DODONA (ΔΩΔΏΝΗ), Oracle of. - In Epirus, in the present-day valley of Olytsika. Certainly the most ancient oracle of Greece.
From the rustling of the leaves of a sacred oak (elsewhere, however, a φηγός is spoken of: Hesiod, frg. 134, 212, and others) Zeus made his will known (Od., XIV, 327 ff.; XIX, 296 ff.). It cannot be determined from these notices, the most ancient, whether the oak of D. had already belonged to the Mediterranean civilization or was an introduction of the Indo-Europeans.
The Zeus worshipped at D. bore the appellation of Naios, as appears frequently in the inscriptions and rarely in literature. Νάιος (also νέος) is to be connected with νάειν, to flow; and this suggested that at D. there was originally a hydromantic oracle (characteristic is the fact that the companion of Zeus Naios, Dione, is cited by Hesiod, Theogonia, 353, among the Oceanids). Of this opinion the first interpreters were Latin writers: Pliny (Nat. hist., 4, 2) who, citing Theopompus, reported that in the valley there were very many springs; Servius (ad Aen., III, 466) who even asserted that a spring gushed from the roots of the sacred oak, and that oracles were drawn from its gurgling (cf. also Pomponius Mela, II, 43). As for Dione, she too bearing at D. the attribute of Nais, she was the female counterpart of Zeus.
The ὑποφῆται of the god, ἀντιτόποδες, χαμαιεῦναι (Il., XIV, 233 ff.), for whom even among the ancients the exact designation was disputed (Ἑλλοί: Hesiod, frg. 134; Pindar, frg. 59 and others. Elsewhere, instead, Σελλοί) were a γένος devoted to the cult of Dodonaean Zeus. Their attributes are not easy to interpret: the ἀντιτόποδα in fact, apart from the Homeric passage, is recorded only one other time in the Greek world (in Asia Minor: an epigraph pertaining to the cult of Zeus Λαράσιος) and no other notice is had concerning sleeping on the bare earth. With the mention of these customs, which perhaps represented a ritual prescription, Homer certainly did not mean to designate a barbarous cult, as has been proposed, nor is the hypothesis convincing that the ὑποφῆται drew inspiration in that way by "incubation" from the earth. Even if it were so, the connection between sleeping on the bare earth and not washing one's feet would still be inexplicable.
The system of consulting the oracle (originally the questions were written on lead tablets, and the answer recorded thereon was very often limited to a yes or a no [cf. Cicero, De div., 1, 76]) and the organization underwent changes with the passage of time: on the one hand priestesses were introduced (but epigraphy ignores them) (Peleiades, and they were three according to Herodotus [II, 55 ff.] who narrates an aetiological myth to explain the innovation; Plato, Phaedrus, 275, and others), on the other, starting from the 4th century B.C., the prophecies were drawn from the resounding of a χαλκεῖον. The fortune of D. was in historical times considerably lowered by that of Delphi.
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Mario Camozzini