Thessalians

When they broke into Attica, the Thessalian horsemen were the first to meet them.

The Thessalians, at their entreaty, joined together and sent their own king, Cineas of Conium, with a thousand horsemen.

Then the horsemen charged and slew Anchimolius and many more of the Lacedaemonians, and drove those that survived to their ships.

When this happened, there followed a headlong flight on the part of the Thessalians, so that some of them were killed and others were captured.

but when the Thessalians, by charging upon those who were behind, kept interfering with his progress, he sent along to the rear the vanguard of horsemen also, except those about his own person.

And when the Thessalians saw them rushing upon them unexpectedly, some of them fled, others turned about, and others, in trying to do this, were captured while their horses were turned half round.

The same oaths also were taken, and the same alliance made by both with the Thessalians.

Now Orestes, son of Echecratidas, king of the Thessalians, being banished from Thessaly, persuaded the Athenians to restore him:

The Athenians were also joined, in accordance with the treaty, by a thousand horse of the Thessalians, who went over during the action to the Lacedaemonians.

Yet this infatuation, this hankering after Philip, men of Athens, until very recently had only destroyed the predominance of the Thessalians and their national prestige, but now it is already sapping their independence, for some of their citadels are actually garrisoned by Macedonians.

For if he should accept the Phocians as allies, and with your help take the oath of friendship to them, he must at once violate the oaths he had already sworn to the Thessalians and the Thebans, with the latter of whom he had covenanted to help them in the subjugation of Boeotia, and with the former to restore their rights at the Amphictyonic Council.

Accordingly his envoys warned you that he would not accept the Phocian alliance, but then Aeschines and his friends, taking up the tale, assured the people that, although for the sake of the Thebans and the Thessalians Philip could not with decency accept the alliance, yet if he should become master of the situation, and get his peace, he would thereafter do exactly what we should now ask him to agree to.

Two hundred and fifty hostages were once massacred by the Thessalians, and the Volsci Aurunci to the amount of three hundred by the Romans.

From hence it follows, that the Thessalians were released from the obligation of paying a sum of money, which they owed to the Thebans;

nor was it confined to those, who lived under the authority of the Roman empire, but prevailed among the Thessalians, the Illyrians, the Triballians, and Bulgarians.

The Thessalians recognize that he is determined to be their despot and not the president of a confederacy.

for ever since he handed Halus over to the Pharsalians, settled the Phocian question, and subdued the whole of Thrace, coining false excuses and inventing hollow pretexts, he has been all the time practically at war with Athens, though it is only now that he confesses it openly in the letter which he has sent.

Eudicus and Simus of Larissa, until they put Thessaly under Philip’s heel.

Therefore, if you Thebans and Thessalians are wise, you will treat them as your enemies, and put your confidence in me.

Those vile Thessalians and those ill-conditioned Thebans regarded Philip as their friend, their benefactor, and their deliverer.

So that formerly I did not know what that saying of the Thessalians means — about drawing the moon down upon themselves — but now I have learned it well.

If a man knew such spells, learned from Medea or from the Thessalians, that by uttering them he could make whatever men he wished weep and suffer though no evil was present, would not his power be thought a tyranny?

While to all Thessalians in my realm I do proclaim a general mourning for this lady, with hair shorn off and robes of sable hue;

These are the sorrows in my home, while abroad the marriages among Thessalians and the thronging crowds of women will drive me mad, for I can never bear to gaze upon the compeers of my wife.

And again when you whirled around in a circle on the platform and said, pretending that you were working against Alexander, I admit that I organized the Laconian uprising, I admit that I am bringing about the revolt of the Thessalians and the Perrhaebi.

But when now the Thessalians had voted to march against our city, and the young Alexander was at first bitterly angry—naturally —and when the army was near Thebes, Demosthenes, who had been elected ambassador by you, turned back when halfway across Cithaeron and came running home—useless in peace and war alike!

For it was plain that the Thessalians and Philip were going to take the field;

And did not the Thessalians laugh at all the rest and say that the expedition was for their own benefit?

when the Theban ambassadors were standing by, and when it was plain that Philip was threatened with the hostility of the Thebans and Thessalians:

When you are ready to extend civic rights to Thessalians and Andrians on the ground that men are scarce, you cannot but refuse to put acknowledged citizens to death, men who should serve you well, and who will have the opportunity of doing so,if they are willing.

Some of you Thessalians have honoured the storks because of custom, and the Thebans the weasels because of the birth of Heracles.

and more agreeable to have you, his hereditary friends, on his side, than the Thessalians who once ejected his own father.

Apart from that, it may be observed that you, Athenians, never yet betrayed any of your friends, while the Thessalians have betrayed every one of theirs.

The Thessalians were always, of course, born traitors, and Philip finds them today just what everyone has found them in the past.

For example, the Thessalians were beguiled by his generosity into their present state of servitude;

It would not have been safe in Thessaly to plead Philip’s cause, if the commoners of Thessaly had not shared in the advantages that Philip conferred, when he expelled their tyrants and restored to them their Amphictyonic privileges.

O yes, by Zeus, all will agree that you are faring better than these, but worse, they declare, than the Thessalians, Argives and Arcadians, or certain others, who had the luck to be in alliance with Philip.

For example, the Thessalians were beguiled by his generosity into their present state of servitude;

He is now established in Thrace with a large force, and is sending for considerable reinforcements from Macedonia and Thessaly, according to the statements of those on the spot.

It would not have been safe in Thessaly to plead Philip’s cause, if the commoners of Thessaly had not shared in the advantages that Philip conferred when he expelled their tyrants and restored to them their Amphictyonic privileges.

for they would presumably have gained nothing if Philip had not passed Thermopylae.

But the Thessalians aimed at the aggrandizement neither of Thebes nor of Philip, because they felt that all that would tell against them;

and if the Thessalians dislike us because we protect the Phocian fugitives, and Philip because we are trying to exclude him from the Amphictyonic Council;

and lately it came to the help of the Thessalians in their factions and feuds against the ruling house.

for they have already decided to demand the restoration of Pagasae and to protest against the occupation of Magnesia.

Lastly he has won over the Thessalians by promising to bestow Magnesia upon them and by undertaking to conduct the Phocian war in their interests.

Do you imagine, I said, that when he was expelling their despots, or again when he was presenting them with Nicaea and Magnesia, they ever dreamed that a Council of Ten would be established among them, as it is today, or that the same man who restored to them the Amphictyonic meeting at Thermopylae would also appropriate their own peculiar revenues?

The Thessalians, Phocians, Aetolians, and all the other peoples of the region, he made his allies, bringing under his control, by their own consent, the men whom Philip and Alexander gloried in controlling against their wish.

It would be as if the Lacedaemonians were to attempt to penalize men for training themselves in preparation for war, or as if the Thessalians saw fit to punish men for practicing the art of horsemanship.

Why is it that the Thessalians, with a cavalry of more than three thousand horse and light-armed troops beyond number, have their fortresses occupied from time to time by certain other states while the Megarians, with only a small force, govern their city as they see fit?

What are the reasons that the Thessalians, who inherited very great wealth and possess a very rich and abundant territory, have been reduced to poverty, while the Megarians, who had small and insignificant resources to begin with and who possess neither land nor harbors nor mines but are compelled to farm mere rocks, own estates which are the greatest among the Hellenes?