Between the World of Hellenes and Barbarians: Epirus as the Northern Border of Ancient Greece

Abstract. The ancient Greeks, who created a highly developed civilization, clearly separated themselves from the world around them, the inhabitants of which they called barbarians. In their view, barbarians were peoples alien to them in culture, who had a different political system, and who did not speak Greek. In the north of Greece, the border region separating the world of Hellenism from the world of barbarism was the highland Epirus. This region had long been inhabited by peoples close to the Greeks, who, although lagging behind the Greeks in political and cultural development, were ethnically close to them. In addition, by the 5th century BC, they were already completely Hellenized and spoke Greek. The presence of a polis organization among the Epirotes and the absence of such among their northern neighbors, the Illyrians, is another criterion separating the world of the Greeks from the world of the barbarians. The most famous polis of the Epirotes was the ancient capital of Passaron, where, according to tradition, annual meetings of the kings with the people took place. The sanctuary at Dodona played an important role in the integration of Epirus into the unified Greek world, attracting pilgrims from all over Greece. The topographic features of Epirus — high mountains, gorges, turbulent rivers — made it possible to draw a more or less clear line separating the world of the Greeks from the world of the barbarians, who were represented in the north by the Illyrian tribes.

Keywords: barbarians, Greeks, Epirus, Hellenization, border, topography