DODONA, the seat of one of the most celebrated of the ancient oracles, was a Pelasgic town of Epirus in the north of Greece. Though the oracle of this town was the oldest and one of the most sacred of antiquity, ranking indeed with those of Delphi and Ammon, no vestige either of the city of Dodona or of the temple of Jupiter has been discovered in modern times. Even the district of Epirus in which the town was situated has become matter of discussion. By some it is believed to have been in Thesprotia, by others in Molossis. It is not impossible that, as the town was somewhere on the boundary line of these two divisions, it may have been included at one time in Molossis, and at another in Thesprotia. The antiquity of the Dodonean oracle was very great. Its name occurs frequently in the Homeric poems, where it is said that the service of the temple was performed by the "Selli—men with unwashed feet, sleeping on the ground." The actual abode of the deity, however, was not at first a temple, but the stem of a great oak-tree, the wide-spreading branches of which when shaken by the wind were believed to be giving voice to the mystic utterances of the inhabitant within. From this circumstance the oak-grove of Dodona was feigned by some of the ancient poets to be endowed with the power of speech. By others it was said that the responses were delivered by the doves that nestled in the branches. Hence the constant allusions in the classics to the "Chaonia aves." In later times it was maintained that the oracular Peleia, or Peleiades, were not doves, but priestesses, to whom Jupiter sent a message by the doves to devote their lives to the service of his temple at Dodona.
With the rise of Delphi, the general repute of Dodona began to decline, though its local celebrity remained unimpaired. The final destruction of the oracle is attributed to the Ætolians, who near the end of the third century B.C. ravaged Epirus and levelled the temple of Jupiter with the ground. So complete was the destruction of the place, that not a fragment of house or temple now remains that can with certainty be identified as belonging to the ancient Dodona. Colonel Leake has endeavoured to fix the site of the old oracle at the modern Kastritza, but his arguments are far from being conclusive.