Epirus (ancient state)

Culture[edit]

At least since classical antiquity, the Epirotes were speakers of an epichoric Northwest Greek dialect, Epirote Greek, different from the Dorian of the Greek colonies on the Ionian islands, and bearers of mostly Greek names, as evidenced by epigraphy and literary evidence.^[19][20]


Nicholas Hammond argues that the principal social structure of the Epirotes was the tribe and that they spoke a West-Greek dialect.^[21] Tom Winnifrith (1983) argues that the Epirotes became culturally more closely connected to the rest of the Greek world during the centuries that preceded the Roman conquest of the region (3rd-2nd century BC), while hellenisation process continued even after the conquest. As such their rulers claimed Greek descent.^[22] Old genealogical links through the stories about the return voyages of the Greek heroes from Troy (nostoi) and other Greek myths strongly connected Epirus with the rest of Greece and these stories prevented any serious debate about the Greekness of the Epirotes, including the Molossians.^[23] The language they spoke was regarded as a primitive Northwestern Greek dialect, but there was no question that it was Greek.^[24] The way of life in Epirus was more archaic than that in the Corinthian and Corcyrean colonies on the coast, but there was never a discussion about their Greekness.^[24]


Ancient writers such as Herodotus,^[25] Dionysius of Halicarnassus,^[26] Pausanias,^[27] and Eutropius,^[28] describe the Epirotes as Greeks. On the other hand, the 5th century BC Athenian historian Thucydides describes them as "barbarians" in his History of the Peloponnesian War,^[29] as does Strabo in his Geography.^[30] Simon Hornblower interprets the vague, and sometimes even antithetical, comments of Thucydides on the Epirotes as implying that they were neither completely "barbarian" nor completely Greek, but akin to the latter. Notably, Thucydides had similar views of the neighboring Aetolians and Acarnians, even though the evidence leaves no doubt that they were Greek. The term "barbarian" may have denoted not only clearly non-Greek populations, but also Greek populations on the fringe of the Greek world with peculiar dialects.^[31] The ancient historians and geographers did not follow the scientific methods of modern linguists, who record in detail the speech of the groups they study; their information was based, more rarely on personal experiences, and mostly on the impressions of each of their informants, who as a rule, had neither philological training nor particularly linguistic interests.^[32] A far more reliable source on the views of the Greeks is the list of sacred envoys (Ancient Greek: θεαρόδοκοι) in Epidaurus, which includes the Epirotes.^[33] The list which was compiled in 360 BC includes the sacred envoys (members of the ruling family of each tribe or subtribe) of the Molossians, Kassopeans, Chaonians and Thesprotians.^[34]


In terms of religion they worshiped the same gods as the rest of the Greeks. No traces of non-Greek deities were found until the Hellenistic age (with the introduction of oriental deities in the Greek world). Their supreme deity was Zeus and the Oracle of Dodona found in the land of the Molossians attracted pilgrims from all over the Greek world. As with the rest of the Epirotes they were included in the thearodokoi catalogues where only Greeks were allowed in order to participate in Panhellenic Games and festivals.^[35] Aristotle considered the region around Dodona to have been part of Hellas and the region where the Hellenes originated.^[36] Plutarch mentions an interesting cultural element of the Epirotes regarding the Greek hero Achilles. In his biography of King Pyrrhus, he states that Achilles "had a divine status in Epirus and in the local dialect he was called Aspetos" (meaning "unspeakable" or "unspeakably great" in Homeric Greek).^[37][38]