Word: thrace
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...great monuments, no massive tombs. They didn't even have a written language; the only accounts of their society--a confederation of tribes that never achieved true political unity and was finally absorbed into the Roman Empire in 45 B.C.--come from the Greeks and Romans, who knew Thrace mostly as a land of poets and warriors...
While it is just being rediscovered, Thrace's craftsmanship was well known to its neighbors: in Book X of the Iliad, Homer writes of the Thracian King Rhesos: "His chariot is a masterwork in gold and silver, and the armor, huge and golden, brought by him here is marvelous to see, like no war-gear of men but of immortals." But these are more than gorgeous works of art. The elaborate figures depicted by and on these objects, and the stylistic themes they reflect, give historians their first direct window onto Thracian society, commerce, religion and, in at least...
...quote belongs to Socrates, who lived in a 5th century energy crisis. After cutting down their own forests for fuel, the ancient Greeks were forced to import shipfulls of timber from Thrace and Macedonia...
...course, the great symbolic marriage during the Age of Alexander was between the rough-riding culture of Macedonia and Thrace and the silkier Persians and other Orientals. Alexander subdued them all, but he also succumbed to their styles...
...since a large part of the insight one gains today into ancient cultures in general (and that of Thrace in particular) derives from the contents of burial mounds, it is well to consider this perspective when examining these works. Heroes and heroines of Greek and Persian mythology provide the subjects for many of the works, but the treatment departs often from the subject's "typical" interpretation...