Archaeological excavations have shown the site of Lamia to have been inhabited since at least the
Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC). In antiquity, the city played an important role due to its strategic location, controlling the narrow coastal plain above
Thermopylae that connected southern Greece with
Thessaly and the rest of the
Balkans. In its ancient phase, Lamia was located closer to the see, which explains the existence of the nearby temple dedicated to
Poseidon. With the flow of the
Spercheios river, the terrain changed and the sealine was dragged to the interior of the
Malian Gulf -this geological phenomenon altered the straights of
Thermopylae, too. Lamia constituted a
polis (city-state). The city was therefore fortified in the 5th century BC, and was contested by the
Macedonians, Thessalians and
Aetolians until the
Roman conquest in the early 2nd century BC. After
Alexander the Great's death in 323 BC, the
Athenians and other Greeks rebelled against Macedonian overlordship.
Antipatros, the regent of Macedon, took refuge behind the substantial walls of the city (
Lamian War, 323–322 BC). The war ended with the death of the Athenian general
Leosthenes, and the arrival of a 20,000-strong
Macedonian army. Lamia prospered afterwards, especially in the 3rd century BC under Aetolian hegemony, which came to an end when
Manius Acilius Glabrio sacked the city in 190 BC. Little is known of the city's history for a number of centuries after that. In
Late Antiquity, the city was the seat of a
bishop (attested since 431),
suffragan of
Larissa, but had declined to obscurity: for instance, it is not shown on the 5th-century
Tabula Peutingeriana. Some archaeological remains from the period have been found in the Castle (the city's ancient
acropolis), including a
basilica, coins and marble inscriptions, while the walls of the Castle are thought to have been rebuilt under
Justinian I in the 6th century. The
Synecdemus of Hierocles includes Lamia among the 16 cities of the
province of Thessaly. The city was occupied by
Slavs in the 7th century, and re-appears only in 869/70 under the name of
Zetounion (Ζητοῦνιον), probably deriving from a Slavic word for "grain". The city played once more a role in the
Byzantine–Bulgarian wars of the late 10th century due to its vicinity to Thermopylae: it was near the town that the Byzantine general
Nikephoros Ouranos scored a crushing victory over Tsar
Samuel of Bulgaria in the
Battle of Spercheios in 997. The city was visited by Emperor
Basil II in his triumphal journey to Greece in 1018, and in 1165, the Jewish traveller
Benjamin of Tudela recorded 50 Jewish families in the city and of raids by the neighbouring
Vlachs. Following the
Fourth Crusade (1204), the city was captured by the
Frankish crusaders. Initially, it was given as a fief to the
Knights Templar, who rebuilt its fortress. In 1209–10 the Templars were evicted due to their support to the rebellion of the Lombard barons of the
Kingdom of Thessalonica. The
Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders confiscated the city (and neighbouring
Ravennika) and made it an imperial domain under a
bailli, possibly
Rainerio of Travale. Under Frankish rule, it was the seat of a
Roman Catholic bishop (
Dioecesis Sidoniensis or
Cythoniensis), probably a suffragan of the
Latin Archbishop of Neopatras. In , or shortly after 1223, the two towns were captured by the
Epirote Greeks. Lamia remained in Greek hands until it was surrendered again to the Franks of the
Duchy of Athens in 1275 as part of the dowry of
Helena Angelina Komnene, daughter of
John I Doukas, ruler of Thessaly. It thereby again became a Catholic see. The
Catalans held the city from 1318 until 1391, when it passed to the
Acciaioli Dukes of Athens. The fortress was razed by the
Ottoman Sultan
Bayezid I in 1394. After the disastrous
Battle of Ankara in 1402, the weakened Ottomans were
forced to return some territories, including the region of Zetounion, to Byzantine rule. The Turks besieged the city for two years sometime before 1415, but the Byzantines resisted successfully. Sometime between 1424 and July 1426, however, the city had been once more conquered by the Turks. Apart from an attack by the troops of the
Despotate of the Morea in 1444, which plundered the city, from then on the town remained under firm Ottoman control until it became part of the newly independent
Kingdom of Greece in 1832. Until the
annexation of Thessaly in 1881, it was a border city (the borders were drawn at a site known as "Taratsa" just north of Lamia). ==Climate==