KATA THALASSAN. THE WESTERN NETWORKS OF MARITIME CIRCULATION AND THE SANCTUARY OF DODONA

Abstract

Th e paper focuses on some aspects of trade, migrations and colonization in the western
Mediterranean area, in which the oracle of Dodona played an important rule. Th e sanctuary
has so far not been considered for the dynamics of circulation in the Western Mediterranean,
and seems on the contrary to have had a great reputation for individual and collective mobility,
directed in particular towards the Corinthian Gulf, the cities of the Ionian-Adriatic
region (Epidamnos, Apollonia) and Southern Italy (Taranto, Syracuse), between the 6th and
the beginning of the 3rd centuries B.C. Such dynamics reveal some important sides of ancient
colonisation, as the mobiity of the epoikoi, the new settlers that reached the previous foundations,
sometimes with their whole familial group.