Getae

Abstract: In the contemporary world of ideas, the ancient race called Scythians holds virtually no place in the popular imagination. Indeed, even among historians, limited by the modern historiographical insistence on the documented 'facts,' the Scythians are frequently ignored altogether or relegated to appendices and footnotes with the unicorn, Prester John, and Atlantis.1 Such connotations as the Scythians may have today are limited largely to a reference to their cannibalism in King Lear (I.i.118), their wrought gold fibulae in museums, and the tangential knowledge which may come from reading histories of Persia and Greece. These ideological vestiges are almost the sole remains of a flourishing tradition which lasted from, roughly, the ninth century B.C. until the nineteenth century A.D.; and the very historiographical genre which in the modern era has practically eliminated the Scythian myth was the agency through which that tradition was formulated and perpetuated for 2300 years. In actuality, the Scythians, an Indo-European tribe, are believed to have migrated from Central Asia along with their cousins-germane, the Sarmatians, into Northern Turkestan and the broader Caspian area in such quantities that by 700 B.C. they heId the territory from Rumania and Hungary in the west to Afghanistan in the east. Always nomadic, the Scythian herdsmen and hunters eventually came into contact with the Greeks in Asia Minor, who were the first to record in any detail the existence of the barbarians to the norh. Since the Scythians were effective horsemen, probably being the first people to ride horseback or to wear trousers, they were much in demand as mercenaries, by the militaristic rulers of ancient Assyria and Persia, though the Scythian nation as a whole avoided communication with the Mediterranean world as much as possible.2 No central government ever evolved, the Scythian political system being a loose alliance of tribes much in the manner of the American Indian; and, like the Indian, the Scythian lived in a portable house, practiced social communism, us,ed tomahawks, and scalped his enemies. In the first or second century B.C., some centuries after they had been afforded a place in history by Heredotus and his successors, the Scythians were over-run and assimilated by the Sarmatians; but the Hellenic world continued to call the hybrid nation ' Scythians ' or ' Getae,' the latter being the usual appellation after the third century A.D.3 Such are the 'facts ' which the twentieth-century historian considers valid enough to give credence to; but these are only fragments of a richly developed trTopta of the Scythians which underwent many interesting and

Abstract: The issues concerning the areas in which the Achaemenid presence in the Balkans influenced the culture of ancient Thrace naturally arouse interest amongst researchers. Abundant archaeological material and, even more, the examples of toreutics discovered south of the River Danube, as well as various written sources enlighten the issues (Marazov 1977; Kalojanov 1988; Boardman 2000; Tacheva 2000; Jordanov 2002; Megaw & Ruth 2002; Jordanov 2003; Valeva 2006; Valeva 2008, etc.). The period of Achaemenid presence, influence, diplomatic and commercial exchange in Thrace began in 520 BC with Dareios I leading his forces over the Bosporus and up the Danube, and continued to around 400 BC (Megaw [& Riith?] 2002, 488). Dareios’ intention to enlarge his possessions in Europe (i.e. in Thrace, Macedonia and Greece) involved the incorporation of territories abounding in natural resources, including in particular the gold and silver mines of Thrace. When, in the middle of the fourth century BC, Philip II took control of the mines, he was able to obtain an annual income of 1,000 talents. Where the Thracian logos intertwines with the Scythian one in his discourse, Herodotos narrates the story of Dareios’ route through European lands and details the relations between the Achaemenids and the Thracian tribes, both along the north Aegean coast and along the west Pontic. Naturally, not every aspect was related by him, and, accordingly, reconstructions of Thraco-Persian relationships have been accompanied by various hypotheses (Tacheva 2006). Paying particular attention to the lack of resistance on the part of the Thracian Odrysae and the Hellenic poleis along the west Pontic coast, investigators have identified a preliminary diplomatic and strategic organization of Dareios’ march that was not mentioned by Herodotos. The Persians just passed by them during their march against the Scythians, while the Getae, who were confronting the Achaemenid army, were defeated by the Persians (Jordanov 2003; Tacheva 2006). The gravity of Dareios’ strategic plans for control of the coastal areas of Thrace is obviously testified by the Persian towns built by him – Borysa and Doriskos, where the royal fortress developed to be the most important Achaemenid political and administrative centre. After Dareios returned to Persia, Megabazos conquered all those who refused to go over to the Persian camp, with the exception of the Thracian Satrai, the priests of Dionysos’ oracle located on Rhodope mountain. Through a system of submitted tyrants and

Abstract: At Tomis, the capital of “Scythia Minor” (Roman province) – where Ovid was exiled by Emperor Augustus in 8 p. Chr. – the roman poet wrote also “getic verses”, i.e. in the language of the Getae, one of the northern tribes of Thraciens, the forefathers of Romanians.