Trakia Travels wishes you pleasant moment while you get to know ancient Thrace in our web pages!

Ancient Thrace 7000 bc. – 300 ad.
The Thrace of history, mythology, Godlores and music; the Thrace of Orpheus, Dionysus and Spartacus, and of the marvelous golden and silver treasures.

Thrace is the center of the oldest European culture, even older than ancient Greece. The Thracians ruled an enormous area: from the Aegeian sea (ex. Thracian sea ) to the Carpathian mountains and the coastal areas of Asia Minor. The Greek historian Herodotos wrote, that the Thracians were the most populous people in the world. The center of the Thracian civilization was in Europe, in the Balkan peninsula, and especially in the area of modern Bulgaria and northern Greece. In that area was also founded the first Thracian country, the kingdom of the Odrysians, which was also Europe’s first country. 


There was no literacy in the Thracian culture, so the remains of this culture were found relatively late, in the 20th century, and the specialized research is based primarily on archeological discoveries.


In the place of literature, art especially in the gold- and silver treasures, worked as a “written” language. The Thracians were superb healers and knew the regions thousands mineral springs and their healing effect. The area has marvelous monuments left by their culture, and they have been categorized by UNESCO as objects of protection, the thousands of burial mounds with their countless frescos, ancient cities and castles, and the endless amounts of gold and silver treasures in the museums. For this reason, this beautiful and ancient culture attracts travelers throughout the world. The Thracian culture was presented in Finland for the first time last year(2000 Jan-Feb), in an exhibition in the museum of Amos Anderson. 

Trakia Travels ®     

“THE MOST NUMEROUS PEOPLE IN THE WORLD AFTER THE HINDUS”

These words of Herodotus (fifth century BC), the ”Father of History”, apply to the Thracians – Indo-Europeans (third millennium BC - Late Antiquity) – of the lands from Pontos Euxinus (pres. Black Sea) in the east to the Strymon River in the west, and from the Carpathians in the north to Aegean Sea in the south, as well as to those from the lands of the northwestern Asia Minor in Bithynia and Troad. Freedom-loved and unsubdued even by Alexander the Great (fourth c. BC), their fame as warriors of iron was was emblematic due to Spartacus, the aristocrat-Roman captive, the gladiator-leader of the rebelled slaves in Italy (first c. BC), and because of their qualities of honoured praetorians for the Roman Imperial Guard (second – third c. AD). Not ever united in a single state but with many kingdoms of famous dynastic families (fifth – first c. BC), the Thracians were one of the most enigmatic peoples of ancient times in Eurasia as they live to pass through the Grave-Gate to the Yonder-World.
The reason is that they believed in immortality of both body and soul in unity. Such was the teaching-faith (second – first mill. BC) ascribed to Orpheus, the Teacher-Prophet born in Thrace, first among ”the born-in-Thrace” Musaeus, Thamyris, Eumolpus – the founder of the Eleusinian mysteries, as well as among others who were the typical cultural heroes of the ancient European culture and civilization. Orpheus sings his initiation verses as the music – ”Thracian by origin”, awakens the Memory which is Knowledge, and the Knowledge is the God. This God is the Son of the self-conception of the Great Mother Goddess. She is the Cosmos, and he is the Sun/Fire. When these equipositioned in the Orphism deities unite in a mysterical sacred marriage, the visible and the invisible world renews its existence. Thus, the Son – Dionysus in Ancient Greek, and multi-named in Thracian – dies sacrified in his image of bull to fertilize the Earth with his blood, to be born again and to give birth to his child. This was the king-priest, organizer of the Socium and initiator into the faith.
Thrace, historical, legendary and mythological, Thrace of the Sacred Orality of words and music, is coded in the treasures of its king-priests. The deciphering of this code continues.

THE RULER

The institution of the ruler is the earliest evidenced in the Paleo-Balkanic antiquity by the central core of the Varna Chalcolithic necropolis (end of the fifth millennium BC). The secularised power is denoted through the choice of the gold items placed in the rich burials as a system of signs disclosing its ideological function. The insignias found in graves Nos. 43 and 36 – a true and a symbolic one – outline clearly the figure of a chieftain and a priest.

The idea of the Sky-Earth interaction that acquired the character of a religious-political doctrine, called Thracian Orphism, took shape and meaning after the middle of the second millennium BC. The major figures in the oral Thracian faith, which was based on the balance of the two elements – the solar and the chthonic – of Orpheus and Dionysus, were those of the Great Mother Goddess and her dual son. The king, who established the balance between the two elements, was born by their sacral marriage. These three images were a main theme in the Thracian aristocratic art. The doctrinal position of the king-Orphist and the degree of self-perfection through which he passed, are suggested by the semantics of the rich funeral offerings as well. Symbols of the royal dignity, ritual vessels, as well as armaments are found among the latter. The numerous treasures found in the lands of the Thracians mark the basic cosmogonic rites connected with the new birth of the king and his sacral marriage with the Goddess.

THE LEGENDARY KINGS

Regarding Thrace the anonymity was broken after the middle of the second millennium BC – the period till, during and after the Trojan War. Hellenic mythology presents the generalised images of Orpheus, Rhesos, Lycurgus, Zalmoxis, Phineus, Maron etc. They were not only political rulers but chief priests, performers of the basic cosmogonic rite as well. Their fifures are revealing for the ritual behaviour of the historically attested kings. Like Rhesos, they were to become anthropodemons after their death, and by saying the Dionysiac prophesies in the cave in the Pangaeus Mountains, they were to become mediators between the two worlds – the real one and the Beyond. Or, like Orpheus, they were to meet the Sun on the rocky peak; or, like Zalmoxis, were to initiate their table-companions in the mystery of immortality in their underground dwelling equal in meaning to the cave, i.e. the rock womb of the Great Mother Goddess.

THE HORSE

The monuments of the Thracian toreutics present the image of the king as a horseman. He was thus inseparably related to the horse, irrevocable symbol of his power. The Hellenic myths convey the image of the Thracian king Diomedes whose mares ate people. However, when Heracles defeated him, he himself died from his own horses – i.e. they ensured both strength and power. Lycurgus died torn to pieces by horses as well, because he dared to oppose to the almighty Dionysus. in both cases the death caused by the horses put an end to the dynasty. However, they could also ensure the victory of their master. Rhesos would have become invincible and Troy unconquerable, “if his horses drank from the water of the Skamander River”. The horse certainly took part in the rituals performed during the funeral of the ruler. It was sacrificed on his grave to ensure a new birth. The horse sacrifice followed immediately after the human one in the value graduation of the sacrificial animals. Throughout their earthly existence they were together in war and in ordeals, so they had to stay together in the Beyond as well.

THE SETS OF APOLLO AND THE GREAT MOTHER GODDESS

Several ritual sets stand out among the numerous vessels of the Rogozen Treasure. The four phialae on which umbo was displayed the head of Apollo and the jug with gilded inscription “Kotys, a son (and a servant) of Apollo” are a ritual set made on a special order. It was probably given as a present to the Triballian ruler Hales by the Odrysian king Kotys I and it was probably used for initiation during the Orphic mysteries.
The other four phialae decorated with human and bulls’ heads, together with the jug with the image of the Goddess among winged centaurs form the so-called “Set of the Great Mother Goddess”. It was probably used also in the sacrifice of bull, a basic zoomorphic image of Dionysus, the son of the Great Goddess. The god is torn to pieces in his image of a bull to be born again, and thus to bestow hope to the initiated.

THE BOROVO TREASURE

The treasure from Borovo represents the typical ritual set. It is a political gift from the Odrysian king Kotys I to an anonymous ruler of the Getai. The treasure consists of five vessels, some of which are depicted in the figural composition on a jug-rhyton. The rhyton in the hands of the lonely god is identical with the rhyton with protome of a sphinx from the treasure and the Eros-cupbearer holds in his hands a similar jug-rhyton and a large bowl. The Borovo set has probably been intended for initiation in the mysteries connected with the Thracian beliefs in immortality. This is suggested through the image of Dionysus because namely he, by his suffering and periodic coming back from the Yonder to the Life ensure his place among the immortal gods. His worshippers believed that thus they would achieve the eternal life for themselves.

THE THRACIAN KINGDOMS

After reporting that according to him the Thracian people were the most numerous people in the world after the Indians, Herodotus (5th century BC) added that they were disunited and they could never unite. This precise description of the “father of the History”, made already in the time of ascent of the Odrysian dynasty, was confirmed during all periods of the relations between Thrace and Rome till the establishment of the Roman rule over Thrace in the first half of the first century AD. The reason for this “non-imperial” disunity can be found in the different physical, geographical, cultural and historical features of this ethno-cultural territory, the largest in Southeastern Europe during antiquity. The Thracian lands were located to the Dnieper and the Dniester, today’s Russia and Ukraine, to the northeast, to the Struma River (the ancient Strymon) to the southwest, to the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara to the east and to the Aegean coast, including the islands of Thasos, Samothrake, Lemnos, Naxos and Imbros, to the south. Asia Minor Thrace w The eastern and southern parts of Thrace, both in Europe and in Asia Minor, were Hellenised quite early, from the eighth century BC onwards, which induced the creative contacts and cultural synthesis. This was the area of the Hellenic coastal poleis (city-states). The inland of Thrace, however, remained divided between dynastic families, some of which still are anonymous. The others, however, yielded to their aspirations for power and competition. Thus, from the fifth century BC onwards, Thrace was a land of kingdoms in Europe and Asia Minor, which under favourable circumstances and factors would have been able to establish themselves as stable monarchies with different historically attested life. according to written, epigraphic, archaeological and numismatic data, the most famous kingdoms were the kingdoms of the Odrysai, Bessi, Edones, Vitini, Triballi and Getai.

THE BESSI

The most famous king of the Satrae – that of the Bessi during and after the second half of the fourth century BC – combined undoubtedly both the royal and the priestly power over a territory with a centre located at the sanctuary of Dionysus, one of the most popular prophesying centres in the ancient times. The practice of using the name of the Bessi started to impose with the disappearance of the ethnonym of the Satrae due to military-political, and, most of all, religious reasons. After the third century BC, it turned into a generalised ethnonym of all the Thracians. The Bessi dynasty whose state was conquered by the Odrysians most probably towards the end of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century BC, stayed anonymous until the first century BC, when their leader Rabokentes was mentioned. The priest Vologaesos was mentioned later. The analysis of the type and the position of the funeral offerings in the six rich tombs from Duvanli tells us not only about the Dionysiac rites with which the Bessi were connected forever, but gives us also the names of two of their kings, Skythodokos and Dadalemes.

THE ODRYSAI AND THEIR DYNASTY

According to the words of the famous Athenian historian Thucydides (fifth century BC), the Odrysian rulers created the greatest state in Europe between the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. Their first representative known to the historians and the founder of their state Teres I, profited by the withdrawal of the huge Persian army under the command of Darius I from its campaign against the Scythians (514 BC) and fixed the boundaries of the Odrysai on the lower course of the Danube River. The sons of Teres – Sparadokos amd Sitalkas/es, as well as their successors till Kotys I, spread their domination from the mouth of the Danube to the mouth of the Mesta River, the ancient Nestos, and they divided with Athens the political, military and financial control over the area of the Aegean Sea coast and the coast of the Sea of Marmara.
During the fifth century and the first half of the fourth century BC, when the Odrysian dynasty took the lead of all Thracian prosperity, vast resources were concentrated in the Odrysian royal treasury. The records of the received taxes and “royal presents” of gold and silver articles gave 500 or even 1000 talents total weight (1 talent = 26 kg) that at the time was commensurable only with the resources of the Persian Empire.
Got into a political and economic depression in the third – first centuries BC that befallen Southeast Europe, the Odrysian dynasty gradually lost large territories but kept its authority till the period of vassalage it got into during the first Roman emperors. This period definitely ended in 45 AD when the emperor Claudius established the province of Thracia between the Mount Haemus, today’s the Balkan Mountains, and the Aegean Sea.

   Next page >>