Thessalian League

[3] In 370 BCE, while Thessaly was still preoccupied with the Macedonian intervention, Jason was assassinated and replaced by his nephew Alexander II, who displayed outrageous tyrannical behavior.

However, the internal conflict divided Thessaly into two sides: the western inland area of Thessalian League and the eastern coastal towns of Pherae controlled by the tyrants.

[5] One historian spoke of this period as follows, “Thessaly remained politically fragmented and hence unstable, and the chaos of civil war in the region attracted the interest of a series of outsiders: Boeotia, Athens, and eventually Philip II of Macedonia.”[2] In the year 364 BCE, the new joint Thessalo-Boeotian army, led by the Theban general Pelopidas, marched to Alexander II of Pherae to intervene in the civil war.

When the military result was not finalized, Pelopidas was summoned to enter the protracted struggle between Alexander II and Ptolemy of Aloros in Macedonia- the Theban general, however, urged rearrangement of the Thessalian League at that time.

In the late summer of 358 BCE, Alexander II of Pherae's death opened a path for Philip’s diplomatic conquest of Thessaly at the request of Cineas of Larissa.

Being entrusted with this position for life, Philip was able to unite the resources and manpower of both Macedonia and Thessaly in order to create a powerful alliance that gave him tremendous influence over the Greek city-states.

Faced with the Macedonian army suddenly appearing behind them, and having had little time to organize any resistance, the League surrendered and elected Alexander archon in his father’s place.

At the end of Second Macedonian War in 196 BCE, Rome established Thessaly as a koinon, Federal League, and cultivated its development to make it part of hegemonic powers of central and northern Greece.

[8] At the ceremony of the Isthmian Games in 196 BCE, Flamininus, associated in name with the Roman Senate, published a decree that declared: “The Senate of Rome and Titus Quinctius the pro-consul having overcome King Philip and the Macedonians, leave the following peoples free, without garrisons and subject to no tribute and governed by their countries’ laws—the Corinthians, Phocians, Locrians, Euboeans, Phthiotic Achaeans, Magnesians, Thessalians, and Perrhaibians”.