Molossia

Language

There is today an overall consensus that the Molossians were among the Greek-speaking population of Epirus, which spoke the Northwest Doric dialect of Ancient Greek, akin to that of Aetolia, Phocis, and certain other regions, this is also attested by the available epigraphic evidence in Epirus. Eugene Borza argues that the Molossians originated from those Proto-Greek tribes that inhabited northwestern Greece in c. 2600 BC. Linguist Vladimir Georgiev argues that northwestern Greece, including Molossia, was part of the Proto-Greek region, before the Late Bronze Age migrations. After the split of Proto-Greek (c. 1700 BC) the northern Greek dialect was spoken in Epirus. As such the Molossians were among the 32 known Greek tribes of the Mycenaean Age. N. G. L. Hammond (1982) argues that the Molossians and other Epirote tribes spoke Greek at least from the Dark Ages (1100–800 BC). The language the Epirotes spoke was regarded as a primitive Northwestern Greek dialect, but there was no question that it was Greek.