THESSALY, a country of ancient Greece, supposed to have received its name from Theffalus the father, or, according to others, the son of Grecus, an ancient king of an obscure village, from whom the Greeks are said to have been descended. It was also called Emonia, the origin of which name is uncertain; Pelagia, from Pelagus one of the first Grecian princes; and Pyrrhaea, from Pyrrha the wife of Deucalion.
It was anciently divided into four districts, or perhaps kingdoms. Theffaliotes, Illeotus, Pelasgiotis, and Phthiotis. Deucalion was king of this last when the deluge that goes by his name happened, which destroyed all the inhabitants of this and the neighbouring countries, except only such as happily escaped into the high mountains of Theffaliotis, and Deucalion and his wife, who were carried in an ark upon the waters nine days and nights, and rested at length upon Parnassus, from which they were feigned to have repopulated the country by throwing of stones behind them. However, the name of Theffaly and Theffalians in time prevailed, and came to signify all the four parts. Sometimes it included Magnesia and Phthiotis, and sometimes not; sometimes it was joined with Macedonia, and sometimes severed from it, and again rejoined to it.
Theffaly, properly so called, had on the east the provinces of Magnesia and Phthia abovementioned, and these two were bounded by the Ægean sea. On the west it had Illyricum and Epirus, now Albania; on the north Macedonia and Mygdonis, and on the south Grecia Propria. It extended from 24 deg. 10 min. to 25 and a half east longitude, and from north to south, from 39 deg. 50 min. to about 41 deg. north latitude.
Theffaly was famous, among other things, for such an extraordinary breed of oxen, that Neleus king of Pylos refused to give his daughter in marriage to Melampus king of Tyrus, except he procured him some of them; which he soon after did by the help of his brother Bias. What fine horses they bred, and how expert they were in the use and management of that noble creature, is evident, since the fiction of the Centaurs is allowed to have taken its origin from them. This fable, however, reflects no less disgrace upon them for their brutish incontinency, than it commends them for their skill in horsemanship. The attempt which they made upon the women at the nuptials of their neighbour Pirithous king of the Læpithæ, if not forged on purpose to cast an ignominious brand upon them, is a pregnant proof of the one; and the history of their wars with other nations afford us a constant proof of the latter: so that in spite of their debauchery, they have showed themselves a warlike nation; and as such, their alliance as well as assistance, especially that of their cavalry, was ever highly courted by contending powers. And indeed, if we consider how liable the pleasantness and fertility of their country made them to foreign invasions, it will be no wonder they should be so well inured to the trade of war. Nor can it be supposed that anything but their extraordinary valour could have saved them from being swallowed up by
some of their neighbours, considering that their scanty territories consisted only of four small kingdoms or districts, as often disjointed from each other under different princes, as united together under one.
At the head of the Theffalian history must be placed the celebrated Argonautic expedition, which happened in the reign of Pelias king of Theffaly, about the year of the world 2720, or 100 years before the taking of Troy. The occasion of this expedition was as follows:
Æson the third in descent from Æolus, being either worn out with age or weary of government, whilst his son Jason was yet very young, appointed Pelias, his brother by the mother's side, guardian of the kingdom till his son came of age. Pelias on the other hand, who had resolved to secure the government to himself, sent to consult the oracle about it, and was bid to beware of the man that had but one shoe. It happened some time after, that as he was sacrificing to Neptune, he called his nephew to him, who was on the other side of a rivulet, and Jason having dropped one of his shoes in crossing the brook, gave him occasion to think that he was the person pointed out by the oracle. He then asked him what course he would take with the person of whom the oracle had bid him beware; and Jason readily answered, That he would send him to Colchis in search of the golden fleece. His uncle took him at his word, and sent him immediately upon that enterprise. Jason made no difficulty to obey; and having engaged a considerable number of young noblemen, the flower of all Greece, to this expedition, he procured a ship to be built for this purpose at Pegasa, by one Argus, from whom he called it Argus; and hence he and his gallant company were called Argonautæ.
These adventurers, after many strange difficulties and exploits, arrived at length at the land of Colchis, where the golden fleece was kept. They went immediately to the metropolis, where Jason acquainted Æetes king of the country with Pelias's command, and demanded the fleece of him. Æetes promised to deliver it to him, provided he could yoke together by his own single strength two fierce and terrible bulls (which had brazen hoofs, and breathed out fire and flame, and had been presented to him by Vulcan), and plough the ground with them, sowing it with the dragon's teeth which Minerva had given him, and were the remainder of those which Cadmus had sown at Thebes.
Jason, perplexed how to perform these conditions, was happily relieved by Medea the king's daughter, who was fallen in love with him. She promised him that if he would marry her, she would assist him in it; and he had no sooner agreed to it, than she gave him a medicine, with which having anointed his body and armour, he became proof against the violence of the bulls; or, according to others, she taught him how to tame those fierce creatures, so as to be able to yoke and make use of them. She told him, moreover, that the teeth which he was to sow would presently spring up into armed men, which would infallibly destroy him unless he raised an immediate dissention among them, by throwing stones at them, during which he might easily cut them off. Jason having successfully performed the task, went and demanded the fleece according to Æetes's promise, whilst
Thessaly. whilst he, instead of delivering it, was contriving how to destroy him and his company, and burn their ship. To prevent this, Medea went, and by her enchantments cast the dragon into a deep sleep, stole the fleece, and brought it to her lover, who took her, and, at her desire, also her brother Abifyrus, into his ship, and sailed away immediately with his companions. Aetes, who was soon informed of his daughter's treachery, pursued immediately after them; which when she perceived, she cut her brother in pieces, and scattered his mangled limbs about in hopes to stop his farther pursuit, as it actually did: for the disconsolate king, surprised at her unnatural barbarity, staid to gather up the fragments of his son's body, and buried them in a place called from thence Tonis; and in the mean time she and the Argonauts escaped into Thessaly, not without having first felt the effects of Jupiter's anger for the murder of Abifyrus, and after having spent four whole months in this expedition.
Daring the absence of Jason, Pelias, who never expected his return from Colchis, had taken some means to cut off his father, in order to fix the kingdom upon himself and his son Acaulus; and the old king being apprised of his plot, had poisoned himself by drinking a draught of bull's blood. His queen likewise, oppressed with grief for his death, and the supposed loss of her son and kingdom, had hanged herself; so that Pelias now thought himself secure on his throne, when, contrary to his expectation, Jason returned successful and victorious, and brought the fleece to him. However, he had so well strengthened himself in it, that Jason did not dare to undertake any thing against him openly. Medea was forced to have recourse to her magic to be revenged on the tyrant, and, as some say, restored Jason's father to life. After this she persuaded Pelias's daughters to boil their old father, on pretence she would restore him to life and youthful vigour; but upon her non-performance Acaulus mounted the throne, and having performed his father's funeral obsequies, banished Jason and his wife from Thessaly, who went and dwelt at Corinth.
Acaulus is famed for having been a great hunter, and for the incontineney of his wife Hippolyta, or, as she is called by others, Cretheis; which proved fatal to him. She was in love with Peleus the son of Cacus, and had solicited him in vain for some time, till, enraged at length at his constant refusal, she accused him to her husband for making some attempts upon her honour. Acaulus believing her, and endeavouring to kill Peleus, was himself and his unchaste wife slain by him.
The next Thessalian prince, both in time and fame, was the celebrated Achilles, the son of Peleus and Thetis, the goddess of the sea. This hero was king of Phthis, one of the four provinces of Thessaly, and is feigned to have been dipped by his mother in the river Styx when he was a child, and to have been made invulnerable by it in every part except the heel, by which she held him. After this she sent him to be brought up by the Centaur Chiron, where he learned music, arms, and the riding of the great horse. Being afterwards warned by the oracle, that if he went to the Trojan war he should meet with his death there, she dispatched him privately in women's apparel to Lyc
medes king of Scyrus, an island in the Ægean sea, and one of the Cyclades.
In the mean time the Grecian chiefs, being likewise forewarned by an old prophecy, that their enterprise against Troy would prove unsuccessful unless they had Achilles with them, Ulysses undertook to find him out, and to bring him to that war; which he accordingly did. Thetis finding that her son was determined to prefer a glorious death before the walls of Troy to an inglorious immortality, prevailed upon Vulcan to make him an impenetrable armour, with which he went at the head of his bold myrmidons to the fatal siege. Here he forbore acting for some time, upon a pique he had taken against Agamemnon on account of a beautiful female captive; but his resentment giving way to his grief for the death of his dear friend Patroclus, who had been killed by Hector, Achilles thenceforth fought nothing but to revenge it; which he soon after did. Hector was not only slain, but most barbarously used by him after his death, he having caused his body to be tied to his chariot and dragged thrice round the walls of Troy. This inhumanity did not go long unpunished; and Priam having redeemed his son's shattered remains at an excessive price, Paris, another of his sons, soon after shot Achilles in the heel, the only place in which he was not invulnerable.
The two most memorable things which the Thessalians are since recorded for, are their driving the Boeotians from the country of Arne, a small territory in Thessaly; so called from its metropolis built by Ilcomtus the son of Neptune, by Arne the daughter of Aeolus, the second of that name, who was the son of Hypotes, and grandson of Mimas king of Alolis; and their constant wars against the Phocians. The former of these happened, according to Thucydides, 60 years after the taking of Troy, and about 100 after their first settlement in that territory; when the Boeotians being driven thence, went and possessed themselves of a country then named Cadmeis, and called it by their name Bœotia. We have elsewhere spoken of that country, and given another etymology of it, to which we refer the reader.
As for their wars with the Phocians, it is not easy to guess at the true ground of them; only we find, that there was an irreconcilable hatred entailed between those two nations, which proved a constant source of fresh and bloody encounters, in which the Thessalians, though superior in strength, especially on account of their cavalry, were very often worsted by the policy of their enemies; witness those statues of Apollo, Mineva, Diana, and other trophies, which Paufanias tells us they set up both on their borders and at the temple of Delphos, in memory of their signal victories over them. The truth is, the kingdom of Phocis was very mountainous, and the avenues to it very rugged; so that the Thessalians, who seem still to have been the aggressors, could receive but little benefit from their horse.—Thessaly is now called Yanna, a province of European Turkey, bounded by Macedonia on the north, by the Archipelago on the east, by Achaia or Livadia on the south, and by Epirus on the west.