The broader region of Lilaea had been inhabited since the 3rd millennium BCE. Herodotus does not mention it among the Phocian cities which had been destroyed by the Persians, possibly because in those days it was attached to Doris, which made its submission to Xerxes I, or because it was so well fortified that the Persians never subdued it. Based upon numismatic and epigraphic evidence, the latter appears the more likely. The city is also mentioned by Strabo, Pausanias, Ptolemy, Pliny the Elder, and Stephanus of Byzantium. Lilaea was destroyed during the Third Sacred War by Philip II of Macedon in 346 BCE, but it was rebuilt during the following years in the course of the project for the reconstruction of the Phocian citadels. It was besieged by Philip V of Macedon and the city had to accept that a Macedonian garrison but soon after an uprising, led by Patron, managed to defeat the Macedonians and they withdrew after the formalization of a pact.