As <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Thrace&groupId=1030&placeId=509">Thrace</a> encompasses their territory so effectually as to extend from one sea to the other, they are engaged in perpetual and most difficult warfare with its inhabitants.
They cannot on the one hand rid themselves of the war once for all by a carefully prepared attack resulting in victory, owing to the number of the chieftains and their followers.
For if they get the better of one, three other more powerful chieftains are sure to invade their territory.
Nor are they at all better off if they give way and agree to terms and the payment of tribute; for the very fact of their making concessions to one chief raises against them enemies many times more numerous.
So that they are, as I said, involved in a warfare both perpetual and most difficult; for what can be more full of peril, what more terrible than a war with near neighbours who are at the same time barbarians? Nay, such being in general the adverse circumstances against which they have to struggle on land, they have in addition to the other evils attendant on war to suffer too something like the torments of Tantalus that Homer describes; for, owners as they are of a fertile country, when they have carefully cultivated it and a superb harvest is the result, and when the barbarians now appear and destroy part of the crops, collecting and carrying off the rest, then indeed, apart from their lost toil and expense, the very beauty of the harvest when they witness its destruction adds to their indignation and distress.
In spite of all, however, they continued to bear the burden to which they had grown accustomed of the war with the Thracians, without departing from their ancient engagements to the Greek states. But when they were attacked also by the Gauls under Comontorius, they found themselves in very grave danger.
Walbank Commentary