The peoples of Thrace, the wide region between the Aegean, the Black Sea, and the Danube, repeatedly engaged in warfare with Rome through the second and first centuries BC. The name also denoted a class of gladiator armed in Thracian fashion (small shield and curved sica), and Cicero plays on the double sense in the Philippics when he mocks Lucius Antonius's career in the arena at Mylasa.