The earliest gods of Dodona are obscure. In the beginning people worshipped the sacred oak or the earth goddess Gaia, before eventually moving on the cult of Zeus. He was not the Olympian Zeus but another male deity who resided in the roots of the sacred oak (thus his name “naios” from the word for dwell). But he was not alone, because people also worshipped Dione, a goddess who seems the evolution of Mother Earth. Her name, in any case, is the feminine of the genitive form of Greek Zeus. She has little presence elsewhere in Greece but in Dodona she was the wife of Zeus and most tablets invoke both deities. The oldest sacred song does the same: “Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be; O mighty Zeus; Earth sends up the harvests, so sing the praise of Mother Earth”.