Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/293

 THESSALV. 277 hoplites were constituted, the warlike nobles, such as the Aleu- adae at Larissa, or the Skopadae at Krannon, despising everything but equestrian service for themselves, furnished, from their ex- tensive herds on the plain, horses for the poorer soldiers. These Thessalian cities exhibit the extreme of turbulent oligarchy, oc- casionally trampled down by some one man of great vigor, but little tempered by that sense of political communion and rever- ence for established law, which was found among the better cities of Hellas. Both in Athens and Sparta, so different in many respects from each other, this feeling will be found, if not indeed constantly predominant, yet constantly present and ope- rative. Both of them exhibit a contrast with Larissa or Pherae not unlike that between Rome and Capua, the former, with her endless civil disputes constitutionally conducted, admitting the joint action of parties against a common foe ; the latter, with her abundant soil enriching a luxurious oligarchy, and impelled according to the feuds of her great proprietors, the Magii, Blossii, and Jubellii. 1 The Thessalians are, indeed, in their character and capacity as much Epirotic or Macedonian as Hellenic, forming a sort of link between the two. For the Macedonians, though trained in aftertimes upon Grecian principles by the genius of Philip and Alexander, so as to constitute the celebrated heavy-armed pha- lanx, were originally (even in the Peloponnesian war) distin- guished chiefly for the excellence of their cavalry, like the Thes- salians ; 2 while the broad-brimmed hat, or kausia, and the short fipreading-mantle, or chlamys, were common to both. We are told that the Thessalians were originally emigrants from Thesprotia in Epirus, and conquerors of the plain of the Peneius, which (according to Herodotus) was then called JEolis, and which they found occupied by the Pelasgi. 3 It may be doubted whether the great Thessalian families, such as the Aleuadae of Larissa. descendants from Herakles, and placed by 1 See Cicero, Orat. in Pison. c. 1 1 ; DC Leg. Agrar. cont. Rullunj, c 34-35. 2 Compare the Thessalian cavalry as described by Polybius, iv. 8, with tta Macedonian as described by Thucydides, i :. 100. 3 Herodot. vii. 176 ; Thucyd. i. 12.