Pinara
PINARA (τὰ Πίναπα: Eth. Πιναρεύς).
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. 14.665; Steph. B. s. v.; Arrian, Arr. Anab. 1.24; Plin. Nat. 5.28; Ptol. 5.3.5; 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. Ἀρτύμνησος), 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,h e says (Lycia, p. 139), rises a singular round rocky cliff (the pinara of the Lycians), literally specked all over with tombs.B eneath 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. (See the plate in Fellows facing p. 141.)
2.A town of Cilicia (Plin. Nat. 5.22), perhaps the same as the one mentioned by Ptolemy (Ptol. 5.15.12) as situated in Pieria, a district of Syria; though it should be observed that Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.19) mentions the Pinaritae as a people in Coelesyria. [L.S]
(τὰ Πίναρα). An inland city of Lycia, where Pandarus (q.v.) was worshipped as a hero (Pliny , Pliny H. N. v. 101).
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.
BIBLIOGRAPHYC. Fellows, Lycia (1840) 138-50I; T.A.B. Spratt & E. Forbes, Travels in Lycia (1847) I 6-11M; E. Petersen & F. von Luschan, Reisen in Lykien (1889) I 47-56MI; TAM 11.2 (1930) 185-88.
G. E. BEAN