Note 447 — Chapter III · MEMBERS OF THE HELLENIC AGGREGATE, SEPARATELY TAKEN.—GREEKS NORTH OF PELOPONNESUS.

The words ascribed by Xenophon (Hellen. vi. 1, 11) to Jason of Pheræ, as well as to Theocritus (xvi. 34), attest the numbers and vigor of the Thessalian Penestæ, and the great wealth of the Aleuadæ and Skopadæ. Both these families acquired celebrity from the verses of Simonides: he was patronized and his muse invoked by both of them; see Ælian, V. H. xii. 1; Ovid, Ibis, 512; Quintilian, xi. 2, 15. Pindar also boasts of his friendship with Thorax the Aleuad (Pyth. x. 99).

The Thessalian ἀνδραποδισταὶ, alluded to in Aristophanes (Plutus, 521), must have sold men out of the country for slaves,—either refractory Penestæ, or Perrhæbian, Magnetic, and Achæan freemen, seized by violence: the Athenian comic poet Mnêsimachus, in jesting on the voracity of the Pharsalians, exclaims, ap. Athenæ. x. p. 418—

Pagasæ was celebrated as a place of export for slaves (Hermippus ap. Athenæ, i. 49).

Menôn of Pharsalus assisted the Athenians against Amphipolis with 200, or 300 “Penestæ, on horseback, of his own”—(Πενέσταις ἰδίοις) Demosthen. περὶ Συνταξ. c. 9, p. 173, cont. Aristokrat. c. 51, p. 687.