Sometimes it was allied with various Ancient Greek tribes or Greek city states.
It became involved in wars and military conflicts against the Romans, Greek colonies, the kingdom of Macedon and the Diadochi, the Persian Empire, Paeonians, Dacians, Celts, Scythians and Thracian tribes. The Odrysian state was the first Thracian kingdom that acquired power in the region, by the unification of many Thracian tribes under a single ruler, King Teres 5th century BC.
The Odrysian kingdom ( Ancient Greek, "Βασιλεία Όδρυσων") was a union of Thracian tribes that endured between the 5th century BC and the 3rd century BC. Main article: List of rulers of Thrace and Dacia It was during this time when Philip of Macedon conquered a large swath of Thrace, absorbing the territory and its tribes into Macedon. However, the kingdom was again split into different parts after the death of king Seuthes. It was allied with Athens during the conflict. Īt the onset of the Peloponnesian War, the Thracian tribes were united under the rule of Sitalces, king of the Odrysae. The tribal wars also kept Thrace from becoming a major regional power due to the lack of a central government. The interior tribes were known as savages, retaining their barbarous habits even until the Roman period. Those allied with the Greeks were more civilized and they were usually established in settlements along the Thracian coast. Thracian tribes fought amongst each other and they allied themselves with the Greeks against other Thracian tribes. Homer recounts in the book of Odyssey that an embarrassed Ares retreated among his Thracian followers when his love affair with the goddess Aphrodite was caught and the two were promptly ensnared by Hephaestus. The god of war Ares was said to have been born in Thrace and was also heavily worshiped there in contrast to the revulsion of his worship by many other Balkan city states. The Thracians were a particularly fierce culture in terms of violence and conflict and so they appeared in Greek Mythology as mostly associated with its stories of strife. In the Odyssey, there is only one instance of Thracians, that of Cicones again on the coast, but they are weak. The Thracians, prominent warriors who became allies of Troy, came from the Aegean coast. The Greek Temenids ousted the Thracians from Pieria (later central Macedonia). Instances of Thracian people engaging in armed conflict occur in the Iliad of Homer and in Greek mythology.