Provincia Thracia ἐπαρχία Θρᾳκῶν | |||||||||||
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Province of the Roman Empire | |||||||||||
46–c. 680 AD | |||||||||||
![]() The province of Thracia within the Roman Empire, c. 125 AD | |||||||||||
Capital | Heraclea Perinthus (modern-day Marmara Ereğlisi, Turkey) | ||||||||||
Historical era | Classical antiquity | ||||||||||
• Annexation of Thracian client state | 46 | ||||||||||
• Division by Diocletian | 293 | ||||||||||
• Theme of Thrace established | c. 680 AD | ||||||||||
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Today part of | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Thracia or Thrace (Ancient Greek : Θρᾴκη, romanized: Thrakē) is the ancient name given to the southeastern Balkan region, the land inhabited by the Thracians. Thrace was ruled by the Odrysian kingdom during the Classical and Hellenistic eras, and briefly by the Greek Diadochi ruler Lysimachus, but became a client state of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire as the Sapaean kingdom. Roman emperor Claudius annexed the kingdom as a Roman province in 46 AD.
From the perspective of classical Greece, Thracia included the territory north of Thessaly, with no definite boundaries, [1] sometimes to the inclusion of Macedonia and Scythia Minor. [2] Later, Thracia proper was understood to include the territory bordered by the Danube on the north, by the Black Sea on the east, by Macedonia in the south and by Illyria to the west, [2] roughly equivalent with the territory of the Thracian kingdom as it stood during the 5th to 1st centuries BC.
With the annexation of the Thracian kingdom by the Roman Empire, by order of emperor Claudius, in AD 46, Thracia (formally provincia Thracia "Thracian province", ἐπαρχία Θρᾳκῶν "eparchy of the Thracians") was established as a Roman province. After the administrative reforms of the 3rd century, Thracia was reduced to the territory of the six small provinces of the Diocese of Thrace. Later still, the medieval Byzantine theme of Thracia contained only what today is Eastern Thrace.
The Odrysian kingdom of Thrace became a Roman client kingdom c. 20 BC, while the Greek city-states on the Black Sea coast came under Roman control as civitates foederatae ("allied" cities with internal autonomy). After the death of the Thracian king Rhoemetalces III in 46 AD and an unsuccessful anti-Roman revolt, the kingdom was annexed as the Roman province of Thracia. [3]
The new province encompassed not only the lands of the former Odrysian realm, but also the north-eastern portion of the province of Macedonia as well as the islands of Thasos, Samothrace and Imbros in the Aegean Sea. To the north, Thracia bordered the province of Moesia Inferior; initially, the provincial boundary ran at a line north of the Haeumus Mountains, including the cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis in Thracia, but by the end of the 2nd century AD the border had moved south along the Haemus. The area of the Thracian Chersonese (modern Gallipoli Peninsula) was excluded from its governor's purview and administered as part of the emperor's personal domains. [4] The province's first capital, where the Roman governor resided, was Heraclea Perinthus. Thracia was an imperial province, headed initially by a procurator , and, after c. 107/109, by a legatus Augusti pro praetore . Otherwise, the internal structure of the old Thracian kingdom was retained and only gradually superseded by Roman institutions. The old tribal-based strategiai ("generalcies"), headed by a strategos ("general"), were retained as the main administrative divisions, but some villages were grouped together into kōmarchiai ("village headships") or subordinated to neighbouring cities (the two Roman colonies of colonia Claudia Aprensis and colonia Flavia Pacis Deueltensium and several Greek cities, many of whom were founded by Trajan), which were set apart. In the mid-1st century, the strategiai numbered fifty, but the progressive expansion of the cities and the land assigned to them reduced their number: by the early 2nd century, they had decreased to fourteen, and c. 136 they were abolished altogether as official administrative divisions. [5]
Septimius Severus (r. 193–211), frequently traveled through Thrace during his military campaigns from 193 to 198, first during his war with Pescennius Niger and later against the Parthians. The city of Perinthus, which backed Severus, was granted the prestigious title of neokoros twice, alongside the permission to hold crown festivals in his honor. Severus also allowed Anchialus to organize seuereia festivals, possibly as a reward for its support during the civil war. [6]
As it was an interior province, far from the borders of the Empire, and having a major Roman road (Via Egnatia) that passed through the region, Thrace remained peaceful and prosperous until the Crisis of the Third Century, when it was repeatedly raided by Goths from beyond the Danube. During the campaigns to confront these raiders, Emperor Decius (r. 249–251) fell in the Battle of Abritus in 251. Thracia suffered especially heavily in the great Gothic seaborne raids of 268–270, and it was not until 271 that Emperor Aurelian (r. 270–275) was able to secure the Balkan provinces against Gothic raids for some time to come. [7]
Generally, the provincial and urban policy of Roman emperors, with the foundation of several cities of Greek type (city-state), [8] contributed more to the progress of Hellenization than to the Romanization of Thrace. So by the end of Roman antiquity, the phenomenon of Romanization occurs only upon the Lower Moesia, while Thrace lying south of the Haemus mountains had been almost completely Hellenized. [9]
As regards the Thracian dispersion outside the borders (extra fines provinciae), from epigraphic evidence we know the presence of many Thracians (mostly soldiers) throughout the Roman Empire from Syria and Arabia to Britain. [10] [11]
Under the administrative reforms of Diocletian (r. 284–305), Thracia's territory was divided into four smaller provinces: Thracia, Haemimontus , Rhodope and Europa .
The new province of Thracia comprised the northwestern portion of the old province, i.e. the upper valley of the Hebrus river between Haemus and Rhodope and including Philippopolis (in Thracia), which had become the provincial capital in the early 3rd century. It was headed by a governor with the rank of consularis .
The four Thracian provinces, along with the two provinces of Moesia Inferior, were grouped into the diocese of Thraciae, which in turn was part of the Prefecture of the East. Militarily, the entire region was under the control of the magister militum per Thracias. [12]
Thrace is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe roughly corresponding to the Province of Thrace in the Roman Empire. Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Sea to the east, it comprises present-day southeastern Bulgaria, northeastern Greece, and the European part of Turkey. Lands also inhabited by ancient Thracians extended in the north to modern-day Northern Bulgaria and Romania and to the west into Macedonia.
Moesia was an ancient region and later Roman province situated in the Balkans south of the Danube River. As a Roman domain Moesia was administered at first by the governor of Noricum as 'Civitates of Moesia and Triballia'. It included most of the territory of modern eastern Serbia, Kosovo, north-eastern Albania, northern parts of North Macedonia, Northern Bulgaria, Romanian Dobruja and small parts of Southern Ukraine.
The Thracians were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Southeast Europe in ancient history. Thracians resided mainly in Southeast Europe in modern-day Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, northern Greece and European Turkey, but also in north-western Anatolia in Turkey.
The Odrysian kingdom was an ancient Thracian state that thrived between the early 5th century BC and the early 3rd / late 1st century BC. Located in present-day Bulgaria, southeastern Romania, northern Greece and European Turkey, it was a tribal amalgam dominated by the Odrysians that was the first large political entity to develop in the eastern Balkans. Before the foundation of Seuthopolis in the late 4th century it had no fixed capital.
Didymoteicho is a town located on the eastern edge of the Evros regional unit of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, in northeastern Greece. It is the seat of the municipality of the same name. The town sits on a plain and located south east of Svilengrad, south of Edirne, Turkey and Orestiada, west of Uzunköprü, Turkey, about 20 km north of Soufli and about 90 km north of Alexandroupoli. The municipality of Didymóteicho has a land area of 565.4 km2 and a population of 16,060 inhabitants.
In Roman literature of the early 1st century CE, the Moesi appear as a Paleo-Balkan people who lived in the region around the Timok River to the south of the Danube. The Moesi do not appear in ancient sources before Augustus's death in 14 CE and are mentioned only by three authors dealing with the Roman warfare in the region and the ethnonymic situation between mid-1st century BC and mid-1st century CE: Ovid, Strabo and Livy. Recent research suggests that a Paleo-Balkan people known as the Moesi never actually existed but the name was transplanted from Asia Minor Mysians to the Balkans by the Romans as an alternative name for the people who lived in the later province of Moesia Superior as Dardani communities. This decision in Roman literature is linked to the appropriation of the name Dardani in official Roman ideological discourse as Trojan ancestors of the Romans and the creation of a fictive name for the actual Dardani who were seen as barbarians and antagonists of Rome in antiquity.
Macedonia was a province of ancient Rome, encompassing the territory of the former Antigonid Kingdom of Macedonia, which had been conquered by the Roman Republic in 168 BC at the conclusion of the Third Macedonian War. The province was created in 146 BC, after the Roman general Quintus Caecilius Metellus defeated Andriscus of Macedon, the last self-styled King of Macedonia in the Fourth Macedonian War. The province incorporated the former Kingdom of Macedonia with the addition of Epirus, Thessaly, and parts of Illyria, Paeonia and Thrace.
The Thracian religion comprised the mythology, ritual practices and beliefs of the Thracians, a collection of closely related ancient Indo-European peoples who inhabited eastern and southeastern Europe and northwestern Anatolia throughout antiquity and who included the Thracians proper, the Getae, the Dacians, and the Bithynians.
The term Thraco-Roman describes the Romanized culture of Thracians under the rule of the Roman Empire.
Kabile or Cabyle is a village in southeastern Bulgaria, part of the Tundzha municipality, Yambol Province.
Dacia Mediterranea was a late antique Roman province, whose capital city was Serdica.
Dardania was a Roman province in the Central Balkans, initially an unofficial region in Moesia (87–284), and then a province administratively part of the Diocese of Moesia (293–337). It was named after the tribe of the Dardani who inhabited the region in classical antiquity prior to the Roman conquest. During the late Imperial period the Dardanian territory was the homeland of many Roman emperors, notably Constantine the Great and Justinian I.
Nicopolis ad Nestum or Nicopolis ad Mestum, is a ruined Roman town in the province of Thracia (Thrace) near to the modern village of Garmen on the left bank of the Mesta river, in Garmen Municipality, Bulgaria. Although “ad Nestum” is the more commonly used alternative, “ad Mestum” is the correct form of the name during the Roman period.
Cabyle or Kabile, also known as Calybe or Kalibe (Καλύβη), is a town in the interior of ancient Thrace, west of Develtus, on the river Tonsus. The town later bore the names of Diospolis, and Goloë (Γολόη).
The history of Thracian warfare spans from the 10th century BC up to the 1st century AD in the region defined by Ancient Greek and Latin historians as Thrace. It concerns the armed conflicts of the Thracian tribes and their kingdoms in the Balkans. Apart from conflicts between Thracians and neighboring nations and tribes, numerous wars were recorded among Thracian tribes.
Vitalian was a general of the Eastern Roman Empire. A native of Moesia in the northern Balkans, and probably of mixed Roman and Gothic or Scythian barbarian descent, he followed his father into the imperial army, and by 513 had become a senior commander in Thrace.
Develtos or Deultum was an ancient city and bishopric in Thrace. It was located at the mouth of the river Sredetska reka on the west coast of Lake Mandrensko, previously part of the Gulf of Burgas, and near the modern village of Debelt.
The Thracian kingdom, also called the Sapaean kingdom, was an ancient Thracian state in the southeastern Balkans that existed from the middle of the 1st century BC to 46 AD. Succeeding the Classical and Hellenistic era Odrysian kingdom of Thrace, it was dominated by the Sapaean tribe, who ruled from their capital Bizye in what is now northwestern Turkey. Initially only of limited relevance, its power grew significantly in the ancient Roman world as a client state of the late Roman Republic. After the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, Octavian installed a new dynasty that proved to be highly loyal and expansive. Conquering and ruling much of Thrace on behalf of the Roman Empire, it lasted until 46 AD, when Emperor Claudius annexed the kingdom and made Thracia into a Roman province.
The Gothic War of 248–253 took place between the years 248 and 249, as well as in the year 253. Within this war, a series of battles occurred and plundering was carried out by the Goths and their allies in the eastern territory of the Roman Empire, specifically in the Balkans. With the cessation of the payment of tribute previously made by the Roman emperor Philip the Arab to the tribes beyond the Danube, the Goths and their allies, led by King Ostrogotha and his subcommanders Argedo and Gundericus, moved towards the Roman border and began a series of attacks, including against the fortified city of Marcianopolis in Thracia. After these actions, the Goths withdrew with their spoils of war.
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