Therma or Thermē was a Greek city founded by Eretria

Eretria

Erétria was a polis in Ancient Greece, located on the western coast of the island of Euboea, south of Chalcis, facing the coast of Attica across the narrow Euboean Gulf. Eretria was an important Greek polis in the 6th/5th century BC. However, it lost its importance already in antiquity...

ns or Corinth

Corinth

Corinth is a city and former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Corinth, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit...

ians in late 7th century BC

7th century BC

The 7th century BC started the first day of 700 BC and ended the last day of 601 BC.The Assyrian Empire continued to dominate the Near East during this century, exercising formidable power over neighbors like Babylon and Egypt. In the last two decades of the century, however, the empire began to...

 in ancient Mygdonia

Mygdonia (Europe)

Mygdonia was an ancient territory, part of Ancient Thrace, later conquered by Macedon, which comprised the plains around Therma together with the valleys of Klisali and Besikia, including the area of the Axios river mouth and extending as far east as Lake Bolbe. To the north it was joined by...

 (which was later incorporated into Macedon

Macedon

Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom, centered in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, the region of Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south....

), situated at the northeastern extremity of a great gulf of the Aegean Sea

Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...

, the Thermaic Gulf

Thermaic Gulf

The Thermaic Gulf is a gulf of the Aegean Sea located immediately south of Thessaloniki, east of Pieria and Imathia, and west of Chalkidiki . It was named after the ancient town of Therma, which was situated on the northeast coast of the gulf...

. The city was built amidst mosquito

Mosquito

Mosquitoes are members of a family of nematocerid flies: the Culicidae . The word Mosquito is from the Spanish and Portuguese for little fly...

-infested swampland, and its name derives from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 thérmē/thérma, "(malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

l) fever". Therma was later renamed Thessalonica by Cassander

Cassander

Cassander , King of Macedonia , was a son of Antipater, and founder of the Antipatrid dynasty...

. By that time the port of the previous capital of Macedonia, Pella

Pella

Pella , an ancient Greek city located in Pella Prefecture of Macedonia in Greece, was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia.-Etymology:...

, had begun silting up, so Cassander took advantage of the deep-water port to the northwest of Therma to expand the settlement.

External links

• Ancient coinage from Therma