The Gods of Battle

The Thracians at War, 1500 BC - 150 AD

Chris Webber

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781844158355
• eBook ISBN: 9781848849426
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Herodotus described the Thracians (who inhabited what is now roughly modern Bulgaria, Romania, the European part of Turkey and northern Greece) as the most numerous nation of all - apart from the Indians - and said that they would be the most powerful of all nations if they didnt enjoy fighting each other so much. There may have been a million Thracians, divided among as many as 40 tribes.Ancient writers were hard put to decide which of the Thracian tribes was the most valiant; they were employed as mercenaries by all the great Mediterranean civilizations. Thrace had the potential to field huge numbers of troops, and the Greeks and Romans lived in fear of a dark Thracian cloud descending from the north, devastating civilization in the Balkans. The Thracian way of warfare had a huge influence on Classical Greek and Hellenistic warfare. After Thrace was conquered by the Romans, the Thracians provided a ready source of tough auxiliaries to the Roman army. Chris Webber gives an overview of Thracian history and culture, but focuses predominantly on their warfare and weapons. The latest archaeological finds are used to give the most detailed and accurate picture yet of their arms, armor and costume. He identifies and differentiates the many different tribes, showing that their weapons and tactics varied. The resulting study should be welcomed by anyone interested in the archaeology and history of the region or in classical warfare as a whole.

Chapter 1

Historical Outline: A Brief History of the Struggle for Thrace

Classical Era

The Sixth Century BC

The written history of the Thracians begins with Herodotus, as a sideshow to the Greek and Persian wars that occasionally moved to centre stage. In the first decade of the sixth century, the Persians invaded Thrace and made it part of Skudra, a border area that never quite pacified enough to make the status of satrapy. This lasted from about 512 to 476BC.1 The area was ruled from Sestos.2 Thracians were forced to join the invasions of Skythia and Greece.3 Skudrians were well known in the Achaemenid Empire, and hundreds of them were in the service of the Great King in Parsa. They appear to have been the largest ethnic group mentioned in the Persepolis Fortification tablets (509–494BC). They are not mentioned in the later Persepolis Treasury Tablets (492–458BC), which perhaps reflects the smaller number of those tablets, or the breaking away of large parts of European Thrace from the Persian Empire after 479BC.

Around 560BC, the Athenians made their first foray into Thrace, with Miltiades visiting the Thracian Chersonese. Miltiades acquired a personal fief in the Chersonese, in alliance with some Dolonci, who had asked the oracle at Delphi whom they should invite to help them in their war against the Apsinthians, which was going badly for them. The oracle answered that they should take the first person to invite them into his home, who turned out to be Miltiades. Miltiades was the first to build a wall (7.24km long) across the peninsula, from Kardia to Pactye, to protect his followers from invasion by the Apsinthii from the north. He ruled as a prince over a mixture of Thracians and Athenian followers. It has been suggested that the real story was that the Thracians invited the Athenians to build a colony there, and that it was Miltiades who consulted the oracle.4 After his death, another Miltiades came from Athens and took control of the region through a ruse that enabled him to kill all the local leaders. He kept a body of 500 mercenaries and married Hegesipyle, the daughter of the Thracian king Olorus. After only two years, he had to leave, as the Skythians advanced as far as the Chersonese after throwing out Darius. He fled before they arrived. The Dolonci invited him back when the Skythians left, however.5

There were six phases of Persian conquest and reconquest between 513 and 492BC. All except the last one failed. The Persians often had to reconquer coastal cities, territories, islands, and fortresses. The first phase involved Darius’ invasion of Skythia via the upper Hebros valley, in 513BC. This involved the subjugation of the Thracian Chersonese, Byzantium, and Chalcedon. Herodotus was not correct to say that all Thrace was under the Persian sway at this time, as only parts of the Black Sea coast and the Hebros valley had been conquered. An important royal fort was also established at Doriskos at the mouth of the Hebros River.6

The second phase involved the conquest by Megabazos of all the remaining states in the Hellespontine regions that did not yet bow to the Great King. In Thrace, this left the Persians in control of the lower Hebros and Doriskos. Megabazos then turned west, conquering all the cities and towns along the Aegean coast up to the Strymon River.7 From the latter area, he then removed most of the Paeonians and transported them first to Sardis, and then to Phrygia.8 Despite the difficulties involved, some of these were later able to escape back to western Thrace.9 If others moved further east, this would account for the large numbers of Skudrians in the Persian tablets.10

Meanwhile it seems that the Hellespont had once more slipped out of the Persians’ hands, for while Megabazos was escorting the Paeonians east, his replacement, Otanes, was reconquering Byzantium, Chalcedon, Antandros and Lamponeia in the Troad. He also reconquered Lemnos and Imbros. The fifth campaign was brought about by the conclusion of the Ionian revolt, in the early spring of 493BC. The Persians sailed up the Hellespont, and again laid claim to all the cities of the Thracian Chersonese, except Kardia, and the Propontis.11 The last included several Thracian walled forts (the teichea). Balcer suggests that the ability of many Byzantines to escape the fourth conquest of their city by moving to Mesembria on the Thracian Pontic coast implies that Darius’ conquest of the Thracian Pontic shore was only ephemeral.12

The final phase of conquest was the most successful, with Mardonius marching from Sestos to the Strymon with a huge army.13 Greek towns were reconquered and Persian garrisons established. Thasos was also taken. The fortress of Eion was established, some time before 492BC, and a bridge built across the Strymon. In 492BC, while they were encamped in Macedonia, the Brygi attacked them by night, and slew many of them, wounding Mardonius himself. Herodotus states that it was the heavy toll exacted by the Brygi that caused Mardonius to retreat.14 Thrace was then securely in Persian hands until Mardonius’ death at Plataea in 479BC. During this time, Thrace was ruled from Sestos, Eion, and Doriskos, all coastal locations, which indicates that little of Thrace north of the Rhodope mountains was controlled directly by the Persians.15 Mardonius had intended to march to Greece, but lost the Persian fleet while it was rounding Mt Athos. After conquering Macedonia he therefore returned to Sestos.

The Fifth Century BC

Herodotus says 300,000 Macedonians and Thracians were in Xerxes’ army.16 A king of the Bisaltai tore out the eyes of his six sons because they were so eager to fight they joined Xerxes’ army, even though their father had fled from Xerxes rather than submit to the Persians.17 This demonstrates how much the Thracians loved their freedom, how savage they were, and how eager they were to fight. The Bithynian Thracians also had to contribute a supposedly 60,000-strong contingent to Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480BC (6,000 would be a more likely figure).18 However, Persian control was rather loose, and many Thracians resisted the Persian occupation during the next decade, even stealing the Persian sacred chariot and its horses. The passage of Xerxes’ army caused great misery and distress.19 As a result, only a few Thracians fought with the Persians at Plataea in 479BC.20 After Plataea, the Thracians annihilated parts of the Persian army as they retreated through Thrace.21

Artabazos’ decision to follow the inland route and cross to Asia from Byzantium suggests his fear of the hostile and rebellious Greeks and Thracians, and a concern for his safety at Sestos, the normal crossing point. Oeobazos, another Persian commander, was later sacrificed along with his attendants to the god of the Apsinthians while fleeing from Sestos.22 Sestos and most of European Thrace except for the Chersonese was free of the Persian yoke by June 478BC, when the Hellenic League fleet sailed up the Hellespont and captured Byzantium.23 Eion fell to the Greeks late in 476BC,24 and Doriskos probably soon afterwards. The Persians never returned, probably due to internal squabbles and pressure from the Greeks.

These Greeks had early in the fifth century begun to cast longing eyes on the mouth of the Strymon, the gate into the rich plains and richer mines of eastern Macedonia. But the powerful and independent tribe of the Edonians held the land, and at least two attempts to found a colony there failed disastrously before the attacks of the warlike natives. The first had come from Miletus in 497BC; the second was a combination under Athenian leadership in 465BC.25 The city of Amphipolis was not founded until the Athenians, under Hagnon, made the third and successful attempt, in 437BC.26

The Persian invasion may have caused some impetus towards the formation of the first Thracian state. About 460BC the first Odrysian kingdom was founded by Teres I in south-eastern Thrace, in territory vacated by Persians.27 In the last years of the reign of Teres, many of the Greek cities between the mouths of the Mesta (Nestos) and the Maritsa (Hebros), which had paid tribute to the Athenian Naval League as allies of the Athenians, reduced or stopped payment of their tribute. The principal towns involved were Abdera, Maronea, and Mesembria. It is thought that this occurred because they now depended on Teres, to whom they had to pay a tax. For this reason, and so as not to antagonize Teres, Athens consented to these payments being reduced or stopped.28 He secured his territory in negotiations with the Skythian king Ariapeithes.29 Ariapeithes was the son of Idanthyrsos, king of the Royal Skythians at the time of Darius’ campaign in 512BC.

The Odrysai was the most powerful Thracian tribe, the only one to briefly unite almost all the others (including some of the Paeonians but not the Triballi). Most Thracian kings mentioned in ancient texts were Odrysian kings. Odrysian power was based in the central Thracian plain, where they built their capital, Seuthopolis. It was built on a Greek plan in the third century, near the modern town of Kazanluk.30 It was formerly thought to be the only significant town or city in Thrace not built by the Greeks, but the discovery of Helis and other permanent settlements (some inside hill forts) has diluted this claim.31 There were Thracian settlements at Kabyle and Philippopolis before the arrival of the Macedonians, but only Kabyle may have been anything like a town as we would know it. Seuthopolis was probably destroyed during the Celtic invasions of 279BC (there are signs that the city was burnt around that time), and is now submerged beneath the Koprinka dam.32 The Odrysians left more than thirty marvellous mound tombs nearby, in an area now referred to as the Valley of the Kings.33 The most spectacular is a UNESCO site that includes glorious life-like paintings of Thracian cavalry and infantry.34 A hill-fort that may have been the original bas...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The Sources
• Maps
• Chapter 1 Historical Outline
• Chapter 2 Thracian costume
• Chapter 3 Armour
• Chapter 4 Weapons
• Chapter 5 The Thracian army
• Chapter 6 Military Organization
• Chapter 7 Fortifications
• Chapter 8 Battles and Tactics
• Chapter 9 Thracian Tribes
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index