on land abandoned due to a contraction of population, or the contraction of Thessaloniki out of its former neighborhoods outside the city walls due to the occupation of the countryside by the Turks. A conqueror might break up a polis for various reasons. As part of the settlement of the Third Sacred War in 346 BC, the Amphictyonic League was commissioned to destroy 21 or 22 cities of Phocis, many of which had already been burned. They chose the method of dioecism, returning the poleis to their constituent kōmai, or villages. The city fortifications were then dismantled. This relatively mild destruction was reversed by Athens and Thebes several years later as they were sympathetic to Phocis but their hands had been legally tied. The cities were re-synoecized and the larger states assisted Phocis to rebuild the fortifications. The Spartan King Pausanias choosing the method of dioecism rather than conquest, liberated the city of Plataea and granted them an independent "autonomoi" status. After defeating the occupying Persians, Sparta restored Plataean autonomy and rule over their city and outlying territories differentiating them from the larger hegemony of Athens in the Attica region. This dioecism carried serious political connotations for the Spartans who invaded again during the Peloponnesian War when it was referenced again by the Plataeans as a way of warning against Spartan interference with their sovereignty or their interests. The legitimacy of the dioecism and the connotations it brought being that Plataea is an independent city-state entity from Athens was enough so that it caused the invading Spartans to enter negotiations rather than violently raze the city and its hinterlands. Ancient Rome In ancient Rome, some of the kinds of settlement that were incorporated by synoecism into greater municipal polities were the prefecture (praefectura), a non-autonomous village administered by a prefect; the oppidum, a fortified, autonomous town; the castellum, a small fortified place under or previously under martial jurisdiction; the forum, a marketplace; the conciliabulum, a meeting place; the vicus, a small, private settlement without government; the canabae, a settlement of dependents in the vicinity of a military base; the pagus, a rural village; the gens, a tribal canton; the saltus, a settlement of coloni (farmers) on a large estate, part of which they leased from the conductor (manager); and the colonia, a settlement of colonists from Rome. As an archaeological site "Synoecism" also denominates an ancient Cretan archaeological site on