Geography

​Its coastal side, on the sea, is the coastline from Thermopylae to the mouth of the Peneus and the peaks of Pelion, looking towards the east and the northern peaks of Euboea. And the Malians and Phthiotic Achaeans hold the parts towards Euboea and Thermopylae, and the Magnetes the parts towards Pelion. Let this side of Thessaly, then, be called the eastern and coastal side. And on either side, from Pelion and the Peneus towards the interior, the Macedonians lie adjacent as far as Paeonia and the Epirote tribes, and from Thermopylae, the Oetaean and Aetolian mountains, which run parallel to the Macedonian territory, adjacent to them and joining the land of the Dorians and Parnassus. And let the side towards the Macedonians be called the northern, and the other the southern. The remaining side is the western, which is enclosed by the Aetolians, Acarnanians, Amphilochians, and of the Epirotes, the Athamanes and Molossians, and the land once called that of the Aethices, and simply the region around Pindus, except for Pelion and Ossa. These latter are indeed sufficiently elevated, yet they do not enclose much territory around them, but end in the plains.

​And these are the interior parts of Thessaly, a most fertile country except for so much of it as is subject to river floods. For the Peneus, flowing through the middle of it and receiving many rivers, often overflows; and in ancient times, as the story goes, the plain was even a lake, being enclosed by mountains on the other sides, while the coastal region held lands higher than the plains; but when a cleft was made by earthquakes, forming what is now called Tempe, and splitting Ossa away from Olympus, the Peneus flowed out to the sea through this passage and dried up this land. Nevertheless, there still remain both the Nessonis lake, which is large, and the Boebeis, which is smaller than the former and closer to the coast.

​Being of such a nature, it was divided into four parts; and one was called Phthiotis, another Hestiaeotis, another Thessaliotis, and another Pelasgiotis. Phthiotis occupies the southern parts along Oeta, extending from the Malian and Pylaic gulf to Dolopia and Pindus, and widening as far as Pharsalus and the Thessalian plains; Hestiaeotis occupies the western parts, and the region between Pindus and Upper Macedonia; and the remaining parts are held by those who inhabit the plains below Hestiaeotis, who are called Pelasgiotes and already border on Lower Macedonia, and those next in order who fill up the places as far as the Magnesian coast. And here, too, there will be an enumeration of famous names, both otherwise and on account of the poetry of Homer; but of the cities, only a few preserve their ancestral dignity, and most of all Larissa.

​But the poet, having divided into ten parts and dynasties the entire land which we now call Thessaly, adding also some parts of the Oetaean and Locrian territories, and likewise of that which is now classed under the Macedonians, describes something common and happening to every country, namely, that both as a whole and in detail they undergo changes according to the power of those who hold sway.