beautiful mountains in the world: it is lovely and fertile up to its
top; it is covered with chesnut-trees, and is probably the place from
which they have spread over the world, for their nuts are called _nuces
Castaneae_, from the town of Castanea on the Pagasaean gulf. Among the
Greek botanists, Pelion is celebrated for its richness in medicinal
plants, and for the variety of its trees. Previously to the present
wretched state of the country, many large villages existed about mount
Pelion; it was the happiest district; its inhabitants enjoyed great
privileges, and as they were very industrious and under the special
protection of the sultans to whom the district belonged as a fief,
they were enabled to pay a large tribute, but lived in the interior
quite undisturbed and without suffering any ill usage. Their excellent
warehouses, which were known also to German merchants, are now entirely
destroyed, although the inhabitants have not risen against the Porte.
This is the physical outline of the mountains. Phthiotis is an entirely
mountainous country between Othrys, the Euboean sea and the gulf of
Iolcus; but the mountains are not high. The remaining part of Thessaly is
not absolutely a plain, for the mountains rise gradually, and the country
is intersected by ranges of hills. Thessaly has two gulfs, that near
Thermopylae called Μαλιακός or Πυλαϊκός, and the Παγασητικός or Ἰωλκίτης.
I shall now proceed to consider the population. According to the most
ancient traditions, Thessaly was inhabited by all kinds of people of
quite different names. The poets are fond of applying to the country,
in the ancient mythical period, the name AEMONIA, which in those times
is not an inappropriate name for Thessaly.[65] Among its earliest
inhabitants, we have mention of the LAPITHAE, who dwelt on mount Pelion,
I do not exactly know where, and are said to have expelled the CENTAURI.
It is quite clear that the Greeks, in their mythology, conceived the
Centaurs only as mythical beings; the explanation of a race of men living
on horseback, is of late origin, and altogether uncertain; such a race,
moreover, belongs to a plain and not to the mountains.
The only river, besides the Peneus, which is of any historical
importance, is the SPERCHIUS or SPERCHEUS in the south, which falls
into the Euboean sea about four miles north of Thermopylae. Of poetical
interest are the APIDANUS and the ANAURUS near Iolcus, on the banks of
which Jason is said to have lost his shoe. In the west, in the territory
of Pherae, we may notice lake Boebeis.
The Thessalians are regarded as an Epirot people, that is, as
Thesprotians, who, under their chief Thessalus, conquered Aemonia. Along
with the Lapithae, it is said, Aeolian tribes occupied the country,
Boeotians living in the valley of Arne, and others elsewhere. Thessaly is
sometimes also regarded as the real Αἰολίς. It is impossible to ascertain
the true history of the Thesprotians, for our accounts of them directly
contradict each other. Thessalians are said to have migrated from
Dodona into Thessaly, and Peraebi again are reported to have penetrated
from Thessaly into the mountains of Epirus, whence it is probable that
here too the identity of the nations gave rise to the traditions about
immigration. I do not mean to deny the immigration, but our accounts
of it are completely devoid of authenticity. I lay, however, great
stress upon the fact, that Thessalians and Pelasgians are synonymous
in the ancient poems and genealogies, which are known to us, at least
substantially, from the scholiasts on Apollonius Rhodius and the Iliad.
This is a grand discovery, and one from which new treasures are still to
be gathered: the Alexandrian school always deserves to be spoken of with
the greatest respect; the statements contained in these scholia make up
for the loss of the poetical lays. At Cyzicus Thessalians and Pelasgians
are mentioned; in Lemnos we find Thessalian Minyans, and the Pelasgians
of Ravenna and Agylla are likewise called Thessalians. Somewhat later
genealogists, as Hellanicus in his Phoronis, account for the Pelasgians
dwelling in the most distant countries by emigration from Thessaly under
Pelasgus and his son[66] Nanas, which is to us only a hint. But the
statement that the Thessalians in the valley of Thessaly were foreign
immigrants, is credible on account of their internal constitution and
their system of servitude, which suggests the subjugation of the ancient
population. A system of servitude so fully developed as in the Wendish
parts of Germany, occurs nowhere in Greece except in Thessaly; I do not
mean to say, that it did not exist in many other parts also, for traces
of it are found in the notes of Ruhnkenius on Timaeus. In Greece proper
helotism is well known; at Athens it never existed, though we find it
in Ionia, Chios, Argos, Crete, Syracuse, and Magna Graecia; but it was
nowhere so permanent as in Thessaly, where it continued down to the time
of the Romans. Its name is πενεστεία, which expresses both the body of
the serfs and the relation in which they lived; it does not seem to have
originally been the name of a nation, but must probably be derived, as
was done by the ancients, from πένομαι, and πένης, a poor man.[67]
There existed in Thessaly a number of towns forming independent states
by themselves; but that at the same time they were united by political
bonds, is evident partly from the coins with the inscription κοινὸν
Θεσσαλῶν, and partly from the fact, that in the πεντηκοντετηρίς, before
the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, kings of Thessaly, such as Orestes
and Echecratides, are mentioned. We must, therefore, infer, that Thessaly
formed one state; but at times the inhabitants of Larissa, Pharsalus,
Pherae, and Cranon appear as citizens of independent towns, whence we may
conclude that the bonds which connected them were extremely loose.
Thessaly, in its narrower sense, was divided into four parts, Phthiotis,
Hestiaeotis, Thessaliotis, and Pelasgiotis. The principal passage on
this subject is Strabo, ix. p. 430, _b._ and _c._; which, however,
as printed in our editions, is senseless, and the beginning alone
is correct. I will, therefore, mention to you the emendation I have
made, for even the unrivalled Casaubonus was mistaken here. Instead
of καλούμενοι δὲ Πελασγιῶται, we must read, in accordance with the
MSS. cited by Casaubonus, καλούμενοι δὲ _Θεσσαλιῶται_; and immediately
after this we must read, συνάπτοντες ἤδη τοῖς κάτω Μακεδόσι, καὶ οἱ
_Πελασγιῶται_ ἐφεξῆς τὰ μέχρι Μαγνητικῆς παραλίας ἐκπληροῦντες χωρία, so
that Πελασγιῶται is restored in the latter passage. Strabo, however, here
confounds Phthiotis, the country of the Phthiotian Achaeans, with that
part of Thessaly which the Thessalians had separated from the ancient
Phthia and united with Thessaly. Phthia, in the sense of the Achaean
country, is never any other than the district between the Malian gulf and
the valley of the Peneus; but if we take it as the portion of Thessaly
which the Thessalians had torn from it, and incorporated with their own
country, it cannot have extended down to the gulf. Thessaly embraced the
land from Pharsalus as far as Hestiaeotis, that is, as far as the upper
part of the valley of the Peneus, in the neighbourhood of Tricca. The
extent of Phthia was not rightly understood by the ancients themselves in
their explanation of Homer. The passage in the Βοιωτία:—
Νῦν αὖ τοὺς ὅσσοι τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἔναιον
οἵ τ’ Ἄλον, οἵ τ’ Ἀλόπην, οἵ τε Τρηχῖν’ ἐνέμοντο,
οἵ τ’ εἶχον Φθίην ἠδ’ Ἑλλάδα καλλιγυναῖκα,
reads entirely as if Phthia and Hellas were towns. This fancy, for
it is nothing but a fancy, took a firm hold even of the Alexandrian
grammarians; but the verses must be transposed, οἵ τ’ εἶχον must follow
directly after the line beginning with Νῦν αὖ. Both Hellas and Phthia are
countries, and stand in apposition to the Pelasgian Argos.
This division into four parts applies only to Thessaly in the narrower
sense, and is not so much of geographical interest, as it is of real
political importance: there must at one time have existed four real
Thessalian states standing to one another in the relation of isopolity,
like the Romans and Hernicans, and the Samnite nations among one another.
But this point, like all that concerns Thessaly, is involved in very
great obscurity. This much, however, is certain, that the division was
restored under Philip of Macedonia, who, for the purpose of breaking
the power of Thessaly cut it up into four different states, just as
afterwards the Romans did with Macedonia, and as, in 1812, Napoleon,
while making the Poles believe that he was restoring their state,
divided their country into three parts, in order to prevent its rising,
at a great distance from him, to the rank of a powerful state. This is
the tetrarchy of which Theopompus in Harpocration gives the well known
explanation. Demosthenes (_Philip._ ii. p. 71, ed. Reiske), however,
states that Philip divided Thessaly into decadarchies: this reading
occurs indeed in all the MSS., but they are of little authority, as all
of them are founded upon a single recension, and are perhaps derived
from one original manuscript. From Harpocration, too, an author of the
second century, we see that in his time this reading already existed,
and puzzled him as well as other archaeologists. It is historically
certain, that the Lacedaemonians, in every town that became subject to
them, established a decadarchy, as at first they did at Athens, though
they there increased the number to thirty; but how we have to view the
statement in regard to Thessaly, is, as Harpocration admits, a matter
of doubt. The explanation, however, is not so very difficult. The
δεκαδαρχίαι in the second Philippic are, if we examine the context, quite
the same as the tetrarchies in the third (p. 117). The fault arose from
the compendious mode of writing: Δ in ancient Greek writing has, as a
number, a double meaning; according to the common Phoenician practice it
signified _four_, and according to the Attic system of writing _ten_.
In nearly all the earlier inscriptions, where it occurs as a number,
Δ signifies _ten_, as Π signifies _fifty_; when, therefore, Δ with
a line (Δʹ) occurred before ἀρχία (ΔʹΑΡΧΙΑ), the reader knew that it
indicated a number, but he made it either _ten_ or _four_, according as
he imagined that he had before him an Attic or a common number; and if he
was familiar with the Lacedaemonian decadarchy, he read in this passage
also δεκαδαρχία. This division into tetrarchies, then, existed in the
Macedonian period, but we do not know how long.
I will now put together the few fragments of Thessalian history which
have come down to us. The family of the Aleuadae, a Heracleid family,
was the most celebrated of all, and ruled at Larissa; it formed an
oligarchy even within the ruling nation; at the time of the Persian
wars it was so powerful as to be in possession of the whole government,
and it is probable that the Thessalian kings mentioned by Thucydides
belonged to it. The Scopadae were another great and noble family at
Pharsalus. The nobility of Thessaly, like that of the Sarmatians
and that of the middle ages, were numerous, whence the best part of
the Thessalian armies consisted of horsemen; they scarcely had any
infantry at all; a Thessalian phalanx does not occur anywhere, and
peltasts are not mentioned till later times. Notwithstanding the
state of dissolution in which we find Thessaly, there still existed a
bond among the different states, which embraced even the neighbouring
nations, the Magnetes, the Achaeans of Phthia, and the Peraebians; it
is possible that the Thessalians, may have ruled over the tribes which
touched upon their borders, but the latter were never really subdued by
them, and the Peraebians seem to have been under the direct supremacy
of Larissa. About thirty or forty years after the Peloponnesian war,
when the disorganisation had increased, the town of Pherae, which had
formerly been insignificant, rose into importance, and Jason, a man of
great parts, came forward there as tyrant, and was elected dictator by
the whole of Thessaly under the title of ταγός, in which capacity he
ruled over Thessaly and even over the countries dependent on it. He
was succeeded by his brothers, and then by his nephew Alexander; but
his dynasty, like those of all usurpers in Greece, passed away, and
afterwards Thessaly was in a state of greater dissolution than ever. The
Aleuadae now renewed their claims, but the Thessalians happened at the
time, in common with the Boeotians, to be involved in the unfortunate
war against the Phocians, and Magnesia on that occasion recovered its
independence. In these circumstances, Philip of Macedonia appeared among
them under the mask of a friend, pretending that he would assist them,
that he would subdue the Phocians, and reduce Magnesia to obedience; he
was accordingly appointed tagus, and intrusted with the administration
of their revenues arising from port dues and the tribute of their
dependencies. Philip abused this ridiculous confidence, which was in
reality an act of treason of the Thessalians against themselves, and put
himself in permanent possession of the common domain of which he had
undertaken the management, especially the Thessalian port of Pagasae,
from which the revenues were very large. Thessaly, which was now divided
into four parts, henceforth belonged to the crown of Macedonia. Very
feeble attempts only were made by the Thessalians to recover their
independence: in the Lamian war they endeavoured in vain to shake off the
yoke, and the same was attempted in the subsequent wars against Cassander
and Demetrius Poliorcetes. Thessaly, in the narrower sense, however,
remained subject to Macedonia until the second Roman war of Philip. Under
Antigonus Gonatas and Demetrius, the father of Philip, the Aetolians
gained Achaia Phthiotis, which thus became separated. Philip recovered
indeed a portion of it (Olymp. 140), but the greater part remained in
the hands of the Aetolians, who even conquered parts of Thessaly Proper,
such as Pharsalus, which, though it was recovered by the Macedonians, yet
remained for a time in the hands of the Aetolians. Thessaly, however,
even in its connection with Macedonia, continued to form a state by
itself, with the exception of Magnesia, which was regarded as part of
Μακεδονία ἐπίκτητος, and where Demetrius Poliorcetes built the great
fortress of Demetrias, which often served the Macedonian kings as a
place of residence; it was very strong, and possessed a military port
with arsenals for both the land army and the navy. When the Romans
took Greece from Macedonia, Thessaly, as far as Mount Olympus and the
Cambunian mountains, was separated from Macedonia, and obtained autonomy.
It now formed a separate state, probably including the Peraebians and the
Achaean Phthiotians; but Magnesia, which remained separate, surrendered
to Antiochus, and afterwards remained in the possession of Philip, who
had conquered it together with Demetrias, and with the sanction of the
Romans retained it, a fact which has often been overlooked. Many believe
that Philip was confined within the boundaries of Macedonia; but this is
erroneous; his dominion extended over several other countries besides,
for he was rewarded by the Romans with possessions, which afterwards they
took from him. The fasti of the Thessalian strategi have come down to us
in the Armenian translation of Eusebius; and from them we learn that the
strategi were appointed for the whole of Thessaly in common, that Larissa
not only had no privileges, but that they were sometimes chosen from
smaller places, nay even from districts, as Phthiotis and Orestis, which
had formerly been subject to Thessaly. One strategus belonged to Argos,
which must have been Argos in Orestis, and not the Amphilochian Argos.
During the war against Perseus, the Thessalians were in disgrace with the
Romans; whether at that time they lost their autonomy cannot be proved
with any degree of probability. In the war of the Pseudo-Philip, one part
of the Thessalians joined him; but the history of that war is so obscure,
that we cannot say whether they were independent or not. They seem,
however, to have had, or at least to have recovered, a kind of autonomy,
for during the war between Caesar and Pompey, the Thessalians appear as
a state or κοινόν with a strategus (_praetor_). The Achaeans then had no
common strategus, and this accordingly appears to prove the autonomy of
the Thessalians. After this their history cannot be traced.
After the description I have already given of the physical features of
Thessaly in the narrowest sense of the name, I have only to add a few
remarks on some other points.
LARISSA was the most important town of Thessaly both in antiquity and the
middle ages; and it is so still. Its situation is extremely favourable,
the district around it being unusually fertile. Neither Larissa nor any
other Thessalian town has a distinct history.
PHERAE, next to Larissa the greatest town, was situated in the plain
towards the bay; it was not indeed as great as Larissa, but still a
respectable town, and is renowned in mythology for the story of Admetus;
in the historical times, Jason and his family gave a certain celebrity to
it.
PHARSALUS, remarkable for the ever memorable battle which decided the
fate of Rome, belonged for a time to the Aetolians.
TRICCA, a town of which considerable ruins still exist, was celebrated
for the worship of Asclepius. At least twenty other Thessalian places are
mentioned, but I will not detain you with an enumeration of their names,
as they are not sufficiently known.
PAGASAE was the sea-port of Thessaly. The country, in its narrower sense,
extended only thirty stadia along the sea-coast, beginning with the gulf
of Pagasae or Iolcos; the Thessalians, therefore, had no fleet, though
they may have had a few ships to keep up their commerce by sea. Pagasae
had been united with their country for the sake of commerce; in the
earlier times it is mentioned on several occasions, but it disappears
during the Macedonian period, as Demetrius Poliorcetes transplanted all
the inhabitants of the towns in that neighbourhood to his new fortress of
Demetrias.
PERAEBIA, one of the three countries subject to Thessaly, extended along
the foot of mount Olympus towards Macedonia; its mountainous parts were
for a time independent, but afterwards surrendered to Thessaly; they did
so, however, on more favourable terms than the Aeolian inhabitants of the
plains; for, though they lost their political independence, they did not
become serfs. The inhabitants were Epirots of the tribe of the Peraebians
dwelling in the neighbourhood of Dodona.
The MAGNETES also belonged to the race of the Pelasgians. The Greek form
of their name is Magnetes, though we are accustomed to say Magnesians,
which is in reality incorrect. Their country embraced the whole coast
of Thessaly from mount Ossa and the mouth of the Peneus down to the sea
which separates Thessaly from Euboea, and the bay of Iolcos. The whole
of mount Pelion belonged to Magnesia, which has few harbours on its
coast, the most important being that in the bay of Iolcos. In the map of
D’Anville and others of an earlier date, a considerable town of the name
of Magnesia is marked near the end of the promontory; but this town never
existed, it is a mere blunder, arising from a misunderstood passage of
Apollonius Rhodius, who, in describing the voyage of the ship Argo along
the coast, mentions Magnesia in such a manner that a person who is not
a scholar might mistake it for a town. Scylax and Herodotus, who give a
very accurate enumeration of the towns on that coast in their natural
succession, do not mention one of the name of Magnesia, which they apply
to the country alone. In Demosthenes, too, Magnesia is not a town.
According to their genealogy, the Magnetes belonged to the Pelasgians,
but of their history nothing is known. In very early times, however, they
also occur in Asia, either because they had emigrated thither, or because
the Pelasgian races in Meonia bore the same name: and why should not the
Magnetes in Europe have undertaken voyages from their coast to the East?
IOLCOS on the Anaurus in Magnesia, is the place from which the Argonautic
expedition is said to have sailed. In the ancient story it appears as an
important place of the Minyans, but afterwards it was only a very small
town, which subsequently disappears altogether.
But instead of it there arose DEMETRIAS, on the modern bay of Volo, a
splendid harbour in the neighbourhood of Iolcos: this town is one of
those creations which shew the practical and keen eye of its founder.
We have seen that the establishment of Megalopolis was an unsuccessful
undertaking; Demetrias was a rude, immoral, detested, and odious man,
but of uncommon ability, which he shewed in his great discoveries in
mechanics and in the art of engineering; the same talent was manifested
here also, for he chose a spot which had been neglected for centuries
for the purpose of founding a capital of Greece, which he intended to
govern as a kingdom. The fact that his son, Antigonus Gonatas, was
enabled to maintain himself as king, without having a definite kingdom,
was owing to Demetrias, for it was his place of residence, and his whole
strength lay there; it became the capital of Magnesia which was governed
by Macedonia as a province in a manner which is somewhat strange to
us; for under those despotisms, small countries often had a republican
form of government, in which the kings interfered but seldom. In like
manner, the small islands of the Archipelago, before the outbreak of
the present war, were governed by Constantinople: when a Turkish vessel
appeared, the people trembled, the magistrates were called out, and if
the commander was so minded, he put them to death. The relations in the
Macedonian empire were of a similar kind; the provinces were bound to
pay tribute and furnish troops, but otherwise they lived quite under
democratic institutions; and when a king founded a city like Antioch or
Alexandria, it received a mixed population of Greeks and Macedonians,
and a republican municipal constitution. Demetrias, as I have already
said, became the capital of Magnesia, when after the war of Philip the
country became free, but it then threw itself into the arms of Antiochus.
As a punishment for this, the Romans allowed it again to be subdued
by Macedonia, and we find Perseus still in possession of it. We are
perfectly ignorant as to the manner in which the Romans decided the fate
of Magnesia and Demetrias because the last book of Livy has come down to
us incomplete; it is not probable that they incorporated it with Thessaly
or with Macedonia; it is more likely that, on account of the strength
of Demetrias, they reserved for themselves the supremacy over it, and
occupied it by a garrison.