ODRYSE, an important tribe of Thrace, occupied a territory whose limits were different at different times, but whose central part was on the banks of the Artiscus and in the neighbourhood of the Hebrus. They seem to have been a colony of that horde of barbarians that came pouring into Thrace from the north after the Trojan war. They were an important people from the first period of their settlement. Their name frequently occurs in legendary history. Thamyris, the ancient bard, is said to have been one of their tribe, and Orpheus is represented to have been their king. At the date of their introduction into authentic history, during the invasion of Scythia by Darius Hystaspis, their native mountains protected their independence against the Persians; and the fine breed of horses which they pastured on the plains of the Hebrus supplied their armies with a large and efficient squadron of cavalry. In the latter half of the fifth century B.C. they had extended their territory northward to the Danube, westward to Abdera, and eastward to the Euxine Sea; and their annual revenue had risen to be equal to the sum of 800 talents. The prosperity of the Odrysae, however, had now reached its zenith, and began to decline. A disputed succession divided them into factions, and made them an easy prey for their ambitious neighbours. In 357 B.C., after a course of various fortune, the Athenians wrested from them the Thracian Chersonese; and in 343 B.C., after a war of nine or ten years, Philip II. of Macedon reduced them to the state of tributaries, and began to plant Philippopolis and other colonies in the very heart of the country. Yet the spirit of independence among the Odrysae soon began to revive, and even before the death of Alexander the Great they had raised the standard of rebellion. On the accession of Lysimachus to the sovereignty of Thrace they commenced a struggle for liberty, which continued with various intervals till the fall of the Macedonian kingdom. The Odrysae then became the auxiliaries of the Romans, and were employed in subjecting the other Thracian tribes to the dominion of Rome. Yet they retained a form of independence, and were treated like allies rather than tributaries. Augustus allowed them still to be governed by native sovereigns, even though their king Sadales, in 42 B.C., had bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans; Crassus bestowed upon them parts of the territory of the Bessi; and in course of time Rome had placed the whole of Thrace under their control. Yet in the time of Tiberius they began a series of rebellions, which resulted in the abolition of their independence, and the reduction of their territory into the form of a Roman province, during the reign of Vespasian.