DODONA, in Epirus, the seat of the most ancient and vener able of all Hellenic sanctuaries. Its ruins are at Dramisos, near Tsacharovista. Though the Greeks of the south looked on the inhabitants of Epirus as barbarians nevertheless for Dodona they maintained a certain reverence. Its temple was dedicated to Zeus, and connected with it was an oracle which would seem to date from early times ; for the method of gathering responses was by listening to the rustling of an old oak tree : perhaps a remnant of very ancient tree-worship. Sometimes, however, auguries were taken from doves in the branches, the murmur of a fountain, or the clanging of brazen caldrons hung round the tree or temple. Croesus proposed to this oracle his well-known question; Lysan der sought from it sanction for his ambitions ; Athens frequently appealed to its authority. But the most frequent votaries were the Acarnanians and Aetolians, with the Boeotians, who claimed a special connection with the district.
Dodona is spoken of in the Iliad as the abode of Selli who sleep on the ground and wash not their feet, and the Odyssey has an imaginary visit of Odysseus to the oracle. A Hesiodic frag ment describes Dodonaea or Hellopia as a district full of corn fields, of herds and flocks and of shepherds, where is built on an extremity (i r' Dodona, where Zeus dwells in the stem of an oak (c n -y6s) . The priestesses were called doves (iraeccu) and 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 a black dove, in which he tries to find a rational meaning. In historical times there was worshipped, together with Zeus, a consort named Dione (see further ZEUS ; ORACLE ; DIONE) .
The ruins, a theatre, town walls and other buildings were iden tified by Wordsworth in 1832, and excavated by Constantin Cara panos after 1875. The topographical and architectural results are disappointing; either the site always retained its simplicity, or else its buildings have been very completely destroyed.
South of the hill, on which are the town walls east of the theatre, and towards the eastern end of a plateau about 200 yd. long and 5o yd. wide are the remains of the temple of Zeus; pronaos, cella and opisthodomus, about 13o ft. by 8o ft. over all. Some lower drums of internal columns of the cella still rest on their foundations. No trace of external colonnade was found. It had been converted into a church. In and around it were found statuettes and decorative bronzes, many bearing dedications to Zeus Nail's and Dione, many small tablets of lead which con tained questions put to the oracle.
Below the terrace was a precinct, flanked with porticoes over 10o yd. in length and breadth, of irregular shape. One of the buildings on the south-western side contained a pedestal or altar, and is described by Carapanos as a temple of Aphrodite. In front of the porticoes are rows of pedestals, which once bore statues and other dedications. At the southern corner is a gate, flanked with two towers, between which are placed two coarse limestone drums. If these belong to the original gateway, it must have been of a very rough character.
The smaller antiquities are now in the National Museum in Athens. Among the dedications are weapons dedicated by King Pyrrhus from the spoils of the Romans.
The temple of Dodona was destroyed by the Aetolians in 219 B.C., but the oracle survived to the times of Pausanias and the emperor Julian.
See C. Wordsworth, Greece , p. ; Constantin Carapanos, Dodone et ses ruines (Paris, 1878) . For the oracle inscriptions, see E. S. Roberts in Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. i., p. 228.