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PINARA (Ancient city) TURKEY
Pinapa (ta Pinapa: Eth. Pinareus). 1. A large city of Lycia, at the
foot of Mount Cragus, and not far from the western bank of the river Xanthus,
where the Lycian hero Pandarus was worshipped. (Strab. xiv. 665; Steph. B. s.
v.; Arrian, Anab. i. 24; Plin. v. 28; Ptol. v. 3. § 5; Hierocl. p. 684.) This
city, though it is not often mentioned by ancient writers, appears, from its vast
and beautiful ruins, to have been, as Strabo asserts, one of the largest towns
of the country. According to the Lycian history of Menecrates, quoted by Stephanus
Byz. (s. v. Artumnesos), the town was a colony of Xanthus, and originally bore
the name of Artymnesus, afterwards changed into Pinara, which, in the Lycian language,
signified a round hill, the town being situated on such an eminence. Its ruins
were discovered by Sir Charles Fellows, near the modern village of Minara. From
amidst the ancient city, he says (Lycia, p. 139), rises a singular round rocky
cliff (the pinara of the Lycians), literally specked all over with tombs. Beneath
this cliff lie the ruins of the extensive and splendid city. The theatre is in
a very perfect state; all the seats are remaining, with the slanting sides towards
the proscenium, as well as several of its doorways. The walls and several of the
buildings are of the Cyclopian style, with massive gateways, formed of three immense
stones. The tombs are innumerable, and the inscriptions are in the Lycian characters,
but Greek also occurs often on the same tombs. Some of these rock-tombs are adorned
with fine and rich sculptures.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
(ta Pinara). An inland city of Lycia, where Pandarus was worshipped as a hero.
Pages of the Turkish Ministry of Culture
About 17 km N-NW of Xanthos. The site is proved by inscriptions and
by the evident survival of the name, of which the old Lycian form was Pinale.
According to Menekrates of Xanthos (ap. Steph. Byz. s.v. Artymnesos) the name
means "round," with reference apparently to the rounded shape of the
precipitous hill on which the city originally stood. A dozen inscriptions in the
Lycian language have been found on the site. Pinara has no recorded history apart
from Menekrates' assertion that it was founded by colonists from Xanthos, and
Arrian's statement that it surrendered quietly to Alexander. In the Lycian League
Pinara was one of the six-vote cities, and issued coins in the 2d-1st c. B.C.;
no imperial coinage, however, is known. Bishops of Pinara are recorded down to
the end of the 9th c.
The principal ruins lie in and around a small valley at the E foot
of a hill over 450 m high, whose precipitous face is honeycombed with the openings
of hundreds of tombs, quite inaccessible without tackle. The only approach was
barred by a triple wall of massive masonry. On the flat but gently sloping summit
nothing survives beyond some rock-cuttings, a few cisterns, and the remains of
a fortified citadel at the highest point.
In the lower town, which was never walled, a much smaller hill forms
a second acropolis, covered with the ruins of buildings now much overgrown; among
these, on the W side, is a small theater or odeum in poor condition. To the NE
of this, in the W face of another small hill, is the principal theater, in excellent
preservation but also badly overgrown. Its plan is purely Greek and seems never
to have been modified in Roman times; it has 27 rows of seats and 10 stairways;
there is no diazoma. The stage building stands to a height of 2 to 4 m, with two
of its doors complete, one leading from the parodos to the stage. The agora appears
to have been situated to the N of the lower acropolis; here are the ruins of a
temple and a large foundation.
Lycian rock tombs are numerous. Among them the largest and most remarkable
is the so-called Royal Tomb, a tomb of house type with a porch and an inner grave
chamber. The galls of the porch carry reliefs showing four Lycian cities (real
or imaginary) within whose battlements houses and tombs are visible. Another tomb
has a facade resembling the end of a "Gothic" sarcophagus, adorned at
the summit with a pair of ox's horns.
G. E. Bean, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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