Thracian religion
The Thracians themselves did not leave any written corpus of their mythology and rituals, but information about their beliefs is nevertheless available through scarce references ancient Greek writings, as well as through epigraphic, iconographic and archaeological sources.
However, Herodotus's writings combined descriptions of Thracian religious beliefs with Greek philosophical concepts so that it is difficult to disentangle them from each other,[1] and they also described different practices belonging to specific regions or tribes, which themselves were few in number and were ambiguous in nature.
[6] Archaeological research has provided a large amount of data on ancient Thrace, such as sites including settlements and cult places, burials, shrines, various deposits, objects depicting cultic scenes, and images like tomb paintings, coins, metal vessels, plaques, and jewellery.
[12] The earliest traces of personified divine power in Thrace is from a Late Bronze Age stone slab depicting an ityphallic warrior in front of a "solar boat."
[5] The account of Polyaenus of Bithynia, that the king Cosingas of the Cebrenii and Sycaeboae threatened to ascend by ladder to Heaven to complain about their disobedience to a goddess, suggests that the Thracians envisioned their deities as inhabiting the celestial realm.
"[23] The civic coins of Kabyle depicted Phōsphoros as wearing a long-belted gown and holding a torch in each hand, and this same image was crudely carved at the peak of Zayči Vruh, that is the acropolis of the city.
[16] Bendis was also depicted using the iconography similar to the Phrygian goddess Kubeleya, and she often appeared on the votive reliefs of the Thracian Horseman, where she was represented as a standing feminine figure with a hand raised in a gesture of benediction or salutation.
[30] A jug from the Rogozen treasure had an inscription reading Κοτυς Απολλωνος παις (Kotus Apollōnos pais), which described the Odrysian king Kotys I as a child or slave of the Thracian "Apollo.
[35] By the Hellenistic period, however, the image of the Thracian Horseman disappeared from luxuries and instead became more widely used, figuring on votive stone reliefs in sacred spaces, among which were anepigraphic dedications from ordinary Thracians; this more common use of the Rider's imagery became widespread through the Thracian provinces of the Roman Empire somewhat like a "national" cult, and the Rider was given an identity of hero (hērōs), god (theos), both hero and god (theos hērōs), or even a master (kyrios), who had several local epithets:[12][36] This image of the Thracian Horseman had become one of a deified ancestor who could however be identified with various Greek gods through inscriptions, and the iconography of the votive monuments depicting it used motifs from Hellenistic heroic cults and monuments where trees marked the burial place as sacred, a serpent acted as its guardian, and a raised altar suggested a ritual to fulfil the hero's manifestation as a horseman.
[25] A representation of this goddess might be found in a greave from Vratsa, whose knee is shaped like a woman's head wearing an ivy wreath and having parallel gold stripes on her right cheek, while her body is covered with snakes, including lion-headed ones, as well as lions, and a dove.
[5] According to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Zalmoxis built a hall where he feasted and preached to the most prominent of his countrymen that he, as well as them and their descendants, would not die, but would instead go to a place where they would enjoy immortality and every good thing.
[15] Therefore, these upper class burials covered by mounds were built on the ground level or on reused embankments above it, as physical representations of the idea that those buries within them were not within the kingdom of the dead in the underworld, which was sometimes further accentuated by sumptuous stairs leading to the tombs within them.
[15] Fitting the vision of the future the deceased elites would enjoy after death, these tombs were located far from settlements of the living, and within them the dead were laid on couches or beds which were not dug into the floor and tableware was present, so that they formed a banquet scene on the inside, thus being reminiscent of the afterlife promised by Zalmoxis to his followers.
[15] As a result of the shift from belief in immortality of body and soul towards one of the "heroisation" of the deceased during the Hellenistic period, burials from this era were personalised with visible inscriptions or portraits.
[54] The native Thracian sanctuaries within Moesia were located far from towns or Roman camps, and were largely found in the foothills of the Balkan Mountain and in the less Romanised eastern part of the province.
[71] A structure tentatively identified with an altar and temple of the Thracian "Dionysos" has been discovered in the agora of Seuthopolis:[72][14] A sanctuary of the goddess Bendis was located on the Munychia Hill of Piraeus in Athens.
[66] Nonetheless, water channels and niches connected to cultic practice had been cut on Zayči Vruh before Philip II built a military tower there, and a crude image of the goddess Phosphoros wearing a long gown and holding torches in each of her hands was carved there.
Cereal grains, loom weights, spindle whorls and several figurine types were located near these alters, implying that they were used in cults relating to fertility and procreation.
[80] The fortifications located near the sanctuary area contained traces of ritual activity such as pits, altar fragments, mobile clay braziers, and figurines.
[11] According to an account by the Gothic historian Jordanes, when Philip II of Macedon attempted to besiege Odessos, Getae priests wearing white clothes and playing citharas to accompany the prayers to their gods opened the gates of the city and came out.
The kapnobatai might thus have been a caste who were separate from the rest of the population due to requirements of ritual purity, and they might have lived a form of extreme asceticism and practice of deep trance in a way similar to Indic yogīs and the Faliscan Hirpi Sorani.
[49] In his record of the meeting between the Getic Kothelas with the Macedonian king Philip II, the Gothic author Jordanes described a vast ritual procession in which participated members of different social orders, as well as musicians among whom were priests who wore white robes and played kitharai.
"[5] The king Seuthes II gave a feast during which he shared bread and meat with Xenophon's Greek army to declare his alliance, after which wine was served to the feasters in horns likely made of precious metals and gifts were exchanged.
[100] Herodotus of Halicarnassus described Thracian and Paeonian women as bringing offerings wrapped in straw to a goddess whom he identified with Artemis basileia (lit.
[54] Vessels such as gold goblets and bowls were given in dedication to chthonic deities during the Late Bronze Age in Thrace, mirrorring similar practices among the Mycenaean Greeks and the Hittites.
[54] Additionally, fragments of wall plaster and domestic hearths, as well as positions of sacrificial meals, occasionally whole animals, and even human sacrifices were also present in these sites.
[48][34] When the Scythians migrated into the Pontic Steppe in the early 1st millennium BCE, their religion absorbed the fertility cults of the agricultural Thracian populations already living there.
[56] This festival was celebrated on the 19th of the month of Thargelion, and during it both Thracian and Greek worshippers of Bendis separately led processions from the prytaneion in Athens to the Piraeus,[106][110] where was located the sanctuary of the goddess.
[47] The Roman cults in Thrace included those of Genii, Diana and Apollo, Hercules, Mercury, Ceres, Liber Pater, Proserpina, Pluto, and Silvanus, while single dedications to Victoria, Concordia and Nemesis are also attested.
[14] The god Mithras is first attested in the military camps of Moesia, and later in Thracia, although his worshippers were mostly Greeks, Romans, or West Asians, but only rarely were native Thracians.
