This is a Thracian treasure from the end of the 5th c. BC, found near Plovdiv.We don’t know many details about
Thracian history before 500BC. It is around 513BC-512BC that Darius invades Thrace in preparation for the war which would end up giving the Greeks a national consciousness. The
Thracians did not offer much if any resistance to the Persians because they knew Darius was out to get the Greeks, the Thracian city of
Doriscus was relinquished without a fight. The Getae did offer some resistance but it was crushed. That would establish a pattern in Thracian history. The tribes never unified fell one by one to foreign invades. Although no one ever quite managed to control them all simultaneously. One or two big tribes would be conquered but another two or at least one would resist or rebel and generally make life miserable for the would be conquerors. But divided Thracian tribes would fall. The harsh history of the Balkans tolerates no weakness, especially not disunity.
Around 490-479 BC
Xerxes set out to fight the Greeks. When passing through Thrace the Thracians knew that Xerxes’s primary goal was to destroy the powerful city of Athens, far to the south, and so they offered no resistance to the Persian army.Persian control over Thrace was rather loose. After the Persian Wars, in 480-460 BC the first powerful Thracian state was founded by
King Teres, the
Kingdom of the Odrysae. Teres managed to unite the many Thracian tribes under his rule and to include in his realm the area of eastern Thrace, plus other regions as far as the Danube. Teres was the first Thracian king to unify several of the big powerful Thracian tribes, starting with his own Odrisians. As Herodotus informs us: “Teres, the father of
Sitalces, was the first to establish the great kingdom of the Odrysians on a scale quite unknown to the rest of Thrace, a large portion of the Thracians being independent.”
Herodotus also informs us that Teres’ daughter marries
Octamasadas, the Skythian king. There is evidence which suggest a close cultural connection between the hero-horseman worshiping Thracians and the nomadic Skytians. Teres created a mighty army and forged political and commercial relations with the Greek cities, the Macedonians and the Scythian chieftains.
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Silent Stones, Ljubimetz municipality
