Celaenae

Celaenae (Celænæ) or Kelainai (Greek: Κελαιναί), was an ancient city of Phrygia and capital of the Persian satrapy of Greater Phrygia, near the source of the Maeander River in what is today west central Turkey (Dinar of Afyonkarahisar Province), and was situated on the great trade route to the East.

It is first mentioned by Herodotus, in Book VII of his Histories; describing the route of Xerxes on his way to invade Greece in 480 BC, he writes:

On their way through Phrygia they reached Celaenae, where two rivers rise — the Meander and one called the Catarractes, which is just as large as the Meander. The Catarractes rises right in the main square of Celaenae and issues into the Meander. Another feature of the square of Celaenae is that the skin of Marsyas the silenus is hanging there, where it was put, according to local Phrygian legend, after Marsyas had been flayed by Apollo.

Xenophon describes it, in Book I of his Anabasis, as the place where Cyrus mustered his Greek mercenaries in 401 BC: