AHC/WI: Ancient Thracian Empire?

Is it possible, with a PoD anywhere between 500 BCE and Roman annexation in 46 AD, for the Odrysian Kingdom of Thrace to expand to such proportions as to control Macedon, parts of Greece and Anatolia, or some other territorial configuration that would also classify this as a wank?
What would the effects be on local culture? What sort of religious traditions could the Thracians popularize, for example?
 
Well im inclined to believe that it would play out similarly to the Macedonians; they would likely embrace greek culture and hellenize the territory they conquer, but would still be viewed as half civilized by 'proper' greeks.

What would be interesting is if they unite Greece before Persia comes into the picture.
 
Well im inclined to believe that it would play out similarly to the Macedonians; they would likely embrace greek culture and hellenize the territory they conquer, but would still be viewed as half civilized by 'proper' greeks.

What would be interesting is if they unite Greece before Persia comes into the picture.

We’re not sure if Macedonian was a Greek dialect with a heavy substrate or a closely related language. In contrast, Thracian is quite obviously not a Greek dialect and unlike Phrygian, is demonstrably not even in the same family on the larger Indo-European tree, unless we are to accept Thracian, Dacian, Illyrian and Dardanian/Albanian as being a separate branch of the larger Graeco-Aryan grouping... which they likely are, but that would also include Armenian and Indo-Iranian, so yeah. Thracian is not really very close to Greek at all, whereas Macedonian appears to have been. Numismatic evidence from Thrace and Bithynia tells us that the Thracian language was alive and well, even during the Hellenistic Period.

The Thracian will likely “Hellenize” in a similar manner then to the Pontians, Cappadocians, and Armenians, adopting many aspects of Hellenistic architecture and dress while blending the latter with their own, and they will use Greek in their coinage alongside Thracian and speak it at court, much the same way the English spoke French, but the core will remain Thracian. Furthermore, Thracian religion appears to have been very different from Greek religion, and appears to have had a pronounced influence on the latter. There would likely be syncretism, but an all out replacement of the Thracian language, culture and religion I see as highly unlikely.

Also, there doesn’t appear to have been any debate in antiquity as to their Hellenism (they were NOT considered Hellenes), and so I doubt they would be able to unite Greece. An excellent opportunity for them to gain a profitable foothold there though would be during the Peloponnesian War, when they invaded Macedonia. If they can successfully conquer and hold Macedonia, then they gain control of the gold mines at Amphipolis and particularly agriculturally productive area that was famed for its horses. If they can take the highlands of Lyncestis then they can perhaps partner up with or subjugate the Dardanians and the Southern Illyrian tribes (both of whom are relatively disorderly and disorganized and disorderly at this point) to establish an over land trade route with Italy. This would be an excellent way to bypass the wealthy Greek city states and get rich while they tear each other to pieces. If the Odrysians can hold it together in this time, then they can come in and mop up the mess 60 years later the way Philip did.

I’m not entirely sure the Thracians would have the same burning desire for vengeance against the Persians, though. If so, I don’t see them expanding nearly as far as Alexander did, but that isn’t for lack of confidence in their capabilities as they were more or less on par with Macedonia socioeconomically, but rather because Alexander’s conquests if they had not happened IOTL would be considered to be cartoonish and ASB. It might be much more profitable to focus on Europe, particularly gaining control of at least Macedon, Thessaly, Epirus and Southern Illyria, subjugating but not “uniting” Greece and then perhaps expanding into Italy.

They would probably meet the same fate as did the Galatian Celts, Luwians, Phrygians, Lydians, and other ancient peoples of the Asia Minor who later assimilated into the Greeks.

Why? All of these peoples retained distinct ethnic identities for hundreds of years under Greek/Roman rule. We are talking about an independent, Thracian Empire centered in Thrace.
 
Why? All of these peoples retained distinct ethnic identities for hundreds of years under Greek/Roman rule. We are talking about an independent, Thracian Empire centered in Thrace.
By the time of the Mid Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, Luwians, Phrygians, Lydians, Hittites, Hurrians, etc didn't exist in the Asia Minor and Northern Syria.

There were no Genocides, either. What had happened was that these peoples had assimilated into and became "Greeks".

A stronger Thracian Empire is a different subject from this post. Then they could have survived like the Albanians or something like them.
 
By the time of the Mid Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, Luwians, Phrygians, Lydians, Hittites, Hurrians, etc didn't exist in the Asia Minor and Northern Syria.

There were no Genocides, either. What had happened was that these peoples had assimilated into and became "Greeks".

A stronger Thracian Empire is a different subject from this post. Then they could have survived like the Albanians or something like them.

Right. So, one thing that it is important to understand is that just because a language stops being attested after a certain date in inscriptions, doesn't mean that it has gone extinct, just out of literary use. There is also the possibility of sampling bias because, well, comparatively little makes it into the archaeological record over the course of thousands of years. For example, there are some urban areas of the United States in which English language signage disappears completely (which begs the question of how well assimilation of the new immigrants is going), and the language changes to Spanish. If somehow down the road, these signs were the only signs from this city x that are preserved in the archaeological record after 2,000 years, especially after say, the Spanish-speaking migrants were able to assert themselves over the English-speaking minority and make their language the language of government and thus signage, then future archaeologists might speculate that English went extinct in city x after it stops being attested. Plenty of languages have continued to be spoken for millennia without being written down under the dominance of another language. Cornish comes to mind for a European example, as does just about any minority language in Italy today, since the Florentine dialect of the Tuscan language has been the prestige language of Italy since at least the Late Medieval Period and Latin was the language of governmental administration before that and even during the same time as the Florentine language. So, where else do you look if you don't find the language being written down? One place is hydronymy and toponymy, but another place is the historical record itself. We know from Greek historians that Anatolian languages were being spoken in Western Anatolia throughout the Hellenstici Period and into the Roman Period. And there were in fact genocides, like the Roman subjugation of the little-known Homonadesians who, given their geographic location probably spoke an Anatolian language. There was also of course ethnic cleansing in the form of mass enslavement, especially after the Mithradatic Wars, and so on. We also know that Phrygian was spoken into Late Antiquity despite the Phrygians having not had their own sovereignty since the 6th century BCE, and Galatian is believed to have survived into the Early Medieval Period. Furthermore, a populous and vibrant Greek community existed in Crimea into the 20th century and actually still exists in a much diminished form after the communists ravaged it, while Crimean Gothic may have been spoken until the end of the 18th century.

So again, I see no reason why a stronger, more centralized and expansive Odrysian Kingdom would assimilate linguistically and culturally into Hellenic culture. There will be extensive syncretism to be sure, and like OTL Albanian does from Latin it will borrow extensively from Greek, but this "Thracian Empire" would be very much Thracian.
 
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