IPHIKRATES IN THRACE. JW eating Thracians," 1 but he also acquired, as dowry, a large stock of such produce as Thracian princes had at their disposal, together with a boon even more important, a seaport village not far from the mouth of the Hebrus, called Drys, where he established a for- tified post, and got together a Grecian colony dependent on him- self. 2 Miltiades, Alkibiades, and other eminent Athenians had done the same thing before him ; though Xenophon had refused a similar proposition when made to him by the earlier Seuthes. 3 Iphikrates thus became a great man in Thrace, yet by no means abandoning his connection with Athens, but making his position in each subservient to his importance in the other. "While he was in a situation to favor the projects of Athenian citizens for mercan- tile and territorial acquisitions in the Chersonese and other parts 1 See an interesting Fragment (preserved by Athenaeus, iv, p. 131 ) of the comedy called Protesilaus by the Athenian poet Anaxandrides (Meineke, Comic. Grsec. Frag, iii, p. 182). It contains a curious description of the wedding of Iphikrates with the daughter of Kotys in Thrace ; enlivened by an abundant banquet and copious draughts of wine given to crowds of Thracians in the market-place : a vSpag fiovrv potyayaf f, etc., brazen vessels as large as wine vats, full of broth, Kotys himself girt round, and serving the broth in a golden basin, then going about to taste all the bowls of wine and water ready mixed, until he was himself the first man intoxicated. Iphikrates brought from Athens several of the best players on the harp and flute. The distinction between the butter eaten, or rubbed on the skin, by the Thracians, and the olive-oil habitually consumed in Greece, deserves notice. The word avx^poKo/^af seems to indicate the absence of those scented un- guents which, at the banquet of Greeks, would have been applied to the hair of the guests, giving to it a shining gloss and moisture. It appears that the Lacedaemonian women, however, sometimes anointed themselves with butter, and not with oil; see Plutarch, adv. Koloten, p. 1109 B. The number of warlike stratagems in Thrace, ascribed to Iphikrates by Polysenus and other Tactic writers, indicates that his exploits there were renowned as well as long-continued.
- Theopomp. Fragm. 175, ed. Didot; Demosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 664.
3 Xenoph. Anab. vii, 2, 38; vii, 5, 8; vii, 6, 43. Xen. Hellen. i, 5, 17; Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 36. See also a striking passage (in Lysias Orat. xxviii, cont. Ergokl. s. 5) about the advice given to Thrasybulus by a discontented fellow-citizen, t( seize Byzantium, marry the daughter of Seuthes, and defy Athens.
