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Modern Description: 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)
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinara
Wikidata ID: Q1318876
Trismegistos Geo: 1835

Info: Princeton Encyclopedia

(Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, from Perseus Project)

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