By: Nelson R. Çabej (part of the work, "In the footsteps of Illyrian gods and mythologies"_ Prepared by: Hera Lera

Today it is almost unanimously accepted that Dione, who appears in ancient Greek sources, is a Mother Earth-type deity, but her name is far from what one would expect if it had come from any of the ancient Greek words for earth and soil - gaia, kton, and pedon.

In ancient Greek mythology the original goddess of the Earth was Gaea, later known as Demeter. In the most widespread version of the creation myth, Gaea was the wife of Uranus (but also his mother, since she herself had no parent because she emerged from chaos) with whom she gave birth to Zeus. In Aeschylus' Eumenides, a priestess says:

"In this prayer of mine, give the place of highest honor among all the gods to the first prophetess, Mother Earth, Gaia."

Her very name, Gaia, indicates that she was the deification of the earth, but neither this word nor the other Greek words for earth can be reasonably connected with the name of Dione, the Earth Mother of Dodona in Epirus. Not only Greek, but none of the modern and ancient Balkan languages, including Latin and other languages, offer any obvious possibility of connecting the name of the goddess Dione with Mother Earth: in Romanian the earth is called pamant, in Greek - ge, in Thracian - semele, in Latin - terra, in Proto-Slavic - zemla, etc.

With a sense of cultural superiority over the Epirotes and with the pronounced inclusive character of their pantheon, the Greeks early found a place for Zeus in Pelasgian Dodona, as Homer called it. They mythologically linked her to the Epirotes' Mother Earth, Dione, and certified her as the 'local wife' of Zeus, because his wife and constant companion was Hera. Over time, Dione was also included in one of the many versions of the Greek pantheon, but her place in that pantheon always remained unstable: she sometimes appears as the mother of Aphrodite, sometimes as the mother of Dionysus, sometimes as the daughter of Uranus and Gaia - the Greek goddess of the earth, sometimes as her analogue and equal, etc.

The Greek pantheon was a cosmopolitan pantheon to which a number of other peoples of the Balkans, the Mediterranean and the Near East contributed. For example, Dionysus, Ares and Semele are gods of Thracian origin, Isis - an Egyptian goddess, Cybele - was the Earth Mother of the Anatolian Phrygians (Brigs) and Aphrodite has its origin from the Near East. Therefore, the possible question "why would the ancient Greeks include an Illyrian-Epirotic god in their pantheon?" has the answer, above all, in the absorbing and eclectic character of the Greek pantheon, as well as of ancient Greek art and culture in general.

Evans, thinks: “The name Dione is the feminine form of Zeus, bearing the same suffix as Dodona. The suffix n- is widely used for divine names in many peoples of the family, especially among the Italics. In fact, Dione has an almost exact parallel in the Latin Diana, who was worshiped in a small grove of trees at Nemi, which also had a sacred tree, most likely an oak.”

It seems that here, he mixes two separate explanations: the first that Dione's name may have come from the feminization of the name Zeus, and the second that that name may have been borrowed from the Latins. Regarding the first explanation, even if, for the sake of argument, we were to accept that Dione arose from the feminization of the name Zeus, we are unable to explain why the Greeks would introduce the suffix -on of a foreign language Illyro-Epirote in the Greek name Zeus, to form the divine name, Dione. The second explanation is as doubtful as the first because the Greeks, not being direct neighbors of the Latins, are very unlikely to have borrowed the name Dione from the Latins, 500-600 years before the Roman conquest.

It has also been speculated that Dodona may have been the name of a Thracian deity but, in the absence of sufficient evidence, the location of Dodona in Epirus, with Macedonia separating Epirus from Thrace, makes this conjecture untenable. In addition to this geographical reason, Thracian is excluded as a possible source of the name Dione for a linguistic reason, which will be discussed further.

The name of the god Dione could regularly come from the name of the attested sovereign of the Illyrian-Epirot pantheon deiva (kallzore Dei) with the suffix -on- which is not unknown in the formation of divine names, as well as names in general in Illyrian (Agron, Audoleon, Kodrion, Omphalion, Damastion etc.). If so, Dione means divine. A strong parallel to this is found in the Celtic pantheon where from a *deua - “goddess” by consensus, the name of the Celtic water god Deuona is accepted to have come, which in Celtic also had the meaning “divine”. But, that name could also have come from the reduplication of dei, to avoid using the taboo name of the main god of the Illyrian-Epirots Deiva patyros, which we know was worshipped by the Epirot tribes.

Regarding the origin of the name Dodona, two facts are worth mentioning here, one that comes from Illyrian antiquity and the other from a modern Albanian tradition. First, Hesicus informs us that satyrs in Illyria were called deuadai, and we know that satyrs were mythological beings, jolly natural demons, who followed Dionysus. Beginning in the 4th century BC, satyrs took the form of goats from Pan (the Greek god of herds). The facts presented before make reasonable the opinion that from the Illyrian word for goat *dida <*gheida, the Illyrian word for satyrs deuadai may have come. Likewise, the name of the city and oracle, Dodona, could regularly derive from the root *deuad with the Illyrian suffix -on.

In light of the fact that Dione is the god of the earth, the name place Dodona could also come from the reduplication of the Illyrian word *dho reconstructed by Jokli or *do- by Pisani, in which the -o- of the Proto-Indo-European base *ghoom 'earth' is preserved ', with the Illyrian suffix -on- which fits well with the fact that Dodona was a Mother Earth-type god and her oracle, unlike the Greek oracle of Delphi, had a deeply natural character, where even the oracle's attendants sat barefoot and slept on the ground . These servants were selloi, and the surprising coincidence of this name with the name of the Albanian suliots, who lived in the same region, may not be a linguistic coincidence.

Of the names of today's places in the Balkans, we do not know that the place Dodona has been preserved anywhere, but the conjecture has been expressed that in ancient times there may have been several places called Dodona, one near Skotoussa, a city in Pelasgiotis, Thessaly, and the other near Mount Olympus. However, this has not been possible to prove and no traces of this ancient place have been found in today's Greece.

Dodona is located at the foot of Mount Tomaros, and investigating the origin of the name of this mountain may shed light on the ethnicity or tribe that populated the region around Dodona. As mentioned, there were no traces of the place name Tomaros, the mountain at the foot of which Dodona was located, in ancient Greece, nor in modern Greece. It is generally accepted that it is an Illyrian name derived from the Indo-European root tem (compare the ancient Indic tamra - "darkening", which Pokorni traces to the modern Albanian word "tym", the Polish dym-"smoke", and the Latvian tima- "darkness".

The only place in the direct vicinity of ancient Dodona, where there are traces of the site of Mount Tomaros and Dodona, is Albania. In Albania there is Tomori, the homonym of Mount Tomaros, at the foot of which Dodona was located, which today is only about 25 kilometers across the southern border of Albania, in an Albanian-speaking territory until recently. Tomori is the highest mountain in southern Albania and its highest peak reaches 2416 meters above sea level. It has been considered, since it can be remembered, as a sacred mountain of the Albanians, it has been worshiped as the "throne of God", it has been nicknamed "Baba Tomori" and its name also appears in the oath "To Baba Tomor" of the Albanians. The mountain continues today to be worshiped as a holy mountain in special annual ceremonies.

As a place name, Tomori also appears on the other high peak of the Tomori mountain range, which is Tomorica, but also as the name of the Tomorica river, the Tomorica stream and the Tomorica region. On the mountain of Tomori there are also two places that are connected to the ancient Dodona. They are Qafa e Dhodhoni on the southern side of Tomori, above the village of Bargullas and in that same village also Pllaka e Dhodhoni, which are still considered sacred places and the shepherds do not let their cattle graze there or even enter those places. Near Poliçan, above Pronovik, there is also the Dodona Board. In the district of Berat, there is also a village called Dodovec (Tërpan municipality), in the southeast of Tomorri mountain, which appears as Dadjan in the Ottoman census of 1431. Using the rules of the historical phonetics of the Albanian language, the reconstructed ancient form of this place would be *Dodion, which clearly seems to have come from the same root from which the name Dodona came.

The local population around Tomori still continue to worship the great oaks and oaks and protect them from harm. Women have a habit of hanging the clothes of sick people on the branches of those trees, with the belief that they will recover. As is known, the oracular oak and the temple of Dodona were located at the foot of the mountain of Tomaros, homonym of the holy mountain Tomor. Like Dodona and the Tomar/Tmar mountain, they were originally thesprote possessions there since the beginning of the 5th century BC, the tragic poets and Pindar speak of a "thesprote Dodona", which later, with the increase in the power of the Mollos, especially with Piro, entered the Mollos possessions.

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