Strabo, Geography

Apameia is a great emporium of Asia, I mean Asia in the special sense of that term,¹ and ranks second only to Ephesus; for it is a common entrepôt for the merchandise from both Italy and Greece. Apameia is situated near the outlets of the Marsyas River, which flows through the middle of the city and has its sources in the city;² it flows down to the suburbs, and then with violent and precipitate current joins the Maeander. The latter receives also another river, the Orgas, and traverses a level country with an easygoing and sluggish stream; and then, having by now become a large river, the Maeander flows for a time through Phrygia and then forms the boundary between Caria and Lydia at the Plain of Maeander, as it is called, where its course is so exceedingly winding that everything winding is called "meandering." And at last it flows through Caria itself, which is now occupied by the Ionians, and then empties between Miletus and Priene. It rises in a hill called Celaenae, on which there is a city which hears the same name as the hill; and it was from Celaenae that Antiochus Soter³ made the inhabitants move to the present Apameia, the city which he named after his mother Apama, who was the daughter of Artabazus and was given in marriage to Seleucus Nicator. And here is laid the scene of the myth of Olympus and of Marsyas and of the contest between Marsyas and Apollo. Above is situated a lake which produces the reed that is suitable for the mouth-pieces of pipes; and it is from this lake that pour the sources of both the Marsyas and the Maeander.