The rapidity of their growth in numbers, and of their propagation southwards, might be due to their having settled on a fertile plain; while necessities, arising from the vicissitudes of climate, would be the probable and less copious cause of migration from the hills. But in any case, whether from the rapidity of their passage through Thessaly, or from their having actually occupied no more than a small portion of it, they left it in the Homeric, and apparently also in the Hesiodic period, still partly impressed, as they must have found it, with the Pelasgic name[611]. The prolonged existence of this appellation indicates in part perhaps the predominance of the Pelasgic element in this country, in part the fugacious character of the Hellic settlement, of which only the Achæan portion lived through the historic times in such a degree of force as to maintain its visible identity: this, too, according to post-Homeric tradition, was peopled by the Myrmidons from the south, and not directly from the region of the Helli. Thessaly, then, was the nursery or cradle of the Hellic or Hellenic races, but it was no more. Consequently with the lapse of time, as it wanted the true mixture of ingredients, Thessaly became less and less Greek in its essential habits and sympathies: while from its preserving a federal constitution, under a federal head, the τάγος, we may also refer to its more Pelasgian character the apparent fact, that it was not so liable to political change, or νεωτέρισις, as were the less Pelasgian parts of Greece. When, after centuries of vicissitude, the outward notes of its original blood were almost gone, Pelasgian feeling still survived: for Thucydides relates that, when Brasidas entered Thessaly at the head of the Lacedæmonian army, he found the mass of the people attached by affection to the Athenian cause, and had to rely on aristocratic influence to furnish him with guides[612]. FOOTNOTES: [516] See Studies on the Theo-mythology of Homer. [517] Fasti, i. 39. [518] De Nat. Deor. ii. 27. [519] Liv. Hist. Rom. iv. 25, 29. [520] Exc. iv. ad Æn. vii. See Browne’s History of Roman Literature, chap. viii. p. 129, and chap. iii. p. 41. Also Dunlop’s Hist. Rom. Literature, vol. iii. p. 56. [521] See ‘The Trojans.’ [522] Polyb. vi. 56, sect. 6-12. [523] Dionysius, b. ii. 18-21. [524] Id., b. viii. 38. See also Cic. Div. i. 2. [525] Smith’s Dict., Art. ‘Fasti.’ [526] Acts xvii. 22. [527] Outram de Sacrif. b. i. ch. iv. sect. 3. [528] Exodus xi. 12-16, and Levit. viii. 1-13. 1 Sam. xvi. 2, &c. See Calmet’s Dict. Taylor’s Edition, 1838. Art. Priest. [529] Heb. v. 4. [530] Browne’s Roman Classical Literature, ch. i. p. 13. [531] Hor. de Art. Poet. v. 53. [532] Hare and Thirlwall’s Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 65. [533] Horæ Pelasg. ch. iv. [534] Sechster Theil. Leipzig, 1838. [535] Applied principally to the shoulder of animals by the Latins.