Located in Turkey, the settlement of Satala (Old Armenian: Սատաղ Satał, Ancient Greek: Σάταλα[1]), according to the ancient geographers, was situated in a valley surrounded by mountains, a little north of the Euphrates, where the road from Trapezus to Samosata crossed the boundary of the Roman Empire, when it was a bishopric, which remains a Latin Catholic titular see.

Probably it was Trajan who placed there the Legio XV Apollinaris and began the construction of the great castra stativa (permanent camp) which it was to occupy till the 5th century.

[5] In the Late Roman province of Armenia Prima,[6] Satala was a suffragan of its capital Sebaste's Metropolitan Archbishop.

It is vacant, having had as such the following incumbents, so far also all of the fitting episcopal (lowest) rank : Satala, then called Sadagh or Suddak, was visited by J. G. Taylor in 1868: he copied a damaged Latin inscription mentioning Domitian found on a Roman votive altar; found a large figurative mosaic fragment, a "magnificent specimen", being reused as the base of a fireplace; found more and larger mosaic fragments scattered about the village (all of them having been dug out of the top of a hill overlooking the village); and reported the existence of Byzantine epitaph inscriptions.

[11][12] Taylor reported that cut stones had been removed from the site to construct government buildings at Erzincan.

Biliotti described it as a basilica, but since then it was frequently regarded as the remains of an aqueduct leading to an as yet unidentified lower city.

[15] The famous Satala Aphrodite, a larger than life-size head from an ancient Hellenistic bronze statue, was found in a field outside Sadak in 1872.

According to Gümüşhane Museum Director Gamze Demir, the broken part of the sarcophagus, which is considered to be 2.5 meters long is believed to be under the ground.