33b - Thrace before the Persian entry into Europe

Summary

SOURCES

The sources for this period are neither rich nor of a consistent value. Of contemporary literary sources we have first the evidence of the Homeric poems, then some very scanty passages in Hesiod, a few fragments of lyric poets such as Archilochus and Alcaeus, to which may be added some data, fragmentary and imprecise, in the logographers, especially Hecataeus. The historians Herodotus and Thucydides provide valuable, if limited, information. In later Greek and Latin literature can be found statements directly bearing on our period, for example in Aristotle or Strabo, or in the scholia of Homer or of Apollonius Rhodius. There are in addition indirect literary references; they are concerned with later events, but show a process of evolution from earlier times. To this first category of sources should be added the material evidence provided by archaeologists, which is, however, in itself not very rich.

A GEOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

After the migradons during the second half of the second millennium and the first centuries of the first millennium, the Thracians were settled in an extensive area stretching from the Euxine (Black) Sea to the neighbourhood of the Axius (Vardar), and from the Aegean Sea to the Transdanubian lands (below, Section IV). They straddled the Propontis (the Sea of Marmora), and had a foothold also in the Troad and in Bithynia.