ODRYSIAN CAVALRY ARMS, EQUIPMENT, AND TACTICS

CHRISTOPHER WEBBER

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The Odrysian Army
Although by Strabo’s time Thrace had been devastated to an exceptional degree, he said that the region as a whole could send into the field 15,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry.1 This would corroborate Herodotus’ statement that there were about a million Thracians, which allows an army 100 – 200,000 strong.
It also makes creadible Thucycidides’ claim that when the Odrysian king Sitalkes called up all Thracian troops south of
the Danube, 150,000 warriors poured “like a cloud of locusts”2 into Macedonia, carrying all before them. No wonder Herodotus says of the Thracians that “were they under one ruler, or united, they would… be invincible and the strongest nation on earth.”3
However, the army was not paid, but lived on booty, and the majority of troops would have supplied their own equipment.
Consequently armies dissolved quickly if not succcessful.4

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