Thracian Religion
THRACIAN RELIGION. In ancient Greece the name Thrakes referred to most of the inhabitants of the northeastern Balkan Peninsula. Their neighbors to the east were the Scythians; to the west the Pannonians, Dalmatians, and Illyrians; to the north the Balts and the Celts. The name seems to have initially belonged only to the Thracian tribes in close proximity to Greece. Later on, it was extended to related tribes to the north, just as the name Graeci, which originally belonged only to a western Greek tribe, was later given by the Romans to all the Hellenes. Nevertheless, the location of the land called Thrake was always restricted to the area south of the Balkan Mountains, principally to the Chalcidice Peninsula.
Thracian Peoples
Nearly two hundred tribes are known under the generic name of Thrakes, of which the most important were the Odrysi, who lived in what is today southeastern Bulgaria; the Dentheleti, north of Macedonia; the Serdi, in Serdica, today the region of Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria; the Bessi, west of Serdica; the Moesi, between the Balkan Mountains and the river Danube; and the Daco-Getae, who occupied a northern territory approximating modern-day Romania. Other Thracian tribes—the Thyni and Bithyni—settled in Asia Minor.
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