Thessaly
Thessaly
Pastures. Ruled by its aristocratic families, Thessaly was a land of great fertility. It had large tracts of productive farmland, which yielded a surplus of wheat that the Thessalians exported to their neighbors. Its pasturelands ensured that Thessaly had the best cavalry in Greece. Below the aristocratic families there was a large class of citizens rich enough to keep horses; this class provided the cavalry, which was the backbone of the military force. At the bottom of the ladder stood a class of people called penestai, who like the helots in Sparta were a subjected people neither free nor fully slaves, but somewhere in between. No “middle class” comparable to that in Athens existed in Thessaly.
Forests. In the late Archaic (700-480 b.c.e.) and early Classical (480-323 b.c.e.) eras, Thessaly apparently still possessed large tracts of forests, for there existed magistrates called forest wardens. If a part of their duties was to protect the land from deforestation, this protection may have been the reason why maritime states like Athens looked to Macedonia and Thrace for their timber, and not to Thessaly.
Source
Simon Hornblower, The Greek World 479-323 BC (London & New York: Methuen, 1983).