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Greek city of Isinda in Pisidia
Bronze 19mm (5.49 grams) Struck circa 200-0 B.C. (2nd-1st centuries BC).
Reference: SNG BN 1573
Laureate head of Zeus right.
ΙΣΙΝ, Warrior, holding spear, on horse galloping right; Γ in field.
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 In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the “Father of Gods and men” who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.
Zeus was the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he was married to Hera, although, at the oracle of Dodona, his consort was Dione: according to the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione. He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.
As Walter Burkert points out in his book, Greek Religion, “Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence.” For the Greeks, he was the King of the Gods, who oversaw the universe. As Pausanias observed, “That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men”. In Hesiod’s Theogony Zeus assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods.
His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical “cloud-gatherer” also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses: standing, striding forward, with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty.
Isinda
Nearby was the ancient town of Isinda, whose site is now thought to be at the village of Kişla, though formerly identified with Yazır. In the 1840s, T.A.B. Spratt and E. Forbes visited Kişla, an hour’s ride from Korkuteli (referred to as Stenez), with extensive walls of soft stone and burnt brick, and identified it as the city of Isinda, which the Roman consul Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, on his victorious march through Asia Minor in 189 BC, found besieged by Termessus. At the city’s request he raised the siege and fined the Termessians 50 talents.
Isinda stood in a strategic position at the western end of the pass leading from Pamphylia by Termessus to Pisidia. Together with Aperlae, Apollonia and Simena, Isinda was a member of a tetrapolis, a federation of four cities.
Samples of the extensive coinage of Isinda are extant, which give evidence that it considered itself an Ionian colony.
Isinda was later included in the Roman province of Pamphylia Secunda. At an early stage, it became a Christian bishopric, a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Perge, the capital of the province. Of its bishops, Cyrillus took part in the First Council of Nicaea in 325, Edesius in the Council of Ephesus in 431, Marcellinus in the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Talleleus in the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, Ignatius in the Photian Council of Constantinople (879).
No longer a residential bishopric, Isinda is now listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.
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