Idrias

Idrias was a town of ancient Caria, in what is now Turkey. It has been suggested that Idrias could be identified with the city that Bronze Age Hittite texts call Atriya. Herodotus refers to the territory of Idrias, which he calls Idriade, as the source of the Marsyas River, a tributary of the Maeander. The town was a member of the Delian League, appearing in an Athenian tribute decree dated to 425 or 424 BC. According to the scholar Mehmet Cetin Sahin, Idrias was subsequently called Hiera Kome. Stephanus of Byzantium, quoting Apollonius of Aphrodisias, identifies Idrias with Chrysaorium, and Pausanias states that the nearby city of Stratonicea was previously called Chrysaorium. Strabo records a cult of Zeus Chrysaoreus near Stratonicea and describes that city as head of the Chrysaorian League. It is thought that Idrias was one of the towns that joined a synoecism to found Stratonicea and continued to exist as one of its districts, though the scholar William Martin Leake held that Stratonicea was built directly on the site of Idrias.