The Oracle of Zeus in Dodoni was considered to be the most ancient in
Greece. There exist many fables regarding its creation. Irodotos reports
two different versions for the foundation of the Oracle. The one reports
that the Phoenix pirates seized two women from the Thebes of Egypt.
Later it became known that the one had been sold in Libya and the other
in Greece and that these two women were the ones who founded the
first oracles in these countries. The first one built the temple of Ammon
Zeus in Shiva, while the second built the temple of Zeus in Dodoni.
When Irodotos himself visited Dodoni, he asked about the foundation.
The priestesses of the temple said that two black pigeons left from the
Thebes. The first went to Libya where it founded the temple of Zeus and
the second went and sat in an oak where it said with human voice to
the residents of Dodoni to build an oracle for Zeus.
Other mythographers regard the pigeons that had human voice as gifts
from Zeus to his daughter Ivi. One of them went to Dodoni. The moment
it reached, a lumberjack was about to cut the holy oak of Zeus and the
pigeon prevented him. The same bird plays the same role in other fable,
when a shepherd came to ask from Zeus to tell him the name of the man
who had stolen his sheep. The Oracle indicated the guilty man and the
angry thief was about to cut the tremendous tree, when a pigeon that
came out from the tree prevented him.

According to another fable, the first clairvoyants were Selloi, whose
ancestor Ellos, without knowing the importance of the holy tree, tried
to cut it. A pigeon however that nested there averted him from this
unholy action. Then Ellos became the first priest of the temple.
Dodoni was one of the places, where Zeus as friend of the people was
revealed to them with the voice of Nature. It is said that the prophecies
were given with the sough of the leafage of trees and the sound of a spring.
At the same time with Zeus, another goddess was worshipped in Dodoni,
Diona, who was considered to be Zeus's spouse. According to tradition,
Goddess Athena took the piece of timber that she put in the prow of Argo
before the Argonautic Expedition began from the Holy Oak of the Oracle
in Dodoni. Also, Odysseus had come to the Oracle of Dodoni to take
prophecies regarding his return to Ithaca and the hero Aeneas from Troia
as well, when after its destruction, he took prophecies from the oracle
regarding where he would build his new city, Rome.