164 TERPSICHORE.

with his forces, and reduced all its cities and inhabit-'
ants under the power of the king: the conquest
Thrace had been particularly enjoined him by Dai iibgl

III. Next to India, Thrace is of al! nations the rrnMl
considerable: if the inhabitants were either under the
government of an individual, or united among them*
selves, their strength would in my opinion render
them invincible; but this is a thing impossible, and
they are of course but feeble. Each different district
has a different appellation; but except the Getse, the
Trausi, and those beyond Crestona, they are marked
by a general similitude of manners.

IV. Of the Getae, who pretend to be immortal, I
have before spoken. The Trausi have a general uni­
formity with the rest of the Thracians, except in what
relates to the birth of their children, and the burial of*
their dead. On the birth of a child, he is placed in
the midst of a circle of his relations, who lament aloud
the evils which, as a human being, he must necessa­
rily undergo, all of which they particularly enumerate;
hut whenever any one dies, the body is committed to

. the ground with clamorous joy; for the deceased,
they say, delivered from his miseries, is then su­
premely happy. *

V. Those beyond the Crestonians have these ob­
servances : each person has several wives; if the hus­
band dies, a great contest commences amongst his
wives, in which the friends of the deceased interest
themselves exceedingly, to determine which of them
had been most beloved. She to whom this honour is
ascribed is gaudily decked out by her friends, and
thon sacrificed by her nearest relation on the tomb of
her husband, with whom she is afterwards buried: bis
other wives esteem this an affliction, and it is imputed
to them as a great disgrace.

VI. The other Thracians have a custom of selling
their children, to be carried out of their country. To
their young women they pay no regard, suffering their!
to connect themselves indiscriminately with men; but
they keep a strict guard over their wives, and pur­
chase them of their parents at an immense price. To
have punctures on the skin is with them a mark of