The Bithyni (; ; ) were a

Thracian The Thracians (; ; ) were an Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Southeast Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied the area that today is shared between north-eastern Greece, ...

tribe who lived in

Bithynia Bithynia (; ) was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), adjoining the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea. It bordered Mysia to the southwest, Paphlagonia to the northeast a ...

History

The Bithyni originally lived in the area of the lower

Strymon river The Struma or Strymonas (, ; , ) is a river in Bulgaria and Greece. Its Ancient Greek, ancient name was Strymon (, ). Its drainage area is , of which in Bulgaria, in Greece and the remaining in North Macedonia and Serbia. It takes its source fr ...

, due to which the ancient Greeks claimed that they were originally called the Strymoni (; ). Around , the Paeonians displaced the Bithynians in the Strymon valley, after which they Bithyni migrated eastwards, and crossed the Thracian Bosporus and settled in northwestern Anatolia, where they assimilated the Phrygians and the Bebryces, with the region becoming known as

after them. The Dolonci tribe, who lived in the Thracian Chersonese and whom Greek mythology claimed were related to the Bithyni, might have been remnants of the Bithyni who were left behind on the European side of the Thracian Bosporus. By the mid-6th century BC, the Bithyni had come under the rule of the Lydian empire, after which it became part of the Persian

Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian peoples, Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, i ...

when Cyrus II annexed Lydia.

Culture

The Bithyni used the round shield in warfare.

References

Sources

* * * Ancient tribes in Thrace Bithynia Ancient peoples of Anatolia Thracian tribes {{Ancient-Thrace-stub