The Thracian genealogical tree counts over 200 tribes, of which the most important ones are those of the Dacians, the Getae, the Ramantes people, of the Besins (the metallurgists), of the Latins, etc.
Dio Cassius would say, "let us not forget that Trajan was a true-born Thracian.
The fights between Trajan and Decebalus were fratricidal wars, and the Thracians were Dacians."
According to Mircea Eliade, the huge number of the branches coming out of the Thracian genealogical tree would amount to approximately 200. ("The Dictionary of
Religions," page. 265) Professor Dumitru Balasa drew up a chart of these and counted no less than 150 Thracian branches (see "The Country of the Sun" or "The History of Daco-Romania," Kagaion Publishing House, 1997).
Herodotus (425 BC) would write: "The Thracian people is the most numerous one of the world; the Thracians have several names, according to their specific regions, but their habits are more or less the same." (Fontes, I, 65) After the Greek victory over the Persians, at Maraton, the king Xerxes (486-465 BC) makes himself a big army among whose soldiers Herodotus mentions the
presence of the Bithynian Thracians, from the north-western Asia Minor, who are described as follows:
"The Thracians joined the expedition wearing fox caps, wearing long coats under their vivid colored capes. Their calf-high footwear was made of deerskin. They were equipped with spears, light shields and small daggers."
Ovid, in his "The Sorrowful" speaks about the Geto-Dacians in the following words:
* You can see them on horseback, riding in midroad.
* Among them you won't find anyone who does not carry a quiver, bow and arrows whose spikes are yellow with the viper's poison.
* Their voices are hoarse, their faces wild and they look like the most genuine embodiment of Mars.
* They have never had their hair or beard cut.
* Their right hand is always ready to thrust the knife that they have fastened to their hip. In 547 BC Cyrus' Persians defeated the Thracian Lydian kingdom in Asia Minor, extending their sovereignty as far to the northwest as the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara.
In the "Iliad", Homer, speaking of the Thracians, mentioned that "their golden shields made their armies shine," and that "their treasures were so precious that Priam (king of the Thracian Troy) could take back the head of his dead son from the hands of the Greeks only after offering the latter the famous Golden Thracian Cup."
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