[197] The ordinance of Caesar is attested by Appian, B. C. ii. 88, and Plutarch, Caes. 48, and it very well accords with his own account, B. C. iii. 80; whereas Pliny, H. N. iv. 8, 29, names only Pharsalus as a free town. In Augustus’ time a Thessalian of note, Petraeos (probably the partisan of Caesar, B. C. iii. 35), was burnt alive (Plutarch, Praec. ger. reip. 19), doubtless not by a private crime, but according to resolution of the diet, and so the Thessalians were brought before the tribunal of the emperor (Suetonius, Tib. 8). Presumably the two incidents and likewise the loss of freedom stand connected.
[198] In the time of the republic Scodra seems to have belonged to Macedonia (iii. 181)iii. 173.; in the imperial period this and Lissus are Dalmatian towns, and the mouth of the Drin forms the boundary on the west.
[199] The towns founded in these regions outside of Macedonia proper bear quite the character of colonies proper; e.g. that of Philippi in the Thracian land, and especially that of Derriopus in Paeonia (Liv. xxxix. 53), for which latter place also the distinctively Macedonian politarchs have epigraphic attestation (inscription of the year 197 A.D., τῶν περὶ Ἀλέξανδρον Φιλίππου ἐν Δερριόπῳ πολιταρχῶν, Duchesne and Bayet, Mission au mont Athos, p. 103).
[200] That for Lysimachus the Danube was the boundary of the empire, is evident from Pausanias, i. 9, 6.
[201] Calybe near Byzantium arose according to Strabo (vii. 6, 2, p. 320) φιλίππου τοῦ Ἀμύντου τοὺς πονηροτάτους ἐνταῦθα ἱδρύσαντος. Philippopolis is alleged even according to the account of Theopompus (fr. 122 Müller) to have been founded as Πονηρόπολις, and to have received colonists corresponding with that description. However little these reports deserve trust, they yet in their coincidence express the Botany–Bay character of these foundations.
[202] Yet the northern Bessarabian line, which perhaps is Roman, reaches as far as Tyra ([p. 226]).
[203] That Byzantium was still in Trajan’s time under the governor of Bithynia, follows from Plin. ad Trai. 43. From the congratulations of the Byzantines to the legates of Moesia we cannot infer their having belonged to this governorship, which from their situation was hardly possible; the relations to the governor of Moesia may be explained from the commercial connections of the city with the Moesian ports. That Byzantium was in the year 53 under the senate, and so did not belong to Thrace, is plain from Tacitus, Ann. xii. 62. Cicero (in Pis. 35, 86; de prov. cons. 4, 6) does not attest its having belonged to Macedonia under the republic, since the town was then free. This freedom seems, as in the case of Rhodes, to have been often given and often taken away. Cicero, l.c., ascribes freedom to it; in the year 53 it is tributary, Pliny (H. N. iv. 11, 46) adduces it as a free city; Vespasian withdraws its freedom (Suetonius, Vesp. 8).
[204] This is proved by the absence of coins of the inland Thracian towns, which could be assigned by metal and style to the older period. That a number of Thracian, especially Odrysian, princes coined in part even at a very early period, proves only that they ruled over places on the coast with a Greek or half–Greek population. A similar judgment must be formed as to the tetradrachms of the “Thracians,” which stand quite isolated (Sallet, Num. Zeitschrift, iii. 241).—The inscriptions also found in the interior of Thrace are throughout of Roman times. The decree of a town not named found at Bessapara, now Tatar Bazarjik, to the west of Philippopolis, by Dumont (Inscr. de la Thrace, p. 7), is indeed assigned to a good Macedonian time, but only from the character of the writing, which is perhaps deceptive.
[205] The fifty strategies of Thrace (Plin. H. N. iv. 11, 40; Ptolem. iii. 11, 6) are not military districts, but, as is apparent with special clearness in Ptolemy, land–districts, which correspond with the tribes (στρατηγία Μαιδική, Βεσσική κ. τ. λ.) and form a contrast to the towns. The designation στρατηγός has, just like praetor, lost subsequently its original military value. Here perhaps the analogy of Egypt, which likewise was divided into urban domains under urban magistrates and into land–districts under strategoi, served primarily as a basis. A στρατηγὸς Ἀστικῆς περὶ Πέρινθον from the Roman period occurs in Eph. epigr. ii. p. 252.
[206] In Deultus, the colonia Flavia Pacis Deultensium, veterans of the eighth legion, were provided for (C. I. L. vi. 3828). Flaviopolis on the Chersonese, the old Coela, was certainly not a colony (Plin. iv. 11, 47), but belongs to the peculiar settlement of the imperial menials on this domanial possession (Eph. epigr. v. p. 83).