Epirus
A mountainous region in northwestern Greece, home to the Oracle of Dodona and the legendary kingdom of the Molossians.
The Story of Epirus
Epirus occupied the rugged northwestern corner of Greece, facing the Ionian Sea. Its most famous sacred site was the Oracle of Dodona, where Zeus spoke through the rustling of a great oak tree — one of the oldest oracular sites in Greece, predating even Delphi. The priests of Dodona, called Selloi, slept on the ground and never washed their feet, preserving what the Greeks themselves recognized as archaic ritual practices. In myth, Epirus was the land where Odysseus journeyed to consult the dead, and the Acheron River — one of the rivers of the underworld — flowed through its territory, giving the landscape a chthonic quality. The Molossian royal house claimed descent from Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, who settled in Epirus after the fall of Troy. Their most famous descendant was Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great. The Molossian hound, ancestor of several modern breeds, was prized throughout the ancient world as a guard and hunting dog.
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Chaonia
🏛 placegeography
A region of northwestern Greece (Epirus) associated with the oracle of Dodona and the earliest Greek mythology.
Thessaly
🏛 placeregion, northern Greece
The largest fertile plain in Greece, legendary homeland of Achilles, the Centaurs, and the Argonauts' leader Jason.
Colchis
🏛 placeLand of the Golden Fleece
Colchis was a kingdom at the eastern edge of the Greek world, on the shore of the Black Sea in modern Georgia, famous as the destination of Jason and the Argonauts.
Libya
🏛 placeGeography
The ancient Greek name for the entire continent of Africa, personified as a daughter of Epaphus and Memphis
Thrace
🏛 placeWild land of Ares and Orpheus
Thrace was the vast, wild region north of Greece — homeland of Ares, Orpheus, the Maenads, and the fearsome warrior tribes the Greeks both feared and respected.
Lycia
🏛 placekingdom, Anatolia
A mountainous region in southwestern Anatolia whose warriors fought for Troy and whose hero Bellerophon slew the Chimera.
Aetolia
🏛 placegeography
A region of northwestern Greece associated with the Calydonian Boar Hunt and the hero Meleager.
Pylos
🏛 placekingdom, Messenia
A Mycenaean palace-kingdom on the western coast of the Peloponnese, seat of the wise King Nestor in Homeric tradition.
Lilybaeum
🏛 placegeography
The westernmost promontory of Sicily, near where Odysseus encountered the land of the dead in some traditions.
Meroe
🏛 placegeography
A distant African kingdom mentioned in Greek mythology as the land at the source of the Nile, associated with the Ethiopians.
Boeotia
🏛 placegeography
A fertile central Greek region whose name means "ox-land," birthplace of Heracles and setting of the Cadmus myth.
Phocis
🏛 placeregion, central Greece
A region of central Greece whose chief distinction was containing Delphi, the most important oracle and religious centre in the Greek world.