Blessed Thessaly

Thessaly, in northern Greece, remains one of the less-often studied regions of the ancient Greek world. Its name calls to mind cavalry charging over wide, fertile plains; wealth and oligarchy; witches and necromancy. Like all stereotypes, this has kernels of truth but is essentially distorting and limited. One reason for Thessaly’s relative obscurity is that it continues to issue a special challenge to our understanding of how ancient societies were composed and organised. Our dominant model for this understanding is the polis, and yet a polis-based approach, applied to Thessaly, only yields half the picture. There, individual communities were linked by a regional superstructure of identity and organisation: being Thessalian.

Being Thessalian, and the expression of being Thessalian, are the subject of this book. Chapter by chapter, it follows the emergence, development and adaptation of Thessalian regional identity from the early Archaic period to the third century BC. In so doing, it considers myth, religion, language, political co-operation, and the constant interplay between Thessalian self-presentation and external perceptions of the Thessalian character.

An Open Access edition will be available on publication.