Thrace

To talk about Thrace is never easy. Nor should it be. Its image is not a given. We wouldn't be exaggerating if we said that the average Greek in general, and the resident of the Athens-centred city-state in particular, is ignorant of what Thrace really is:

• the Thrace of the Orphics, which Pindar, in symbolic fashion, called "the country and place of pure teaching and of poetic initiation"
• the Thema (county) of Thrace of the Byzantines,
• the Didymoteicho or Demotica of the Bulgars,
• the Xanthi or Esketze of the Turks,
• the Nestos or Saribasan
• Alexandroupoli or Dede Agats
• the Pomak villages of Rodopi, and
• Eumolpus, who still sings in the night for a nymph

Thrace which was carved up - literally and metaphorically-by the various treaties which imposed the interests of the Great and which legitimised the mistakes of the Lesser; the Thrace of 1912-13, and the Thrace of Lausanne (24 July 1923), which saw its populations exchanged like herds of animals or like merchandise; the Thrace of the myths and the reality of folk gatherings and of a lofty spiritual and intellectual tradition; the Thrace of Georgios Vizyinos and of Christos Aidonidis... Thrace is a quiet place-a stable and unspoiled landscape -but also an unexpected landscape.

It is on this ever-present antithesis that its identity is based. It is the easternmost point of Europe-that is, of the "West" of which Spengler spoke - and the westernmost part of the East. Thrace is the homeland of Bacchus - and of Democritus; of the tristesse joyeuse of the Fathers -and of the Roman Justinian; of the "barbarous" Diomedes who was torn asunder by his horses - and of Domna Vizvizaina, the Thracian Bouboulina. A knowledge of Thrace is, first and foremost, a national - not nationalistic - duty. Thrace is a dreamland which abounds in sea and rivers, and is rich in mountains, rain, sudden downpours, and uncompromising sunlight.

*BY MANOS STEPHANIDIS
Curator, National Gallery, Athens