to escape the ignominy of being dragged along amidst the compulsory auxiliaries of the Persian invasion, forbidding his six sons to take any part in it. From recklessness, or curiosity, the sons disobeyed his commands, and accompanied Xerxês into Greece; they returned unhurt by the Greek spear; but the incensed father, when they again came into his presence, caused the eyes of all of them to be put out. Exultation of success manifested itself in the Thracians by increased alacrity in shedding blood; but as warriors, the only occupation which they esteemed, they were not less brave than patient of hardship, and maintained a good front, under their own peculiar array, against forces much superior in all military efficacy.[36] It appears that the Thynians and Bithynians,[37] on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, perhaps also the Mysians, were members of this great Thracian race, which was more remotely connected, also, with the Phrygians. And the whole race may be said to present a character more Asiatic than European, especially in those ecstatic and maddening religious rites, which prevailed not less among the Edonian Thracians than in the mountains of Ida and Dindymon of Asia, though with some important differences. The Thracians served to furnish the Greeks with mercenary troops and slaves, and the number of Grecian colonies planted on the coast had the effect of partially softening the tribes in the immediate vicinity, between whose chiefs and the Greek leaders intermarriages were not unfrequent. But the tribes in the interior seem to have retained their savage habits with little mitigation, so that the language in which Tacitus[38] describes them is an apt continuation to that of Herodotus, though coming more than five centuries after. [34] Mannert assimilates the civilization of the Thracians to that of the Gauls when Julius Cæsar invaded them,—a great injustice to the latter, in my judgment (Geograph. Gr. und Röm. vol. vii, p. 23). [35] Cicero, De Officiis, ii, 7. “Barbarum compunctum notis Threiciis.” Plutarch (De Serâ Numin. Vindict. c. 13, p. 558) speaks as if the women only were tattooed, in Thrace: he puts a singular interpretation upon it, as a continuous punishment on the sex for having slain Orpheus. [36] For the Thracians generally, see Herodot. v, 3-9, vii, 110, viii, 116, ix, 119; Thucyd. ii, 100, vii, 29-30; Xenophon, Anabas. vii, 2, 38, and the seventh book of the Anabasis generally, which describes the relations of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand Greeks with Seuthês the Thracian prince. [37] Xenoph. Anab. vi, 2, 17; Herodot. vii, 75. [38] Tacit. Annal. ii, 66; iv, 46.