Even though the Dacians had many other deities Zalmoxis was regarded as " the one true god " by most Dacians and many Thracians.

For this purpose he laboriously collected the scattered words and allusions found in classical writers, and endeavoured to determine the relationship between the German language and those of the Getae, Thracians, Scythians, and many other nations whose languages were at the time known only through doubtfully identified, often extremely corrupted remains preserved by Greek and Latin authors.

Noteworthy is the fact that, at an early date, the ancient Greeks employed the term " Thrace " to refer to all of the territory which lay north of Thessaly inhabited by the Thracians, a region which " had no definite boundaries " and to which other regions ( like Macedonia and even Scythia ) were added.

In addition to the tribe that Homer calls Thracians, ancient Thrace was home to numerous other tribes, such as the Edones, Bisaltae, Cicones, and Bistones.

Similar to the Gauls and other Celtic tribes, most Thracians are thought to have lived simply in small fortified villages, usually on hilltops.

Yet, in general, despite Greek colonization in such areas as Byzantium, Apollonia and other cities, the Thracians avoided urban life.

He was planning to kill some more Thracians and stealing the chariot of the king with his armour when Athena advised him to back off for some other god may warn the Trojans.

The same Thracians, on other occasions, when he thunders and lightens, shoot with arrows up in the air against the sky and menace the divinity because they think there is no god other than their own.

Thracians inhabited parts of the ancient provinces: Thrace, Moesia, Macedonia, Dacia, Scythia Minor, Sarmatia, Bithynia, Mysia, Pannonia, and other regions on the Balkans and Anatolia.

Yet, in general, despite Greek colonization in such areas as Byzantium, Apollonia and other cities, the Thracians avoided urban life.

In parts of Moesia ( northeast Serbia ) the Celtic Scordisci and Thracians lived beside each other, evident in the archaeological findings of pits and treasures, spanning from the 3rd century BC to 1st century BC.

Thracians were seen as " barbarians " by other peoples, namely the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The Thracians struck their weapons against each other before battle, in the Thracian manner, as Polyaneus testifies.

On the other hand, Dr. Aris N. Poulianos states that Thracians like modern Bulgarians belong mainly to the Aegean anthropological type.

From these proto-Thracians, in the Iron Age, developed the Dacians / North Thracians of the Danubian-Carpathian Area on the one hand and the Thracians of the eastern Balkan Peninsula on the other ..

He also mentions that in other respects their customs approach nearly to those of the Thracians This is to say that Agathyrsi Scythians were completely denationalized at that time

In parts of Moesia ( northeast Central Serbia ) the Celtic Scordisci and Thracians lived besides each other, which is evident in the archeological findings of pits and treasures, spanning from 3rd century BC to 1st century BC.

to spears and swords. Thracians shunned armor and greaves and fought as light as possible favoring mobility above all other traits and had excellent horsemen.

As the Roman army was essentially based on heavy infantry, it favored the recruitment of auxiliaries that excelled in other roles, such as missile troops ( e. g. Balearic slingers and Cretan archers ), cavalry ( recruited among peoples such as the Numidians, and the Thracians ), or light infantry.

The remains of their material culture reveal close ties with Luwian other Anatolian groups, Thracians and Greek contact.

On the other hand, the Paeonians were also regarded as being related to Thracians and ancestors of the Phrygians.

:" The Trausi in all else resemble the other Thracians, but have customs at births and deaths which I will now describe.

This ambivalence is expressed also in the god's association with the Thracians, who were regarded by the Greeks as a barbarous and warlike people.

By the 4th century, the Thracians had a composite indigenous identity, as Christian " Romans " who preserved some of their ancient pagan rituals.

" The trochaic verse was quoted by the Homeric scholar Heraclitus ( commentator ) | Heraclitus, who said that Archilochus used the image to describe war with the Thracians.

" There are, indeed, various names affirmed to designate the ante-Hellenic inhabitants of many parts of Greece — the Pelasgi, the Leleges, the Curetes, the Kaukones, the Aones, the Temmikes, the Hyantes, the Telchines, the Boeotian Thracians, the Teleboae, the Ephyri, the Phlegyae, & c. These are names belonging to legendary, not to historical Greece — extracted out of a variety of conflicting legends by the logographers and subsequent historians, who strung together out of them a supposed history of the past, at a time when the conditions of historical evidence were very little understood.

A notable ruler of the East Thracians was Cersobleptes, who attempted to expand his authority over many of the Thracian tribes.

Other ancient writers who described the hair of the Thracians as red include Hecataeus of Miletus, Galen, Clement of Alexandria, and Julius Firmicus Maternus.

Strabo also mentions the expeditions against a group of Celts who lived among the Thracians and Illyrians ( probably the Scordisci ).

In 19th century, Niebuhr regards the Agathyrsi of Herodotus, or at least the people who occupied the position assigned to them by Herodotus, as the same people as the Getae or Dacians ( North Thracians ).

The new supra-nationalistic statute renamed it to Secret Macedono-Adrianopolitan Revolutionary Organization ( SMARO ), which was to be an insurgent organization, open to all Macedonians and Thracians regardless of nationality, who wished to participate in the movement for their autonomy.

Antiochus ' army was composed of 5, 000 light armed Daae, Carmanians and Cilicians under Byttacus the Macedonian, 10, 000 Phalangites ( the Argyraspides or Silver Shields ) under Theodotus the Aetolian, the man who had betrayed Ptolemy and handed much of Coele Syria and Phoenicia over to Antiochus, 20, 000 Phalangites under Nicarchus and Theodotus Hemiolius, 2, 000 Persian and Agrianian archers and slingers with 2, 000 Thracians under Menedemus of Alabanda, 5, 000 Medes, Cissians, Cadusii and Carmanians under the Aspasianus the Mede, 10, 000 Arabians under Zabdibelus, 5, 000 Greek mercenaries under Hippolochus the Thessalian, 1, 500 Cretans under Eurylochus and 1, 000 Neocretans under Zelys the Gortynian, 500 Lydian javelineers and 1, 000 Cardakes under Lysimachus the Gaul.

By 339 after defeating the Thracians in series of battles, most of Thrace was firmly in Macedonian hands save the most eastern Greek coastal cities of Byzantium and Perinthus who successfully withstood the long and difficult sieges.

These original Vlachs probably consisted of a variety of ethnic groups ( most notably Thracians, Dacians, Illyrians ) who shared the commonality of having been assimilated in language and culture of the Roman Empire with the Roman colonists settled in their areas.

Orphism ( more rarely Orphicism ) ( Ancient Greek: Ὀρφικά ) is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and the Hellenistic world, as well as by the Thracians, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into Hades and returned.

It was partly occupied by a remnant of the Pelasgi, who spoke a different language from their neighbors ( Thracians and Paeonians ); later the Greeks.

The Getae were one of the major components of the Thracians ( Herodotus 4. 93, 5. 3 ), who the Greeks held to descend from the eponymous Thrax.

After a first unsuccessful attempt at colonisation in 497 BC by the Milesian Tyrant Histiaeus, the Athenians founded a first colony at Ennea-Hodoi (‘ Nine Ways ’) in 465, but these first ten thousand colonists were massacred by the Thracians.

The Dacians, widely accepted as part of the Getae described earlier by the Greeks, were a branch of Thracians that inhabited Dacia ( corresponding to modern Romania, Moldova, northern Bulgaria and surroundings ).

Greeks, Illyrians, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls, Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement ( e. g. gladiators and sex slaves ).

To the north of Macedonia lay various non-Greek peoples such as the Paeonians due north, the Thracians to the northeast, and the Illyrians, with whom the Macedonians were frequently in conflict, to the northwest.

The first people to leave lasting traces and cultural heritage throughout the Balkan region were the Thracians.

The Thracians were generally disorganized, but had an advanced culture despite the lack of own their own proper script, and gathered powerful military forces when their divided tribes formed unions under the pressure of external threats.

Most of the Thracians were eventually Hellenized or Romanized, with the last remnants surviving in remote areas until the 5th century.

In ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians or Getae as they were known by the Greeks — a branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus range.

To the north of Macedonia lay various non-Greek peoples such as the Paeonians due north, the Thracians to the northeast, and the Illyrians, with whom the Macedonians were frequently in conflict, to the northwest.

It seems that certain elements of the cult of Dionysos and Semele were adopted by the Thracians from the local populations when they moved to Asia Minor, where they were named Phrygians.

Herodotus thought the Cimmerians and the Thracians closely related, writing that both peoples originally inhabited the northern shore of the Black Sea, and both were displaced about 700 BC, by invaders from the east.

On further questioning, Diomedes and Odysseus learnt that among the various allies, Thracians were the most vulnerable for they had come last and were sleeping apart from the others at the far end of the camp.

Vladimir I. Georgiev asserted that the Pelasgians were Indo-Europeans, with an Indo-European etymology of pelasgoi from pelagos, " sea " as the Sea People, the PRŚT of Egyptian inscriptions, and related them to the neighbouring Thracians.

What is known is that he argued that each of the phenomena had a natural rather than divine explanation in a manner reminiscent of Anaximander's theories and that there was only one god, the world as a whole, and that he ridiculed the anthropomorphism of the Greek religion by claiming that cattle would claim that the gods looked like cattle, horses like horses, and lions like lions, just as the Ethiopians claimed that the gods were snubnosed and black and the Thracians claimed they were pale and red-haired.

A prominent precursor in the formulation of this projection principle was Giambattista Vico, and an early formulation of it is found in ancient Greek writer Xenophanes, which observed that " the gods of Ethiopians were inevitably black with flat noses while those of the Thracians were blond with blue eyes.