The Thracian Chersonese was the ancient name of the Gallipoli peninsula, in the part of historic Thrace that is  now part of modern Turkey .

The peninsula runs in a south-westerly direction into the Aegean Sea ,  between the Hellespont (now known as the Dardanelles ) and the bay of Melas (today Saros bay). Near Agora it  was protected by a wall running across its full breadth. The isthmus traversed  by the wall was only 36 stadia in  breadth (about 6.5 km), but the length of the peninsula from this wall to its  southern extremity, Cape Mastusia, was 420 stadia (about 77.5 km)

 History

The Thracian Chersonese was originally inhabited by Thracians .  Settlers from Ancient Greece , mainly of Ionian and Aeolian   stock, founded about 12 cities on the peninsula in the 7th century BC. The Athenian   statesman Miltiades the Elder founded a major Athenian colony there around 560 BC. He  took authority over the entire peninsula, building up its defences against  incursions from the mainland. It eventually passed to his nephew, the more  famous Miltiades the Younger , around 524 BC. The peninsula was abandoned to the Persians in 493 BC after the outbreak of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–478 BC).

The Persians were eventually expelled, after which the peninsula was for a  time ruled over by Athens, which enrolled it into the Delian League in 478 BC. The Athenians established a number of cleruchies   on the Thracian Chersonese and sent an additional 1,000 settlers around 448 BC.  Sparta gained control between 431 BC-404 BC, but the peninsula subsequently  reverted to the Athenians. In the 4th century BC, the  Thracian Chersonese became the focus of a bitter territorial dispute between  Athens and Macedon , whose king Philip  II sought possession. It was eventually ceded to Philip in 338 BC.

After the death of Philip's son Alexander  the Great in 323 BC, the Thracian Chersonese became the object of contention  among Alexander's successors . Lysimachus   established his capital Lysimachia here. In 196 BC, the Seleucid king Antiochus III seized the peninsula. This alarmed the Greeks and prompted  them to seek the aid of the Romans , who  conquered the Thracian Chersonese, which they gave to their ally Eumenes II   of Pergamon   in 188 BC. At the extinction of the Attalid dynasty   in 133 BC it passed again to the Romans, who from 129 BC administered it in the  Roman province of Asia . It was subsequently made a state-owned territory (ager publicus)  and during the reign of the emperor Caesar Augustus it was imperial property.

The Thracian Chersonese subsequently passed to the Byzantine Empire ,  which ruled it until the rise of the Ottoman Empire in  the 14th century AD. In 1356 the peninsula became the first part of Europe to  fall to the Ottomans, who subsequently made it a major base for raids and  incursions into territories further afield.

 Towns  and economy

The principal towns of the Thracian Chersonese were Cardia , Pactya , Callipolis   (Gallipoli), Alopeconnesus , Sestos , Madytus , and Elaeus . The peninsula was renowned for its wheat . It also  benefited from its strategic importance on the main route between Europe and Asia, as well as  from its control of the shipping route from Crimea . The  city of Sestos was the main crossing-point on the Hellespont (Dardanelles).

Thrace (demonym Thracian / ənθreɪʃⁱˈ/; Bulgarian : Тракия, Trakiya, Greek : Θράκη, Thráki, Turkish : Trakya) is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe . As a geographical concept, Thrace  designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east. The areas it  comprises are southeastern Bulgaria (Northern  Thrace), northeastern Greece (Western  Thrace), and the European part of Turkey (Eastern  Thrace). The biggest part of Thrace is part of present-day Bulgaria.  In Turkey, it is also called Rumelia . The name comes from the Thracians , an ancient Indo-European people inhabiting Southeastern  Europe.

The historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. Noteworthy is the fact that,  at an early date, the ancient Greeks employed the term "Thrace" to  refer to all of the territory which lay north of Thessaly inhabited by the Thracians , a region which "had no definite  boundaries" and to which other regions (like Macedonia and even Scythia ) were added. In one ancient Greek  source, the very Earth is divided into "Asia, Libya, Europa and Thracia". As the  knowledge of world geography of the Greeks broadened, the term came to be more  restricted in its application: Thrace designated the lands bordered by the Danube on the north, by the Euxine Sea (Black  Sea) on the east, by northern Macedonia in the south and by the Illyrian lands (i.e. Illyria ) to the west. This largely coincided  with the Thracian Odrysian kingdom , whose borders varied in time.  During this time, specifically after the Macedonian conquest, the region's old  border with Macedonia was shifted from the Struma River to the Mesta River . This usage lasted until the Roman  conquest. Henceforth, (classical) Thrace referred only to the tract of land  largely covering the same extent of space as the modern geographical region. In  its early period, the Roman province of Thrace was of this extent,  but after the administrative reforms of the late 3rd century, Thracia's much  reduced territory became the six small provinces which constituted the Diocese of Thrace . The medieval Byzantine theme of Thrace contained only what today is Eastern Thrace .

The largest cities of Thrace are: İstanbul (European side), Plovdiv , Burgas , Stara Zagora , Haskovo , Edirne , Çorlu and Tekirdag .

Most of the Bulgarian and Greek population are Christians, while most of the  Turkish inhabitants of Thrace are Muslims.

Thrace in  ancient Greek mythology

Ancient Greek mythology provides them with a  mythical ancestor, named Thrax , son of the war-god Ares, who was said to reside in Thrace. The Thracians appear in Homer 's Iliad as Trojan allies, led by Acamas and Peiros . Later in the Iliad, Rhesus , another Thracian king, makes an  appearance. Cisseus , father-in-law to the Trojan elder Antenor , is also given as a Thracian king.  Homeric Thrace was vaguely defined, and stretched from the River Axios in the west to the Hellespont and Black Sea in the east. The Catalogue of Ships mentions three separate  contingents from Thrace: Thracians led by Acamas and Peiros, from Aenus ; Cicones led by Euphemus , from southern Thrace, near Ismaros ; and from the city of Sestus , on the Thracian (northern) side of the  Hellespont, which formed part of the contingent led by Asius . Greek mythology is replete with Thracian  kings, including Diomedes , Tereus , Lycurgus , Phineus , Tegyrius , Eumolpus , Polymnestor , Poltys , and Oeagrus (father of Orpheus ). In addition to the tribe that Homer  calls Thracians, ancient Thrace was home to numerous other tribes, such as the Edones , Bisaltae , Cicones , and Bistones .

Thrace is also mentioned in Ovid's Metamorphoses in the episode of Philomela , Procne, and Tereus . Tereus, the King of Thrace, lusts after  his sister-in-law, Philomela. He kidnaps her, holds her captive, rapes her, and  cuts out her tongue. Philomela manages to get free, however. She and her sister,  Procne, plot to get revenge, by killing Itys (son of Tereus and Procne) and  serving him to his father for dinner. At the end of the myth, all three turn  into birds—Procne, a swallow; Philomela, a nightingale; and Tereus, a hoopoe .

 History

Ancient history

Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak  

The indigenous population of Thrace was a people called the Thracians , divided into numerous tribal groups.  Thracian troops were known to accompany neighboring ruler Alexander the Great when he crossed the Hellespont which abuts Thrace, and took on the Persian Empire of the day.

The Thracians did not describe themselves as such and Thrace and Thracians are simply the names given them by the Greeks.

Divided into separate tribes, the Thracians did not manage to form a lasting  political organization until the Odrysian state was founded in the 4th century  BC. Like Illyrians , Thracian tribes of the mountainous  regions fostered a locally ruled warrior tradition, while the tribes based in  the plains were purportedly more peaceable. Recently discovered funeral mounds  in Bulgaria suggest that Thracian kings did rule regions of Thrace with distinct  Thracian national identity.

During this period, a subculture of celibate ascetics called the Ctistae lived in Thrace, where they served as  philosophers, priests and prophets.

Medieval history

By the mid 5th century, as the Roman Empire began to crumble, Thracia fell  from the authority of Rome and into the hands of Germanic tribal rulers. With  the fall of Rome, Thracia turned into a battleground territory for the better  part of the next 1,000 years. The eastern successor of the Roman Empire in the Balkans, the Byzantine Empire , retained control over Thrace  until the 8th century when the northern half of the entire region was  incorporated into the First Bulgarian Empire . Byzantium regained  Thrace in the late 10th century and administered it as a theme , until the Bulgarians regained  control of the northern half at the end of the 12th century. Throughout the 13th  century and the first half of the 14th century, the region was changing in the  hands of the Bulgarian and the Byzantine Empire(excl. Constantinopole). In 1265  the area suffered a Mongol raid from the Golden Horde , led by Nogai Khan . In 1352, the Ottoman Turks conducted their first incursion into the  region subduing it completely within a matter of two decades and occupying it  for five centuries.

Modern history

With the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Northern Thrace was  incorporated into the semi-autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia , which united with Bulgaria in  1885. The rest of Thrace was divided among Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey at the  beginning of the 20th century, following the Balkan Wars , World War I and the Greco-Turkish War . Today Thracian is a  strong regional identity in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria and other neighbouring  countries.

Famous Thracians and people from Thrace

• Mehmed II Ottoman Sultan, born at Edirne in Thrace; he was the Sultan who  conquered Constantinople, marking the end of the Middle Ages.
• Bayezid II Ottoman Sultan
• Spartacus was a Thracian auxiliary soldier  in the Roman army who deserted but was captured  and then enslaved by the Romans. He led a large slave uprising in what is  now Italy in 73–71 BC. His army of escaped gladiators and slaves defeated several Roman legions in what is known as the Third Servile War .
• Belisaurius , one of the most successful  Generals of the Roman Empire , was born in the borderlands  between Thrace and Illyria .
• In Ancient Greek mythology , Orpheus was the chief representative of the  art of song and playing the lyre .
• Democritus was a Greek philosopher and  mathematician from Abdera, Thrace (c. 460–370 BC.) His main  contribution is the atomic theory , the belief that all matter  is made up of various imperishable indivisible elements which he called atoms .
• Herodicus was a Greek physician of the  fifth century BC who is considered the founder of sports medicine . He is believed to have  been one of Hippocrates' tutors.
• Protagoras was a Greek philosopher from Abdera, Thrace (c. 490–420 BC.) An expert  in rhetorics and subjects connected to virtue  and political life, often regarded as the first sophist . He is known primarily for three  claims (1) that man is the measure of all things, often interpreted as a  sort of moral relativism , (2) that he could make  the "worse (or weaker) argument appear the better (or stronger)" (see Sophism ) and (3) that one could not tell if  the gods existed or not (see Agnosticism ).

• A number of Roman emperors of the 3rd-5th century were  of Thraco-Roman backgrounds (Maximinus  Thrax, Licinius , Galerius , Aureolus , Leo the Thracian , etc.). These emperors  were elevated via a military career, from the condition of common soldiers  in one of the Roman legions to the foremost positions of political power.