A far more significant influence is that asserted to have been exercised by the Aleuadæ, whom Herodotus describes as “Kings in Thessaly.” This great feudal family from Larisa found itself in a very difficult and hazardous position. They were at the time supreme in this border-land; but it was a supremacy which was threatened by the fact that the Persian frontier had been advanced by Mardonius’ conquest of Macedonia to within a few miles of their own stronghold. Their Thessalian vassals were ofttimes inclined to kick against the pricks of a quasi-serfdom; and, furthermore, their rulers must have been in a position to gauge accurately the feeling that would be excited among them in the event of a Persian advance, and in case the Greeks farther south showed any disposition to aid them in resistance to that invasion which must come sooner or later. The attitude of the Aleuadæ some few years later, at the time of the war, was indeed calculated to give rise in after-times to sinister reports as to their previous proceedings; but their position at this time between the upper millstone of Persia and the nether millstone of Greece was so uncomfortable, that they may well have sought to escape from it before the mill started working. It was a far cry to Peloponnese from the banks of the Peneius, and a supremacy in Thessaly under Persia was better than no supremacy at all. It is not strange, then, if, in their providence of the future, they made friends of the mammon of Persian unrighteousness. It would flatter Greek conceit to think that their own renegade countrymen could have so much influence for evil with the Great King; and the part which these families of the Peisistratidæ and Aleuadæ are represented to have played in determining the great war was doubtless greatly exaggerated. Apart from this motive for exaggeration, there was a tendency in after-times to antedate the medism of those who sided with the Persian in the war of 480. Perhaps in the case of the Aleuadæ, however, later tradition may not have been wholly unjust. It would be natural that they should seek to make some arrangements with the great Power which was now at their very gates. It was to their interest to do so; but no motive of interest can be assigned to their reported advocacy of an invasion of Greece; and this part of the tradition preserved in Herodotus was probably a creation of the imagination of posterity. ◆H. vii. 8.◆ The language attributed by Herodotus to Xerxes and his counsellors in the meeting at which the king announced his decision to undertake the expedition against Greece, though it cannot have any claim to an historical foundation, still less to historical accuracy, is interesting as expressing the Greek idea of the working of the Oriental mind.