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ANCIENT THRACE: MYTH AND REALITY

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTEENTH

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THRACOLOGY
KAZANLAK, SEPTEMBER 3 – 7, 2017

VOLUME TWO

Sofia, 2022
St. Kliment Ohridski University Press
 1

Ancient Thrace: Myth and Reality

The Proceedings of the Thirteenth

International Congress of Thracology

Volume Two
 2

Софийски университет „Св. Климент Охридски“

Национален археологически институт с музей, БАН
Институт за балканистика с център по тракология, БАН
Исторически музей „Искра“, Казанлък

ДРЕВНА ТРАКИЯ: МИТ И РЕАЛНОСТ

МАТЕРИАЛИ ОТ ТРИНАДЕСЕТИЯ МЕЖДУНАРОДЕН

КОНГРЕС ПО ТРАКОЛОГИЯ
КАЗАНЛЪК, 3 – 7 СЕПТЕМВРИ 2017 г.

ВТОРИ ТОМ
под редакцията на Петър Делев, Тотко Стоянов,
Светлана Янакиева, Христо Попов, Анелия Божкова,
Майя Василева, Юлия Цветкова, Маргарит Дамянов,
Петя Илиева, Юлий Емилов

СОФИЯ 2022
Университетско издателство „Св. Климент Охридски“
3

St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia

National Archaeological Institute and Museum, BAS
Institute of Balkan Studies and Center of Thracology, BAS
Museum of History Iskra, Kazanlak

ANCIENT THRACE: MYTH AND REALITY

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTEENTH

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THRACOLOGY
KAZANLAK, SEPTEMBER 3 – 7, 2017

VOLUME TWO
еdited by Peter Delev, Totko Stoyanov, Svetlana Yanakieva,
Hristo Popov, Anelia Bozkova, Maya Vassileva, Julia Tzvetkova,
Margarit Damyanov, Petya Ilieva, Juliy Emilov

SOFIA, 2022
St. Kliment Ohridski University Press
The four organizing institutions of the 13th International Congress of Thracology in 2017 have each celebrated important
anniversaries thereafter:
• 130 years since the foundation of the National Museum in Sofia (1892) [now the National Archaeological Museum
affiliated to the National Archaeological Institute];
• 120 years since the foundation of the Museum Iskra in Kazanlak (1901);
• 100 years since the establishment of the Department of Archaeology at the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia
(1920);
• 100 years since the foundation of the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute (1921);
• 100 years since the establishment of the Department of Classical Philology at the St. Kliment Ohridski University of
Sofia (1922);
• 50 years since the foundation of the Institute of Thracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1972) [now a Center
of Thracology affiliated to the Institute of Balkan Studies].
The editors dedicate the publication of the congress proceedings to the commemoration of these six events.

The printing of the proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Thracology has been sponsored financially by:

National Archaeological Institute of Balkan Studies with

Institute and Museum, BAS Center of Thracology “Prof. A. Fol”, BAS
St. Kliment Ohridski
University of Sofia

Iskra Historical Kazanlak

Museum, Kazanlak Municipality

St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia

National Archaeological Instotute and Museum, BAS
Institute of Balkan Studies and Center of Thracology “Prof. A. Fol”, BAS
Museum of History Iskra, Kazanlak
ANCIENT THRACE: MYTH AND REALITY. THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CON-
GRESS OF THRACOLOGY, KAZANLAK, SEPTEMBER 3 – 7, 2017. VOLUME ONE
edited by Peter Delev, Totko Stoyanov, Svetlana Yanakieva, Hristo Popov, Anelia Bozkova, Maya Vassileva, Julia Tzvetkova,
Margarit Damyanov, Petya Ilieva, Juliy Emilov

© the editors and the respective authors, unless where otherwise indicated
© 2022 NICE AN LTD, Sofia (prepress and graphic design)
© 2022 St. Kliment Ohridski University Press

ISBN 978-954-07-5622-6 (printed edition) ISBN 978-954-07-5624-0 (E-book, pdf)

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dimitra Andrianou
Figured grave reliefs from Aegean Thrace in the Late Hellenistic and Roman eras ..................... 9
Neşe Atik
Two important monuments in the ancient city of Heraion Teichos:
the sanctuary of Hera/Kybele and the sanctuary of the god of health ........................................... 21
Cristina Bodó
Considerations regarding the Dacian discoveries on the Mureş Corridor .................................... 31
Dilyana Boteva
Thracia huc usque regnata in prouinciam redigitur....................................................................... 41
David Braund
Finding Bendis............................................................................................................................... 49
François de Callataÿ
Putting the Late Hellenistic Balkan silver coin hoards in broad geographical
and historical perspective .............................................................................................................. 53
Francesca Ceci
Das Münzbild als Instrument zur Volksidentität: Liebe und Tod am Beispiel der Darstellungen
von Orpheus und von Hero und Leander auf kaiserzeitlichen Münzen Thrakiens ......................... 67
Alexandra Comşa
“Skull cult” among the Thracians and the Geto-Dacians ............................................................. 75
Peter Delev
Between myth and reality: 45 years of thracology in Bulgaria ...................................................... 83
Valeria Fol
Culte héroïque dans la Thrace – images littéraires grecques ou images
réelles du chevalier-héros thrace ................................................................................................... 95
Martin Gyuzelev
Crossing the strait: a view to the Bosporian seafarers’ pantheon in antiquity .............................. 99
Petya Ilieva
Maron, xenia and plundering Odysseus ....................................................................................... 107
Milen Tsonev Ivanov
King Rhesus and his mountain cave ............................................................................................. 117
Lenče Jovanova
Thracian influence in the Roman colony Scupi and the Skopje – Kumanovo region..................... 123
Gergana Kabakchieva, Krasimira Stefanova-Georgieva
Antike Festung und Siedlung im Ort „Gradovete“ bei Kran, Gemeinde Kazanlak ...................... 133
Veselka Katsarova
The sanctuary of the nymphs and Aphrodite
by the village of Kasnakovo: between myth and reality ................................................................ 141
6 Table of contents

Marina Koleva
Greek myths, Roman art and the Thracians .................................................................................. 151
Marija Đ. Ljuština, Jelena Lj. Cvijetić
Between the Illyrian and Thracian worlds: southwest Serbia and
northern Montenegro at the turn of the new era ........................................................................... 159
Ivaylo Lozanov
Nicopolis ad Nestum between Mark Antony and Trajan ............................................................... 169
Sasha Lozanova, Stela Tasheva
Architectural images on antique coins from Bulgarian lands (Roman Empire) ............................ 181
Vanya B. Lozanova-Stantcheva
Ancient Thrace and the Thracians as a paradigm of otherness
and the other in Old Attic Comedy ............................................................................................... 187
Flora P. Manakidou
Wieland’s Geschichte der Abderiten and some thoughts on the reception of antiquity ................. 197
Boryana Markova
Les Besses et le christianisme ....................................................................................................... 205
Bilyana Mihaylova, Albena Mircheva
The Thracian glosses revisited ..................................................................................................... 209
Liana Oța, Valeriu Sîrbu
Dacians or Sarmatians? Tamga signs in Dacia (1st century BC – 1st century AD) ....................... 219
Sorin Paliga
Thracian v. Dacian (Daco-Moesian). How many ‘Thracian languages’
were there spoken in the Antiquity? .............................................................................................. 231
Maria-Gabriella Parissaki, Yannis Stoyas
The inconspicuous coinage with the legend ΜΟΡΙΑΣΕΩΝ........................................................... 239
Plamen Petkov
On some problems of the Thracian dynastic history in the 2nd century BC ................................... 255
Hristo Preshlenov
The (re)used pagan temenoses in Thracia Pontica (4th – 6th century AD) ..................................... 263
Nade Proeva
Les représentations du «cavalier thrace» sur les monuments
funéraires en Haute Macédoine .................................................................................................... 271
Kostadin Rabadjiev
The Thracian gods: the puzzle of anthropomorphism ................................................................... 283
Aliénor Rufin Solas
Anthropology of war exchanges: A new approach to premodern
warrior societies without written literature .................................................................................. 297
Aurel Rustoiu, Iosif Vasile Ferencz
Late Iron Age in Transylvania (Romania): Material culture
and practices as markers of communal identities ......................................................................... 303
Cristian Schuster, Ion Tuțulescu
Buridava – eine Dakische und Römische Ansiedlung in Nordostoltenien ..................................... 315
Mirena Slavova
On the Thracian syllable: word-initial consonants and consonant clusters in Thracian names.....325
 Table of contents 7

Adela Sobotkova
Thracian state: a myth or reality? ................................................................................................ 335
Despoina Tsiafaki
Exploring the reality through myths and archaeological evidence ............................................... 343
Georgios P. Tsomis
Der Wein und die antiken thrakischen Ortsnamen Ismaros und Maroneia:
eine literarische, linguistische und geographische Annäherung .................................................. 349
Julia Tzvetkova
Ancient Thrace: GIS and reality ................................................................................................... 355
Ivan Valchev
The cult to Apollo at Kabyle ......................................................................................................... 365
Julia Valeva
Eros in Thrace: The Greek colonies and the interior of Thrace.................................................... 371
Varbin Varbanov
Tumulus No 8 from the village of Brestovitsa, Rousse region (Preliminary report) ...................... 387
Oya Yağız
Les monnaies des trois Rhoemetalkès, les derniers rois de la dynastie thrace ............................. 395
Svetlana Yanakieva
Myths and reality in Thracian linguistics: the Thracian
language as a linguistic and historical problem ........................................................................... 403
Vladislav Zhivkov
Pottery from Nicopol and North Central Bulgaria on the eve
of the Roman conquest (2nd c. BC – 1st c. AD) ............................................................................... 409

List of authors .............................................................................................................................. 421

Abstracts of papers and posters presented to the congress but not submitted for publication ....... 425
8
 Ancient Thrace: Myth and Reality
Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Thracology, Volume 2
THRACIAN V. DACIAN (DACO-MOESIAN).
HOW MANY ‘THRACIAN LANGUAGES’ WERE
THERE SPOKEN IN THE ANTIQUITY?
Sorin Paliga
My previous work on the linguistic situa-
tion in the Balkans in antiquity has dealt with a
number of different issues. In a recent paper1 I
tried to answer the question of how many lan-
guages were spoken in the Balkans in antiquity.
In another paper2 I tried to clarify the pointlessly
complicated matter of Albanian origins, which I
find to be a political rather than a scientific issue.
In the wake of other comparative linguistic stud-
ies focussing on the prehistoric linguistic herit-
age of Europe, it is perhaps high time to clarify
the long-debated issue – and one with political
connotations too – of the ‘Thracian language(s)’
spoken in the antiquity.
One aspect of this latter issue relates to the
ethnic names used by the Thracians, including
the long-debated issue of whether Getae and
Daci, Dacisci were two different groups or just
two names of the same group. We do know that
the Thracians did not have an organized, unitary
state, according to a cliché used in the 1970’s
and 1980’s. A brief, selected list of Thracian eth-
nic names would include the following:
• Thraces, sg. Thrax, with several spelling
variants3 is the ancient name of the Thracians, or
the Thracians proprie dicti. This ethnonym has
been preserved in some river names, in Bulgaria
and Serbia, respectively: Trakana, a tributary of
Stara Reka, Vardar basin; also Trakanska reka
(‘the Thracian River’, in a free translation), and
Trakanje in the same area; and Trakanić. The
ultimate origin of the ethnonym Thrax is debat-
ed. If we admit that the Romanian adjective tare
‘strong, hard’ and the derived verb a întărí ‘to
strengthen, to solidify’ (with prefix în- < Lat. in)
1 Paliga 2015.
2 Paliga 2016.
3 See Detschew 1957, 209. All the ethnic names quoted below
have several spellings, out of which only the currently used
ones have been preserved.
are related to the same root, and that it is there-
fore a substratum survival, then we may recon-
struct the initial meaning of the root as ‘strong,
powerful’, from the same root as English stark,
strong, strew and strain. Alternatively, the root
*T-R- may be of Pre-Indo-European origin, and
related to the basic meaning ‘cliff, mountain’.
In DEX, the adjective (adverb, according to
other sources)4 tare ‘strong, hard’ is considered
related to the adj. atare ‘such as’ and tare adv.
‘very’, all from Lat. talem, acc. of talis ‘such; so
great’. Such an account is extremely doubtful, if
not entirely erroneous. It is quite clear that the
adj. tare ‘hard, strong’, also in the personal name
Tăriceanu and other variants of this name, can-
not be explained from Lat. talem < talis, given
that the Latin form does explain tare adv. ‘very’
and adj. atare < eccum-talem. Therefore, Rom.
tare covers two different semantic spheres, and
the forms are of different origin, their relation
being paronymic, not etymologic:
1. The adverb tare ‘very’ and atare reflect
Lat. talis, acc. talem. It is probable that the
meaning ‘very’ was influenced by meaning #2:
2. tare ‘strong, hard’ has a different ori-
gin, a substratum (Thracian) element related to
English stark, strong, strew and strain, also to
German stark ‘strong’ and, very probably, to the
ethnonym Thrax, pl. Thraces ‘the strong, power-
ful ones’. The Thracian forms tarabostes (tara–
bostes), by which the ancient Latin sources refer
to the Dacian aristocracy, may also contain the
root tar- (Boerescu s.a.).5
This ethnonym has been adopted in the sci-
entific literature as the generic name referring
to all the Thracian groups, the extent of which
4 See dexonline.ro which, beside DEX proper, now includes a
series of other dictionaries as well.
5 A different, unconvincing etymological explanation is in
Detschew 1957: 489-490.
232 Sorin Paliga
roughly corresponds to the modern territories
of Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Bul-
garia, along with some of the neighbouring ar-
eas. The term is used differently in the linguistic
literature, on the one hand, and the historical
and archaeological literature, on the other. This
is a topic which cannot be covered in this brief
analysis. I would just mention the use of syn-
tagmas like Thraco-Dacian (Rom. traco-dac) or
Daco-Getian (Rom. daco-get) etc. mainly in the
Romanian scientific literature, in an effort (not
without its ’political substratum’ too) to find a
more appropriate formula when referring to the
Thracian groups located north of the Danube.
These forms were coined in the modern period.
• Odrysae, the Odrysians. We also know
some ‘kings’ of the Odrysae, e.g. Kotys I (in the
4th c. BCE); the real pronunciation of the name
spelled Kotys was probably *Čot-is [IPA ‘tʃot-
is], cf. Rom. ciot [tʃot], most probably related to
cioc [tʃok]‘a beak, a bill’: “čokot, čot su pred-
rimske panonske riječi’ (čokot, čot are Pre-Ro-
mance Pannonian words)”.6
• Daci, Dacisci ~ Getae. There is an ongo-
ing debate regarding whether the two forms re-
fer to the same ethnic group of the north Thra-
cians, or to two different groups. We have every
reason to believe that here we have a typical
example of an endonym~exonym contrast, i.e.
one form used by (and within) an ethnic group
and another one used by foreigners, e.g. Suomi,
suomalainen ~ Finland, Finnish (of Germanic
origin) or Euskara ~ Basque; Deutsch (related
to Dutch) ~ German, Hellenoi ~ Graeci (indig-
enous v. Latin form) etc. There is no clear proof
that these forms (Daci, Dacisci and Getae) have
been preserved, yet compare the place name
Decea, pronounced ‘detʃe̯a’, in one syllable. In
our view, the ethnic name Daci, Dacisci is re-
lated to doină, daină, the typical Romanian folk
song, which in turn has a Baltic (Lithuanian and
Latvian) parallel: dainà, daiņa. The Thracians
in general, and their northern branch, in par-
ticular, were known as good singers and good
musical instrument players. Therefore, the tra-
dition of specific folk songs from antiquity to
modern times is entirely logical and supported
by the etymological analysis. The meaning of
the ethnic name Daci, Dacisci may have been
6 Skok 1971-1974, 1, 335.
‘the singers’.7
• Moesi. In the modern archaeologic and
linguistic literature, they are sometimes called
Daco-Moesians, suggesting that the character-
istics that were believed to distinguish the Moe-
sians were similar to features also recognised as
Dacian, therefore a (more) northern Thracian
group. The etymon is unclear, perhaps from
the same root as the Thracian personal names
spelled Mussatis, Musiaticus,8 and their prob-
able modern continuations like the typically
Aromanian Mușu, Mușlea, adj. mușát ‘beauti-
ful’ (hence personal name Mușat) and the plant
mușețel ‘camomile’ (family Chamaemelum).
The ancient spelling of the ethnic name with
-oe- may indicate a long vowel *ū or perhaps
another vowel with no clear orthographic repre-
sentation in Greek or Latin. One of the enduring
family of rulers of Medieval Moldova, Mușat or
Mușatinii (pl.) derives its name from this pre-
Roman root, beyond any reasonable doubt. They
must have initially been a family of local rulers,
later Romanized. This corresponds entirely to
the widely recognized fact that the political élite
of Thracian origin was Romanized, along with
the rest of the indigenous inhabitants – since I
would expect that rulers to have been Roman-
ized first.
• Triballi. This ethnic name seems to have a
clear translation: ‘three dragons’, cf. Romanian
bală and balaur, typical terms of the tales with
the general meaning ‘dragon, a fantastic mon-
strous being’. The first part of the compound
is, beyond any reasonable doubt, the numeral
‘three’: *tri-balloi ‘three dragons’.9 For the
preservation of intervocalic -l- in Romanian,
see below.
• Carpi, Carpiani, Corpili. This is the best
attested and most analyzed group of the so-
called Free Dacians, Latin Daci liberi in Bar-
baricum. They resisted Romanization until the
late 4th and even in the 5th c. C.E. Their ethnic
name has not been directly preserved. Compara-
7 For a more detailed analysis, see Paliga 1994.
8 It is not clear whether these personal names are related to
the river name Mousaios, Mouseos, the present day river
Buzău, in eastern Romania. The spelling with initial m in
the ancient documents may be deformed, as Buzău seems
related to another series of Thracian forms: the ancient
Byzantion founded by the semi-legendary Byzes, whose name
corresponds to Rom. personal name Buzea, Buzescu related to
buză ‘lip’. See also Detschew 1957, 306 ff.
9 For a complete analysis of this ethnonym, see Papazoglu
2007, a reprint of the initial book published in 1969).
 Thracian v. Dacian (Daco-Moesian). How many ‘Thracian languages’ were there spoken in the Antiquity?
tive analysis shows it is related to Karpates, the
Carpathians, and also to Albanian karpë ‘a rock’
and to the mountain name Cârpa, in Romania,
by folk etymology associated to cârpă ‘a rug, a
torn piece of a cloth’. There is a continuing lit-
erature dedicated to this Thracian group, which
resisted Romanization for at least 3 centuries.
Studies on the subject have regularly been pub-
lished in the journal Carpica.10
• Costoboci. They represent the northern-
most Thracian group, located north of the Carpi-
ans. No etymon has been suggested, but it seems
to be a compound form *cost(o)-boc-i.
The Carpi and the Costoboci represent the
northernmost Thracian groups. Their territory
was not conquered by the Romans. The Carpi
were attested until at least the 4th c. C.E., and
represented a constant threat to the Roman army.
They had a certain role in Slavic ethnogenesis,
an issue analysed in an interdisciplinary work.11
They must have represented the avant-garde of
the first Slavic move towards south along the
rivers Siret and Prut, dated approx. in the inter-
val 500 to 550 C.E. They may have met some
other Thracian groups located south of the Dan-
ube and together were pushed further west un-
til they settled on the Romanized Illyrian area.
Together with the local population, of Illyrian
descent, they came to form a new ethnic group,
the Albanians, through the well-attested process
of post-classical ‘ethnicization’, which affected
the whole territory of Europe. The role of the
Carpians in the widespread process of ‘(re)eth-
nicization’ of southeast Europe was correctly in-
terpreted by Hasdeu in the 2nd half of the 19th c.
Hasdeu was the first to hypothesize the Dacian
(Carpian) origin of the Albanians. Hasdeu’s hy-
pothesis was later developed by Giuliano Bon-
fante and I. I. Russu.12
Many other Thracian groups (tribes, local
groups etc.) are noted in the ancient texts. One
such is the Bessi, Bessoi, a Thracian group locat-
ed in the Rodope Mts region, whose main town
is Bessapara.13 Its likely etymon is IE *bhendh-
‘to bind’, hence also Alb. besë ‘pledge, word of
honour’, ‘vow to revenge a murder’, ‘religious
10 Many issues of the journal Carpica are available online (Feb.
25, 2018): http://www.enciclopedia-dacica.ro/?operatie=subi
ect&locatie=periodice&fisier=carpica.
11 Paliga, Teodor 2009.
12 See the discussion and further references in Paliga 2017.
13 Detschew 1957, 57-59.
233
faith’. The same etymon is accepted for the
Thracian goddess Bendis, which after Romani-
zation was identified with Diana. The Bessi
were one of the Thracian groups (‘Stamm’ in
Detschew’s terminology) to survive Romani-
zation for a longer period. One may surmise,
as an interim hypothesis at least, that the Me-
dieval name Basarab originated in this ancient
ethnic name, with personal name variants such
as Bessius etc. The family Basarab dominated
the whole political life of Wallachia, while in
Moldavia the Mușat family (Mușatini) had the
dominant role.14 This series of names reminds
us, of course, of the Moesi.15 Currently, the per-
sonal name Basarab is held to be of Turkic ori-
gin, which may be debatable.
As the list of probable or, at least, possible
Thracian groups (‘Stämme’) may be consider-
ably longer, I will close the discussion. It is high
time to ask the essential question: does each of
these different ethnonyms imply a distinct lan-
guage or dialect? Definitely not. Traditionally,
the dispute in the 1960’s through the 1980’s
referred to accepting or not accepting at least
two radically different ‘Thracian languages’:
one ‘Thracian proper’ (echtthrakisch, as used by
Ivan Duridanov) and another one more north-
ern, Daco-Moesian (or Daco-Thracian, or Daco-
Getian), whose speakers were mainly in the ter-
ritory of modern Romania.
The hypothesis of ‘the two Thracian lan-
guages’ was seemingly invented by Vladimir
Georgiev, and adopted by most Bulgarian schol-
ars, and some Romanian linguists, in those
times: there would have been a dichotomy be-
tween Thracian proper16 and Dacian or Daco-
Moesian.17 The argument most often invoked,
weak as it is, refers to the distribution of place-
names in -dava v. the ones in -bria and -para. I
answered this question as early as 1987, by ana-
lyzing seven Thracian terms referring to urban
structures: ‘township’ and/or ‘fortress’. These
are, in alphabetical order: bria, dava or deva
(also dova, daba, deba), dina or deina, diza
14 With some graphical variants, see Detschew 1957, 324-325.
15 Detschew 1957, 306 ff.
16 ‘Echtthrakish’, Ivan Duridanov’s term, seemingly first used in
Duridanov 1969.
17 An unexpected resurrection of the old hypothesis that there
were two Thracian languages is in Dana 2004. His study is
based on this old, but wrong assumption. See our comments
and corrections to Dana’s analysis, useful and reliable to a
certain point, in Paliga 2010, with a second part in Paliga
2014.
234 Sorin Paliga
(also dizos, deize), leba, ora (also oros, oron,
crucial in understanding the situation of some
modern place-names of Romania, and some also
in the South Slavic area), para, also bara.18 Our
conclusion was straightforward and clear: there
is no convincing argument to support the idea
that there were more ‘Thracian languages’.19
Meanwhile, the hypothesis that we should
use the phrase ‘Thracian languages’ in the plu-
ral has been abandoned by all or almost all our
Bulgarian colleagues.20 In fact, the old hypoth-
esis, which supported the dichotomy Thracian
language v. Dacian (or Daco-Moesian) language
had already been abandoned to my knowledge
in 2000, on the occasion of the congress of thra-
cology in Sofia-Jambol.21 All these circuitous
and hesitant approaches to the question ‘one
or more Thracian languages’ involved a high
degree of political intrusion into the academic
research. This was clearly stated in the introduc-
tory speech to the 13th Congress of Thracology
by Petăr Delev. As the relation between politics
and scientific research is too complex to be de-
bated here, it may offer the occasion of a more
serious discussion.
We may even accept the hypothesis that
both Romanian and Bulgarian do preserve per-
sonal names of Thracian origin. I referred to Ba-
sarab and Mușat above. The list may be consid-
erably larger, even if not impressively so.22
All these studies clearly show that there is
no serious argument in favor of the proposition
that there were ‘several Thracian languages’ in
antiquity or whatever other formula one may be
tempted to use. This does not mean of course
that there was a uniform language spoken over
such a vast area. There were, beyond any doubt,
dialects, but they probably were mutually in-
telligible, at least for the most part. We cannot
doubt this assertion very much as the ancient
sources speak of ‘homoglottic speakers’ in the
Thracian world. We are also able to make a rela-
18 Paliga 1987, later included in the volume of studies Paliga
2007, 13 ff.
19 A hypothesis for which I provided firm support in Paliga 2015
as well.
20 See a recent discussion in Janakieva 2014, who seems to have
reached exactly the same conclusion as the author of this pa-
per in 1987.
21 Fol 2000 et al.; Fol 2002. As far as I am aware of, in these
volumes there is no reference to the would-be ‘two Thracian
languages’.
22 A detailed analysis, in two parts, is given in Paliga 2010 and
2014.
tively clear analysis of the two, also much de-
bated, ethnic names Daci (also Dacisci) v. Ge-
tae. Were they two ethnic names or two regional
names?
There are, in fact, several ethnonyms refer-
ring to Thracian groups. As was usual for those
times, those names cannot be equated with dis-
tinct language names. In those times, ethnic
groups had their local, tribal names, while ge-
neric names, referring to the whole group, were
associated with larger, more comprehensive cul-
tural areas. This was the norm in those times, and
therefore the fact that a Thracian subgroup had a
distinct tribal name does not mean the members
of that group spoke a different language. We
may surmise, with fair certainty, that they spoke
a dialect more or less related to the neighboring
dialect. It is of course debatable whether, say, a
Thracian dialect spoken in a region which cor-
responds to the Transylvanian plateau was intel-
ligible to the Thracian speakers located in the
Stara Planiná. There are strong arguments that
they were indeed mutually intelligible at least
during the ‘classical Thracian age’, i.e. the 1st c.
BCE. Over time these Thracian dialects began
to diverge but in the end their speakers were all
Romanized.
The Thracian heritage of Romanian and Bul-
garian
The debates of the last decades, in fact of
the last century, beginning with Hasdeu in the
2nd part of the 19th c., have referred to the prob-
able or possible Thracian heritage in the mod-
ern languages, mainly those currently included
in the Balkansprachbund. As the problem is too
complex to be analyzed here, I shall refer to
only some conclusions in the wake of my analy-
ses of the last years. A comprehensive set of Ro-
manian words, including place-names, together
with large appendixes referring to place-names
of Thracian, Illyrian and Celtic origin spread
over a large area was published more than a dec-
ade ago.23 It reflected the results of the previous
research, and is now in need of revision. Sev-
eral entries should be revised and some (few)
removed from that list; others should be added,
though. This will be done in the forthcoming
etymological dictionary of the Romanian lan-
guage, almost completed and planned to be pub-
23 Paliga 2006.
 Thracian v. Dacian (Daco-Moesian). How many ‘Thracian languages’ were there spoken in the Antiquity?
lished in 2019.
In this analysis, the estimation was that we
should consider at least 450 elements of Thra-
cian (substratum) origin. Now, I am rather in-
clined to consider an even higher number. If we
take into consideration the dexonline.ro, which
includes not only the previous printed versions
of DEX, but also many other dictionaries, in-
cluding Ciorănescu’s etymological dictionary of
Romanian, then the origins of the Romanian lex-
icon can be summarised as follows, by source:24
– 1442 words of (old) Latin origin, i.e. pre-
served at the colloquial level.
– 1340 words of new, bookish Latin origin;
they reflect the newer wave of ‘re-latinization’
of Romanian, mainly after 1848.
– 1214 words labelled ‘et. nec.’ (etimologie
necunoscută = unknown etymon) in the 2009
edition v. 1171 in the 1998 edition. This label
covers a range of situations, from words of un-
known origin through words that might have
been assigned to a (Thracian) substratum, had a
label such as ‘substratum origin’ been used.
– 86 words with the label ‘cf. alb.’, which
have a corresponding form in Albanian. The set
of Romanian forms with Albanian correspond-
ences is in fact larger, including forms of Latin
origin that occur in both languages.
– 1027 words labelled ‘din slavă’ (from
Slavic); 478 words with the label ‘din bulgară’
(from Bulgarian); 157 words ‘din sârbă’ (from
Serbian); many words have more than one such
label, indicating that they may be from Bulgar-
ian and/or Serbian and/or Slavic in general.
– 404 words ‘din maghiară’ (from Hungari-
an) while 82 words have the label ‘cf. maghiară’.
Unfortunately, the database of DEX is the
only comprehensive one available, though it re-
flects a totally chaotic approach to the Roma-
nian etymology. Some relevant corrections still
need to be made, approx. 5-10 words, to the
Latin portion of the database.
The rest of the etymological labels assigned
require radical revision and clarification. Some
forms labelled Slavic (e.g. stăpân, jupân etc.)
are not of Slavic origin, and others labelled
Hungarian (oraș, gând etc.) are not in fact of
24 I express my thanks to Cătălin Frâncu, the administrator of
dexonline.ro, who promptly sent me the essential data refer-
ring to the etymological labels in DEX. The last list was sent
in the summer of 2016, but there are no relevant changes ever
since.
235
Hungarian origin. One can approach a kind
of ideal ‘traditional Romanian’ as it would be
without more recent Latin forms and ‘bookish’
borrowings, and by removing dialectal, rare,
and outdated words (such as those of Ottoman
Turkish origin that are now of historical interest
only which reflect a certain historical reality).
The result, considering root forms only, is the
following:
a. approx. 1445 words of (old) Latin origin;
out of these, some – few – are not used any more
in the current language;
b. approx. 500 to 1,000 substratum (Thra-
cian) elements;
c. approx. 500–750 Slavic elements, mainly
of Bulgarian origin, some of bookish origin via
Old Church Slavonic.
d. approx. 200–500 words of various ori-
gins, some obsolete, regional or irrelevant. It is
probable that many of them never had a signifi-
cant circulation.
To some, the figure under [b] may seem ex-
aggerated, of ‘dacomaniac character’. In fact,
the substratum heritage of Romanian (and Bul-
garian) has been largely underestimated, not
overestimated, despite the false impression of
the former that some scholars give.
A brief analysis of some dialectal evolutions
and the debated issue of the Thracian surviv-
als after the 5th c. C.E.
There are several examples which show di-
alect-specific developments over time. One such
example refers to the different evolution of Thr.
ā > a in south Thracian (‘echtthrakisch’) v. ā > ô
> o and ā > > ô > u.25 But there are other, con-
vincing examples, which show that the dialectal
differences do not involve a strict north ~ south
dichotomy, as perhaps implied by the example
above. Rather, they involve complex local or
regional developments, e.g. river-names Struma
(Bulgaria) and Strei and Stremț (Romania), on
the one hand, v. Siret and Siriu (east Romania),
which indicate an evolution from IE *ser- + vow-
el to *str- + vowel v. an eastern area where such
an evolution did not occur, at least from the avail-
able data. We may surmise an Iranic influence in
the latter case or a development specific to these
25 Analyzed in Paliga 1996, in the same issue of Linguistique
Balkanique no. 38 with a critical answer of Ivan Duridanov.
Meanwhile, after years of comparing other data as well, I
maintain the hypothesis advocated in 1996.
236
eastern Thracian dialects, which must be associ-
ated with the idiom spoken by the Carpians and
Costoboces, two groups, which were not under
the Roman conquest and which survived at least
to the 4th – 5th c. C.E., perhaps longer.26
With respect to specific phonetic develop-
ments from Thracian to Romanian, one cannot
avoid the questions whether these were identical
or different from those of Latin to Romanian.
Those who hastened to postulate ‘parallel evo-
lutions’ put, in fact, the cart before the horse,
and then tried to move it ahead without traction.
There are several clear examples which show,
among others, that intervocalic b/v have been
regularly preserved, while intervocalic l did not
rotacize (l > r). These are phonetic phenomena
specific to postclassical, colloquial Latin, which
cannot be automatically transferred to the Thra-
cian language. There are, in fact, several exam-
ples, accepted for long as reflecting the substra-
tum heritage. One such example, showing the
preservation of intervocalic b is Rom. abur ~
Alb. avull ‘vapour(s)’; and căciulă ‘fur cap’ is a
good example showing how intervocalic l does
not rotacize. Nor does it in the case of the two
forms bală and balaur (see above when the eth-
nic name Triballoi was discussed). I would add
that final ll in Alb. avull is not phonetically a lat-
eral of any sort, but a phoneme whose phonetic
realisation is similar to that of English /r/. Once
such phonetic developments are accepted, then
a place name like Deva may be related to the
second part of the compound Bulgarian place
name Plovdiv < Pulpu-deva.
Another example is offered by the verb a
avea < Lat. habeo, habere, with an exception-
al preservation of intervocalic b > v, and with
some forms of the present indicative probably
reflecting a substratum influence: am (substra-
tum), ai (Lat.), a (used as aux. verb, Lat.) and
are (with the meaning ‘he/she has’, subst.); the
plural forms avem, aveți (Lat.) and au reflect the
Lat. heritage, with the exceptional preservation
of intervocalic v < b.
Thracology and ‘ethnogenesis’
I recently tried to show that ‘enigmatic Al-
banian ethnogenesis’ is mainly a political issue,
26 See the development in Paliga 2016, including the hypothesis
of Hasdeu, end of the 19th c., later developed by Giuliano
Bonfante and I. I. Russu. It could be labelled ‘the Hasadeu-
Bonfante-Russu hypothesis’.
Sorin Paliga
rather than a linguistic one.27 From various rea-
sons, which cannot be developed here, the emer-
gence, through ‘ethnogenetic processes’, of a po-
litical construct in the 1st millennium C.E. is not
rare, but has occurred on a number of occasions.
It is clear, I think, that the Albanian language
must be understood as a local development from
the Romanized Illyrian language, which gave
rise to a language of Dalmato-Romance type,
which was later affected by the language of a
group coming from the east, the last remnants
of the non-Romanized Thracian groups, pushed
down south by the Slavic migration.
We may debate whether this group should
be identified with the non-Romanized Carpians
(the hypothesis of Hasdeu, later developed by
Bonfante and Russu) or with non-Romanized
Thracian groups of the Stara Planiná, perhaps the
often-invoked Bessi (Bessoi), or perhaps both: a
Carpian group pushed down by the first Slavic
groups, and a second Thracian group (Bessi?
others?) located in the Stara Planiná. These two
Thracian, non-Romanized groups merged and
moved further west and settled along the Adri-
atic coast, and ultimately gave rise to new ethnic
group, using a blend of the indigenous Roman-
ized Illyrian language and the more newly ar-
rived Thracian idiom. If this view is accepted,
we may surmise that Thracian is still a living
language, only now it is called Albanian or gju-
ha shqipe. Albanian is therefore a language with
a dual heritage: one of the Romanized Illyr-
ians, the other of the non-Romanized Thracian
groups, which settled here approximately in the
6th c. C.E. This is in agreement with the general
situation in southeast Europe (and Europe in
general) during the period of great migrations.
The ‘Thracian theme’ has long since be-
come the stuff of legend and of politics as well.
The Thracians are often considered the glorious
ancestors of both Romanians and Bulgarians.
The Thracians are now used to nurture various
hypotheses that are more political ideologies
than scientific debates. These problems have
been recently treated in Daskalov and Vezen-
kov, eds. (2015), particularly in the first essay of
the volume written by Tchavdar Marinov (this
study has other major flaws, though, but they
cannot be analysed in this text).28
27 Paliga 2016.
28 Marinov 2015, 10-117.
 Thracian v. Dacian (Daco-Moesian). How many ‘Thracian languages’ were there spoken in the Antiquity?
Conclusions
Using several names in order to denote local
groups or tribes of the Thracian world was the
norm in the antiquity. Using such tribal names
does not imply that each such group spoke a dif-
ferent language.
The dichotomy Daci, Dacisci ~ Getae does
not imply two different ethnic groups. It is an
endonym ~ exonym dichotomy, like dichoto-
mies of the type Suomalaisia ~ Finns, Hellenoi
~ Graeci, Deutsch ~ German etc. This is a com-
mon cultural pattern used in various cultural
contexts up to the present day.
When we speak of convergent ~ divergent
features in the Thracian world, we must refer
to the historical period and context. It is clear
that the initial convergent tendencies gradually
turned into divergent tendencies as historical
circumstances changed: the Hellenistic influ-
ence on the south Thracians, and Romanization,
which arrived earlier there than in Dacia.
The substratum heritage of Romanian (and
the Balkansprachbund in general) has in fact
been underestimated, not overestimated. A more
careful analysis shows completely different fig-
ures than those in current circulation.
We may conclude that Bulgarian and Ro-
manian linguists have now agreed on the fact
that we cannot speak of (radically) different
Thracian languages, but of Thracian dialects. Of
course, archaeologists have their own criteria,
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