Pharsalus, now known as Farsala, is a city in southern Thessaly, Greece. It was built over a hillside of the Narthacius Mountains, and it was one of the main cities in Thessaly, the capital of the Phthian tetrarch, and a polis. During the Greco-Persian Wars, it sided with the Athenians, and it also sided with Athens during the Peloponnesian War. In 395 BC, Medius of Larissa conquered Pharsalus, and it later joined the Macedonian kingdom under King Philip II of Macedon. During the war between Antiochus III and Rome, Pharsalus was for a time in the possession of the Seleucid monarch, but it surrendered to the Romans in 191 BC. After the defeat of Macedon, Pharsalus became a part of the Roman Republic, and it was the site of the 48 BC Battle of Pharsalus, where Julius Caesar defeated Pompey the Great. Pharsalus would remain under Roman/Byzantine rule until the Ottoman era, during which it was known as Catalca, and it was ceded to Greece along with the rest of Thessaly in 1881. As the result of World War II and a series of earthquakes, the town has no historical or medieval buildings remaining, and it had a population of 18,545 people in 2011.
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