United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Having said these things, they obtained quarter; for they had the Thessalians for witnesses of all they said.
His brave Persians fronted the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans; and, in successive order, ranged the Medes and Bactrians, the Indians and the Sacae, the Boeotians, Locrians, Malians, Thessalians, Macedonians, and the reluctant aid of a thousand Phocians.
There he held an assembly of the Aetolians, which had been summoned to meet at Heraclea, to determine with what number of auxiliaries they should follow the Roman general to the war. On the third day, having learned the determination of the allies, he proceeded from Heraclea to Xyniae; and, pitching his camp on the confines between the Aenians and Thessalians, waited for the Aetolian auxiliaries.
There were two of these stratagems, which were both completely successful, and both of a very extraordinary character. The first was this. The Thessalians were in the Phocæan country in great force, and the Phocæans had found themselves utterly unable to expel them.
Proclamation was now suddenly made by the sound of a trumpet that every man should keep silence; and a herald coming forward into the midst of the assembly announced that the Senate of Rome, and Titus Quintius their consul and general, having overcome King Philip and the Macedonians, did now henceforth give liberty to the Corinthians, Lokrians, Phokians, Eubœans, Achæans of Phthia, Magnetes, Thessalians, and Perrhæbians, with exemption from garrisons and tribute, and permission to govern themselves by their hereditary laws.
In this way the more conspicuous patriots among the Thessalians, Aetolians, Acarnanians, Lesbians and so forth, were removed from their native land; and, in particular, more than a thousand Achaeans were thus disposed of a step taken with the view not so much of prosecuting those who were carried off, as of silencing the childish opposition of the Hellenes.
And, in truth, it was through this passage that the Persian army ultimately marched. The Greeks, therefore, broke up the camp and returned to the Isthmus. The Thessalians, thus abandoned, instantly treated with the invader, and became among the stanchest allies of Xerxes.
For when you had been deceived by Philip, through the agency of these men, who while serving as ambassadors had sold themselves and made a report in which there was not a word of truth when the unhappy Phocians had been deceived and their cities annihilated what followed? The despicable Thessalians and the slow-witted Thebans regarded Philip as their friend, their benefactor, their saviour.
So, in spite of all that Demosthenes could say, they did not offer any great resistance to Philip, who little by little became a very powerful king. When Philip had entirely subdued the Thracians and Olynthians, he helped the Thessalians to get rid of their tyrant; and, adding their cavalry to his infantry, he boasted of as fine an army as the Greeks had ever been able to muster.
The Lapithæ, among whom the ceremony took place, were a famous family of Thessalians, rugged mountaineers, in some respects resembling animals the first mortals who had learned to manage a horse. But the bride, who had sprung from this race, was not at all like the men of her people.
Word Of The Day