Brea (Thrace)

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Brea stone in the Athens Epigraphic Museum

Brea ( Greek  Βρέα Femininum, inhabitant Βρεαῖος or Βρεάτης ) was an ancient Greek polis (city) in Thrace , on the lower reaches of the Strymon , among the Bisalts . Nothing is known about the city itself. Nevertheless, the city is significant and important through an inscription in which its foundation in 446/5 BC. The so-called Brea decree or the Brea inscription, the Brea stone.

Location and history

The exact location is unknown. The city was a colony of Athens. There is no information about its further fate after its foundation. Perhaps it was destroyed by the Thracians just a few years after it was founded, or it was later destroyed in 437 BC. Amphipolis colony founded in BC . In Thucydides it does not appear more.

Plutarch

Plutarch mentions the founding of Brea in his Pericles . He interprets this colonization in such a way that Pericles, in his foresight, on the one hand alleviated the plight of the people with a social program and therefore sent unemployed people in particular to the colony and on the other hand wanted to intimidate the allied poleis in Thrace with the colony.

The Brea Decree

The Brea Decree (446/5 BC) is an inscribed source carved in stone on the Athenian colonization in the 5th century BC. And the example of the systematic creation of an independent polis as part of the Athenian colonization policy and the exercise of rule at the beginning of the Attic League . The text lists several provisions about the participants and the execution of the procession, the holding of the sacrifices, the establishment of holy districts, the chief representative. Added to this is the obligation of the allied cities in Thrace to assist Brea in the event of Thracian raids. The Athenian people's assembly hereby reveals the actual function of colonization to maintain the position of power in this area, because Athens had a pronounced interest in the Strymong area due to its strategic location, the mines and the precious metals to be mined there.

The source translates: ... the person who filed the complaint or the plaintiff. ... should be made available to them by the settlement manager (apoikistai) in order to offer as many auspicious sacrifices as they think are good for the apoikie (= colony). As geonomists (= land distributors) you should choose ten men, one from one (each) phyle ; these are supposed to distribute the land. Demokleides should set up the apoikie as an agent to the best of their ability. The holy districts that are reserved should be left as they are and no more should be staked out. A cow and a panhoplie (= full armor) should be sent to the great panathenaic mountains and a phallos to the Dionysia . If someone goes on a campaign against the territory of the (Attic) settlers, the cities should give aid as energetically as possible according to the agreements that, when ... was secretary, were made regarding the cities in Thrace. These provisions should be recorded on a stele and (they) set up in the polis; The stele should be made available by the settlers at their own expense. If someone initiates a vote, (which) violates (the provisions) of this column or if a speaker makes a motion and tries to change or cancel something in what has been decided, the atimie (= denial of civil rights) should lapse he and his sons, and his property, shall be confiscated and the tenth part shall go to the goddess (Athene), unless the settlers themselves ... request. Those who register as additional settlers, namely by the soldiers, should be present in Brea within thirty days after their return to Athens as additional settlers. The apoikie should be sent within thirty days. Aeschines should accompany (the train) and pay out the money ... Phantocles made the request: Regarding the apoikia after Brea, agreement with what Demokleides has requested, but the Phantocles should let the Erechtheis Prytany appear before the council at its next meeting . After Brea are (from the film) of Theten and zeugitae pull (native) settlers ...

Remarks

  1. ↑ Stephanos of Byzantium .
  2. ↑ Plutarch, Pericles 11.5: πρὸς δὲ τούτοις χιλίους μὲν ἔστειλεν εἰς Χερσόνησον κληρούχους , εἰς δὲ Νάξον πεντακοσίους, εἰς δὲ Ἄνδρον τοὺς ἡμίσεις τούτων, εἰς δὲ Θρᾴκην χιλίους Βισάλταις συνοικήσοντας ... He sent (= Pericles) thousand citizens Kleruchen (Settlers) to the Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, half of them to Andros, a thousand to Thrace (= Brea ), who were supposed to live with the Bisalts ... (a thousand to Thrace = Brea: compare Brea decree).
  3. ↑ Plutarch, Pericles 11.5: καὶ ταῦτ ἔπραττεν ἀποκουφίζων μὲν ἀργοῦ καὶ διὰ σχολὴν πολυπράγμονος ὄχλου τὴν πόλιν ... = freeing And this made him, unemployed around the city from the pile and for that very reason restless elements ... (in Brea Decree: Thetes and Witnesses ).
  4. ↑ Plutarch, Perikles 11,5: ... φόβον δὲ καὶ φρουρὰν τοῦ μὴ νεωτερίζειν τι παρακατοικίζων τοῖς συμμάχοις. ... to instill fear in the allies by occupying them against the start of a riot.
  5. ↑ Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) I³ 46 = Meiggs / Lewis 49 (English) = Brodersen / Günther / Schmitt (German) = Stahl, p. 231, see literature below.

Literature and Sources

  • Kai Brodersen , Wolfgang Günther , Hatto H. Schmitt : Historical Greek inscriptions in translation . Volume I, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2011.
  • Inscriptiones Graecae (IG). Volume I³, No. 46 (original text in Greek).
  • Russell Meiggs, David Malcolm Lewis: A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC Oxford 1989, No. 49.
  • Eduard Meyer : History of Antiquity . Reprint, Darmstadt 1965, p. 670 (interpretation of the Brea inscription in the sense of Plutarch).
  • Michael Stahl ; Society and State among the Greeks: Classical Times . Paderborn 2003, p. 231 (reprint and interpretation of the German translation by Brodersen, Günther, Schmitt).

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