Thracian king Lykurgos (lit., “wolf’s anger”) pursues Diony-
sos, who, in his turn, brings down madness upon the king.
The king then either kills himself or is eventually killed by
Dionysos. The symbolism of this myth is very complicated.
It refers, in all probability, to the cosmic effects of a battle
between opposite principles represented by Apollo and
Dionysos. As a matter of fact, the wolf is related to Apollo,
who is often called Apollo Lukeios, a name referring both to
the wolf (Gr., lukos) and to light (Gr., luk ̄e, “dawn”; Lat., lux,
“light”).
In several variants of the myth, Lykurgos tries to cut
down a vine with an ax. Dionysos confuses him so that in-
stead he kills his own son and cuts off one of his own legs.
The mythologist Nonnus of Panopolis (fifth century) reports
that Lykurgos, an Arab king who pursues Dionysos with an
ax in order to kill him, hits one of the Maenads, Ambrosia,
who is then changed into a vine. It is difficult to unravel the
implications of this myth: while Lykurgos appears to be a
vine hater, an enemy of Dionysos, his action may instead
simply represent a viticulturist’s pruning of his vines. There
is nothing typically Thracian in all this, except perhaps the
contradictory characterization of Thracians as either vine
lovers or vine haters. Strangely enough, the calendar temple
in the stronghold at Sarmizegetusa Regia seems to indicate
that the Daco-Getic priests under Decebalus were concerned
with the vegetative period of the vine, and that this concern
was a major element in their culture; yet King Burebista is
said to have ordered all vines in his kingdom to be cut down.
Is the latter, perhaps, only a wrong assumption on the part
of Strabo (Geography 7.7–11), who mistakenly expects wine
hatred from the spiritualistic, Pythagorean features of Getic
religion? This hypothesis deserves further investigation.
As for the Thracian Artemis, both Bendis and Cotys
have been identified with this goddess. Bendis appears to be
a goddess of marriage, while Cotys, or Kotyto, is an orgiastic
Thracian divinity in whose cult men wore women’s gar-
ments. Her name has been related to the Indo-European
kot-u- (“avenger”; cf. the Greek koteo, “I am angry”) and has
thus been taken to mean “angry [goddess]” or “[goddess] of
fight.” Gheorghe Mus,u prefers the etymology “[goddess]
energy,” from the Indo-European kued-, kuod- (“stimulate,
urge on”). Both Bendis and Cotys were known at Athens
from the fifth century BCE onward.
Neither worship of a heavenly god nor the institution
of sacred kingship was confined to the northern Thracians.
The military historian Polyaenos (second century) reported
that the priests of Hera were kings of the tribes of the Ke-
brenoi and Sykaiboai. One of them, Kosingas, gathered
many wooden ladders with the intent, he said, of climbing
to heaven in order to indict the Thracians before Hera for
their disobedience. Impressed, the Thracians swore to obey
his orders.
Two practices that were general among the Thracians
rested, in all probability, on religious bases: tattooing and the
burial or cremation of living wives together with their dead
husbands. Among the Getae, tattooing was probably related
to the story of the sufferings once inflicted upon Zalmoxis,
and was thus applied to members of certain social categories
(e.g., women and slaves) as a sign of suffering. Among the
southern Thracians, where only the nobles were tattooed, it
must have had another symbolic meaning.
As for the burial or cremation of living widows, archaeo-
logical finds confirm the rather puzzling written evidence
that the Thracians practiced either one or the other, and
sometimes both in the same place. No reasons for this varia-
tion are given. Two works based on the findings at several
necropolises in Dacia (Protase, 1971; Nicolaescu-Plopsor
and Wolski, 1975) have confirmed the concurrent existence
of both ritual practices, although cremation prevailed.
Wives, sometimes accompanied by their infant children,
were sacrificed at the death of their husbands and were bur-
ied or cremated in the same tomb. Both Herodotos and
Pomponius Mela (De situ orbis 2.2.19–20) report that
among polygamous Thracians the wives of the deceased vied
for the great honor of being killed and buried together with
the corpse of their husbands.
Herodotos also reports a three-day exposure of the
corpse, followed by animal sacrifices, feasting, mourning,
and burial or cremation. To the historian Hellanicus (fifth
century BCE) is attributed the information that the animal
sacrifices and the banqueting were based on a belief that the
deceased would return to the human world to participate in
the feast. Pomponius Mela (2.2.18) affirms that some Thra-
cians mourned a child’s birth and rejoiced over death. There-
fore the feasts following one’s death were an expression of
collective participation in the happy destiny of the dead. The
Getae were not the only Thracians to believe in immortality,
but their beliefs, which relate to the cult of Zalmoxis, are bet-
ter known, for they impressed the Greek authors who came
in contact with them after the fifth century BCE.
Strabo (7.3.3) reports that, according to the Stoic Posi-
donius of Apamea, the Mysians (whom Strabo correctly
identifies as the Moesi, i. e., inhabitants of Moesia) practiced
vegetarianism, feeding themselves on honey, milk, and
cheese. These are called theosebeis (“worshipers of the gods”)
and kapnobatai (“walkers on smoke”). Some among the
Thracians lived in continence and are recorded as ktistai (lit.,
“founders”). To the latter applies the Homeric epithet abioi
(lit., “lifeless,” i.e., poor), which was attributed to some of
the inhabitants of Thrace. The epithet kapnobatai may refer
to a practice mentioned by Pomponius Mela (2.2.21), ac-
cording to which some Thracians did not use wine as an in-
toxicating liquor but instead inhaled smoke from fires upon
which had been thrown seeds whose scent provoked exhilara-
tion. The Lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria (fifth or sixth
century CE) reports under the word kanabis (“hemp”) that
hemp seeds were burned, and so Cannabis sativa may be a
plausible identification of the intoxicating plant referred to
by Pomponius.
SEE ALSO Geto-Dacian Religion; Zalmoxis.9170 THRACIAN RELIGION