Realms of Silver and Gold

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Ares and Orpheus—the belligerent Greek war god and the greatest of mythical poets—might seem like polar opposites. But they have one thing in common: Their legendary birthplace was ancient Thrace.

That Ares was linked to Thrace is not surprising. Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides all praised the fierce, warlike Thracians, tribes that inhabited the towering Rhodope Mountains of southwestern Bulgaria and the fertile lowlands south of the Danube River. But the Thracians’ association with Orpheus and his heartrending lyre suggests that they were also skilled at the art of art.

The Thracians left a considerable visual legacy—much of it catalogued in Ancient Gold: The Wealth of the Thracians, which is also the name of an exhibition that traveled the United States in 1998 and 1999. Four essays by the Bulgarian scholars Alexander Fol, Margarita Tacheva, Ivan Venedikov and Ivan Marazov accompany the brilliant illustrations, making up the first comprehensive English-language history of Thracian art.

The story of Thrace actually begins a few millennia before the arrival of the Thracians in the Balkan Peninsula. In 1972, local archaeologists excavating near the modern Bulgarian city of Varna, not far from the western coast of the Black Sea, uncovered a stunning Chalcolithic necropolis dating to about 4500–4000 B.C. This cemetery contained nearly 300 burials stocked with over 3,000 gold artifacts: bracelets, beads, pectorals and appliqués—the oldest hoard of gold ever found in Europe.

Who were these ancient Balkans? The archaeological evidence suggests that they were nomads who had trekked across the Danube River from the north. Three of the grave pits in the Varna necropolis contained sculptures of human skulls molded from clay. One of these had a gold diadem across its forehead; earrings adorned its clay ears, five on the left ear, three on the right. Its mouth was represented by a rectangular gold plate, its eyes by gold disks. Beneath the mouth, seven gold studs were hammered into the clay, 049suggesting a lower lip in the shape of the letter U—this 6,000-year-old image appears to be smiling for posterity.

Another Varna grave yielded a stone ax-scepter and a copper spear with gold-plated handles, the oldest insignia ever found in the Mediterranean region. Clearly, fifth-millennium B.C. Varna was governed by rulers who understood how to use symbols of power to legitimate their authority. But this Varna ruler—unlike the pharaohs of Egypt, buried in eternal solitude in the Valley of the Kings—was laid to rest democratically, among his people, surrounded by rich and poor alike.

Life at Varna and elsewhere along the western coast of the Black Sea ceased toward the end of the fifth millennium B.C. The archaeological record shows an abrupt drop in population in the region. So what accounts for this period of tumultuous upheaval? Perhaps in the dawn of the Early Bronze Age, invaders entered the Bulgarian steppes and annihilated the people living there. Or, perhaps, climatic changes are to blame. In any event, by the end of the fourth millennium B.C., when Thracian tribal communities began to occupy the Balkan Peninsula, ancient Varna had disappeared—leaving only a few golden traces.

It is difficult to pinpoint when the Bronze Age Thracians migrated into the Balkan Peninsula. According to Greek sources, a people known as the Pelasgians had settled the region prior to the Thracians’ arrival—and some scholars 050associate these Pelasgians with the Thracians (and both with the Hittites).

After the arrival of the Greeks around 1500 B.C., the land of the Thracians came to be known as Mycenaean, or Orphic, Thrace. Greek myths refer to legendary Thracian kings, such as Orpheus, Rhesus and Lycurgus. Homer memorably describes King Rhesus—who, in the Iliad, is allied with the Trojans against the Achaeans of the Greek mainland:

Here are the Thracians, new come, separate, beyond

all others

in place, and among them Rhesos their king, the son of

Eïoneus.

And his are the finest horses I ever saw, and the biggest;

they are whiter than snow, and their speed of foot is the

winds’ speed;

his chariot is fairly ornate with gold and with silver,

and the armour is golden and gigantic, a wonder to look on,

that he brought here with him. It is not like armour for

mortal

men to carry, but for the immortal gods.

(Book 10.434–441, trans. by Richmond Lattimore)

Tragically, before Rhesus can prove himself in battle, the Achaeans Odysseus and Diomedes enter his camp and murder him along with 12 of his men. They also steal away with his fabled horses.

The archaeological evidence suggests that the Thracian kings of the mid-second millennium B.C.—the basilei, as Homer called them and as the Thracian kings later called themselves—were wealthy indeed. In 1924, while plowing a vineyard, Bulgarian farmers unearthed a remarkable collection of gold objects, which has since come to be known as the Vulchitrun treasure. Dating to about 1500 B.C., this hoard of 13 ritual gold vessels, including cups and lids, probably belonged to a Thracian king.

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These rulers maintained a lavish lifestyle by imposing heavy taxes on their subjects, resulting in a marked disparity in wealth between the ruling class and the Thracian masses. Later Thracian kings also profited from the Greek colonization of the Black Sea coast, which began in earnest around 600 B.C. In order to maintain a peaceful coexistence with their mighty Thracian neighbors, Greek colonists paid the basilei tribute, often hefty sums. According to the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460–400 B.C.), in one year the fifth-century B.C. Thracian king Seuthes I collected 400 talents (probably around 25,000 pounds) of gold and silver from the Greek colonies in Thrace. “It was thus a very powerful kingdom,” reports Thucydides, “in revenue and general prosperity surpassing all in Europe between the Ionian gulf and the Euxine [Black Sea]” (The Peloponnesian War 2.97.3–5).

Although Greek-Thracian relations were testy, the two cultures, existing as they did in such close proximity, could not have failed to influence one another. Greek colonists, for example, added local Thracian deities to their own pantheon. In the colony of Odessos (modern-day Varna), the Greeks adopted the deity Darzalas, the “great god” of the northern Thracian tribe 052called the Getai, as their own Theos Megas, or great god. The colonists even minted coins bearing Darzalas’s likeness: He looks like the Greek god Kronos riding a horse (the god’s horsemanship is distinctively Thracian). The Thracians, for their part, appended the names of their gods to those of Greek deities—worshiping such hybrid gods as Apollo-Derrainos, Hermes-Perpheraios and Artemis-Bendis.

Of the Thracians, Herodotus wrote: “If they were under a single ruler or could be of a single mind, none could fight them down, and they would, in my judgment, be far the mightiest of all people on earth. But such agreement is quite impossible for them; no means can bring it about, and this is the respect in which their weakness lies” (Histories 5.3). Indeed, the warring Thracian tribes who inhabited the Rhodope Mountains and the more peaceful people who interacted with Greek colonists on the coast remained throughout their history a disjointed and decentralized people; they never forged anything like a cohesive national history. Margarita Tacheva attributes this weakness to the institution of paradynasts, in which aristocratic friends of the king were dispatched to rule over Thrace’s peripheral territories. In many cases, these paradynasts challenged the authority of the king, 053successfully wresting power from him. As a result, the Thracian political landscape was often volatile and at times chaotic.

The closest the Thracians came to a unified state was the Odrysian kingdom, founded around 460 B.C. by King Teres, who subdued several Thracian tribes between the Hellespont and the Black Sea. Around 440 B.C., Teres’s son Sitalkas the Great stretched Odrysian boundaries from the Danube River to the Aegean and Black seas. During the reigns of Sitalkas and his nephew Seuthes I, the Odrysian state reached its zenith, and the king of the Odrysai was recognized as the undisputed king of Thrace. The power of the Odrysian state soon waned, but around 380 B.C., Kotys I reunified much of Thrace. Kotys’s battles, however, weakened his kingdom and left it vulnerable to Philip II of Macedon (the father of Alexander the Great), who conquered the region in 341 B.C.

The Thracians’ last independent kingdom dates to 43 B.C., when a dynasty known as the Sapaeans seized power. But conspiracies and rebellions within the royal family spelled the end of this rule. Around 45 A.D., the last Thracian dynast, Rhoemetalkaes III, was brutally murdered, allowing a weakened Thrace to become overwhelmed by the armies of the Roman emperor Claudius.

Since the Thracians did not write down their language, they left no epic poems or narrative histories. Every literary reference to them that we have comes from Greek, Roman and Byzantine writers. For a first-person account, we must ultimately turn to the Thracians’ greatest legacy: their masterfully crafted gold and silver artifacts.

According to Ivan Marazov, Thracian art is a visual language, meant to illustrate aspects of Thracian mythology. Unlike much narrative Greek art, especially vase painting, Thracian art rarely tells stories. Instead, we find portraits of deities and mythological heroes—as on third-century B.C. silver and gold appliqués depicting Athena clad in a plumed helmet and breastplate. Wide-eyed and smooth-skinned, with her hair snaking down her shoulders, Athena tilts her head as if to contemplate the fate of mankind. When mythological stories are told, they are often metaphors for aspects of Thracian daily life. A dramatic fourth-century B.C. silver phalera (a cheekpiece attached to a man’s helmet) depicts Heracles slaying the Nemean Lion—perhaps representing an initiation ritual for Thracian warriors. In this scene, Heracles wrestles with ease, his head resting gently on the lion’s mane, his left hand caressing the beast’s head. But the lion, gravely contorted, with its mouth agape and right leg pulled miserably over its head, seems to be in dire pain. This combination of ease and stress, and power and grace, charges the scene with high drama.

In the fifth century B.C., Thracian art was directly influenced by the forms 055and styles trickling west from Persia. Like the artists working for the Persian Achaemenid kings (such as Darius I [521–486 B.C.], who invaded Greece), Thracian workshops specialized in small-scale metalwork; the lack of a permanent capital city ruled out the need for monumental art. Eventually, the proximity of Greece resulted in the adoption of Greek styles (such as painted cups resembling Greek vases) and subjects (such as chariot races).

After the end of the fifth century B.C., Thracian craftsmen increasingly used images of Greek gods to represent local deities. King Kotys I (382–359 B.C.) commissioned art bearing the image of Apollo in order to imbue his kingship with an element of the divine. Four silver phialae (shallow ceremonial bowls embossed with ornamental designs) and a silver and gold oinochoe (a kind of jug) make up Kotys’s so-called Apollo set. The heavy oinochoe is chiseled with a Greek inscription: “Kotys son [or servant] of Apollo.” This is the earliest evidence of a Thracian king claiming to be a descendant of a god. Kotys probably used the jug to pour wine into the accompanying bowls, each of which contains a representation of Apollo embossed at its center.

Many commentators have disparaged the Thracians as barbaric imitators of Greek high culture. But we should remember that the Thracians and the Greeks produced art for fundamentally different reasons. Unlike classical Greek artists, Thrace’s craftsmen weren’t obsessed with harmony, beauty, order and proportion. They produced objects for specific rituals that were enacted by the kings who commissioned the works. Much Thracian art happens to inspire the eye, but this is of secondary importance to its function. Furthermore, in the sixth century B.C., Greek intellectual life was undergoing a profound metamorphosis, with clear-headed rationalism replacing a more primitive, mythological worldview. Such a development passed Thrace by; life continued on there as it had in Homer’s day. The Thracians clung defiantly to mythology and tradition. Their art is not a failed attempt to mimic the workshops of Greece but rather, as Ivan Marazov writes, something distinct and individual, “a bold negation of the classical canon.”

Ares and Orpheus—the belligerent Greek war god and the greatest of mythical poets—might seem like polar opposites. But they have one thing in common: Their legendary birthplace was ancient Thrace. That Ares was linked to Thrace is not surprising. Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides all praised the fierce, warlike Thracians, tribes that inhabited the towering Rhodope Mountains of southwestern Bulgaria and the fertile lowlands south of the Danube River. But the Thracians’ association with Orpheus and his heartrending lyre suggests that they were also skilled at the art of art. The Thracians left a considerable visual legacy—much of it catalogued […]