Page 432 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

Moski had crossed into Asia Minor and broken the Hittite empire.
And to their west the Dorians had pushed south into Greece, and
had captured the key fortress of Mycenae less than twenty years

before. Since then all the peoples south of the Danube had been
emigrating unchecked into Greece and Asia Minor, eager to seize
what plunder remained and to stake out a claim in the rich and

fertile valleys of the fabulous Mediterranean coast. And behind
them the Thracians had been able to spread from their home­
lands north of the Black Sea into the almost deserted plain of the

lower Danube.
And the Thracians were the immediate neighbors of the
Cimmerians to the west.

They had not, of course, completely deserted their home
pasturelands. But many families, and even chieftains with their
whole peoples, had trekked southwest. Land was available, then,

in the Thracian territories, at the price of acknowledging the
suzerainty of a Thracian king, or—if the situation warranted it
—defying his authority. The assembly broke up after a formal

decision that, although war with their old friends, the Thracians,
was not to be contemplated, the western border was henceforth
to be regarded as open territory. Any of the peoples who wished

might move across it and make what arrangement they could with
its inhabitants. And if they were opposed with force, the king and
his chieftains in council would decide in what way support might

be given.
In the following years a considerable portion of the Cim­
merian nations crossed the open frontier. It was no organized

movement. When a territory was heard to be vacant or sparsely
held, a subtribe or a group of families would strike through the
intervening lands and occupy it. Sometimes there would be

skirmishes with other aspirants; sometimes the matter could be
settled by the payment of a few score head of cattle or by the
promise of an annual tithe. Sometimes the new settlers were

thrown out, and returned or went elsewhere; sometimes they
were defeated and enslaved. But on the whole the movement was
constant and successful.

Always in the van were to be found the veteran mercenaries
from the Assyrian campaigns. They were hard-riding, hard-fight-