Norwich bulletin., 1916-12-20
THE WAR PRIMER By National Geographic Society

ties which have been storm centdrs in the present European war have had a more tumultuous history than A5a lonilzi, now the focal point of War events with the Entente Allies in pos session. A condensed yet graphic re- cital of the powers and peoples winch have held sway over the seaport is given in a communication to the Ma tional Geographic Society from H. G. Dwight, a part of which has been is sued in the war geography of the so
 ciety. MT. Dwight says:
 Compared to it's two great neigh bors, Athens and Constantinople, Sa- loniki is relatively a modern city Founded originally as an Ionian cpl- ony, the place was first known as 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 Mac
 edonian empire the city played no no- table role, for Philip and Alexander the Great held their court at Pella, in the hills beyond the Vardar. The present town was founded about 3f5 B. C., py King Kassander of Macedon, and named after his wife Thessalonike, na,f sister to Alexander the Great The adjoining peninsula of Kassandra takes it's 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 re. zion, it became the home of many Roman colonists, and not a few famoTs names associate themselves with the town. Cicero lived there for a time in exile, St. Paul was another temper ary resident, whose epistles to the Ihessalonians we still preserve.
 The emperor Nero decorated the city with a colonnade, few of whose battered earyatides were visible there until a few years ago, under the Lic- turesque name of las encantadas-| the Enchanted Women. They are now in the Louvre. Trajan ~erected a TO- tunda in honor of the Cabiri; for they, with Aphrodite of the Baths, were patrons of pagan Saloniki. GaIerius, one of the associates of Diocletian in the purple, made Salonikf his head Constantine the Great, died or was put to death there in S24 by his sac- cessful rival. Theodosius the Great also lived there, in 3S0, in order to keep his eyes on the Goths. I
 After his retirement to Milan, 19- 900 of the Thessalonians were butch cred in the circus, in punishment 1T insulting the emperor's lieutenant St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, thunJrcd from the pulpit against the imperial murderer, and Theodosius eventually made a most humiliating public per- ance.
 During the Byzantine period Salon. iH became the second city of the ein- pire. Its situation made it the con- mercial capital of the Balkan penin- sula, and it rivalled Constantinople as port of traffic between eastern Flu d1-io O,,@ and it's comparative remoteness also made it a frequent object of attack AVars, GothS, and Huns came time and again to it's gates. The Saracons captured and sacked it in 9O4. The Normans descended upon it in 1185.
 And it is not uninteresting to re- call that among the most assiduous of these redoubtable visitors were tie Serbs, and especially the BuIgars. These neighbors owed much to Salon. iki, from whom they took their faith, and incidentally their alphabet; for it was from Saloniki that St. Cyril an? St. Methodius went forth to convert and to civilize the hardy mountainee.s S of the Balkans. The hardy noun talneers, however, lost no opportunity to take more merchantable loot frori Saloniki, though the city itself they never took for long,
 After the conquest of Constanti- nople in 1904 by the Franks and Ven etians of the Fourth Crusade, Salon. iki fell to the lot of Boniface, Mar quis of Montferrat, who made it the capital of an imaginary kingdom. Jn 1222 King Demetrius, son of Bonifacc, was driven out with his Lombard mo- bles by Byzantine prince of Epirus. The ensuing 200 years were the most unhappy in the troubled history of the Thessalonians, who were fought oyer and bandied about by Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs, Catalans, Venetians, and Turks. l
 The Turks first appeared upon the scene in 1880. They did not definitely take possession, however, until 1i30. | Then Sultan Mourad II. father of thA conqueror of Constantinople, captur ad the town from the Venetians, gava 1t over to sack and massacre, carried off 1000 of the inhabitants into slavery and changed mary of the churches into mosques or tore them down for use in his own construction Some Of the marbles of Salonik were ca"- ried as far afaw as Adrianople.
 For nearly 800 years the Turks re- mained in ulldisturbed possession. Yet it is perhaps not quite accurate to describe their possession as undis turbed; for during the latter part of that period the frontiers of the em-