of the tribal progenitor, as demonstrated by how, after Lysimachus had been captured by the king of the Getae, Dromichaetes, the latter arranged a feast for him and placed before him sumptuous vessels on silver tables, and called Lysimachus "father" in a speech to him. Another example of the Thracian belief in the rite of the sacred marriage with the goddess was in how the Odrysian king Cotys I believed that Athena accepted to be a substitute for the Great Goddess as his spouse. This most unusual ritual union with the goddess happened when the Odrysian king Cotys I believed the Greek goddess Athena had agreed to marry him, and therefore he arranged a wedding feast and prepared a bridal chamber where he waited for his divine bride after getting drunk. During this ritual marriage between the king and the goddess, Cotys was the earthly substitute for the Hero , making him the lover of the goddess, who in this case was the Mother Goddess of Athens: the ritual echoed the myth of the marriage of the hero Tereus with the Athenian princesses Procne and Philomela to express his desire to possess Athena, but in Cotys's case it was the goddess herself who replaced the two princesses. This ceremony was a reflection of Cotys's policy of expelling the Athenians from Aegean Thrace, of which further evidence exists in his declaration to the Athenians who had granted him honorary citizenship to their city that he too would grant them his tribe's rights, so he could this way put the Odrysian kingdom and Athens on an equal footing. Cotys's ritual marriage to Athena in her role as the Athenian form of the Great Goddess is paralleled by the many diplomatic and likely ritual marriages of the Macedonian king Philip II, which he always contracted during war time with the daughter of a king whose lands he had conquered or was planning to conquer: Philip first married the Illyrian princess Audata and with her had a daughter named Cynane then wedded Phila of Elimeia, the sister of the Archon Derdas III of Elimiotis Philip then fathered children with two Thessalian women to attract the Thessalians' support from his marriage to Olympias, he obtained the kingdom of the Molossians in dowry when he conquered Thrace, the king Cothelas went to meet him bearing gifts, including his daughter Meda, whom Philip married finally, he fell