Dodona 1

Dodona
Dodona
Δωδώνη

View of the bouleuterion in Dodona

Shown within Greece

Location Dodoni, Ioannina, Epirus, Greece

Region Epirus

Coordinates [1]
39°32′47″N 20°47′16″E Coordinates: 39°32′47″N 20°47′16″E [1]
Type Sanctuary

History

Founded 2nd millennium BCE

Abandoned 391–392 CE

Periods Mycenaean Greek to Roman Imperial

Cultures Greek, Roman

Site notes

Condition Ruined

Ownership Public

Public access Yes

Dodona (Doric Greek: Δωδώνᾱ, Dōdṓnā, Ionic and Attic Greek: Δωδώνη,[2] Dōdṓnē) in Epirus in northwestern
Greece, was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called
Dione, who was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek god Zeus.
Dodona 2

The shrine of Dodona was regarded as the oldest Hellenic oracle, possibly dating to the second millennium BCE
according to Herodotus. Situated in a remote region away from the main Greek poleis, it was considered second only
to the oracle of Delphi in prestige. Priestesses and priests in the sacred grove interpreted the rustling of the oak (or
beech) leaves to determine the correct actions to be taken. Aristotle considered the region around Dodona to have
been part of Hellas and the region where the Hellenes originated.[3] The oracle was first under the control of the
Thesprotians before it passed into the hands of the Molossians. It remained an important religious sanctuary until the
rise of Christianity during the Late Roman era.

History
Though the earliest inscriptions at the site date to ca. 550–500 BCE, archaeological excavations over more than a
century have recovered artifacts as early as the Mycenaean era, many now at the National Archaeological Museum
of Athens, and some in the archaeological museum at nearby Ioannina. Archaeologists have also found Illyrian
dedications and objects that were received by the oracle during the 7th century BCE.[4] Until 650 BCE, Dodona was
a religious and oracular centre mainly for northern tribes: only after 650 BCE did it become important for the
southern tribes.
At Dodona, Zeus was worshipped as "Zeus Naios" or "Naos" (god of the spring cf. Naiads)[5] — there was a spring
below the oak in the temenos or sanctuary — and "Zeus Bouleus" (Counsellor).[6] Originally an oracle of the Mother
Goddess, the oracle was shared by Dione (whose name, like "Zeus," simply means "deity") and Zeus. Many
dedicatory inscriptions recovered from the site mention both "Dione" and "Zeus Naios". Elsewhere in Classical
Greece, Dione was relegated to a minor role by classical times, being made into an aspect of Zeus's more usual
consort, Hera, but never at Dodona.
The god could also be invoked from a
distance. In Homer's Iliad (circa
750 BCE),[7] Achilles prays to "High
Zeus, Lord of Dodona, Pelasgian,
living afar off, brooding over wintry
Dodona".[8] No buildings are
mentioned, and the priests (called
Selloi) slept on the ground with
unwashed feet. The oracle also features
in Odysseus's fictive yarn about
himself told to the swineherd
Eumaeus:[9] Odysseus, he tells
Eumaeus, has been seen among the
Thesprotians, having gone to inquire of
the oracle at Dodona whether he
should return to Ithaca openly or in
secret (as the disguised Odysseus is A map of the main sanctuaries in Classical Greece
actually doing). Odysseus later repeats
the same tale to Penelope, who may not yet have seen through his disguise.[10] His words "bespeak a familiarity with
Dodona, a realization of its importance, and an understanding that it was normal to consult Zeus there on a problem
of personal conduct."

Not until the 4th century BCE, was a small stone temple to Zeus added to the site. By the time Euripides mentioned
Dodona (fragmentary play Melanippe), and Herodotus wrote about the oracle, priestesses had been restored. Though
it never eclipsed the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Dodona gained a reputation far beyond Greece. In Apollonius of
Rhodes' Argonautica, a retelling of an older story of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason's ship, the "Argo", had the gift
Dodona 3

of prophecy, because it contained an oak timber spirited from Dodona.

In c. 290 BCE, King Pyrrhus made Dodona the religious capital of his domain and beautified it by implementing a
series of construction projects (i.e. grandly rebuilt the Temple of Zeus, developed many other buildings, added a
festival featuring athletic games, musical contests, and drama enacted in a theatre). A wall was built around the
oracle itself and the holy tree, as well as temples to Heracles and Dione.
In 219 BCE, the Aetolians, under the leadership of General Dorimachus, invaded and burned the temple to the
ground.[11] During the late 200s BC, King Philip V of Macedon (along with the Epirotes) reconstructed all the
buildings at Dodona.[12] In 167 BCE, Dodona was destroyed by the Romans[13] (led by Aemilius Paulus), but was
later rebuilt by Emperor Augustus in 31 BCE. By the time the traveller Pausanias visited Dodona in the 2nd century
CE, the sacred grove had been reduced to a single oak.[14] In 241 CE, a priest named Poplius Memmius Leon
organized the Naia festival of Dodona. In 362 CE, Emperor Julian consulted the oracle prior to his military
campaigns against the Persians.[15] Pilgrims still consulted the oracle until 391-392 CE when Emperor Theodosius
closed all pagan temples, banned all pagan religious activities, and cut the ancient oak tree at the sanctuary of Zeus.
Though the surviving town was insignificant, the long-hallowed pagan site must have retained significance for
Christians given that a Bishop Theodorus of Dodona attended the First Council of Ephesus in 431 CE.

Panorama of the theatre of Dodona. The modern village Dodoni and the snow-capped Mount Tomaros are visible in
the background.

Herodotus
Herodotus (Histories 2:54–57) was told by priests at Egyptian Thebes in the 5th century BCE "that two priestesses
had been carried away from Thebes by Phoenicians; one, they said they had heard was taken away and sold in Libya,
the other in Hellas; these women, they said, were the first founders of places of divination in the aforesaid countries."
The simplest analysis: Egypt, for Greeks and for Egyptians themselves, was a spring of human culture of all but
immeasurable antiquity. This mythic element says that the oracles at the oasis of Siwa in Libya and of Dodona in
Epirus were equally old, but similarly transmitted by Phoenician culture, and that the seeresses – Herodotus does not
say "sibyls" – were women.
Dodona 4

Herodotus follows with what he was told by the prophetesses, called

peleiades ("doves") at Dodona:
"...that two black doves had come flying from Thebes in
Egypt, one to Libya and one to Dodona; the latter settled
on an oak tree, and there uttered human speech, declaring
that a place of divination from Zeus must be made there;
the people of Dodona understood that the message was
divine, and therefore established the oracular shrine. The
dove which came to Libya told the Libyans (they say) to
make an oracle of Ammon; this also is sacred to Zeus.
Such was the story told by the Dodonaean priestesses, the
eldest of whom was Promeneia and the next Timarete and
the youngest Nicandra; and the rest of the servants of the
temple at Dodona similarly held it true."
Plan of the sanctuary
In the simplest analysis, this was a confirmation of the oracle tradition
in Egypt. The element of the dove may be an attempt to account for a
folk etymology applied to the archaic name of the sacred women that no longer made sense. Was the pel- element in
their name actually connected with "black" or "muddy" root elements in names like "Peleus" or "Pelops"? Is that
why the doves were black? Herodotus adds:
"But my own belief about it is this. If the Phoenicians did in fact carry away the sacred women and sell
one in Libya and one in Hellas, then, in my opinion, the place where this woman was sold in what is
now Hellas, but was formerly called Pelasgia, was Thesprotia; and then, being a slave there, she
established a shrine of Zeus under an oak that was growing there; for it was reasonable that, as she had
been a handmaid of the temple of Zeus at Thebes, she would remember that temple in the land to which
she had come. After this, as soon as she understood the Greek language, she taught divination; and she
said that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phoenicians who sold her."
"I expect that these women were called 'doves' by the people of Dodona because they spoke a strange
language, and the people thought it like the cries of birds; then the woman spoke what they could
understand, and that is why they say that the dove uttered human speech; as long as she spoke in a
foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could a dove utter the
speech of men? The tale that the dove was black signifies that the woman was Egyptian."
Thesprotia, on the coast west of Dodona, would have been available to the seagoing Phoenicians, whom Herodotus's
readers would not have expected to have penetrated as far inland as Dodona.
Dodona 5

References

Citations
[1] http:/ / tools. wmflabs. org/ geohack/ geohack. php?pagename=Dodona& params=39_32_47_N_20_47_16_E_type:landmark
[2] , "Dodone" (http:/ / www. perseus. tufts. edu/ cgi-bin/ ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999. 04. 0057:entry=#29769)
[3] ; Aristotle. Meteorologica. 1.14 (http:/ / classics. mit. edu/ Aristotle/ meteorology. 1. i. html).
[4] ; .
[5] ; .
[6] LSJ: bouleus.
[7] Homer. Iliad, 16.233-16.235.
[8] Richard Lattimore translation.
[9] Homer. Odyssey, 14.327-14.328.
[10] Homer. Odyssey, 19.
[11] ; ; .
[12] ; .
[13] ; .
[14] Pausanias. Description of Greece, 1.18.
[15] ; .

Sources
• Boardman, John (1982). The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries B.C. (http://books.
google.com/books?id=0qAoqP4g1fEC). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-23447-6.
• Boardman, John (1982). The Prehistory of the Balkans and the Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to
Eighth Centuries B.C. (http://books.google.com/books?id=vXljf8JqmkoC). Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22496-9.
• Dakaris, S. I. (1971). Archaeological Guide to Dodona (http://books.google.com/
books?id=BSbjAAAAMAAJ). Cultural Society "The Ancient Dodona".
• Flüeler, Christoph; Rohde, Martin (2009). Laster im Mittelalter/Vices in the Middle Ages (http://books.google.
com/books?id=Arly1t2ILksC). New York, New York and Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
ISBN 3-11-020274-3.
• Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy (1988). Didyma: Apollo's Oracle, Cult, and Companions (http://books.google.com/
books?id=wOtqfmkUZA8C). Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.
ISBN 0-520-05845-3.
• Gwatkin, Jr., William E. (1961). "Dodona, Odysseus, and Aeneas". The Classical Journal 57 (3): 97–102.
• Hammond, Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière (1986). A History of Greece to 322 B.C (http://books.google.com/
books?id=KwHBQgAACAAJ). Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-873096-9.
• Hammond, Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière (1976). Migrations and Invasions in Greece and Adjacent Areas (http://
books.google.com/books?id=O9saAAAAYAAJ). Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press. ISBN 0-8155-5047-2.
• Kristensen, William Brede (1960). The Meaning of Religion: Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion (http://
books.google.com/books?id=KMLjAAAAMAAJ). The Hague, The Netherlands: M. Nijhoff.
• Lhôte, Éric (2006). Les Lamelles Oraculaires de Dodone (http://books.google.com/
books?id=FARJLKZqnR8C). Genève, Switzerland: Librairie Droz. ISBN 2-600-01077-7.
• Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1996) [1940]. A Greek-English Lexicon (http://books.google.com/
books?id=8-uXQgAACAAJ). Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-864226-1.
• Pentreath, Guy (1964). Hellenic Traveller: A Guide to the Ancient Sites of Greece (http://books.google.com/
books?id=H0VoAAAAMAAJ). London, United Kingdom: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-09718-9.
• Potter, John (1751). Archaeologia Graeca or the Antiquities of Greece (http://books.google.com/
books?id=flUPAAAAQAAJ) I. London, United Kingdom: Printed for G. Strahan, R. Ware, W. Innys, J. and P.
Knapton, S. Birt, D. Browne, H. Whitridge, T. Longman, C. Hitch, J. Hodges, B. Barker, R. Manry and S. Cox, J.
Dodona 6

Whiston, J. and J. Rivington, J. Ward, M. Cooper, and M. Austen.

• Sacks, David; Murray, Oswyn; Bunson, Margaret (1997). A Dictionary of the Ancient Greek World (http://
books.google.com/books?id=KeEjUjSaDA0C). New York, New York and Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-511206-7.
• Tandy, David W. (2001). Prehistory and History: Ethnicity, Class and Political Economy (http://books.google.
com/books?id=BiqTCaFkvdYC). Montréal, Québec, Canada: Black Rose Books Limited. ISBN 1-55164-188-7.
• Tarn, William Woodthorpe (1913). Antigonos Gonatas (http://books.google.com/
books?id=FqBMAAAAMAAJ). Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-8244-0142-5.
• Vandenberg, Philipp (2007). Mysteries of the Oracles: The Last Secrets of Antiquity (http://books.google.com/
books?id=d_elJua3hD0C). New York, New York: Tauris Parke Paperbacks (I.B. Tauris). ISBN 1-84511-402-7.
• Wilson, Nigel Guy (2006). Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece (http://books.google.com/
books?id=-aFtPdh6-2QC). New York, New York and Oxford, Great Britain: Taylor & Francis Group
(Routledge). ISBN 978-0-415-97334-2.

Further reading
• Christidēs, Anastasios-Phoivos; Arapopoulou, Maria; Chritē, Maria (2007). A History of Ancient Greek: From the
Beginnings to Late Antiquity (http://books.google.com/books?id=WJbd0m6YaFkC). Cambridge, United
Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83307-8.
• Easterling, P. E.; Muir, John Victor (1985). Greek Religion and Society (http://books.google.com/
books?id=irMha63sJmYC). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-28785-5.
• Eidinow, Esther (2007). Oracles, Curses, & Risk Among the Ancient Greeks (http://books.google.co.uk/books/
about/Oracles_curses_and_risk_among_the_ancien.html?id=wAAvAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y). Oxford, United
Kingdom: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-199-27778-8.
• Marinatos, Nanno; Hägg, Robin (1993). Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches (http://books.google.com/
books?id=IlcOAAAAQAAJ). New York, New York and Oxford, Great Britain: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-05384-6.

External links
• A. E. Housman, "The Oracles" (http://www.kalliope.org/digt.pl?longdid=housman2002020325&printer=1)
• C. E. Witcombe, "Sacred Places: Trees and the Sacred" (http://witcombe.sbc.edu/sacredplaces/trees.html)
• Harry Thurston Peck (1898). Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, s.v. "Dodona".
• Joe Stubenrauch - Dodona: Pathways to the Ancient World (http://www.calvin.edu/academic/clas/pathways/
dodona/)
Article Sources and Contributors 7

Article Sources and Contributors

Dodona Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=582495373 Contributors: 83d40m, Abie the Fish Peddler, Aeonx, Albanau, AlexanderVanLoon, Alexikoua, Alexius08, Andre
Engels, Athenean, Axosman, Bacchiad, Benc, Bgwhite, Bill Thayer, Brianyoumans, Bumm13, Catalographer, D6, DIEGO RICARDO PEREIRA, Da Joe, Dbachmann, Dejvid, Delirium,
Deucalionite, Diderot, Dorieo, Dougweller, Dream of Nyx, Durro Gjeloshi, Eugene van der Pijll, Favonian, Fayenatic london, FerhatBingol, Fuper, Garhowell, General Wesc, Ghirlandajo,
Gilgamesh, Greco22, Guy M, Hajor, Hebrides, Hmains, InterwikiLinksRule, Ipodamos, Itai, Jackiestud, JamesAM, Jguk, Jimbreed, Jkelly, Joelca, Kedadi, Ktsquare, Lapost, Leandrod,
Lectiodifficilior, Leszek Jańczuk, Lorynote, LucieQuilt, Macedonian, Magnus Manske, Maliepa, Markussep, Marsyas, Megistias, Mercury McKinnon, Michael IX the White, Mondigomo,
Montrealais, Nev1, No. 108, Nortonew, Omnipaedista, Onno Zweers, Phso2, Pumpie, R'n'B, Rstens, Scutigera, Sifaka, Sortan, Squids and Chips, Stan Shebs, Tibetan Prayer, Tom harrison,
Tucci528, Uncle G, UtherSRG, Wetman, Wiglaf, Wiki-uk, Ydcok, ZjarriRrethues, Zoicon5, ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ, 50 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

File:Dodona-Greece-April-2008-107.JPG Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Dodona-Greece-April-2008-107.JPG License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Unported Contributors: Marcus Cyron
file:Greece location map.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Greece_location_map.svg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: Lencer
File:Map greek sanctuaries-en.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Map_greek_sanctuaries-en.svg License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Contributors: Marsyas
File:D70-0404-dodona.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:D70-0404-dodona.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: Onno Zweers
File:Magnify-clip.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Magnify-clip.png License: Public Domain Contributors: User:Erasoft24
File:Plan Dodona sanctuary-en.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Plan_Dodona_sanctuary-en.svg License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Contributors: User:Marsyas

License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/