westward. They were the Celtic Scordisci, who, as we have seen, occupied an extensive country to the southward of the Danube. They are placed by Strabo between the Margus or the Morawa, and the Noarus,* supposed to be the Save, namely, in the modern Servia and Bosnia. They are said to have destroyed the Triballi, who had been one of the most powerful Thracian tribes in the time of Herodotus, and they maintained their independence till they were conquered by the Romans. In the accounts given of the wars of the Roman armies the Scordisci are reckoned among the principal nations of Thrace. From this time no important accession was made to the population of the countries beyond the Danube till the age of Valens, when Moesia was given by the emperor to the Goths, who passed the river in a body, which Gibbon computes to have amounted to a million of people. But the Goths abandoned Moesia, which became afterwards the seat of the Bulgarian kingdom, while many extensive districts in the northern part of the Byzantine empire were colonised, as we have seen, by various Slavonian hordes. The Bulgarians were, in the ninth century, the dominant people in these countries. They were, as we shall hereafter observe, a Turkish race, and took their name from the Wolga, termed by them Bolga, on which was situated their ancient kingdom of Bolgari; but they appear to have been outnumbered by the Slavic hordes under their sway, and to have adopted the language of that people, with whom they were intermixed.¶ Nations of the Slavic language were the last people who obtained settlements for numerous hordes beyond the Danube, until the invasion of the Byzantine empire by the Turks; and those tribes in the Ottoman provinces who speak neither the Slavonian nor the Turkish language, may be considered as most * Strabo, lib. vii. p. 318. Gibbon, ch. xxvi. + T. Liv. Epit. lib. lxv. || Von Engel, cited by Adelung. See also Müller's Ugrische Volkstamm, Theil ii. ¶ Boscovich, who was a native of Ragusa in Dalmatia found himself able to understand the Bulgarians, during his travels through their country, without great difficulty. See Boscovich's Travels, Lausanne, 1772, p. 59. The speech of the Bulgarians is intelligible to the Russians, and their church books are in the Servian or Russian language. See Adelung, Mithridates, ii. 642. probably descended from the aboriginal inhabitants. They are the Greeks, the Albanians, and the Wallachs. I shall now proceed to trace the history of the four nations before enumerated. SECTION II. Of the Thracian Race. Herodotus declares that the Thracians were the most numerous race of people in the world next to the Indians.* In this passage he used the name in its widest sense, as comprehending all the nations allied to the Thracians in language and descent. It has also a more restricted meaning, in which it includes certain tribes more properly termed Thracians, and chiefly, as it appears, those clans who were subject to the Thracian kingdom of the Odrysæ, or their immediate neighbours.+ The Thracians in the time of Herodotus reached northward as far as the Danube. The coast of the Adriatic was occupied by the Illyrian race, distinct, as we shall find, from the Thracian; but to the eastward of the Illyrians the whole country was occupied by Thracian tribes as far as the Euxine. The heart of Thrace was the broad valley of the Hebrus lying between the chains of Rhodope and Hæmus, the latter of which is now called the Balkan. Strabo makes it reach westward to the Strymon, τὰ δὲ πέραν Στρύμονος ἤδη, μέχρι τοῦ Αἴμου, πάντα Θρακῶν ἔστι.ς or. He says in another passage that all Greece was hemmed in towards the north by Thracian, Epirotic, and Illyrian nations. The Thracians, he adds, possess Macedonia and a part of Thessaly: above Acarnania and Ætolia are the Thesproti, the Cassopæi, the Amphilochi, the Molossi, and the Athamanes, which are Epirotic nations. We shall have occasion to advert again to these last tribes and the race to which they belong. The principal nations between Mount Hamus and the Danube were the Krobizii, near the Pontus, and the Triballi, a Thracian people, as Strabo declares,|| who inhabited the extensive Triballian plains in the central parts *Herod. lib. v. c. 3. VOL. III. + Adelung, Mithridat. b. ii. s. 354. || Strabo, vii. 320. H H of the inland country, of which they kept possession till they were expelled by the Celtic Scordisci, shortly before the time of Alexander the Great. Within the same boundary were several other tribes, well known to be of the Thracian stock; as the Bessi, who inhabited the greater part of Mount Hæmus, where they maintained their independence even against the army of Xerxes; the Bryges, near Macedonia, who were the ancestral stock of the Phrygians, according to Herodotus and Strabo; the Satræ, in the south on the mountains of Rhodope, equally wild and independent; the Trausi, on the Travus, known to Herodotus; and the Thyni near Salmydessus, who were said to have passed with the Mysians into Asia Minor, and to have been the ancestors of the Bithynians. Besides these tribes, who are all termed Thracians in a more restricted sense, there were several nations who are known by sufficient evidence to have belonged to that race. 1. The Getæ and Dacians are declared by all the ancient writers to have been of the Thracian race. The Getæ are first mentioned by Herodotus, who terms them the most valiant and honest of the Thracians.* They were subdued by the army of Darius before he arrived at the Danube; therefore they dwelt at that time to the southward of the Danube, and it does not appear that they differed in manners or language from other Thracian tribes. In the time of Thucydides they are found in the same region, namely, between the Danube, Mount Hæmus, and the Euxine; and, as Mannert has observed, they must have been among those Thracian tribes who combined with the Scythians in resisting the arms of Philip of Macedon.+ Perhaps at this time they crossed the Danube, since they appear on the northern side when the country on the Euxine was invaded by Lysimachus. Niebuhr thinks they had disappeared from their former country in the age of Alexander, who found a city of the Geta within the Scythia of Herodotus.+ In the time of Strabo the country of the Getæ certainly was to the northward of the Danube. It was a part of Dacia, *Herod. iv. c. 93. † Mannert, Geogr. der Griecher und Römer. Niebuhr, Geogr. of Scythia, translated from his "Kleinere Schriften." and Strabo declares* that the people of the eastern Dacia, near the sea and the mouth of the Danube, were called Getæ, and those of the western part Daci.+ It seems then that the Getæ, who were recognised by Herodotus and Thucydides as Thracians, were of the same race with the Dacians.‡ But 2. The Macedonians appear to have been a Thracian people. The Argive Temenidæ founded a Grecian state in Macedonia at an early period, and Philip brought the skin-clad Macedonians from their mountains, and taught them to till the soil and live in towns, and by military discipline trained them to become conquerors of the world. But the language of the Macedonians was unintelligible to the Greeks. The Greek soldiers in Alexander's army understood not, as we learn from Quintius Curtius,§ a speech addressed to the Macedonians. Niebuhr thought the Macedonians a Pelasgic people. the Pelasgic name had become extinguished in Greece long before the age of the Macedonian conquests. We may infer from a well-known passage of Herodotus, that the only relics of the Pelasgi existing in his time, as distinguished from the Greeks, were the bands of Tyrsenian Pelasgi who were settled near Placia and Crestona. Had the language of the Macedonians been that of these same Pelasgi, the fact could hardly have escaped his knowledge, and it would assuredly have been mentioned by him in the passage in which he discussed the question with what nations the Pelasgi were allied, and what idiom was their speech. If we give credit to Strabo, we must consider the Macedonians as a Thracian people. That geographer mentions several parts of the Macedonian country, and Pieria, on the borders of Thessaly, *Strabo, p. 314. ed. Casaub. + Strabo adds his testimony to the Thracian origin and language of the Getæ, and he cites in another passage a verse of Menander, in which the Getæ are mentioned as Thracians: πάντες μὲν οἱ Θρᾶκες μάλιστα δ' οἱ Γέται "All the Thracians, but especially the Getæ, are not very temperate." See Strabo, lib. vii. p. 295. Strabo says expressly, p. 305, that the Daci and the Getæ speak one language. § Q. Curtius, vi. 9. Mithridat. ii. p. 361. which he expressly says had been peopled by the Thracians.* In another passage he declares that in his time the Thracians still had possession of many countries considered as belonging to Greece, namely, Macedonia, and some parts of Thessaly.† By this we can only understand that the Thracian language and Thracian manners still prevailed among the inhabitants of these countries, and that though ruled by Grecian princes, the people had not become assimilated to the Greeks. 3. The Abantes, the native inhabitants of Euboea, called after them Abantis, were likewise, according to Strabo, a Thracian tribe.+ 4. Besides all the above-mentioned tribes of the Thracian race who inhabited Europe, there were several nations in Asia Minor who were supposed by the ancient writers to belong to the same stock. As they form a separate department of nations, I shall advert to their history in a particular section which will be devoted to the inhabitants of Lesser Asia. The manners of the Thracians are described by Herodotus and by Posidonius, whose account has been preserved by Strabo. They display some traces of eastern culture, mixed with the barbarism of the northern European nations. The funerals of chiefs were celebrated among them with great festivity, and at the same time with loud lamentations. They sacrificed on these occasions many animals, and sometimes burned, at others interred the body, over which they raised a mound of earth. The favourite wife of the deceased, splendidly dressed, was immolated by her nearest relatives on the tomb of her husband. This was coveted as a great distinction. The Getæ believed in the immortality of souls, * Niebuhr's principal reason for supposing the Macedonians Pelasgi is the celebrated passage of Eschylus, which will be cited in a succeeding section of this chapter, in which king Pelasgus makes his domain extend as far as the river Strymon. It must be observed that a Greek kingdom had been established in Macedonia before the time of Eschylus. Then there was a Macednus mentioned among the posterity of the mythical Lycaon; but the myth may have referred to the Argive colony. + Probably the Thracian race reached southward as far as the Peneus, and that river, rather than the Strymon, may have been the ancient boundary between the Thracian and Pelasgian races. Strabo, lib. x. s. 445. Mith. ii. 364. |