Named Entity Results, Thessaly (Greece)

From Doriscus Xerxes went on his way towards Hellas, compelling all that he met to go with his army. As I have shown earlier, all the country as far as Thessaly had been enslaved and was tributary to the king, by the conquests of Megabazus and Mardonius after him. On his road from Doriscus he first passed the Samothracian fortresses;Erected doubtless by the Samothracians to protect their possessions on the mainland. of these, the city built farthest to the west is called Mesambria. Next to it is the Thasian city of Stryme; between them runs the river Lisus, which now could not furnish water enough for Xerxes' army, but was exhausted. All this region was once called Gallaic, but it is now called Briantic; however, by rights it also belongs to the Ciconians.

When Xerxes saw from Therma the very great height of the Thessalian mountains Olympus and Ossa and learned that the Peneus flows through them in a narrow pass, which was the way that led into Thessaly, he desired to view the mouth of the Peneus because he intended to march by the upper road through the highland people of Macedonia to the country of the Perrhaebi and the town of Gonnus;Xerxes' army might have entered Thessaly by marching along the coast between Olympus and the sea, and up the PeThessaly by marching along the coast between Olympus and the sea, and up the Peneus valley (the pass of Tempe) to Gonnus. Instead, it crossed the mountains; probably both by a route which runs across the southern slope of Olympus to Gonnus, and also by the Petra pass, further inland, between Olympus and Bermius. But Herodotus is mistaken in making the a)/nw o(do/s alone reach Gonnus; the Tempe route would have done the same. this, it was told him, was the safest way. He did exactly as he desired. He embarked on a Sidonian ship which he always used when he had some such bus

Thessaly, as tradition has it, was in old times a lake enclosed all round by high mountains. On its eastern side it is fenced in by the joining of the lower parts of the mountains Pelion and Ossa, to the southerly wind by Othrys. In the middle, then, of this ring of mountains, lies the vale of Thessaly. A number of rivers pour into this vale, the most notable of which are Peneus, Apidanus, Onochoisus. These five, while they flow towards their meeting place from the mountains which surround Thessaly, have their several names, until their waters all unite and issue into the sea by one narrow pad, there was not yet this channel and outfall, but those rivers and the Boebean lake,In eastern Thessaly, west of Pelion. Naturally, with the whole country inundated, the lake would have no independenexistence. which was not yet named, had the same volume of water as now, and thereby turned all Thessaly into a sea. Now the Thessalians say that Poseidon made the passage by which the Peneus flows. T

any other outlet for the Peneus into the sea, and they, with their full knowledge of the matter, answered him: “The river, O king, has no other way into the sea, but this alone. This is so because there is a ring of mountains around the whole of Thessaly.” Upon hearing this Xerxes said: “These Thessalians are wise men; this, then, was the primary reason for their precaution long beforeAs a matter of fact the Thessalians had determined on their policy very recently indeed; but Xerxes apparently nd, for they perceived that their country would be easily and speedily conquerable. It would only have been necessary to let the river out over their land by barring the channel with a dam and to turn it from its present bed so that the whole of Thessaly, with the exception of the mountains, might be under water.” This he said with regard in particular to the sons of Aleues, the Thessalians who were the first Greeks to surrender themselves to the king. Xerxes supposed that when they offered him

Among those who paid that tribute were the Thessalians,Not all the inhabitants of Thessaly, here, but the tribe of that name which had settled in the Peneus valley and given its name to the surrounding peoples. Dolopes, Enienes, Perrhaebians, Locrians, Magnesians, Melians, Achaeans of Phthia, Thebans, and all the Boeotians except the men of Thespiae and Plataea. Against all of these the Greeks who declared war with the foreigner entered into a sworn agreement, which was this: that if they should be victorious, they would dedicate to the god of Delphi the possessions of all Greeks who had of free will surrendered themselves to the Persians. Such was the agreement sworn by the Greeks.

to the Isthmus, where men chosen from the cities which were best disposed towards Hellas were assembled in council for the Greek cause. To these the Thessalian messengers came and said, “Men of Hellas, the pass of Olympus must be guarded so that Thessaly and all Hellas may be sheltered from the war. Now we are ready to guard it with you, but you too must send a great force. If you will not send it, be assured that we will make terms with the Persian, for it is not right that we should be left toe war. Now we are ready to guard it with you, but you too must send a great force. If you will not send it, be assured that we will make terms with the Persian, for it is not right that we should be left to stand guard alone and so perish for your sakes. If you will not send help, there is nothing you can do to constrain us, for no necessity can prevail over lack of ability. As for us, we will attempt to find some means of deliverance for ourselves.” These are the words of the men of Thessaly