Seuthes I

Seuthes I

Seuthes I (; Ancient Greek: Σεύθης, Seuthēs) was king of the Odrysians in Thrace from 424 BC until at least 411 BC. Seuthes was the son of Sparatocos (Sparadocus), and the grandson of Teres I. While his father Sparadocus is the first Odrysian monarch to have left proven coinage, Seuthes succeeded his uncle Sitalces on the throne in 424 BC. Although the contemporary Thucydides merely indicates that Sitalces died during the course of an unsuccessful campaign against the Triballi and was succeeded by his nephew Seuthes, the circumstances, paired with a later accusation of Philip II of Macedon against the Athenians (that on the death of Sitalces, whom they had admitted to their citizenship, they immediately made an alliance with his murderer), some scholars have seen Seuthes' accession as the result of a conspiracy. This does not necessarily follow, and Seuthes is already described as Sitalces' highest official before his succession to the throne. Others have pointed out the probability that the Odrysians followed the principle of tanistry when it came to the succession, and that as son of Sitalces' apparently older brother, Seuthes may have had a prior claim over Sitalces' sons. Already before his accession to the throne, Seuthes had married Stratonike, a sister of king Perdiccas II of Macedon, as part of a peace settlement between his uncle and the king of Macedon in 429 BC. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Seuthes I has received more than 36,325 page views. His biography is available in 16 different languages on Wikipedia. Seuthes I is the 11,740th most popular politician (down from 10,367th in 2019).