Information About the City of Thessalonica and Its People

Thessalonica, formerly Therma—now called Salonika by the Greeks and Thessalonica by us—lies amphitheater-fashion on a hillside in the northwestern corner of the Thermaic Gulf. During the period of apostolic preaching this city was the chief city of the second district of the Macedonian province and the residence of the Roman praetor and quaestor. Its geographical situation—on the seaward side along the bay, and on the landward side along a great trade road known as the Via Egnatia—made Thessalonica a flourishing, commercially active, wealthy, and populous city. But luxury naturally developed there as a result, and its consequence everywhere is a decline in morals. The native population consisted of Greeks; after the Roman conquest, Roman settlers were nearly equal to them in number; later a large community of Jews settled there who, by reason of their shrewdness in trade—which they had taken largely into their own hands—enjoyed a certain standing in the city and had not a mere house of prayer (προσευχη), as for instance at Philippi (Acts 16:13) and elsewhere, but a synagogue (Acts 17:1). It is likely that there were active proselyters there as well, who administered the whole of that region.