Anabasis (1.2.5-1.2.9)

And when the King heard from Tissaphernes about Cyrus’ array, he set about making counter-preparations.

After crossing the Maeander he marched through Phrygia one stage, a distance of eight parasangs, to Colossae, an inhabited[*] city, prosperous and large. There he remained seven days; and Menon[*] the Thessalian arrived, with a thousand hoplites and five hundred peltasts, consisting of Dolopians, Aenianians, and Olynthians.

Thence he marched three stages, twenty parasangs, to Celaenae, an inhabited city of Phrygia, large and prosperous. There Cyrus had a palace and a large park full of wild animals, which he used to hunt on horseback whenever he wished to give himself and his horses exercise. Through the middle of this park flows the Maeander river; its sources are beneath the palace, and it flows through the city of Celaenae also.

There is likewise a palace of the Great King[*] in Celaenae, strongly fortified and situated at the foot of the Acropolis over the sources of the Marsyas river; the Marsyas also flows through the city, and empties into the Maeander, and its width is twenty-five feet. It was here, according to the story, that Apollo flayed Marsyas,[*] after having defeated him in a contest of musical skill; he hung up his skin in the cave from which the sources issue, and it is for this reason that the river is called Marsyas.

It was here also, report has it, that Xerxes, when he was on his retreat from Greece after losing the famous battle,[*] built the palace just mentioned and likewise the citadel of Celaenae. Here Cyrus remained thirty days; and Clearchus, the Lacedaemonian exile, arrived, with a thousand hoplites, eight hundred Thracian peltasts, and two hundred Cretan bowmen. At the same time came also Sosis the Syracusan with three hundred hoplites and Agias the Arcadian with a thousand hoplites. And here Cyrus held a review and made an enumeration of the Greeks in the park, and they amounted all told to eleven thousand hoplites and about two thousand peltasts.[*]