| Summary |
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. |
