Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/294

 278 HISTORY OF GREECE. Pindar on the same level as the Lacedaemonian kings 1 would have admitted this Thesprotian origin ; nor does it coincide with the tenor of those legends which make the eponym, Thessalus, son of Herakles. Moreover, it is to be remarked that the lan- guage of the Thessalians was Hellenic, a variety of the JEolic dialect ; 2 the same (so far as we can make out) as that of the people whom they must have found settled in the country at their first conquest. If then it be true that, at some period ante- rior to the commencement of authentic history, a body of Thes- protian warriors crossed the passes of Pindus, and established themselves as conquerors in Thessaly, we must suppose them to have been more warlike than numerous, and to have gradually dropped their primitive language. In other respects, the condition of the population of Thessaly, such as we find it during the historical period, favors the supposi- tion of an original mixture of conquerors and conquered : for it seems that there was among the Thessalians and their dependents a triple gradation, somewhat analogous to that of Laconia. First, a class of rich proprietors distributed throughout the principal cities, possessing most of the soil, and constituting separate oli- garchies, loosely hanging together. 3 Next, the subject Achaeans, Magnetes, Perrhsebi, differing from the Laconian Periceki in this point, that they retained their ancient tribe-name and sepa- rate Amphiktyonic franchise. Thirdly, a class of serfs, or depen- dent cultivators, corresponding to the Laconian Helots, who, till- ing the lands of the wealthy oligarchs, paid over a proportion of its produce, furnished the retainers by which these great fami- lies were surrounded, served as their followers in the cavalry, and were in a condition of villanage, yet with the important reserve, that they could not be sold out of the country, 4 that they 1 Pindar, Pyth. x. init. with the Scholia, and the valuable comment of Boeckh, in reference to the Aleuadae ; Schneider ad Aristot. Polit. v. 5, 9 ; and the Essay of Buttmann, Von dem Geschlecht der Aleuaden, art. xxii. vol. ii. p. 254, of the collection called " Mythol gus." aa well as to Theocritus (xvi. 34), attest the numbers and vigor of the Thes- salian Penestse, and the great wealth of the Aleuadae and Skopadse. Both these families acquired celebrity from the verses of Simonidcs : he was p
 * Ahrens, De Dialect. JEolica, c. 1, 2.
 * See Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 3 ; Thucyd. ii. 99-100.
 * The words ascribed by Xenophon (Hellen. vi. 1, 11 ) to Jason of Pherae,