THE BALKANS AND MACEDONIA
The next Thessalian tribe of the Dimini culture from the Danubian areas are the Tyroi or Siraco of the Stychian Plain. Thomson 8 considers the Tyroi and Lapith to be branches of the same people. The Tyroi in Thessaly inhabited the plain around the Pagasitic Gulf, around the present-day city of Volos. Their new homeland was the settlements by the sea, such as Phylake, Pherae, Iolcus, Neleus, Boiba and Crannon. The largest sites of the Dimini culture are located near the ancient settlement of Iolcus.
8 Thomson, G.: I Arhaia Eilliniki Koinonia-to Proistoriko Algaio , p. 134, Athena, 1954.
The Tyrians bear the eponym of their foremother named Tyro (cheese). The Choral lyric poet Pindar (520-445) says in Pythia 9 that the Tyrians migrated from the north, through Macedonia, and that their foremother Tyro fell in love with the god Poseidon from Petra, on the slopes of Olympus. The Tyrolean settlers brought their religion from Gyerdap-Tartar, the belief in the god Poseidon, with them, as did their compatriots – the Lapiths.
9 Pindar, Pythias, 4, 138.
In mythology, the name Tyro occurs in prehistory in both Thessaly and Elis in the northwest of the Peloponnese. Tyro of Thessaly was the wife of the god Poseidon 10 , but also of Cretaeus, king of Iolcus, who was the son of Aeolus.
10 Herodotus, History, VII, 55, Matica Srpska, Belgrade, 1988 and Pausanias 2.1 etc.
In Thessalian legend, Cretaeus is a mortal king of Iolcus. He married his niece by his brother Tyro, who bore him three sons: Pheretes, Amythaeon, and Aeson. Cretaeus also fathered two children by his wife with the god Poseidon, Pelias and Neleus . 11 Pheretes is the founder and eponymous hero of the city of Pherae (Riga of Pherae) in Thessaly, northwest of Volos. Pheretes was married to Periclymene, daughter of King Minos. Their children were Admetus, Eidomene, Periopedes, and Lycurgus, who was king of Nemea in the Peloponnese during the "Seven against Thebes" campaign in 1213 BC, when the Cadmean Phoenicians ruled.
11 Apollodori, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century BC), 1,7,3
Admetus succeeded his father Pheretes and extended his rule to all of Aeolia-Thessaly. With his wife Alceste he had three children: Eumelus, Perimelus and Hippas. The second son of Cretaeus, Amythaeon, married Pheretes' daughter Idomene (name of the city of Idomene on the Vardar, near Gevgelija), who bore him two sons, Melampus and Biantus, who later became kings in Megara, Messenia and Acarnania. In mythology, Amythaeon is known for having founded the Olympic Games together with his relatives Neleus and Peleus. 12
12 Thomson, G.: I Arhaia Eilliniki Koinonia-to Proistoriko Algaio , p. 129, Athena, 1954.
Part of Thessaly
One of Aeolus' descendants was Phylacus, founder of the city of Phylacus in Thessaly, a famous hero. According to Homer 13 , Phylacus was also famous for his cattle, and in connection with this is the legend of his son Iphicles who was barren but was cured by Melampus. Iphicles then had sons Podarchus and Protesilaus and participated in the expeditions of the Argonauts. Podarchus participated in the Trojan War with 40 ships, as did his brother Protesilaus, where he died.
13 Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, I, 1, II, 705, Novi Sad, 1985. (trans. M.N.Gjurig)
The third son of Tyrinus and Cretaeus was Aeson, king of Iolcus, married to Alkimeda, granddaughter of King Minos, who bore him a son, Jason. Aeson was dethroned by his half-brother Pelias, the illegitimate son of Tyrinus and Poseidon. Pelias sent Aeson to prison, demanding that he renounce his inheritance. Jason is the hero of the myth of the Argonauts and a Thessalian hero whose legend was described in the work "Argonautica" by Apollonius of Rhegium (295-230 BC).
When Pelias became king of Iolcus, he expelled his brother Neleus, who fled to Messenia in the southwest of the Peloponnese, where he founded the city of Pylus south of the Nevarin Gulf, taking with him his relatives Melampos and Bias.
Pelias was married to Amphion's daughter Philomache of the Minyan tribe. He had a son, Axates, and several daughters, collectively known as the Peliades. Pelias ruled Iolcus until the arrival of Jason from Colchis with the "Golden Fleece". Pelias was killed by his daughters, the Peliades, thanks to the trickery of the sorceress Medea, who said that she would rejuvenate their father if they dismembered him first.
Fearing revenge, Jason left the kingdom to Pelias' son Acastus and went to Isthmus in the Peloponnese. Acastus participated in the hunt for the Calydonian boar and in the campaigns of the Argonauts. He was married to Astydamia, who tried to seduce the guest Peleus, son of the Aeginetan king Aeacus, king of Phthia in Thessaly, father of the greatest hero of the time Achilles, who had come to cleanse himself after a murder. Since he rejected Astydamia's love, the offended queen told her husband at length that Peleus had tried to rape her. Acastus did not want him to personally kill his guest, so he banished him unarmed to Mount Pelion.
Neleus, the second illegitimate son of Tyra, after a quarrel with his brother Pelias, fled to Messenia, and his fate will be discussed in the chapter on the Peloponnese.
The southern part of Thessaly is called Phthia. It is a triangular plain in the basin of the Sperchei River, which flows into the Malida Gulf of the Aegean Sea. The plain is closed on all sides by high and inaccessible mountains: in the north Othrys (1726 m), in the south Eta (2152 m), in the west Timphrest (2315 m). In the east it is open to the sea in a width of about 30 km, and is about 50 km long.
The only southern approach to Boeotia leads through the Thermopylae gorge, which is only wide enough for a single wagon to pass, because to the west rises the high, inaccessible and steep slope of Mount Eta, and to the east is the sea. Cape Artemisia on the island of Euboea protrudes like a wedge into the gulf itself.
When the first ecological conditions were created, Phthia was settled by the descendants of the Pelasgians from the Peloponnese, settlers from the Black Sea. 14 After them, around 1600 BC, there was a migration of the Achaeans from Pannonia through Epirus. One part of the Achaeans settled Epirus, with a center in the city of Dodona, and the other part migrated to Phthia and are known in history as the Thessalian Achaeans. The first historical data about the Achaeans were provided by the Hittites from Asia Minor and the Egyptians in the 13th century BC, when they called them Ahhiawa, Ahhiwawan. 15
14 Thomson, G.: I Arhaia Eilliniki Koinonia-to Proistoriko Algaio , p. 115, Athena, 1954.
15 Papastavrou, I.: Istoria tis Arhaias Ellados, p. 29, Hiotelli, Athens, 1972.
In mythology, the Pelasgians of Phthia descended from the god Asopus, who had two sons – Pelasgus (today there is a city of Pelasgia on the shores of Phthia) and Ismene, and a daughter named Aegina. She married Actor, king of Phthia.
Aegina bore Actor two sons, of whom Menoetius was the father of Patroclus, the famous hero of the Trojan War and Achilles' inseparable friend. However, Aegina, with Zeus, on the island of the same name, gave birth to a son, Aeacus, who became the ancestor of a tribe of newly arrived Acherians in Phthia, who were called Aeacids or Myrmidons (ant-eaters). Aeacus' grandson was Achilles, the most famous hero of the Achaeans in the Trojan War of 1192-1182 BC.
Part of Boeotia
According to Homer, 16 the Achaeans inhabited five cities in Phthia: "... Who built in Alope, Ala, Trehina and Phthia,/ who were in Hellas, where they say there were beautiful women,/ so they were called Hellenes, Achaeans and Myrmodonians,/ Their ships numbered fifty, Achilles was their commander..."
16 Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, II, 681, Novi Sad, 1985 (trans. M.N. Đuriđ)
While the Thessalian Achaeans lived cramped and poor in Phthia with the Pelasgians, in the middle of the 13th century BC, Pelops of Asia Minor, son of the Lydian king Tantalus, also known as the Phrygian or Brygus, promised the Achaeans wealth and led most of them to the Peloponnese.
To be continued
Written by: ACADEMICIAN A. SHKOKLYEV-DONCHO
AND SLAVE KATYN
