SALONIKI 



205 



It is not surprising that a city so ad- 

 mirably placed, whether for defense or 

 for communication, enjoying the temper- 

 ate climate of the northern ./Egean, and 

 amply provided with the various re- 

 sources of field, wood, and water, should 

 long have been known to men, and that 

 its possession should often have been dis- 

 puted. 



SALONIKI MORE MODERN THAN ATHENS 

 AND CONSTANTINOPLE 



Yet compared to its two great neigh- 

 bors, Athens and Constantinople, Salon- 

 ika is relatively a modern town. Founded 

 originally as an Ionian colony, the place 

 was first known as Therme, or Therma, 

 from the hot springs which still exist in 

 that eastern district of the bay. It fell 

 into the hands of the Persians in 512 

 B. C, when Darius overran Scythia and 

 Thrace ; and Xerxes reassembled his own 

 forces there preparatory to his invasion 

 of Greece. 



During the great days of the Mace- 

 donian Empire the city played no notable 

 role, for Philip and Alexander the Great 

 held their court at Pella, in the hills be- 

 yond the Vardar. The present town was 

 founded about 315 B. C. by King Kas- 

 sander of Macedon, and named after his 

 wife Thessalonike, half sister to Alexan- 

 der the Great. The adjoining peninsula 

 of Kassandra takes its name from the 

 king himself, who founded another city 

 on its shore. 



Under the Romans, Saloniki grew 

 greatly in importance. Made a free city, 

 the capital of the surrounding region, it 

 became the home of many Roman colo- 

 nists, and not a few famous names asso- 

 ciate themselves with the town. Cicero 

 lived there for a time in exile. St. Paul 

 was another temporary resident, whose 

 epistles to the Thessalonians we still pre- 

 serve. 



NERO BUILT A COLONNADE 



The emperor Nero decorated the city 

 with a colonnade, a few of whose bat- 

 tered caryatides were visible there until a 

 few years ago, under the picturesque 

 name of las encantadas — the Enchanted 

 Women. They are now in the Louvre. 



Trajan erected a rotunda in honor of 



the Cabiri; for they, with Aphrodite of 

 the Baths, were patrons of pagan Salon- 

 iki. Galerius, one of the associates of 

 Diocletian in the purple, made Saloniki 

 his headquarters. Licinius, coemperor 

 with Constantine the Great, died or was 

 put to death there in 324 by his success- 

 ful rival. Theodosius the Great also 

 lived there, in 380, in order to keep his 

 eye on the Goths. 



After his retirement to Milan, ten 

 thousand of the Thessalonians were 

 butchered in the circus, in punishment 

 for insulting the emperor's lieutenant. 

 St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, thundered 

 from the pulpit against the imperial mur- 

 derer, and Theodosius eventually made a 

 most humiliating public penance. 



During the Byzantine period Saloniki 

 became the second city of the empire. 

 Its situation made it the commercial cap- 

 ital of the Balkan Peninsula, and it ri- 

 valled Constantinople as a port of traffic 

 between eastern Europe and Alexandria. 

 But its wealth and its comparative re- 

 moteness also made it a frequent object 

 of attack. Avars, Goths, and Huns came 

 time and again to its gates. The Saracens 

 captured and sacked it in 904. The Nor- 

 mans descended upon it in 1185. 



SERB AND BULGAR VISITORS 



And it is not uninteresting to recall 

 that among the most assiduous of these 

 redoubtable visitors were the Serbs, and 

 especially the Bulgars. These neighbors 

 owed much to Saloniki, from whom they 

 took their faith and, indirectly, their 

 alphabet ; for it was from Saloniki that 

 St. Cyril and St. Methodius went forth to 

 convert and to civilize the hardy moun- 

 taineers of the Balkans. The hardy 

 mountaineers, however, lost no opportu- 

 nity to take more merchantable loot from 

 Saloniki, though Saloniki itself they 

 never took for long. 



After the conquest of Constantinople 

 in 1204 by the Franks and Venetians of 

 the Fourth Crusade, Saloniki fell to the 

 lot of Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, 

 who made it the capital of an imaginary 

 kingdom. In 1222 King Demetrius, son 

 of Boniface, was driven out with his 

 Lombard nobles by a Byzantine prince of 

 Epirus. 



