That vast space comprised between the rivers Strymon and Danube, and bounded to the west by the easternmost Illyrian tribes, northward of the Strymon, was occupied by the innumerable subdivisions of the race called Thracians, or Threïcians. They were the most numerous and most terrible race known to Herodotus: could they by possibility act in unison or under one dominion (he says), they would be irresistible. A conjunction thus formidable once seemed impending, during the first years of the Peloponnesian war, under the reign of Sitalkês king of the Odrysæ, who reigned from Abdêra at the mouth of the Nestus to the Euxine, and compressed under his sceptre a large proportion of these ferocious but warlike plunderers; so that the Greeks even down to Thermopylæ trembled at his expected approach. But the abilities of that prince were not found adequate to bring the whole force of Thrace into effective coöperation and aggression against others. Numerous as the tribes of Thracians were, their customs and character (according to Herodotus) were marked by great uniformity: of the Getæ, the Trausi, and others, he tells us a few particularities. And the large tract over which the race were spread, comprising as it did the whole chain of Mount Hæmus and the still loftier chain of Rhodopê, together with a portion of the mountains Orbêlus and Skomius, was yet partly occupied by level and fertile surface,—such as the great plain of Adrianople, and the land towards the lower course of the rivers Nestus and Hebrus. The Thracians of the plain, though not less warlike, were at least more home-keeping, and less greedy of foreign plunder, than those of the mountains. But the general character of the race presents an aggregate of repulsive features unredeemed by the presence of even the commonest domestic affections.[34] The Thracian chief deduced his pedigree from a god called by the Greeks Hermês, to whom he offered up worship apart from the rest of his tribe, sometimes with the acceptable present of a human victim. He tattooed his body,[35] and that of the women belonging to him, as a privilege of honorable descent: he bought his wives from their parents, and sold his children for exportation to the foreign merchant: he held it disgraceful to cultivate the earth, and felt honored only by the acquisitions of war and robbery. The Thracian tribes worshipped deities whom the Greeks assimilate to Arês, Dionysus, and Artemis: the great sanctuary and oracle of their god Dionysus was in one of the loftiest summits of Rhodopê, amidst dense and foggy thickets,—the residence of the fierce and unassailable Satræ. To illustrate the Thracian character, we may turn to a deed perpetrated by the king of the Bisaltæ,—perhaps one out of several chiefs of that extensive Thracian tribe,—whose territory, between Strymon and Axius, lay in the direct march of Xerxês into Greece, and who fled to the desolate heights of Rhodopê,