The historical dichotomy of barbarian and
civilised societies is recurrent throughout history, and Ancient Greece was no exception
to this in its own interactions with foreign and unfamiliar peoples, constantly interacting
with those whom the Hellenes considered barbarian, whether those interactions were violent, peaceful,
or even profitable. Welcome to our video on the relationship of
ancient Greece with its many neighbors, and how they influenced each other throughout
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full membership! The part of Anatolia’s northern coast which
would later be known as Pontus experiences wet, warm summers. In the deep, dark reaches of the past, thousands
of years ago, a lone woman paces along the wooden harbour of a city bordering on the
Black Sea. That city is the mythical Themyscira - the
capital of the legendary Amazons. Narrowing her eyes toward the horizon in order
to see something which otherwise might be dismissed as a daydream or mirage, this woman,
bearing only one breast and grasping a fighting spear, finally relaxes her gaze. A single ship comes into view, sailing closer
and closer every moment amidst a midsummer downpour. In a rush, the lady makes her way across the
Thermodon river and through Themyscira until she reaches a throne room. There, the city’s queen - Hippolyta - holds
court in a chamber filled solely with other women akin to her and the makeshift sentry. Informed of their uninvited visitors, Hippolyta
strides out to meet them accompanied by a large crowd, and clad in the legendary Girdle
of Ares - Greece’s fearsome god of war. As she arrives at the harbour, the small ship
has docked. Out of it climb men - a small group of companions. One in particular, possessing a formidable
bearing, steps forward from their ranks, keenly regarded by the strange queen in front of
him. That man is Heracles, divine hero of Greek
mythology, who is serving penitence for slaying his own family in years past. To this end, he tells Hippolyta, he has slain
great beasts, captured many more, and accomplished tasks previously thought impossible. Now he comes to faraway, unfamiliar Themyscira
for but one thing - the magical girdle worn by the city’s Amazonian queen, granted to
her by Ares himself. Impressed by her guest’s riveting tale of
enterprise and daring, Hippolyta prepares to remove the girdle and hand it to Heracles
of her own free will. Then, however, a shout resounds among the
crowd. An Amazonian woman darts back and forth through
the thronging crowd of her fellows, wailing that these strangers were seizing their queen
and intended to spirit her away. Passionate to protect their ruler, a small
army of mounted female warriors charges downhill on horseback, clashing with Heracles and his
friends. Suspecting betrayal, the Greek hero slays
Hippolyta, seizes the belt by force and then sails back to Troy, his Ninth Labour complete… Apollodorus’s age-old rendition of Heracles’
Twelve Labours is obviously far from historical fact, with its inclusion of gods, heroes and
monsters. However, such an unconventional people as
the Amazonians may be a distorted reflection of a traditionally barbarian group which the
oral poet or initial ancient author may have heard of or experienced in the real world
- possibly a tribe of Scythian nomads. Whatever the inspiration behind the Amazons
was, it was typically foreign to the Greek experience. Many of their customs, such as the early removal
of one breast to facilitate combat prowess, might make your average citizen of classical
Athens or Thebes shudder in horror. Moreover, as indicated by the presence of
Ares’ divine girdle and the passion-driven cavalry charge at Heracles and his friends,
the Amazons were stereotypically warlike. The Homeric age of Greek myth neared its end
with the Trojan War, in which another barbarian group entered historical sight for the first
time - the Thracians. Under their king Rhesus, they allied with
Troy during the city’s conflict with the ‘Achaeans’, leading the latter to launch
a nighttime raid in which the Thracian king was killed. It was the first of many violent meetings
between the two peoples… When the Greek world emerged from the dark
age initiated by the end of Bronze Age civilisation, many independent city-states began rising
to prominence. These thriving political entities began deliberately
sending or accidentally spawning colonists who took to the seas and proliferated throughout
the Mediterranean world. This age of settlement and city-foundation
spread Hellenic civilisation to distant lands such as Italy, where Magna Graecia was formed,
Cyrenaica [sai’ran’ay’ika] on the Mediterranean coast of Libya, and even as far as Gaul. Closer to home, Greek settlers quickly came
to covet the productive coastal territories immediately north of the peninsula, inhabited
by Thracian tribes. Because of its proximity, it is only natural
that efforts to develop new cities on the Thracian coast began very early. Archaeological finds on the Chalcidice [hard
c’s] reveal that bold pioneers from the island of Euboea were first to settle new
cities in the north, specifically on the peninsula’s western and central arms. Although it was a part of the ‘Thracian
world’ at the time, the Chalcidice would eventually become a key extension of the Hellenic
world. Around the midpoint of the seventh-century
BC, colonists from Andros joined their southern Greek kin and created four more colonies in
the Strymon Valley - Sane, Akanthos, Stagira and Argilos. This trend of migration and settlement continued
until the entire coastline of Thrace was pockmarked by bustling Greek enclaves - both on the Aegean
and Black Seas. The scarcity of written sources renders it
difficult to know how the many inland Thracian tribes reacted to these de facto invasions
of their coast, but their response was probably different depending on the situation. The Samian settlement of Perinthos and Bisanthe,
for example, was met with bitter native resistance and hard fighting, but others probably dealt
with the Thracians through the exchange of valued goods, paying of tribute, mutually
beneficial alliance, marriage, or a mixture of more than one of these possibilities. By the end of the seventh-century BC, Athens
occupied its first colony in the area - Sigeion - located on the Asian side of the Hellespont,
but was kicked out relatively quickly. From then on, the great city focused its early
attention on the so-called ‘Thracian Chersonese’. Only a few decades after an attempt in Asia,
Miltiades the Elder embarked on a private expedition there at the invitation of a Thracian
tribe known as the Dolonkoi, who wished to use the Philaid family and their settlers
as a weapon against their local rivals. They established a mini-dynasty in the area
which lasted until the Persian invasion. Of all Greek city-states, it was with Athens
that the natives of Thrace would eventually become most familiar due to their vast political
influence over the Greek world. Athens’ strategic interest in Thrace was
focused on two primary regions: the aforementioned Chersonese, from which Black Sea trade could
be controlled, and the mineral and timber rich Lower Strymon Valley. From the moment of the first contact, resourceful
Athenian statesmen saw the potential function of these barbarians as killers for hire. In the mid 500s for example, a tyrant known
as Peisistratos hired units of Thracian mercenaries in liberal quantities to serve as his politically-detached
personal bodyguard in the city, who would deal with their paymaster’s internal enemies
when it was necessary. The presence of such distinctly foreign auxiliaries
marching around Athens as de facto enforcers appears to have had an influence on the city’s
creative types, such as potters, who seem to have enjoyed the barbarians’ aesthetic
and were inspired to recreate it. Therefore, it was roughly during the time
period of Peisistratos’ tyranny that we begin to see Thracians, in their distinctive
style, depicted on pieces of Attic art such as vases and other goods. Most of the contact between Athens and Thrace
revolved around military affairs such as these, and therefore the most easily visible cross-cultural
influence was martial in nature. One of the main contributions of the Thracian
warrior to Greek warfare was the peltast - a lightly armed skirmishing unit employed heavily
by tribes from the region. Although traditional heavily-armoured Greek
citizen hoplites were one of the most formidable troop variants of their age, the hoplon-bearing
soldiers crucially lacked flexibility and mobility. This was a tactical gulf which Thracian tribal
warriors, armed with light javelins, a crescent-shaped pelte shield, and protected by a tunic made
of wood or flax, filled brilliantly. The potential benefits to Greek armies of
supplementing heavy infantry with Thracian skirmishers was shown clearly during the height
of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and its Spartan enemy. In 425 at the Isle of Sphacteria, a trapped
force of 450 elite Spartan hoplites was assaulted by a small contingent of Athenian hoplites
in combination with a larger group of Thracian mercenary peltasts. Each time the highly-trained Spartan spearmen
attempted to advance, swarms of nimble harassing troops descended on them from all sides, harrying,
wounding, and killing the armoured soldiers with terrible ease. 300 Spartans eventually surrendered. Unsurprisingly, this way of fighting an infantry
battle led the defeated hoplites to scorn the Athenians’ reliance on arrows and stones
as ‘dishonourable’, but the results were clear - imported Thracian tactics had won
the day. Greek states closer to Thrace would adopt
the peltast to the extent that Thracian-inspired fighters would frequently be mistaken for
actual tribal mercenaries by scholars. Just as Greeks, specifically the Athenians,
frequently drew from Thrace’s reserve of eager, battle-ready tribesmen in order to
fight their wars, wealthy Thracian rulers also came to hire Greek mercenaries to compensate
for their own military shortcomings as the centuries progressed. At the turn of the fourth century BC, Athenian
mercenary general Xenophon and his band of 10,000 hoplites embarked on their famous anabasis,
escaping from an Achaemenid dynastic civil war and eventually reaching Byzantium. There, he was contacted by an agent of the
King of the Odrysians - a Thracian tribe that had managed to consolidate most of the region
- known as Seuthes II. Keen to put Xenophon’s veteran hoplites
to work for his own ends (namely: exterminating his regional enemies) Seuthes held council
with the Athenian general to discuss business. After Xenophon spoke of his situation and
willingness, the Thracian king replied by declaring that he ‘should not distrust anyone
who was an Athenian, for he knew that the Athenians were kinsmen of his, and he believed
they were loyal friends.’ Taken with Xenophon and satisfied that his
men would do nicely, the wealthy Seuthes enrolled all of them at once, supplementing his native
Thracian peltasts and cavalry with heavy infantry. Although fierce, the barbarians’ logistics
and organisation needed improvement. So, the Greeks trained Seuthes’ military
to stagger their march - slower heavy infantry would set off first, then light toops a little
while after, and then cavalry after that. By operating in such a way, all contingents
would theoretically arrive in the same place at the same time… An incident during Xenophon’s service with
Seuthes, shows just how deeply Greek culture had penetrated Thrace. During a mission, the general was marching
through a mountain hamlet at night, far into the country’s wild interior. Suddenly, however, Xenophon and his forces
were surrounded by a hostile force which recognised who he was, and was met with a shout in his
native language: “Xenophon, come on out and die like a man!” So far from ‘civilisation’, the natives
still spoke Greek. Far from the stereotype of Greeks scorning
barbarians and brushing them off as uncivilised subhumans, these interactions show a mutual
fondness between two peoples who differed in many ways, and who had been interacting
with one another for so long. Indeed, by Xenophon’s time, Thracians were
making use of imported Hellenic craftsmanship, products crafted by Greeks living in Thrace,
or even items fashioned by native Thracians who had learned to emulate the artistic techniques
of their sophisticated southern neighbors. Even language was one of the aspects of Hellenic
civilisation which proliferated north. At some of Seuthes’ court banquets attended
by Xenophon, wine-servers commonly, although somewhat unexpectedly, spoke Greek. The Thracian warlord himself, although he
used an interpreter at times, was actually able to follow most details of a conversation
in Greek personally. As in the modern world, attitudes towards
foreign people in ancient times varied based upon the individual experiencing them. In the case of Athens and Thrace, not only
were there plenty of opportunities for opinions to develop from constant diplomatic and military
missions, but also because the city of Athens actually hosted a surprisingly large number
of Thracians, both free and enslaved. One particular demographic took a harsher
view of these ‘savages’ than most others - playwrights. Euripides, for example, has a wily king of
the Thracians entrusted with the care of Priam’s young son during the Trojan War. It proves to be a bad decision, however, since
the stereotypically greedy monarch quickly slays the boy in search of his gold. A similar warning against dealing with barbarians
appears in Sophocles’ now-lost play Tereus. The titular character in this piece is a Thracian
king who tortures and rapes his Athenian wife’s sister, whom he married to secure a political
alliance. Both of these works of theatre were created
with the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War alliance between Athens and Odrysian king
Sitalkes, and visibly play on the population’s probably very real anxieties. The famous half-Thracian author Thucydides
provides us with a somewhat more sympathetic and perhaps partly biased in the other direction
view of his semi-native culture and character. In a discussion of the Greek past, he essentially
argues that the ‘barbarians’ of Classical Greece weren’t simply aliens from another
planet, but were just like Greeks in that they lived as the citizens of Athens had in
an earlier stage of development. Even representations of Thracians in Attic
art reveal interesting details about how their creators viewed this most exotic muse. They are often associated with satyrs and
other ‘Dionysian’ imagery, bringing forth an impression of rampant drunkenness and uncivilised
savagery. To contrast with this less than flattering
viewpoint, some Athenian horsemen, aristocratic by birth, depicted on a frieze in the Parthenon
are wearing patterned cloaks which are unmistakably the Thracian zeira. It has since been argued that the privileged
classes used this bold fashion statement to distinguish themselves from Athens’ common
rabble. It might have served to make the wearer some
kind of ancient edgy hipster-type, proclaiming with his clothing that he also had a wild
streak just like those barbarians. Southern Greek interactions with Thrace came
to an end with the rise of Macedon, a force with which the natives would have a far more
violent relationship. After Alexander’s death, it would take the
diadochi Lysimachus’ full effort to restrain them and bring the area under control by force. Although the Thracians are far from the only
typically ‘barbarian’ ethnic group with whom the Greeks dealt on a regular basis,
it would be impossible to cover every detail in a single video. Nevertheless, other peoples, such as Scythians
and Celts, also had a decisive impact on the course of Hellenic civilisation, and in the
daily lives of many individual Greeks. Immediately after the wars against Xerxes
I came to an end in the early 470s, Athens continued its trend of outsourcing an urban
police force. Rather than using native Athenians, the city
purchased and began utilising a unit of 300 Scythian ‘public slaves’, or ‘demosioi
hyperetai’, to perform the function in their place. These so-called toxotai, armed with a composite
bow and recognisably clad in traditional Scythian dress, carried out their duties under the
authority of judicial magistrates known as the Eleven. For example, they might be sent to accompany
executives of the citizens’ council as they arrested a criminal, put down disorderly civilians,
handle prisoners, and stand guard at the Acropolis, among other functions. After around 390, all references to these
Scythian slave-enforcers fade from history, leaving us to conclude that, for whatever
reason, Athens simply decided that they weren’t worth the money or the hassle. It is possible that the democracy’s citizens’
dislike of being policed by foreigners finally tipped the scales. This gently simmering resentment can be sensed,
again, through the lens of Greek theatre. In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, an Athenian
statesman accompanied by four toxotai confronts a group of angry women who have assembled
on the Acropolis. Although ordered to arrest and tie up the
women, the Scythians are shown to be inept barbarians and fail to do so - instead being
met with jeers and insults from the ladies. Presumably, the play’s audience was meant
to jeer as well upon witnessing the scene. Cooperation and conflict, interaction and
interference, are the qualities that define the relationship of the Greeks, and specifically
the rich Athenians, with their tribal neighbors. It was often implied by ancient scholars that
the brilliance of Hellenic culture, the strength of its warriors, and resilience of its form
was inspired by a clash between Greeks and the barbarian. However, while the Greeks themselves constructed
a culture almost unrivalled in the ancient world, its story could not have been told
without the barbarians amongst them. It could have been a Thracian king importing
Hellenic pottery to decorate his citadel, a toxotai going about his work of enforcing
peace in Athens, or a craftsman who caught a glimpse of Thracian clothing and had a eureka
moment, but all of them were influenced by and influenced the Greeks in equal measure. We are planning more videos on the Hellenic
world, so make sure you are subscribed to our channel and have pressed the bell button. We would like to express our gratitude to
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