The district of ancient Thrace is sometimes called Romania, but more properly, Roumelia, from the Turkish name Roum Eli, “the country of the Romans.” It extended from the Euxine Sea to the river Strymon, and from Mons Hemus to the Propontis and Egean, which limits it has retained through all its vicissitudes to the present day. Byzantium, or Constantinople, is its former, as it is its present capital. The ancient Thracians were distinguished for their ferocity, and the poets have reported it as the theatre of many scenes of cruelty. Here it was that their king, Diomedes, fed his horses on human flesh, casting every stranger he found into their mangers, to be devoured alive; and here it was that the poet Orpheus, while lamenting the loss of his beloved Eurydice, was torn to pieces by the women, and his head cast into the Hebrus; and he who was represented to soothe tigers, soften rocks, and lead lofty oaks by his song, could not charm into humanity the Thracian ladies. In less fabulous times, their barbarism is unfortunately too well authenticated. It was the region where they offered up human victims as grateful offerings to their gods, and that from whence the Roman people obtained their theatrical assassins; so that the names of Thracian and gladiator are synonymous in their language: and such was the horrid delight taken in their exhibition, that from one thousand to fifteen hundred of those barbarians are reported to have been seen dead or dying, by each others swords, at the same moment, on the bloody stage, for the amusement of the assembled citizens of Rome. The original barbarians of this region were amalgamated with various people as barbarous as themselves, who were driven from their own deserts, and invited to settle there. The Bastarnæ, a nation from the banks of the Rhine, were located here by the Emperor Probus, who attempted to instruct them in the ways of civilized life; but the intractable savages rejected the instruction, and, by repeated rebellions and insurrections, devastated the country they were allowed to settle in. In the reign of Valens, another nation was transported hither. The Goths were assaulted by the Huns, whom they represented as an unknown and monstrous race of savages, and they supplicated permission to escape from their ferocity by migrating into Thrace, and occupying the vast uncultivated plains then waste and unproductive. This second immigration was permitted; and these barbarians, like the former, ungratefully rebelled against their benefactors.