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Epirus (; Epirote Greek: Ἄπειρος, ; Attic Greek: Ἤπειρος, ) was an ancient Greece kingdom, and later republic, located in the geographical region of Epirus, in parts of north-western Greece and southern Albania. Home to the ancient Epirotes, the state was bordered by the Aetolian League to the south, Ancient Thessaly and Ancient Macedonia to the east, and Illyrians tribes to the north. The Epirote king Pyrrhus is known to have made Epirus a powerful state in the wider Hellenistic world (during 297–272 BC) that was comparable to the likes of Macedon and Ancient Rome. Pyrrhus' armies also attempted an assault against the state of Ancient Rome during their unsuccessful campaign in what is now modern-day Italy.
By the early 1st millennium BC three principal clusters of Greek-speaking tribes emerged in Epirus. These were the Chaonians of northwestern Epirus, the Molossians in the center, and the Thesprotians in the south.. The region inhabited by each of these ethne had its own name (Chaonia, Molossia, Thesprotia), thus there was no single name for the entire region originally.
In 334 BC, the time Alexander the Great crossed into Asia, Alexander the Molossian led an expedition in southern Italy in support of the Greek cities of Magna Graecia against the nearby Italian tribes and the emerging Roman Republic. After some successes on the battlefield, he was defeated by a coalition of Italic peoples tribes at the Battle of Pandosia in 330 BC.
Aeacides's son Pyrrhus came to the throne in 295 BC. Pyrrhus, being a skillful general, was encouraged to aid the Greeks of Tarentum and decided to initiate a major offensive in the Italian peninsula and Sicily. Due to its superior martial abilities, the Epirote army defeated the Romans in the Battle of Heraclea (280 BC). Subsequently, Pyrrhus's forces nearly reached the outskirts of Rome, but had to retreat to avoid an unequal conflict with a more numerous Roman army. The following year, Pyrrhus invaded Apulia (279 BC) and the two armies met in the Battle of Asculum where the Epirotes won the eponymous Pyrrhic victory, at a high cost..
In 277 BC, Pyrrhus captured the Carthage fortress in Eryx, Sicily. This prompted the rest of the Carthaginian-controlled cities to defect to Pyrrhus. Meanwhile, he had begun to display despotic behavior towards the Sicilian Greeks and soon Sicilian opinion became inflamed against him. Though he defeated the Carthaginians in battle, he was forced to abandon Sicily..
Pyrrhus's Italian campaign came to an end following the inconclusive Battle of Beneventum (275 BC). Having lost the vast majority of his army, he decided to return to Epirus, which finally resulted in the loss of all his Italian holdings. Because of his costly victories, the term "Pyrrhic victory" is often used for a victory with devastating cost to the victor..
In the following years, Epirus faced the growing threat of the expansionist Roman Republic, which fought a series of wars with Macedonia. The League remained neutral in the first two Macedonian Wars but split in the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BC), with the Molossians siding with the Macedonians and the Chaonians and Thesprotians siding with Rome. The outcome was disastrous for Epirus; Molossia fell to Rome in 167 BC and 150,000 of its inhabitants were enslaved.
Nicholas Hammond argues that the principal social structure of the Epirotes was the tribe and that they spoke a West-Greek dialect.: "Epirus was a land of milk and animal products ... The social unit was a small tribe, consisting of several nomadic or semi-nomadic groups, and these tribes, of which more than seventy names are known, coalesced into large tribal coalitions, three in number: Thesprotians, Molossians and Chaonians ... We know from the discovery of inscriptions that these tribes were speaking the Greek language (in a West-Greek dialect)." 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. 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.. The language they spoke was regarded as a primitive Northwestern Greek dialect, but there was no question that it was Greek. 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.
Homer mentions the oracle of Dodona, which was located in the territory of Classical Epirus, with Panhellenic acclaim. The Athenian historian Thucydides described the inhabitants as "barbarians" in his History of the Peloponnesian War; and Strabo in his Geography, seems to imply that Epirus was not originally a proper part of the Greek world. Other historians, such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Pausanias, and Eutropius considered the Epirotes proper Greeks, while Aristotle considered Epirus as the cradle of the Greeks. 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 about the neighboring Aetolians and Acarnanians, 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.. 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. A far more reliable source on the views of the Greeks is the list of sacred envoys () in Epidaurus, which includes the Epirotes.. 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, , Chaonians and Thesprotians.. Only communities that considered themselves Greek and were considered so by others were allowed to participate at these great Panhellenic festivals.
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 Theoroi catalogues where only Greeks were allowed in order to participate in Panhellenic Games and festivals. (1997). 9789602133774, Ekdotike Athenon. ISBN 9789602133774 Aristotle considered the region around Dodona to have been part of Ancient Greece and the region where the Hellenes originated.: "The original home of the Hellenes was 'Hellas', the area round Dodona in Epirus, according to Aristotle. In the Iliad it was the home of Achilles' Hellenes." 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).Plutarch. Parallel Lives: Pyrrhus, 1.
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