The main strength of his cavalry consisted in two chosen regiments of cuirassiers, one Macedonian and one Thessalian, each of which was about fifteen hundred strong.

The Thessalian cavalry, commanded by Philippus, were next, and held the extreme left of the whole army.

The whole left wing was intrusted to the command of Parmenio, who had round his person the Pharsalian regiment of cavalry, which was the strongest and best of all the Thessalian horse regiments.

His Thessalian cavalry particularly distinguished themselves by their gallantry and persevering good conduct; and by the time that Alexander had ridden up to Parmenio, the whole Persian army was in full flight from the field.

There was one Cineas, a Thessalian, who was thought to be a man of good sense, and who, having heard Demosthenes the orator speak, was better able than any of the speakers of his age to delight his hearers with an imitation of the eloquence of that great master of rhetoric.

At length he was victorious, chiefly by means of a sudden charge of his Thessalian horse on the Romans after they had been thrown into disorder by the advance of the elephants.

I saw Lysimachus betrayed by his son; {172a} Antiochus intriguing with his mother-in-law; {172b} Alexander the Thessalian slain by his wife; and Attalus poisoned by his son: in another place I saw Arsaces killing his wife, and the eunuch Arbaces drawing his sword upon Arsaces; Spartim, the Mede, dragged by the heels from the banquet by his guards, and knocked on the head with a cup.

Men, my friend, are exactly like these: if you approve not of the comparison, recollect, if you please, the ancient Thessalian fables, and you will find that the Myrmidons, {177} a most warlike nation, sprung originally from pismires.

I fancied that the trees in the gardens and the birds that sang in their branches were men that had been transformed by Thessalian witches.

I am a Thessalian, free, My father a born chief of Thessaly; And thou most insolent.

P. 53, l. 945 ff., The floor unswept.]Probably the floor really would be unswept in the house of a primitive Thessalian chieftain whose wife was dead and her place unfilled; but I doubt if the point would have been mentioned so straightforwardly in a real tragedy.

Thessalian fields; alluding to the battle fought at Pharsalia, in Thessaly, between Caesar and Pompey.

[Footnote 1: A Thessalian maiden, from whom, according to this legend, the colony of Kyrene in Africa took its name.]

It was given out of old, that a Thessalian wench had bewitched King Philip to dote upon her, and by philters enforced his love; but when Olympia, the Queen, saw the maid of an excellent beauty, well brought up, and qualifiedthese, quoth she, were the philters which inveigled King Philip; those the true charms, as Henry to Rosamond, "One accent from thy lips the blood more warms, Than all their philters, exorcisms, and charms.

[6080]Neptune saw by chance that Thessalian Tyro, Eunippius' wife, he forthwith, in the fury of his lust, counterfeited her husband's habit, and made him cuckold.

"Thou shouldst know, our hounds at Warwick are a noted pack, So flew'd, so sanded, and their beads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls; Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells, Each under each.

His warlike brother is Pirithous come: Arcite of Thebes was known in arms long since, And honour'd by this young Thessalian prince.

He performed the suitable incantation, putting this and that together in the manner formerly employed by the Thessalian witches and sorcerers, and he cried aloud a very ancient if indecent charm from the old Latin, saying, as Queen Stultitia had told him to say, without any mock-modest mincing of words: Dictum est antiqua sandalio mulier habitavit, Quae multos pueros habuit tum ut potuit nullum Quod faciundum erat cognoscere.

In Southern Macedonia from the Thessalian frontier as far north as the parallel of Saloniki, the population is almost exclusively Greek, as is also the whole of the Chalcidician Peninsula, while further east the coast region between the Struma and the Mesta is also predominantly Greek.

[Footnote 1: For example: Tsimova and Panitsa in the Tainaron peninsula (Maina); Tsoupana and Khrysapha in Lakonia; Dhimitzana, Karytena, and Andhritsena in the centre of Peloponnesos, and Vostitsa on its north coast; Dobrena and Kaprena in Boiotia; Vonitza on the Gulf of Arta; Kardhitsa in the Thessalian plain.

The Romance-speaking Vlachs of Pindus moved down into the Thessalian plains.

The bulk of the Ottoman army was drawn from a feudal cavalry, bound to service, as in the mediaeval Latin world, in return for fiefs or 'timaria' assigned to them by their sovereign; and many beys and agas have bequeathed their names in perpetuity to the richest villages on the Messenian and Thessalian plains, to remind the modern peasant that his Christian ancestors once tilled the soil as serfs of a Moslem timariot.

The Fates had granted that when the Thessalian King Admetus approached the ordained end of his life it should be prolonged if another person voluntarily consented to die in his place.

Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd like Thessalian Bulls; Slow in Pursuit, but match'd in Mouths like Bells, Each under each: A Cry more tuneable Was never hallowed to, nor chear'd with Horn.

In this respect the celebrated breeds take the names of the countries from which they come: thus in Greece we have the Thessalian breed: in Italy the Apulian from Apulia, and the Rosean from Rosea.[140]