THE 



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THE 



short time previous to the commencement of the Pelopon- 

 nesian war (B.C. 432) it was taken and occupied by the 

 Athenians, but it was soon afterwards restored to Perdiccas, 

 the king of Macedonia. According to an account in 

 Strabo (Epit., vii. 330), the name of Thessalonica was 

 given to it by Cassander, the son of Antipater, in honour 

 of his wife Thessalonica, who was the daughter of Philip, 

 king of Macedon, and the sister of Alexander the Great. 

 With a view to its aggrandisement, Cassander collected 

 together (about B.C. 315) the population of several adjacent 

 towns, so as to make it one of the most important cities of 

 Northern Greece. (Strabo, /. c., p. 330.) After the battle 

 of Pydna (B.C. 168), in which the Romans defeated Per- 

 seus, the then king of Macedonia, Thessalonica, with the 

 other Macedonian towns, surrendered to the Romans, and 

 was made the capital of the second of the four regions into 

 which Macedonia was divided by them. (Livy, lib. xliv., 

 c. 10 and 45 ; lib. xlv., c. 29.) Livy speaks of it as being 

 then a very celebrated city, to which its admirable position 

 materially contributed. It possessed an excellent harbour, 

 peculiarly well situated for commercial intercourse with 

 the Hellespont and the JEgean ; and it had the additional 

 advantage of lying on the great Roman military road, the 

 Via Egnatia, which, commencing at Dyrrachium, on the 

 western side of Greece, and extending to Byzantium, 

 atforded the easiest land communication with Thrace, 

 Asia Minor, and the shores of the Euxine. In St. Paul's 

 time it was much frequented by people of different nations 

 for commercial and other purposes, as appears from the 

 fact of there being a synagogue of Jews there ; and it was 

 also the seat of the Roman government. Pliny (iv. 10) 

 calls it a free city ; and Lucian (Asin., 46) speaks of it as 

 the largest of the Macedonian towns. In later times, 

 \mder the empire, it continued to be so flourishing and 

 important a city, that it was selected as the residence of 

 the prefect of Illyricum, and the metropolis of the Illyrian 

 provinces. (Theodoret, Hist. Eccl.,v. 17.) In the reign 

 of the emperor Theodosius it was the scene of a deplorable 

 calamity : it was then protected against the assaults of the 

 Goths by strong fortifications and a numerous garrison. 

 Their commandant, Botheric, with his principal officers, 

 was inhumanly murdered by the people of the town, in 

 consequence of his having thrown into prison one of the 

 popular characters of the circus, to the games of which 

 the Thessalonians of that time (A.D. 390) were passionately 

 devoted. The emperor Theodosius, in the excitement of 

 his indignation, gave orders for the punishment of the 

 people ; and, according to the most moderate accounts, no 

 less than 7000 persons were massacred by barbarian sol- 

 diers in a promiscuous carnage, which lasted for three 

 hours (Gibbon, Roman Empire, c. xxxvii.), a deed, the 

 guilt of which, as Gibbon observes, was aggravated by the 

 long and frequent residence of the emperor at Thessalonica. 

 [THEODOSIUS ; AMBROSE.] 



For an account of the ruins and antiquities of Thessa- 

 loniea, see Clarke's and Holland's Travels, vol. ii., p. 50 ; 

 Dodwell's Tour in Greece, vol. ii., c. 19, p. 190 ; Cramer's 

 Antie.nt Greece, i. 238. 



THE'SSALUS (flt-r-raXis), an antient Greek physician, 

 son of the celebrated Hippocrates, appears to have lived 

 at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, about 360 

 years before Christ. He was one of the founders of the 

 sect of the Dogmatic), who also took the name of the Hip- 

 pocratic school, because they professed to follow the doc- 

 trines of that great man. However, both he and his brother 

 Dracon, and his brother-in-law Polybus, are accused by 

 Galen in several passages of not only mixing up with the 

 opinions of Hippocrates the principles of later philoso- 

 phers, but also of altering and interpolating his writings. 

 Several of the works that go under the name of Hippo- 

 crates are by many critics supposed to have been written 

 by Thessalus, viz. ' De Morbis,' the second, fifth, sixth, and 

 seventh books 'De Morbis Vulgaribus,' and the second 

 book of the ' Praedictiones,' or ' Prorrhetica ;' but this con- 

 jecture is uncertain. 



(Le Clerc, Hint, de la Med. ; Fabricius, Biblioth. Grcvca ; 

 Haller, Biblioth. Medic. Pract. ; Sprengel, Hist, de la 

 Mcd. ; Ackermann, Hist. Literar. Hippocr. ; Chpulant, 

 Handbuch der Biicher kunde fur die Aeltcre Median.) 



THE'SSALUS (&nraa\6<-), one of the founders of the 

 antient medical sect of the Methodici, was born at Tralles 

 in Lydia, and lived in the reign of the emperor Nero, in 

 the first century after Christ. He was the son of a weaver, 



and followed the same trade himself during his youth, by 

 which means he lost the opportunity of receiving a good 

 education, and was never afterwards able to overcome this 

 disadvantage. He appears however to have soon given 

 up this employment, and applied himself to the study of 

 medicine, by which he acquired a great reputation, and 

 amassed a large fortune. His whole character however, 

 both intellectual and moral, is everywhere represented by 

 Galen in a very unfavourable light ; but it must be con- 

 fessed that Galen himself appears to very little advantage 

 in these passages, and goes beyond all bounds in his abuse 

 of him. 



Thessalus adopted the principles of the Methodici, but 

 modified and developed them so much that he attributed 

 io himself the invention of them. In fact on all occasions 

 le appears to have tried to exalt himself at the expense of 

 his predecessors ; lavishing upon the antients the most in- 

 sulting epithets; calling himself by the title (Wpov.VcT/e 

 (conqueror of physicians), because he thought that he him- 

 self surpassed all his predecessors as much as medicine is 

 superior to all other sciences ; boasting that he could teach 

 ;he art of healing in six months ; and telling the emperor 

 ^ero, in the dedication of one of his works, that none of 

 ;hose who had been before him had contributed anything 

 ;o the advancement of medical science. By his boasting 

 ie attracted a great number of pupils, whom he took with 

 lira for six months to visit his patients ; but most of them 

 ire said to have been common artisans and persons of very 

 low extraction. Galen accuses him of knowing nothing of 

 the action of drugs, though he had written on the subject. 

 He did not care for inquiring into the causes of diseases, 

 and was satisfied with certain problematical analogies ; 

 nor did he admit the value of prognostic signs. He did 

 not recommend tapping in cases 'of ascites. A further 

 account of his opinions may be found in Le Clerc, Hist, de 

 la Med. ; Haller, Biblioth. Medic. Pract. ; Sprengel, Hist, 

 de la Mfd. 



THESSALY (etowaXia), one of the principal divisions of 

 Northern Greece, and the cradle of many of the inhabitants 

 of Greece in general, is an extensive and generally unbroken 

 plain, about 80 miles in extreme length and 70 in breadth, 

 comprising an area of about 5500 square miles, and form- 

 ing an irregular sort of square. This description applies 

 only to what may be called Thessaly Proper, which is 

 bounded on the west, towards Epirus and Athamania, by 

 the range of Pindus ; on the north, towards Macedonia, 

 by the Cambunian Mountains ; on the south by the range 

 of Mount Othrys ; on the east by a range of mountains 

 running along the coast nearly parallel to Pindus, and in- 

 cluding the summits of Pelion and Ossa. The basin of 

 Thessaly is thus surrounded by mountain-barriers, broken at 

 the north-east corner only by the valley and defile of 

 Tempe (or the Cut), which separates Mount Ossa from 

 Olympus, and presents the only road from Thessaly to the 

 north which does not lead over a mountain-pass. At the 

 eastern base of the mountain-range which runs from 

 Tempe to the bay of Pagasae, now the Gulf of Volo, there 

 is a narrow strip of land called Magnesia, between the hills 

 and the sea, interrupted in several places by lofty headlands 

 and ravines, and without any harbour of refuge from the 

 gales of the north-east. South of Othrys, the southern 

 boundary of Thessaly Proper, lies a long narrow vale, 

 through which winds the river Spercheius, and which, 

 though generally considered as a part of Thessaly, is sepa- 

 rated from it by the range of Othrys, and is very different 

 from it in physical features. It is bounded on the south 

 by the range of CEta, which runs from Pindus to the sea 

 at Thermopylae in a general direction nearly parallel to the 

 Cambunian Mountains ; and on its eastern side by the 

 shores of the bay of Malia, now the Gulf of Zeitoun. Ac- 

 cording to Greek traditions, Thessaly was known in remote 

 times by the names of Pyrrha, ^Emonia, and JEo\is. The two 

 former names belong to the age of mythology ; the last 

 refers to the time when the country was inhabited by the 

 .ffiolian Pelasgi, previous to the occupation of any part of 

 it by the Thessalians, who, according to Herodotus (vii. 

 176 ; Strabo, ix., p. 444), originally came from Thesprotia, 

 a region in the west of Epirus, and settled in the country, 

 which from them derived its future name. At what time 

 it received the name of Thessaly cannot be determined. 

 The name does not occur in the poems of Homer, although 

 the several principalities of which it was composed at the 

 time of the Trojan war are there enumerated, together 



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