Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/38

20 HISTORY OF GREECE. CHAPTER XXVI. THRACIANS AND GREEK COLONIES IN THRACE. TIIAT vast space comprised between the rivers Strymon end Danube, and bounded to the west by the easternmost Illyrian tribes, northward of the Strymon, was occupied by the innumer- able subdivisions of the race called Thracians, or Threi'cians They were the most numerous and most terrible race known to Herodotus : could they by possibility act in unison or under one dominion (he says), they would be irresistible. A conjunction thus formidable once seemed impending, during the. first years of the Peloponnesian war, under the reign of Sitalkes king of the Odrysae, who reigned from Abdera at the mouth of the Nestus to the Euxine, and compressed under his sceptre a large proportion of these ferocious but warlike plunderers ; so that the Greeks even down to Thermopylae trembled at his expected ap- proach. But the abilities of that prince were not found adequate to bring the whole force of Thrace into effective cooperation and aggression against others. Numerous as the tribes of Thracians were, their customs and character (according to Herodotus) were marked by great uni- formity : of the Geta?, the Trausi, and others, he tells us a few particularities. And the large tract over which the race were spread, comprising as it did the whole chain of Mount Haemus and the still loftier chain of Rhodope, together with a portion of the mountains Orbelus and Skomius, was yet partly occupied by level and fertile surface, such as the great plain of Adrianople, and the land towards the lower course of the rivers Nestus and Hebrus. The Thracians of the plain, though not less warlike, were at least more home-keeping, and less greedy of foreign plunder, than those of the mountains. But the general character of the race presents an aggregate of repulsive features unre deemed by the presence of even the commonest domestic affoc-