Not only did the theme control the exits to the mountain passes from the Slav-dominated interior of the Balkans into the coastal plains of Macedonia, but it was transversed by the great Via Egnatia highway, which linked Byzantine-controlled Thrace with Thessalonica, the Empire's second-largest city.

[1][3][6] In addition, the bishop of Serres was elevated to an archbishop at about the same time, a possible indication of the establishment of a thematic capital there.

[6] Several authors like the French Byzantinist Paul Lemerle support its creation in the late 840s, during Theoktistos's anti-Slavic campaigns,[7] but historian Warren Treadgold considers it to have become a full theme in c. 896, to counter the threat of the Bulgarian tsar Symeon I (r.

[3] The theme continued in existence until the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade (1204), when it became part of the short-lived Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica.

In 1246, after the Nicaean emperor John III Vatatzes (r. 1221–1254) conquered Macedonia, the theme was re-established as a separate province.