Blessed Thessaly, The Identities of a Place and Its People from the Archaic Period to the Hellenistic

Author

Aston; Emma

Year

2024

Publisher

Liverpool University Press

Language

English

Pages

ISBN

978-1-78962-427-4

Link

Last Update

01-Jun-2026

Keywords

History ; Classical Studies ; European Studies

Description

Shortly after the fall of Troy, a new group entered the land we call Thessaly, in northern Greece. They came from the west, over the Pindos mountains, though Epeiros may not have been their original home. They were the Thessaloi, and they would come to dominate Thessaly, giving it its historical name – Thessalia, land of the Thessaloi – and enslaving its indigenous population as an agricultural workforce.

Such, in essence, is the story that Greeks from the fifth century onward told about the origins of the Thessalians and their presence in the land they inhabited. There are two ways of looking...