Epirus (ḗ-pī′ rŭs), meaning mainland, is the old name of a part of Greece lying between Illyria and the Ambracian Gulf and between the Ionian Sea and the mountain chain of Pindus. It is a mountainous region, heavily wooded and growing little wheat, though noted for its cattle and horses and for its breed of Molossian shepherd-dogs. Its best known river is the Acheron; its chief towns Dodona and Ambracia. In early times, as to-day, its people were only half Greeks, the Greek colonies being confined to the coast and southern portion. Of the Molossian kings of Epirus, the most famous was Pyrrhus, who long waged successful war against the Romans. On the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans (168 B. C.) the most revengeful measures were put in force against the Epirotes, who had helped Perseus, the Macedonian king. Æmilius Paulus, the Roman general, plundered and razed to the ground seventy towns of Epirus, and sold into slavery 150,000 of the people. From that time Epirus shared the good or bad fortunes of the Roman and Byzantine empires until 1204. Then small princes ruled the country until the 15th century, when it was at last conquered by the Turks. Epirus, peopled largely since the 14th century by the Albanians, formed latterly a part of the Turkish province of Janina. Under pressure from the great powers, Turkey ceded the strip of land east of the River Art a to Greece in 1881.
