Thessalonike, half-sister to Alexander the Great, was born around 352 or 345 BCE.

King Philip II, to commemorate the birth of his daughter, which fell on the same day as the armies of Macedon and Thessalian league won the significant battle of Crocus Field in Thessaly over the Phocians, is said to have proclaimed, "Let her be called victory in Thessaly".

In the Greek language her name is made up of two words Thessaly and nike, which translate into 'Thessalian Victory'.

Her mother did not live long after her birth and upon her death Thessalonike appears to have been brought up by her stepmother Olympias.

In memory of her close friend, Nicesipolis, the queen had taken Thessalonike to be raised as her own daughter.

Thessalonike was, by far, the youngest child in the care of Olympias.

Her interaction with her older brother Alexander would have been minimal, as he was under the tutelage of Aristotle in "The Gardens Of Midas" when she was born, and at the age of six or seven when he left on his Persian expedition.

She was only nineteen when Alexander, king of the then most known world, died.

Thessalonike had spent her childhood in the queen’s quarters, to whose fortunes she attached herself in 317 BCE when the latter returned to Macedon, and with whom she took refuge in 315 BCE, along with the rest of the royal family, in the fortress of Pydna, on the advance of Cassander.

The fall of Pydna and the execution of her stepmother threw her into the power of Cassander, who embraced the opportunity to connect himself with the Argead dynasty by marrying her; and he appears to have studiously treated her with the respect due to her illustrious birth.

This may have been as much owing to policy as to affection but the marriage appears to have been a prosperous one.

Thessalonike, as queen of Macedon, will become the mother of three sons, Philip, Antipater, and Alexander; and her husband pays her the honor of conferring her name upon the port city of Thessaloniki, which he founds on the site of the ancient Therma and twenty-six other local villages,.

The city, as it continues down to the present day, will soon becomes one of the most wealthy and populous cities of Macedonia, located at the head of the Gulf of Salonika in northern Greece, about one hundred and ninety miles (three hundred kilometers) northwest of Athens.

Macedonia, made a Roman province in 146 BCE, is to be governed and taxed by a Roman proconsul, who also watches over the Greek cities to the south, where the Achaean and Aetolian leagues have been disbanded.

A smaller league, however, is set up soon afterward (and will continue into the Roman imperial age.)

Macedonia is in fact the first province of Rome’s nascent empire.

Throughout the rest of Greece, the leagues have been dissolved, democracies abolished, and power placed with the rich.

Intercity peace has been established and left to the governor of Macedonia to enforce.

The ironic result is that this external agency, Rome, has given the city-states a degree of autonomy and peace they had previously lacked.

Thessaly becomes part of the province of Macedonia, for which Salonika serves as the provincial capital.

The Late Byzantine mosaic scheme of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Salonika, executed around 1315, display brilliant color, graceful forms, and decorative richness.

After taking the border fortresses, Dushan penetrates deep into imperial territory to the gates of Salonika, although he does not achieve lasting success in subduing the cities.

He makes peace with Emperor Andronikos in August 1334, having extended the territories of his state close to what is today the northern border of Greece.

The declining Empire, with Andronikos dead, once more falls prey to family quarrels and civil war.

Dushan, arriving before the gates of Salonika, receives an unexpected ally in Kantakouzenos, who takes up arms against the regents of the young successor, and …

The revolutionary movement in the shrinking domains of the empire is most memorable and lasting in Thessalonica, where a faction known as the Zealots has seized power in a coup d'état and governs the city as an almost independent commune until 1350.

The junior emperor John V will rule in Thessalonica after 1351.

Andronikos Palaiologos is a son of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and his wife Helena Dragaš.

His maternal grandfather was the Serb prince Constantine Dragaš.

His brothers include emperors John VIII Palaiologos and Constantine XI Palaiologos, as well as Theodore II Palaiologos, Demetrios Palaiologos and Thomas Palaiologos, who rule as despots in the Morea.

In childhood, Andronikos had survived the sickness that had killed his older brother Constantine and two sisters.

He has never recovered in full and will remain n poor health for the rest of his life, eventually developing leprosy.

When he was only eight years old his father had made him a despot (despotēs) and appointed him imperial representative in Thessalonica, where he succeeded his deceased cousin John VII Palaiologos.

As he was still a minor, for the first years of his rule there, until about 1415/1416, he was under the tutorship of the general Demetrios Laskaris Leontares.

After John VIII assumes control of the imperial government in 1421, the Empire faces an increasingly hostile Ottoman Empire.

Constantinople had been attacked in 1422 by the Ottomans.

Although the Turks had lifted the siege of Constantinople, Murad's armies had invaded Greece and in 1422–1423 subjected Thessalonica to a long blockade in 1422–1423.

Under siege, and increasingly unwell, Andronikos had begun diplomatic initiatives for the surrender of the city to the Republic of Venice.

Although he does not have the support of the whole of the population, and is opposed by the church, which mistrusts the Latins, these negotiations result in a Venetian force entering the city in 1423.

The handing over of Thessalonica to Venice contributes to the outbreak of the first in a series of wars between Venice and the Ottoman Empire.

An influx of twenty thousand Jews driven from Spain augments the population of Thessaloniki, which in 1430 had been severely reduced by the terrible massacre visited upon the city by Ottoman sultan Murad II.

They join their coreligionists in initiating a golden age of Ottoman Jewry that will last well into the seventeenth century (when Ottoman decline and the rising power of European diplomats and merchants will enable them to promote the interests of the sultan's Christian subjects at the expense of Muslims and Jews alike).

The city of Salonika has become one in which the Jews play a considerable role, the Ottomans’ invitation of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 having prevented the Greek element from dominating the city.

For the ensuing four centuries, the Sephardic Jews, Muslims and Greek Orthodox would remain the principal groups in the city.

The city, often called "Mother of Israel", is to remain the largest Jewish city in the world for at least two hundred years.

The Sephardim of Constantinople and Salonika are important links in international trade between the Mediterranean, Amsterdam and the East.

The Sabbatean crisis had lasted nearly a century, some of its aftereffects even longer.

It has led, for example, to the formation of sects whose members are externally converted to Islam—notably the Dönmeh (Turkish, “apostates”) of Salonika (whose descendants still live in Turkey).

The Dönmeh believe that the conversion of Sabbatai Zevi is a step in the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy.

They therefore have also converted from Judaism to Islam but secretly practice various Judaic rites.

Although they remain apart from the larger Jewish community, they preserve some knowledge of Hebrew, keep secret Hebrew names, forbid intermarriage with the Muslim population, and conduct their marriage and funeral rites in secret.

As the Dönmeh remain secretive and live in separate quarters, they are not generally noticed by the Muslims.

Internally they split into a number of subsects, reflecting social distinctions and disputes over the successors to Sabbatai.