Phthiotic Thebes

Phthiotic Thebes was an ancient Greek city and polis in the district of Phthiotis in ancient Thessaly, at the northern end of the Crocus Field, with its harbor at Pyrasus about 300 stadia from Larissa, north of the modern village of Mikrothives. Evidence of habitation dates back to the Stone Age, though the city was not named until the fourth century BC, when it formed through the union of neighboring settlements and became the most important maritime city in Thessaly until Demetrias was founded around 294 BC. Philip V of Macedon captured it in 217 BC and renamed it Philippopolis, but it regained its original name after the Roman victory in the Second Macedonian War in 189 BC. The city prospered into the sixth century AD before a fire in the late seventh century destroyed it, after which it never fully recovered and was overshadowed by the port city of Halmyros.