DODONA, in Epirus, was the seat of the most ancient and venerable of all Hellenic sanctuaries. In the plain of the Dodonaea, and on the banks of the neighbouring Acheloüs, there dwelt in times long anterior to history the race of Helli or Hellenes, who thence spread into Thessaly and Greece. In after times the Greeks of the south looked on the inhabitants of Epirus as barbarians; nevertheless for Dodona they always preserved a certain reverence, and the temple there was the object of frequent missions from them. This temple was dedicated to the Pelasgic Zeus, the wielder of the thunderbolt in the storms so frequent in Epirus. Connected with the temple was an oracle which enjoyed more reputation in Greece than any other save that at Delphi, and which would seem to date from more early times than the worship of Zeus; for the normal method of gathering the responses of the oracle was by listening to the rustling of an old oak tree, which was supposed to be the seat of the deity, and by taking thence an augury of the future. We seem here to have a remnant of the very ancient and widely diffused tree-worship. Sometimes, however, auguries were taken in other manners, being drawn from the moaning of doves in the branches, the murmur of a fountain which rose close by, or the resounding of the wind in the brazen tripods which formed a circle all round the temple. The oracle was thus, compared with the articulate responses of Delphi, dumb, but none the less constantly consulted. Craesus proposed to it his well-known question; Lysander sought to obtain from it a sanction for his ambitious views; the Athenians frequently appealed to its authority during the Peloponnesian war. Bιit the most frequent votaries were the neighbouring tribes of the Acarnanians and Aetolians, together ...with the Boeotians, who claimed a special connection with the district.
Dodona is not unfrequently mentioned by ancient writers. Homer speaks of it twice, once calling it the stormy abode of Selli who sleep on the ground and wash not their feet, and on the second occasion describing a visit of Odysseus to the oracle. Hesiod has left us a complete description of the Dodonaea or Hellopia, which he calls a district full of corn fields, of herds and flocks and of shepherds, where is built on an extremity (<⅛ ’ i<rχaτιfj) Dodona, where Zeus dwells in the stem of an oak (φyγ<k). Herodotus tells a story which he learned at Egyptian Thebes, that the oracle of Dodona was founded by an Egyptian priestess who was carried away by the Phoenicians, but says that the local legend substitutes for this priestess a black dove, a substitution in which he tries to find a rational meaning. From later writers we learn that in historical times there was worshipped, together with Zeus, an Asiatic goddess under the name Dione, and thenceforward the responses were given by the priestesses of the latter, who were called doves, and not by the Selli.
As to the site of Dodona there has been a good deal of discussion. We know from the authorities that the town was situated in a fertile vale at the foot of the mountain Tomarus, whence issued a multitude of springs, and that it was on the eastern boundary of Epirus, and on the confines of Thesprotia and Molossis. We are further told that Dodona was a two days’ journey from Ambracia, and a journey of four days from Buthrotum. It would also appear certain that it was in a region of frequent thunderstorms. In accordance with these indications, Colonel Leake fixed on Castritza near Janina in Epirus, at the foot of the mountain Mitzikéli, as the site of Dodona. But his reasons are not conclusive. Quite recently excavations have been undertaken at a spot in the valley of Dramisius, a few leagues south of Castritza, at the foot of Mount Olytzika, where Leake found the remains of a theatre and of two temples. This has usually been supposed to be the site of Passaron, the ancient capital of the Molossian kings. But these excavations have brought to light not only many antiquities, but tablets ex voto bearing dedicatory inscriptions to Zeus Naïos and Dione, and many fragments of tripods, whence it would seem highly probable that the opinion of Leake must be given up, and the new site definitely fixed upon as that of Dodona. (See Leake, Northern Greece, vols. i. iv.; Revue Archéologique for 1877, pp. 329, 397.)
The temple of Dodona was destroyed by the AEtolians in 219 b.c., but the oracle survived to the times of Pausanias and even of the emperor Julian.
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