Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-02-27
Geography Repeated
In Ancient IhTdCe

Ancient Tnrace, II Of the morn
ing lands of the worlds history, for
parts of which Greece has presented
claims to the peace conference. ar.
fords a parallel to the difficulties OF
self determination already experienced
along the eastern shores Of the Adj
%riatic," says a bulletin from the WASH
ington headquarters of the National
Geographic Society.
1T will be recalled that the spirit
ed dispute between Jugo-Slavla ana
Italy arose from the fact that Italians
were predominant in coastal cities
while the hinterland was ~undenlab!y
Slavic. The Latin peoples of Italy
had gone across the Adr.atic in past
centuries, settled along the east Ad-
riatic shores, but were pushed well
GU to islands and peninsulas by the
influx of Slavic tribes.
I'm much the same way this phe-
nomenon was duplicated. in an earlier
age, on the eastern side OF the Balkan
= where lay the extremely
mobile Thrace. The Greeks colonized
the coast cities Of Thrace, on what
| now are the Marmora, Black and Aeg-
can Seas, not for settlement so much
as for trading stations. They did not
seek to impinge upon the Tracians OF
the interior.
THUS Constantinop1e was founded,
and thus Greece early came into pos
session of the peninsula now called
Gallipoli, building a wall across the
five mile neck of the isthmus to keep
! the Thracians within bounds.
Shrinking and expanding, and
changing it's conformation time and
| time again as Darius invaded it,
| Xerxes abandoned it. Philip II united
| part of 1t with Macedonia and garri-
soned the rest. the Romans organized
1t as a province. Thrace dropped at
! last into the ~capacious nav or the
| Turks with the fall of Constantlnople
in 1853. that historic date from which
| some historians mark the beginning
| of modern history.
Later the western part, that Philip
Joined to Macedonia, fell within the
| limits of pre-war Serbia, and the
! northern part became eastern Ru-
melia, which was given to Bulgaria
al the London settlement Of 1913.
| The rest remained with European
Turkey until the World War exploded
| that domain and left the pieces to
be the step children OF the Allied ma
tions.
"Adrianople, once the Paris of
!Thrace, and later the Versailles of the
Turkish sultans, Is a picturesque, II
somewhat unkempt, remainder of the
ancient days. But more familiar,
perhaps, Is the name or Phlllppl, IN
the center of the rich gold mine dis
trict of Thrace. and near the hill OF
D,onysius. which owes its fame to
neither of those facts so much as to
the visits of Paul, who wrote letters
to his converts that were Incorporated
in the Bible as the book of Philip
plans.
"Dionysius, or Bacchus, as the Ro-
mans call the god, typified the loose
morality OF the void n barbarous
inhabitants of Thrace originally, for
the Thracians of historic times al
ready were a composite people.
Every girl passed through a period
when she was the common property
of the male community before she
married one of them. Even in Gre
clan days the worship of Dionysius
consisted of wild nocturnal orgies
There Is the story that three women
who declined to join in the revelries
were translated into doves. and a king
of Thrace was reputed to have resist
ed a visit of Dionysius to his domain
The god escaped by a plunge into
the sea, but the king was stricken
with a blindness and a frenzy. 81
the myth relates, that caused him tc
hew down his son, believing him tc
be q tree.