Getae

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Getae (singular Geton) was the name by which ancient Greek writers referred to the tribes later known as the Dacians. The Romans used predominantly the name Dacus (plural Daci) to refer to the Getae, but the name Getae was also employed. The Getae were a Thracian people who lived in what are today Romania, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Bulgaria.

According to Herodotus (4.93), the Getae were "the noblest as well as the most just of all the Thracian tribes." When the Persians, led by Darius the Great, campaigned against the Scythians, the Thracian tribes in the Balkans surrendered to Darius on his way to Scythia, and only the Getae offered resistance (Herod. 4.93).

Although thought of as a war-like people, Getae were also able to show diplomacy. When the king of Macedon Lysimachus tried to conquer the Getae living North of Danube, he was defeated. The Getae king Dromichaetes took him prisoner but he treated him well. Dromichaetes convinced Lysimachus that there is more to gain as an ally than as an enemy of the Getae and released him.

The Getae's two principal gods were Zalmoxis and Gebeleixis.

"This same people, when it lightens and thunders, aim their arrows at the sky, uttering threats against the god; and they do not believe that there is any god but their own." - Herodotus, 4.94.

Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia mentions[link] a tribe called the Tyragetae, apparently a Daco-Thracian tribe who dwelt by the river Tyras (the Dniester). Their tribal name appears to be a combination of Tyras and Getae.

At the close of the fourth century CE, Claudian, court poet to the Emperor Honorius and the patricius Stilicho, habitually uses the ethnonym Getae to refer poetically to the Visigoths.

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