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- [00:00]
Tristan Hughes
Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes and if you would like the Ancients ad free. Get early access and bonus episodes. Sign up to History Hit With a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary All About Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
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Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a.
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Tristan Hughes
Thing Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless 3030 better to get 30 better to get 2020 better to get 2020 better get 15151515 just 15 bucks a month sold.
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Ryan Reynolds
Give it a try at mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month New customers on first 3 month plan only taxes and fees extra speed slower above 40g detail you can trust.
- [00:57]
Tristan Hughes
Podcasts to deliver results for your business 80% of podcast listeners say they'll consider a brand recommendation by their favorite host. Even more impressive, 88% have taken action because of a podcast ad. If you're looking to connect with highly engaged audiences, now's the time to dive in. Download podcast Pulse 2024 for all the latest insights and see how podcast ads can drive real results for you. It's the entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is an episode that many of you have been clamoring for, both in recent polls that we've released on Spotify and in emails that you've sent to me. A regular request for an Ancients episode over the last year has been the Thracian. Now I'm very excited to say that that is what we're covering today. The Thracians were a culture that lived in Eastern Europe, largely in what is today Bulgaria. We hear a lot about them from the ancient Greeks, with whom the Thracians had a lot of contact throughout ancient history. They feature in Greek mythology. They are mentioned in Homer's epic poem the Iliad, with a particular Thracian king siding with the Trojans during the Trojan War. Indeed, the Thracians are linked to many of the biggest names from Greek and Roman history. Spartacus, the world's most famous gladiator who led a revolt against the Romans. Well, he was a Thracian. Now, the Thracians are an extraordinary ancient people, often overlooked compared to the Greeks and Romans, and yet archaeology is revealing a lot about them and how they lived today. We're going to shine the ancient spotlight on the Thracians and give you a taster of just how interesting they are. Our guest today is Dr. Zosya Archbold, senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool and an expert on the Thracians and their archaeology. We cover everything from Thracian expertise as cavalrymen and the strange weapons some of them wielded, like this large bladed weapon called the Rhompheia, to great archaeological treasures of Thrace such as the Panagirishti treasure and the remarkable bronze statue head of a powerful ruler called Seuthes iii. There's a lot to talk about, so let's get into this long awaited episode. Zosya, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [03:25]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Thank you. Thank you, Tristan. I'm really pleased to be contributing something on this exciting topic.
- [03:31]
Tristan Hughes
Well, it is such an exciting topic and one that has topped a couple of our recent polls. The so called Thracians. Now, Zosya, to start it all off, big question. Who were the Thracians?
- [03:42]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Well, indeed, we can start with Homer. This is one of our first written sources about people called Thracians. And the Homeric poems refer to Thracians as allies of the Trojans and therefore enemies of the Greeks from the mainland. But if we look at these references in detail, we can see that most of the information comes from seafaring sources, people who actually crossed the Aegean Sea and met other people at the other end. But this sort of writing reflects a real curiosity about the north, the north, the exciting north, which is part of the unknown territory of Europe. And we have the goddess Hera stepping down from Mount Olympus and Flo floating across the sea towards the river Hebros. So there's a rather mystical feel about what this territory was like and who lived there. And we hear about some of the heroic figures from the participants on the Trojan side. And maybe the most spectacular is the leader Risos Rezos, with his wonderful decorated armor and horse gear. And this is of course something that we actually find in real burials, but rather later on, several hundred years later, when we have princely tombs that have been excavated in Aegean Greece and in Bulgaria that reflect these spectacular figures. And some of the plays written in athens in the 5th century also reflect a little bit of that spectacular glory. The wonderful horses, the beautifully decorated horse gear, and these extraordinary leaders. So we get a little bit of that reflection that first appears in the Homeric cones.
- [06:06]
Tristan Hughes
So many different things there that I love to delve into first before we then explore various aspects of Thracian society. Archaeology and so on. The first thing is, of course, you mentioned, like, the Trojan War and Homer and Greek sources and Athens, the Aegean Sea and so on. So are Greek sources, ancient Greek writings? Are they a key source of information for people like yourself researching the Thracians and that area of Thrace today? They seem to be fascinated by them.
- [06:35]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Well, there are various Greek writings that refer to Thracians. Some of them refer to Thracians as heroes, like the Homeric poems. The comedies that were written in Athens in the second half of the 5th century refer to Thracian slaves. So we get a full spectrum of society in Greek sources. But probably the most important writer about Thrace was the historian Thucydides, because Thucydides was connected with this region. So Thucydides was one of those rare authors who wrote about the history of his own lifetime. So he was writing about contemporary affairs. And he himself had family connections with parts of Thrace that are now in northern Greece. Around the great silver mountain, Pangaeon. He had a silver concession, a mine concession there. So he knew quite a lot about the area. He knew a lot about the people. But he doesn't tell us a great deal about these local connections. He mainly tells us about the big picture, the politics of his day, the international relations. And that means the Athenians, the Spartans, and of course, these various Thracian rulers who were referred to in his history. And top of the list is King Sitalcain, who invaded the Halkidic peninsula of northern Greece at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. He was allegedly an ally of the Athenians. So this was an alliance which united one side of the war, the Peloponnesian War, with these foreign troops. But the Athenians got a little bit scared because suddenly there were literally hundreds of thousands of people moving south. So this was a bit of a no, no for the Athenians, and they decided to pull out of this alliance rather quickly. But what we do learn from later affairs, towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, and from various inscriptions that survive from the 5th and the 4th centuries BC is that the international power, the big movers and shakers of contemporary affairs, really did feel that they needed to find some kind of political alignment with the rulers of this region, because they were big players. And it's mainly the inscriptions that tell us about this history, because a lot of the writers that we read or that dominate this period were not terribly interested in the locals. They were interested in locals who came to them, who happened to be either landowners or Slaves, but they weren't terribly interested in political affairs. So apart from Thucydides and Xenophon, who we might say something about in due course, most contemporary writers are not terribly interested in local affairs. They're interested in the region. If some of their people go there, if a prominent political figure like Alcibiades goes off and occupies a couple of forts on the coastline near the Hellespontine Straits, then they're interested. But otherwise, it sort of rather falls below the race.
- [10:44]
Tristan Hughes
So the Thracians have this interesting relationship with the Greeks. And those inscriptions are interesting, aren't they, Zosia? I mean, I think I remember one where the Athenians are honoring a certain Thracian king who's aligned with them. But as you say, that kind of those people on the edges of what they would see as the civilized world, and I stress what they would see, like kind of on the edges of the Greek world, how to deal with them, Are they a threat? Can they be an ally? How that differs from time to time. The whole home region of the Thracians, this area of Bulgaria today, was it a land in antiquity that was very suitable? That helps you understand why there was such a large population of people called Thracians who lived there at that time. Was it a rich area of the world?
- [11:29]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Well, from an economic point of view, it was. It was and is rich agricultural land. When I first went to do field work in Bulgaria, in the last days of Communist government in Bulgaria, there were lots of very well organized collective farms that produced intensively grown food. And this is in the Thracian plain, the central part of Bulgaria. And Bulgaria was a very big exporter of agricultural produce to the Soviet Union, but also to parts of North Africa, other regions of the world, and indeed to the uk the local railway repair works were involved in negotiations with British Rail over freight production. So we have two foundations, really, of economic success. One is this agricultural one, and the other one is about minerals, the mineral exploitation of the region. So it's a very good source of a wide range of minerals, and some of them continue to be exploited on a significant scale today. But in antiquity, it was about silver and iron as well as copper. These were really the prime minerals, and that's what people were very interested in getting from this region.
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Tristan Hughes
And did they get that from the mountain ranges? Because I got in my notes things like the Rhodope Mountains. I might completely mispronounce that. But were the mountain ranges where those rich minerals were extracted from?
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Dr. Zosia Archbold
Well, in order to determine where metals come from you've got to understand the geology and you've got to be able to match objects that are made from particular metals to particular sources. And there are various ways in which that can be done scientifically. But we can be reasonably sure that copper was mined in eastern Bulgaria, in the lowland regions and the upland regions that are in the area between European Turkey and Bulgaria. The mountains that are just north of that border with Turkey and further west into the central Bulgarian region, these are the copper mines of that area. Rhodopi is a great source of silver and other minerals that are very good to exploit. Iron was probably produced in central Bulgaria and this is one of the things that I've been investigating during my field research. Iron objects are produced in very large numbers in central Bulgaria and this probably reflects local exploitation of particular iron deposits within that region as well as gold. River gold is one of the most important minerals from central Bulgaria as well. So these are the prime areas that we know about. Other areas were probably also exploited, but we don't know as much about them.
- [15:04]
Tristan Hughes
Do we know much about the emergence of the Thracians? Does it go back to the second millennium bc? Is it a powerful place back then? I mean, what do we know about going that far back when talking about, shall we say, like the early Thracians and who they were?
- [15:19]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
So we know quite a lot about the region, the South East European area, the Balkan region in the Neolithic Age. The Neolithic is the period of the first settled farming communities in southeast Europe. And there's been a big project recently looking at the development of domesticated plants in this whole area. And it's been an excellent project. It's called plant cult and it has really discovered the shared characteristics of plant domestication in the whole of this region. And that includes the Greek peninsula and the rest of the East Balkan area. So this is the foundation of southeastern Europe in terms of settled communities. And on the basis of this very successful plant and animal domestication, you have the emergence in the early Bronze Age of settled communities living on tells these man made mountains that represent the best known settlements of the Bronze Age, that's the period between the 4th and the 2nd millennium BC is more or less the period of the Bronze Age. And in the second millennium there are some very close connections between this area and northwestern Turkey. So the area of ancient Troy, there is a commonality of various cultural features. So there clearly were connections between these regions and if anything, recent research has reinforced those connections. So it may be that the stories that we find in written poems such as Homer do reflect something about that Bronze Age background, but the poems themselves reflect a later period, the early first millennium B.C. when we find ships traveling regularly up to the north, mainly merchant ships, and the frequency of these visits seems to be what generates the stories. So once these become regular forms of traffic, then we get these stories emerging and they're connected with the difficult journeys right up into the Black Sea. So you know, the Argonautic legends are very much part of that background.
- [18:25]
Tristan Hughes
Jason and the Argonauts, yes, because it's.
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Dr. Zosia Archbold
Connected to the stopping off points along the North Aegean coast, as well as the difficulties of actually penetrating the dangerous waters of the Bosporus.
- [18:42]
Tristan Hughes
Of course, because I say you do start to see all those Greek cities and colonies starting to be constructed, as you say, along the Aegean, Bosphorus and into the Black Sea. So there'll be interactions with the local people, with the Thracians, and hence how they become such an interesting part of Greek thought for some Greek writers. As you've mentioned earlier, Zosha.
- [19:13]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History hit Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:42]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's Unlimited Wireless for $15 a month. Now you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 per month new customers on first 3 month plan only taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.
- [20:22]
Tristan Hughes
You mentioned before recording how you thought that there might be one aspect of Thracian society that people might think of straight away. I think I know what you're talking about because I played Rome total war growing up, and it seemed to come up quite a lot then. Did the Greeks perceive the Thracians as being very I think part of the.
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Dr. Zosia Archbold
Problem with this question is that we use a few small statements in a small number of writers and big them up. And then we think that that's reality. But the warlike aspect of Thracians that comes across, it's a very strong subtext, is partly connected to people who are thought of as a bit dangerous, actually quite powerful. You need to take them seriously. And much of that sense of warlikeness is reflected in the journey that Xenophon the historian, made to become a mercenary of the Prince Euthis and spend about a month or so as a mercenary with some of his fellow Greeks who were trying to get back to Greece from Asia Minor.
- [21:43]
Tristan Hughes
And this was in Thrace. That was a Thracian ruler. Was that Zosia?
- [21:46]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Yes, yes. Euuthes, who appears in Xenophon's Anabasis, where Xenophon recalls how the Greeks, after being defeated by the Persian king, the Persian prince who managed to defeat his brother Cyrus, all the supporters of Cyrus had to somehow get away. Some of them were killed, but some of them got away. And Xenophon was one of them. And he tells us all about their adventures trying to get back to Greece. And on the final leg of their journey, they try and get across to Byzantium. And the Spartan governor of Byzantium doesn't want to know them. He wants them to get away. So this is 400 BC, and Xenophon and his chaps decide, well, we can't get back to Greece yet. We might as well make the most of this and go and fight for this Prince Euphie's defeat. A few villagers using our good Greek infantry tactics and armor and get a bit of a bonus in the process. So they get paid for their services. And Xenophon is sort of in two minds about how he describes this, because on the one hand, he wants to show how he and his men got into some scrapes and managed to escape from them, because he's telling all his friends back home about what it's like. And at the same time, he's a little bit embarrassed about being a mercenary in this area. So he bigs up what the mercenaries do and downplays the opposition.
- [23:39]
Tristan Hughes
But it's interesting, isn't it? He said that portrayal of the Thracians as warlike, as you say, he's just. Actually, that portrayal that has come down to us is the taking of a few small mentions in sources like, I think one calls them having hearts of Ares and stuff like that. But keeping on that mercenaries vibe is there at clear times when the Thracians, certain Thracians, do go out and serve as mercenaries, and I think of lightly armed javelin Men like a felt cap. Or in some cases, you hear of some wielding this large kind of curved sword, polearm kind of thing, which seems to be such a powerful image, at least in my brain. But I mean, do you hear case of at least of Thracian warriors going out and fighting in the world, I guess as mercenaries?
- [24:22]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Well, they weren't just mercenaries. They were regular soldiers. The history of Alexander the Great is peppered with Thracian detachments. And when people talk about Thracian fighters, they sort of forget about all those Thracians who went off and fought with Alexander the Great. Well, what about them? What were the strengths of Thracian soldiers? Well, particularly cavalry. Cavalry fighting was quite difficult. We're dealing with a period where people don't have the sort of equipment that more modern cavalries have. They didn't have stirrups, so they were using their real experience as horsemen to fight effectively from a horse without falling off. And that's not something that you can learn quickly. So successful cavalry warfare is something that we associate with northern Greece and with the Balkans. And there are various cavalry armies that were really very effective in the period before the Roman Empire. We hear about the Illyrians who defeated Philip II of Macedon's older brother and killed him off. That was a tremendous defeat for the Macedonians. And they had to improve their cavalry tactics. And at the same time, you've got Thracians being very effective cavalrymen. And that's one of the reasons why we have Thracian units in Alexander's army. They do enhance the cavalry capacity of those troops that cross over into Asia to fight the Persians. So this is one of the reasons why we hear about lots of Thracians fighting for the successor kings. We get Thracians in Egypt who were given land by the Ptolemies because they were effective military fighters, because these were people who were there not just as settlers. They were there also because of their military skills. And we have Macedonians like that, and we also have Thracians. So when we think about Thracians, we shouldn't just be thinking about the unusual equipment, which is certainly true. It's. It's not been very easy to find examples of this. These sorts of weapons. But they're on fire, I think, is the type of very sharp and long javelin that you were referring to. So really, this is part of the story of Thracian warfare that hasn't really been discovered yet. It would be great to know more about those sorts of tactics. And Thracian horsemen continued to be of Great interest in the period when the Romans expanded into the Balkans. And we find Thracians and then Sarmatians all over the place because they're jolly useful cavalrymen. So cavalry fighting was really one of the key areas. And the other one was light armed troops who could provide slingers or essentially guerrilla tactics.
- [27:56]
Tristan Hughes
And I guess also that position, the position of Thrace, isn't it? You have to the north, the great steppe and the Scythians. And you mentioned the Sarmatians as well, these great horse riders, the Greeks to the south, Persians and Asia to the east. You can see that influence from all of those cultures. And with the landscape, the political landscape. Zosha, you've mentioned before, kind of various kings. It doesn't seem to be there's one Thracian people. They're divided up between various smaller powers, entities in that region. But was there ever a time where Thrace. Were there particular peoples who were more powerful in the region that could potentially have united Thrace into, I guess, one political identity?
- [28:37]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Herodotus does adopt this phrase, that if all the Thracians united together, they would be more powerful than anyone else. It is a very powerful anecdote. The period between the middle of the 5th century and the time of Philip II of Macedon, so the middle of the 4th century, this is a period when a large part of Thrace between the Danube and the Aegean coastline was effectively united under a single dynasty, the Odrysian kings. And this was partly in response to what happened in the region during the Persian wars, because the Persian wars were really very stressful and damaging for all the European dwellers of southeastern Europe. There are some traces of massacres in Romanian territory around the city of Histria, which suggest that the Persians might have been much more vindictive towards those who did not show them absolute sovereignty. So the period between 500 BC and the successful battles in 479 BC, this is a period which is extremely problematic for all the people who found themselves effectively enslaved by Persian authorities. So the reaction to that was to seek some sort of political unification. There was a willingness on the part of various group political groupings to unite. And that may have been a stronger sense of unity than there actually was in much of the Greek mainland, where many Greeks continued to fight amongst themselves. And of course, some of them were fighting on the Persian side in the Persian wars. Some of them were forced into that. Some of them took advantage of that. So the Persian wars were a very difficult time, and they did create particular new perspectives on international affairs before that time there hadn't really been any incentive to create any sort of unitary authority. And we find after the Persian wars, the strengthening and enlargement of Macedonia under Alexander I and Thrace a little bit later, but in the immediate aftermath, we're not quite sure exactly how that panned out, but the same process seems to have taken place in much of the area south of the Balkan range. And this seems to have been really quite a stable authority. There are lots of historians who think of it as a rather unstable state of affairs, but there is no evidence for this instability. It's largely imaginary, given its size and.
- [32:29]
Tristan Hughes
Its strength and its duration. How important and significant does the Yedrysian Kingdom become over that next century or so, where you see, you know, Alexander the Great ultimately coming to power in nearby Macedonia, the fall of the Persian Empire? I mean, the Etruscan kingdom witnessing all of these things, its rulers witnessing all of these things. How significant a player was this kingdom in the political affairs, I guess in the Mediterranean world affairs over that next couple of centuries from the Persian wars onwards.
- [33:02]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
We don't have much evidence of this in written records, but what we do have is lots and lots of archaeology, and it's the archaeology that really gives us most of our information about what was actually going on. And this period between about 450onwards is one of real economic boom in this region. And that's reflected in commercial relations, which means import and export of various commodities. The import of wine and olive oil, the export of iron objects, weapons, tools and all kinds of other products. Probably textiles, the textiles that appear on Athenian vases, the sort of nice patterned cloaks. These are the kinds of things that were likely exported as well as produced in large quantities for internal consumption. So it's a very lively traffic. And we see this in those places that have been excavated intensively. I've been associated with a place called Pistiros, which is bang in the middle of the Thracian plain and was a very big city that was importing and exporting various kinds of commodities.
- [34:38]
Tristan Hughes
So we should imagine with this, with this kingdom there were these great kind of centers, almost kind of urban centers, idea that being one of them. I have in my notes. I'd love to talk about Soothopolis a bit later, which seems extraordinary, but like the archeology from this period is revealing a lot about that whole structure and I guess kind of the wealth and riches of the Drizzian kingdom too.
- [35:00]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Yes, yes, you've mentioned Soothopolis, and Soothopolis is. Is one of those key sites named after the ruler Seuthes iii, who fought Lysimachus, one of Alexander the Great's successors in the region. And there is also Hellis, the modern name Sporianovo. This is a big fortress city, very extensive territory, which is perhaps the site of or the headquarters of another opponent of Lysimachus, namely Dromichaites. So we have a number of excavated places that we can point to. But it's worth saying that many cities were created in this period that haven't survived. And that's true of Macedonia as it is of Thrace. And this is simply because cities were a relatively ephemeral phenomenon for a long time. And it's only the ones that have survived into the Roman Empire that we've really paid attention to, because they've survived. And there are lots of reasons why they survived. But the survivors conceal a lot of what we would like to know about earlier periods. So the critical phase before the Roman Empire, what we call the Hellenistic age, between the third and the first centuries bc. This is a largely unknown period and not just in Thrace, also in many other parts of the Aegean. We'd like to know more about it. And this is true of the Levant, the great cities. I mean, you think about Antioch on the Orontes. What do we really know about Antioch in this period? We'd love to know more. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors From History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors. Murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title really. So follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [37:38]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two year contracts, they said, what the are you talking about, you insane Hollywood? So to recap, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only taxes and fees, extra speeds lower above 40 gigabyte c. Details.
- [38:18]
Tristan Hughes
I hope you don't mind. I would like to ask quickly about one particular set of objects discovered from Thrace I think Adrisian Thrace, because they are extraordinary and once again, I might butcher the name of it, but the Panagirusti treasure. Yes, because this feels an extraordinary example, doesn't it, Zosha?
- [38:37]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
It is. It's a fantastic find. I wrote a master's thesis about the Panagyurishte treasure and it is. It's a very, very extraordinary find. It was displayed in the British Museum just over a year ago.
- [38:53]
Tristan Hughes
It's the Persian Greece exhibition. Yes.
- [38:55]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
It's also part of the finds that are on display at the Getty Research Institute at the Getty Villa in Malibu. The Panagyriste treasure is a collection of drinking vessels made entirely of gold. This is absolutely extraordinary because very little gold tableware survives from any period. We hear about Renaissance gold plates and things, but you don't often find them surviving. They've usually been melted down. So the Panagirishta treasure is unique because of this factor. And it was buried until the late 1940s, so it survived accidentally. But what is even more extraordinary about it is the way in which particular vessel forms are connected with relief imagery, imagery represented in repousse figures. So we have animal representations, we have figure scenes from Greek mythology. Now, it is worth considering whether some of these myths were shared myths rather than being exclusively Greek myths even to suggest this is a little bit unusual. But many myths from the remote past were Indo European myths. They weren't exclusively Greek or Italian or Anatolian, but they take different forms in different linguistic traditions. And here I'd like to point to another truly remarkable piece of archaeology, which is the head of King Seuthes iii.
- [40:58]
Tristan Hughes
What an object this is. Type in the head of Seuthes iii. It is extraordinary.
- [41:02]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
It is. It's one of the finest bronze portrait heads and indeed one of the earliest surviving portrait heads from antiquity. And it was found in the entrance to a tomb, a tomb that was not looted and therefore contained a lot of the original artifacts. But this head originally belonged to a complete statue, and the head was cut off rather roughly, presumably after the death of SES iii, and placed in the entrance of the tomb. So why cut off the bronze head of a statue and put it in a tomb? Because it then becomes a severed head. And in a recent article, which is freely available online, I have suggested, and I'm not the first person to suggest this, but I think it's an independently suggested thing, I've suggested that the reason why this head was cut off the statue was because then you have the full power of the individual concentrated in this head, and it becomes a prophetic head, like the head of Orpheus that sang after death. And there are many European traditions. There's the Irish head of Brahan. There are other versions of these severed heads that become prophetic. And that's what I would suggest this head is doing. It is becoming a prophetic head.
- [42:45]
Tristan Hughes
It is so interesting, and what a remarkable artifact that is. And it's lovely to hear that there's still more and more research going into it, because it is one of the. One of my favorite artifacts from antiquity. So thank you, Zosya, for mentioning the head of Seuthes iii. I think we will move on now to that last big part of this discussion, which is something you've already hinted at earlier. You said that head was found at the entrance to a tomb. We can't talk about the Thracians and not talk about death and burial. I mean, what do we know about the Thracians and how they buried their dead? Zosia?
- [43:19]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Quite a lot, because tombs are one of the archaeological phenomena that's been investigated extensively in the region that we're looking at. One of the commonest forms of burial for distinguished individuals, but also ordinary people was the earthen mound, the tumulus.
- [43:44]
Tristan Hughes
The tumulus, yes.
- [43:45]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
And if you travel around the East Balkans, you will see lots and lots of these mounds. And many of them are collective burials, but some of them are individual burials. So typically, the ruling class, and we're not talking about a narrow range of individuals, we're talking about quite a wide social group. People who had power regionally and locally would be buried under an urban male. And this is partly connected to ideas about the afterlife and partly to the status of those individuals in life. Those who had leadership responsibilities are buried in these earthen mounds. And sometimes they're buried simply in a pit in the ground, and sometimes inside a built stone sarcophagus or chamber. And the purpose there is to enable that individual to continue an existence after death. And we have some hints about what that otherworldly existence involves. But one of the things that it is thought to involve is coming back. Coming back as a prophet or as a seer or some sort of unearthly return.
- [45:20]
Tristan Hughes
Are those the types of burials, the ones that survive like that? I mean, I have in my notes this extraordinary. The Thracian Valley of Kings, this Valley of the Roses today, and names like Kazanluk, and elaborate burials with wall paintings in and everything. The tombs that you have to examine today, Zosha, are they largely for the elite? For elite Men and women, or. I mean, do we know much about everyday burials in Thrace, or is it just those great tumuli that are the ones that have survived?
- [45:50]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
We do have a lot of information about elite burials, and when we talk about the elite, as I said, we're actually talking about quite a large social group because they seem to represent local leadership, dynasties or social groups. But there are collective burials, there are secondary burials within these tumuli, not necessarily regularly, but they do exist. On the other hand, we know very little about the burial of what we would call ordinary people. We don't have extensive cemeteries until later in the Hellenistic age and the Roman Empire, and even then they're not really as common as we would like them to be. So there's a lack of comparison. We don't quite know what to do with this. What happened to everybody else? Were they actually buried in some other manner? We just don't really know enough about that. That's something else that people ought to think about, not just thinking about the elite.
- [47:00]
Tristan Hughes
I must ask quickly, then, about the Romans when they come to Thrace, because my mind will think of Spartacus the slave, and saying that he was a Thracian, or with gladiators, that class of gladiator called a Thracian. Does Thrace remain important and its people remain important after the Romans take over?
- [47:20]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Oh, certainly. It was a major province and the major centres, the big urban foci of Thrace, actually flourished to an extraordinary degree, and Thrace was even the source of some of the later emperors. So this partly reflects the way in which the eastern Mediterranean was refocused in response to external threats. But under the Roman Empire, Thrace is a very successful region. It's a province that continues to flourish. It has very big cities, it has an educated and successful population. So this really takes forward that whole history of urban development that began much earlier. There are Thracian gladiators who fight in a particular way, and this is a bit different in style from what we find earlier. But perhaps the development of the Thracian gladiator owes something to the story of Spartacus and his great reputation as a leader of the slave revolt in 73 to 71 BC. The story of Spartacus has obviously been an enormous inspiration for people then, and since. I was surprised how many references there are, even in Cicero to Spartacus, you don't expect the name Spartacus to have become a rather everyday reference amongst certainly educated Romans. And I think that does reflect the way in which Spartacus clearly had an effect even on Those who considered the slaves to be people who should be put down as Spartacus made that impression. Kirk Douglas was a very worthy representative of that tradition and I think he has continued to live in people's imagination as a visual representation of how we imagine Spartacus. And if you only think of all the football teams that have Spartac in their names, I'm astonished that this has continued to have such an impact. And it has had tremendous afterlife in politics, Karl Marx, who thought of Spartacus as a hero, and an enormous industry in the communist era that generated works about Spartacus the proletarian leader. So the afterlife of Spartacus has been a tremendous one.
- [50:27]
Tristan Hughes
Zosia this has been a fantastic chat. We've covered lots of aspects of Thracian society and Thracian ancient history and big figures dotted in there from Rhesus the king in serving in the Trojan War to Seuthes iii, an extraordinary head to finishing off with the Thracian gladiator Spartacus. I could ask so many more questions about this, but we have to wrap up now. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.
- [50:53]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Thank you very much, Tristan. It's been a pleasure.
- [50:58]
Tristan Hughes
Well, there you go. There was Dr. Zosia Archibald giving you a taster. An overview of the story of the Thracians and their remarkable archaeology and just how interesting this ancient culture is often overshadowed by the likes of Greece and Rome. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. We'll also put on Spotify a new poll for which overlooked civilization of the ancient world you would like us to cover next. Last time the Thracians topped that pole. Let's see what tops the poll this time. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com subscribe.
- [52:08]
Ryan Reynolds
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's the show that we recommend. Hi Jenna.
- [52:17]
Tristan Hughes
Hi Danny.
- [52:18]
Ryan Reynolds
We are back for season six of a very merry iconic podcast here in 2024. It's good to be here. I'm so excited. We're gonna be covering holiday classics. We are diving back into the Halloweentown franchise for our annual Halloween episode. We're gonna be covering part two, Calabar's Revenge. Calabar's Revenge. We're also gonna be talking about miracle on 34th Street. I also have a Hallmark Christmas movie coming out this year, Deck the Walls Day After Thanksgiving. Maybe we'll cover that.
- [52:43]
Dr. Zosia Archbold
Yes.
- [52:43]
Ryan Reynolds
As well as diving into some of these other seasonal films that we love so much and others that sometimes we don't love so much.
- [52:50]
Tristan Hughes
Yeah.
- [52:50]
Ryan Reynolds
And we'll talk about it, hash it out. So what do we always say? Pour yourself some eggnog and enjoy a very merry podcast. Coming holiday season 2024. Maybe even out now. So check your podcast feeds. ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
- [53:09]
Tristan Hughes
Acast.com.