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. 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 Hamus, the latter of which is now called the Balkan. Strabo makes it reach westward to the Strymon, τὰ δὲ πέραν Στρύμονος ἤδη, μέχρι τοῦ Αἵμου, πάντα Θρακῶν ἔστι. OT. 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 Hæmus 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. Herod. lib. v. c. 3. et seqq. VOL. III. + Adelung, Mithridat. b. ii. s. 354. НН 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 Getæ 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: "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 disThe Getæ believed in the immortality of souls, tinction. * 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. and that after death they went to the abode of their god Zamolxis, called also Gebeleizes, where they were for ever in happiness. The Thracians in general were addicted to excessive drinking; they esteemed agriculture a disgraceful employment; their delight was in war and plunder. They punctured or tattooed their skins; they were accustomed to sell their children into slavery. SECTION III. Of the Illyrian Race. The most accurate among the ancient writers have always distinguished between the Illyrians and the Thracians. Strabo in particular, who is our best guide in this part of ancient ethnology, carefully separates the Illyrians from all other races. The Illyrians were the borderers on the eastern side of the Adriatic, and occupied the coast from the junction of that gulf with the Ionic Sea, to the estuaries of the river Po.* Of this wide extension of the Illyrian name, Herodotus is the first evidence. He likewise places Illyrians on the western tributary rivers of the Morava. He says, "The river Angros, flowing from the Illyrians towards the north, pours into the Triballian plains and the river Brongos, and the Brongos into the Danube.† He was aware that the Heneti, in the inmost recess of the gulf, were Illyrians. That the Veneti or Heneti were a tribe distinct from all the Celtic nations in the neighbourhood, we have, with many others, the testimony of Polybius, who declares that although the Veneti resembled the Celta of the Cisalpine in manners and habits, they were quite separate in language.§ The Heneti or Veneti appear then to have been the last Illyrian tribe towards the north-west. The southern limits of this race, where they bordered on the Epirots, are accurately described by Strabo. He marks out the transit of the road called Via Ignatia, from the neighbourhood of Epidamnus and Apollonia into Macedonia; it seems to have proceeded directly eastward from Epidamnus towards Edessa and Pella, and to Thessalonica, separating the nations of * Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme, s. 251. iv. c. 49. i. 196. § Polyb. ii 17. |