Situated in a remote region away from the main Greek poleis, it was considered second only to the Oracle of Delphi in prestige.

During classical antiquity, according to various accounts, priestesses and priests in the sacred grove interpreted the rustling of the oak (or beech) leaves to determine the correct actions to be taken.

[4] According to Nicholas Hammond, Dodona was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess (identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione) who was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek deity Zeus.

[12] During the post-Mycenaean period (or "Greek Dark Ages"), evidence of activity at Dodona is scant, but there is a resumption of contact between Dodona and southern Greece during the Archaic period (8th century BCE) with the presence of bronze votive offerings (i.e. tripods) from southern Greek cities.

Odysseus's words "bespeak a familiarity with Dodona, a realization of its importance, and an understanding that it was normal to consult Zeus there on a problem of personal conduct.

By the time Euripides mentioned Dodona (fragmentary play Melanippe) and Herodotus wrote about the oracle, the priestesses had appeared at the site.

Over 4200 oracular tablets have been found in Dodona, written in different alphabets, and dated approximately between the mid-6th and early 2nd centuries BCE.

In c. 290 BCE, King Pyrrhus made Dodona the religious capital of his domain and beautified it by implementing a series of construction projects (i.e. grandly rebuilt the Temple of Zeus, developed many other buildings, added a festival featuring athletic games, musical contests, and drama enacted in a theatre).

A fragment of Dio Cassius reports that Thracian soldiers instigated by King Mithridates sacked the sanctuary ca.

[35] Although the surviving town was insignificant, the long-hallowed pagan site must have retained significance for Christians given that a bishop of Dodona named Theodorus attended the First Council of Ephesus in 431 CE.

The simplest analysis of the quote is: Egypt, for Greeks as well as for Egyptians, was a spring of human culture of all but immeasurable antiquity.

This mythic element says that the oracles at the oasis of Siwa in Libya and of Dodona in Epirus were equally old, but similarly transmitted by Phoenician culture, and that the seeresses – Herodotus does not say "sibyls" – were women.

Such was the story told by the Dodonaean priestesses, the eldest of whom was Promeneia and the next Timarete and the youngest Nicandra; and the rest of the servants of the temple at Dodona similarly held it true.In the simplest analysis, this was a confirmation of the oracle tradition in Egypt.

The element of the dove may be an attempt to account for a folk etymology applied to the archaic name of the sacred women that no longer made sense and the eventual connection with Zeus, justified by a tale told by a priestess.

If the Phoenicians did in fact carry away the sacred women and sell one in Libya and one in Hellas, then, in my opinion, the place where this woman was sold in what is now Hellas, but was formerly called Pelasgia, was Thesprotia; and then, being a slave there, she established a shrine of Zeus under an oak that was growing there; for it was reasonable that, as she had been a handmaid of the temple of Zeus at Thebes, she would remember that temple in the land to which she had come.

According to Strabo, the prophecies were originally uttered by men:[37] At the outset, it is true, those who uttered the prophecies were men (this too perhaps the poet indicates, for he calls them “hypophetae” [interpreters] and the prophets might be ranked among these), but later on three old women were designated as prophets, after Dione also had been designated as temple-associate of Zeus.

[41] According to Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, the epithet Neuos of Zeus at Dodona primarily designated "the god of streams, and, generally, of water".

Aristotle (Meteorologica, 1.14) places 'Hellas' in the parts about Dodona and the Achelous and says it was inhabited by "the Selloi, who were formerly called Graikoi, but now Hellenes.