Xen., Anab. 6.3). Eventually, in 399, Xenophon and his troops arrived in the vicinity of Byzantium and southeastern Thrace, where they entered the mercenary service of Seuthes. Seuthes was well equipped with peltasts and cavalry, but he lacked heavy-armed shock troops. With Seuthes, Xenophon formed a versatile and formidable combined-arms force that achieved much success against the Thracian villages Seuthes wanted to subdue. Xenophon showed a keen understanding of the proper use of different troop types by, for example, advising Seuthes to stagger the march of his forces through the night. Xenophon instructed the heavier troops to begin the march earlier, followed by the light-armed infantry, and finally the cavalry. In this way, all the troops arrived together in the morning, without the differences in speed leading to a separation of forces (Anab. 7.3.37–39).
A decade later, in 390, Thracian peltasts achieved their most famous feat of arms when Iphikrates led a group of mercenary peltasts to victory over a 600-strong division, or mora, of Spartan hoplites at Corinth’s port of Lechaion (see Konecny 2001). The fearsome Spartan hoplites held the light-armed mercenaries in contempt, brazenly moving past the peltasts’ position in line of march with their unshielded right sides exposed. Iphikrates, trusting in the long training with which he had honed the peltasts’ skill and cohesion, ordered his soldiers to attack. Entirely on their own, unsupported by cavalry or hoplites, the peltasts attacked the Spartans in small detachments, hurling javelins and then withdrawing at ease. Harried, injured, and dying in some numbers, the Spartans attempted to counter by sending out the youngest hoplites in pursuit. The peltasts then displayed the value of the discipline they had acquired during several years under Iphikrates’ command. They withdrew far enough to lead the younger Spartans a good distance away from the protection of the phalanx’s numbers, at which time the peltasts wheeled about and cut down the pursuing individual hoplites. For their part, the Spartans were supported by cavalry, but the horsemen refused to set off after the peltasts, striving instead to maintain a continuous front with the phalanx and thereby eliminating the advantages of swift horses. The Spartans eventually withdrew, having lost some 250 of their 600 hoplites, a devastating blow made all the more painful by the nature of the troops arrayed against them. Iphikrates’ spectacular success would not soon be surpassed, given that he had enjoyed the luxury of developing within his mercenary force an esprit de corps over long months of continuous campaigning (see Pritchett 1974, 117). But from then on Greek armies would ignore the potential of the peltast at their own peril.
As the fourth century progressed, more and more leaders adopted combined-arms forces, in which peltasts usually played key roles. The most famous military advances in this period were made by leaders such as Jason of Pherai, who used his vast wealth to employ seemingly numberless peltasts and cavalry, Epameinondas of Thebes, who supplemented his newly organized phalanx with light-armed and mounted troops, and Philip of Macedon, crafting a new war machine based on a deft combination of heavy phalanx, heavy and light cavalry, and light-armed skirmishers. In the hands of his son Alexander, Philip’s combined-arms force proved unbeatable and conquered the Persian Empire. Many of the trends that culminated in Philip and Alexander were begun under Athenians such as Demosthenes, Xenophon, and Iphikrates, due largely to the extensive experience many Athenians had in Thrace and with Thracian soldiers. Even when direct Thracian influence on tactics is less evident, several of Athens’ most prominent military figures, such as the younger Miltiades, Kimon, Hagnon, and Alcibiades, campaigned for long periods in Thrace, where they no doubt honed their military talents and passed on the lessons learned to other Athenian soldiers.
As we have seen, Athenian ties to Thrace featured prominently in Athenian political and military history. Aside from the many Athenians who would have had contact with Thracians through various military and diplomatic missions to the north Aegean, there was also a large number of Thracians living at Athens itself, both as free metics and as slaves. It is hardly surprising, then, that Athenian art and literature treats the Thracians extensively. While the Thracians are often stereotyped as uncivilized and uncultured barbarians, strange bedfellows to say the least of the epicenter of Greek culture and learning, they also possessed an enduring allure.
Herodotus, not himself an Athenian but certainly a figure who spent a great deal of time in Athens, devotes several chapters of the fifth book of his Histories to an ethnographic description of the Thracians (5.1–10). As is his wont, Herodotus focuses on those aspects of the Thracians that the Greeks would have found most marvelous or absurd, such as the custom of suttee – whereby the favored of several wives was killed and buried along with her polygamous husband – and the supposed practice on the part of many Thracians of selling their own children into slavery. Herodotus famously says that the Thracians are second only to the Indians in terms of population, and were they to unite behind a common purpose, no nation on earth could withstand them. The Thracians, however, lack the requisite political sophistication for such unification, and therefore remain divided and weak. While conceding some admirable traits to the Thracians, such the fierce resistance offered by the Getai to the Persians (4.93), Herodotus leaves the reader with an impression of contempt mitigated by curiosity.
The playwrights were frequently much harsher in their description of Thracians. Euripides, in his Hecuba produced during the early years of the Peloponnesian War, highlights Thracian barbarity and treachery through the character of Polymestor, a king of the Thracians in the Chersonese. Polymestor, known only from this play and probably invented by Euripides, murdered a young son of Priam, Polydorus, who had been entrusted to Polymestor’s care during the Trojan War. The reason given for the vile murder was Polymestor’s desire to steal the Trojan prince’s gold. Sophocles wrote a play roughly contemporaneous with Hecuba, the now lost Tereus. The title character is a Thracian king who rapes and mutilates the sister of his Athenian wife, whom he married to secure a dynastic relationship with the king of Athens. Both plays seem to present a warning against forging alliances with the Thracians, a particularly relevant theme given Athens’ ties to Sitalkes at the time.
Thucydides offers a somewhat different take on barbarians like the Thracians. Thucydides, it should be noted, was himself partly of Thracian descent. His father Oloros was probably a Thracian noble, maybe even the son of the younger Miltiades who in the late sixth century had married the daughter of a Thracian ruler also named Olorus. After failing as a general to protect Amphipolis from Brasidas and therefore being exiled from Athens, Thucydides retired to his own estates in Thrace, on the mainland opposite Thasos. In his discussion of Greek prehistory, known as the Archaeology, Thucydides presents an evolutionary view of social and cultural history, that is, he argues that the barbarians of his own day live as the Greeks themselves once had (1.5–6). Barbarians are not, then, fundamentally different from the Greeks, but are simply at an earlier stage of societal and cultural evolution. Such a view accords well with the predominant scholarly approach to peripheral peoples up until the last couple of decades. Namely, if the Thracians changed over time, it was in the direction of becoming increasingly Hellenized.
The representation of Thracians in Attic art is similarly ambiguous. On the one hand, certain Thracians, such as peltast warriors, are frequently employed to represent the antithesis of the good Greek hoplite. Even the very vessels on which peltasts appear are more at home in the women’s quarters than the aristocratic male symposium, which, as Robin Osborne (2000) argues, is a further comment on the social status of such Thracians. Thracians are often associated in art with satyrs and other Dionysiac imagery, evoking drunkenness and uncivilized barbarity. On the other hand, many vases and even the Parthenon frieze depict Athenian horsemen wearing distinctively Thracian clothing – such as the unmistakable patterned cloak known as the zeira. François Lissarrague (1990) argues that Thracian imagery was employed by aristocratic Athenian knights to set themselves apart from the mass of Athenians in terms of social class. Why specifically Thracian attributes were chosen as a mark of social distinction is difficult to ascertain, but clearly some Athenians did not think of the Thracians merely as savages. That Thracians are depicted so frequently in Attic art suggests an Athenian fascination with the Thracians, much as with the Persians in the decades following the Persian Wars so fascinatingly discussed by Margaret Miller (1997).
Ambiguities abound also in the position of the Thracians living at Athens. From the late sixth century on, Thracians were frequently used as slaves in Attica. The Thracian became the stereotypical image of the slave in literature and art, as exemplified in Aristophanes’ slave character Xanthias, whose very name means “Blondie” – a physical characteristic commonly associated with Thracians (see Rosivach 1999). The Attic Stelai, a record of property seized from those accused of desecrating the Herms before the Athenian expedition to Sicily in 415, show that a high proportion of the confiscated slaves were Thracian. There were also many Thracians working the silver mines at Laurion, attested both epigraphically and archaeologically (Morris 2011, 184–185). There were, however, many free Thracians living at Athens, particularly in the port of Piraeus. These Thracians – apparently alone of all ethnic groups in the polis at that time – were granted by the Athenians the right to construct a shrine to their goddess Bendis, a figure closely associated with Artemis (see Planeaux 2000). The Thracians were not alone in worshipping this deity on Attic soil, as the Athenians themselves took part in what became a lavish festival. In the famous opening lines of Plato’s Republic Socrates describes attending the first celebration of the Bendideia, which included separate processions of Thracians and Athenians, and other intriguing events including a horseback torch race and all-night celebration.
The evidence as it stands allows of no simple interpretation of Athenian attitudes toward the Thracians. Aside from the ambivalent way in which the majority of Athenians conceived of Thrace and the Thracians, Greece’s neighbors to the north proved particularly fascinating to certain Athenian elites.
Ties to Athens influenced many Thracians a great deal, to which the increasing prevalence of Attic pottery and prestige goods at Thracian sites attests (see Owen 2006). Contact with Greeks naturally led to the adoption of various Greek practices, including in some cases the use of the Greek language (as seen in the early to mid-fourth-century Vetren Inscription, transcribed in Chankowski and Domaradzka 1999 and discussed and translated in Tacheva 2007). Influence went both ways, however. The Greek states in the north Aegean, lying on the edge of Thrace, adopted Thracian tactics in their own armies, deploying contingents of peltasts and cavalry much earlier and more extensively than did most Greek states to the south (see Isaac 1986, 103–104, 153). At times scholars have a difficult time distinguishing Thracian mercenaries from Thracian-style fighters serving in the citizen armies of Greek poleis in the Thracian region (Best 1969, 85–97; Pritchett 1974, 118). Religious syncretism was also common. On the island of Thasos, for instance, the Greek inhabitants incorporated existing Thracian sacred structures into their own worship, the result being a cult that was neither fully Greek nor fully Thracian (Owen 2000). The worship of Artemis Tauropolos and Rhesus at Amphipolis seems to be another example of religious hybridization (see Isaac 1986, 55–58; Archibald 1998, 101). Instead of conceiving of Greco-Thracian relations as leading to a one-sided process of Hellenization on the part of the Thracians, we should instead think of both peoples undergoing a process of hybridization or cultural entanglement, in which all parties influence others and are in turn influenced themselves. Because Athens was heavily involved in Thrace for so long, it experienced cultural exchange in ways similar to the Greek cities of the region. This exchange was most pronounced in the particular Athenian leaders who drove the relationship between Athens and Thrace, those whom we might usefully call Thracophiles.
The reasons for an Athenian to turn to Thrace were manifold. For one thing, military victories anywhere, including in Thrace, were often a stepping stone to further political power at Athens. Kimon, for instance, grew in popularity and influence following his expeditions to the Chersonese and the region surrounding Thasos. He also grew in wealth. Thrace was very resource-rich, and many others were able to exploit mining rights and lucrative estates and the like to add to their personal fortunes, seen perhaps most famously in Thucydides’ retirement to his own mines and properties in Thrace after he was exiled. Thucydides’ case is instructive. Not only did he use his Thracian connections to amass wealth and probably also a prestigious military command in the region, he was also able to turn to Thrace as a refuge once he fell out of favor at Athens. Alcibiades and Iphikrates would do likewise, the former after having been driven out of Athens for a second time after losing the naval Battle of Notion, the latter on two separate occasions, after losing the Hellespont to the Spartans in the 380s and failing to take Amphipolis in the 360s. Iphikrates’ case has been described in detail by Edward Harris (1989), who offers a stimulating discussion on the dangers faced by unsuccessful Athenian generals at the hands of the demos.
While, as we have seen, many of these Athenians adopted various Thracian military practices, they seem also to have been attracted to certain elements of Thracian culture. Along with politics, Athenian society and culture became increasingly egalitarian from the sixth century on, a phenomenon which stifled the expression of aristocratic pretension. Solon’s famous sumptuary laws limiting the ostentation of funerals were but part of a wider phenomenon edging out the traditional ways in which the upper classes could distinguish themselves from the mass of ordinary Athenians (Plut., Solon 21). In Thrace, however, aristocrats and rulers were expected to engage in the boar hunt, to exchange valuable gifts at lavish feasts, and to lord their regal authority over the common people. In other words, Thracian aristocrats lived as Greek – and even Athenian – aristocrats once had. Xenophon recounts a splendid dinner thrown by Seuthes in which wine and meat were abundant and the host was presented with objects of great value by an assortment of noble guests, a feast of literally Homeric proportions (Anab. 7.3.21–33). Iphikrates’ wedding to the daughter of Kotys was apparently an affair of similar grandiosity, ridiculed by the comic poet Anaxandrides (F 42 Kassel-Austin). Hoards of gold and silver drinking vessels dating to the fifth and fourth centuries have been found throughout Bulgaria, some of which are inscribed with the name of Kotys, who may be identical to the great Odrysian king (see Cook 1989; Zournatzi 2000). In the sixth century, the elder Miltiades was honored by his subjects in the Chersonese with funeral games reminiscent of those for Patroklos, a distinction hardly afforded Miltiades’ contemporaries at Athens (Hdt. 6.38). As Thrace served as a source of power and refuge, it might also have been an attractive cultural alternative to the birthplace of democracy. As a segment of the Athenian elite portrayed themselves in art wearing Thracian clothing and carrying Thracian equipment, Athenian Thracophiles might have assimilated somewhat to the culture of Thracian nobility. Some Athenians found in Thrace a ready-made set of cultural symbols to compensate for those lost in the rise of equality among Athenian citizens.
Athenians were often uneasy about the foreign activities and connections of Thracophiles. In his lost play Gerytades, Aristophanes pokes fun at those he calls Thraikophoitai, literally “Thrace-haunters” (F 156 Kassel-Austin). Often the citizenship credentials of Athenians who spent too much time in Thrace were called into question, as in the case of Dieitrephes, the Athenian commander who presided over the massacre at Mykalessos, who was labeled as barely Athenian, “mogis Attikos,” by the comedian Plato Comicus (F 30 Kassel-Austin). Political rivals of Thracophiles could threaten to bring charges of xenia, that is, passing oneself or one’s foreign-born children off as Athenian citizens. Timotheus promised to do just that to Iphikrates in the mid fourth century, a poignant threat given that Iphikrates’ son was the product of his marriage to a Thracian princess ([Dem.] 49.56). More seriously, the orator Lysias suggested that Thrasyboulos was guilty of treason, conspiring to commandeer an Athenian fleet, seize Athenian interests in Thrace for his own uses, and marry a Thracian princess (28.8). While such allegations appear to be no more than rhetorical bluster on the part of Lysias, they are not too far off in the case of Iphikrates a couple of decades later.
In the end, long ties to Thrace inevitably had an effect on Athenian society and culture, in addition to politics and warfare. Some of those best poised to be among the cultural elite of Athens also happened to be those leading expeditions to Thrace and forging relationships with Thracian tribes and rulers. Like many facets of the Atheno-Thracian connection, personal interests in Thrace were received with mixed feelings at Athens. Like Thrace itself, Athens’ Thracophiles were crucial to Athenian interests. The Athenian need for Thrace, however, did not always translate into ready Athenian acceptance of the Thracians and those Athenians who made their careers among Greece’s neighbors to the north.