Thrace

” For those who speak directly to God or Fortune — as if she had ears to suffer our abuse — are the most foolish of all, the more so for being impious as well, like the Thracians who start shooting arrows at the sky when thunder rumbles or lightning strikes to pacify God with their infernal retaliation.

The Thracian ambassadors coming to comfort Archileonida, the mother of Brasidas, upon the death of her son, and commending him to that height as to say he had not left his like behind him, she rejected this private and particular commendation to attribute it to the public:

In Thrace the king was distinguished from his people after a very pleasant and especial manner;

And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than Tiberius did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to carry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate.

For instance, take the fox, the people of Thrace make use of when they wish to pass over the ice of some frozen river, and turn him out before them to that purpose;

The wives and concubines of the Thracians contended who should be chosen to be slain upon their husband’s tomb.

And about Amphipolis, in Thrace, the hawkers and wild falcons equally divide the prey in the half.

The Thracians, in return of the benefits they had received from Agesilaus, came to bring him word that they had canonized him:

But let us proceed in our examples of treachery two pretenders to the kingdom of Thrace were fallen into dispute about their title;