The Ruins of Oenoanda

Oinouanda, high in the rugged hills of northern Lycia, has always been remote. Likely founded in the Hellenistic era, the city flourished under the Romans, apparently becoming a center of stock breeding. It vanished quietly in the early Byzantine era and has been abandoned ever since. Oinouanda is not an easy site to reach. After parking in the village, you have to fight your way up a steep and rocky slope with all kinds of clinging thorns, following a series of ill-defined goat paths. At long last, when you're on the point of giving up, you encounter the Roman aqueduct. The channel ran on top of this wall. We're now standing on top of the aqueduct. It was about three miles long and carried an estimated thousand cubic meters of water each day. Here, the channel is still well defined. It does need a bit of maintenance, though. Following the line of the aqueduct, we encounter these imposing defensive walls. Let's go inside this tower. Everything was built in the polygonal masonry that appears to have been a local specialty. Let's try to climb up to the rampart. Need some careful gimbal work here. So... The walls of Oinouanda seem to be late Hellenistic, possibly built under the kings of Pergamum. Like the walls of Pergamum itself, they consisted of a rubble core contained by inner and outer faces of dressed polygonal blocks. In places, the walls stand almost to their original height of more than 30 feet. During the Roman era, when security was no longer a concern, a section was dismantled to allow the aqueduct to pass through. There was an extensive necropolis beneath the walls. Looming over the lesser tombs beneath the walls was the great mausoleum of Licinia Flavilla and Flavianus Diogenes, an Oinouandan power couple. The long inscription on the building's façade listed no fewer than twelve generations of Licinia's illustrious ancestors. The city proper is ahead. This was the main agora, the showplace of the Roman city. Though pines have forced their way between the flagstones, you can still see fragments of a colonnade that lined the square. Also still evident are the bases of statues that honored Oinouanda's leading citizens. A short distance beyond the agora is the so-called esplanade, the original Hellenistic agora of the town. Column stumps mark the portico that lined the square. It was here, sometime in the second century AD, that the classical world's longest inscription was inscribed. At least 25,000 words long, it was set up at the behest of Diogenes, a wealthy and elderly man who wished to share the blessings of Epicurean philosophy with his fellow citizens. The inscription incorporated works of Epicurus and of Diogenes himself on everything from the creation of the world to the interpretation of dreams. The stoa in which the inscription was displayed was dismantled in late antiquity to build a wall. Since the 19th century, archaeologists have been uncovering the reused blocks and piecing together the lost inscription. Though only about a third has been recovered so far, the most recent edition of the text is well over a hundred pages long, one of the few public buildings that's still relatively intact. Almost everything else is just a flat sea of rubble. The remains of a substantial late antique church. All the columns have fallen, but you can still see the telltale apse where the altar was. This residential district has been reduced to more or less shapeless heaps of rubble. Only a few doorposts stand here and there, entering the theater. We'll close with the theater. The Greek-style Kapia, partially cut into the slope behind, is almost intact, though carpeted, as I know from bitter experience, with thorny scrub. The stage building still stands the second story, but most memorable are the ranges of pine-covered hills that still stand sentry over the lonely ruins of Oinawanda.