For more than a century already, archaeologists have searched for the remains of the famous temple where Dionysus had an oracle. It is believed that, when made, the discovery will be as important as that of Troy and Mycenae. Very little is known about the temple today and the only thing which is know for sure is that it was in the Holy Rhodope mountains.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus is the main source of information about the temple of Dionysus. In his famous History, Herodotus gives an account of the march of Xerxes’ immense army on Greece in 480 BC. As the huge invasion force was slowly making its way along the Aegean coast, many Thracian tribes sent envoys to pledge their allegiance to Xerxes. Only the Satrians, who inhabited the Rhodope, chose to ignore him: “The Satrians however never yet became obedient to any man, so far as we know, but they remain up to my time still free, alone of all the Thracians. [...] These are they who possess the Oracle of Dionysus; which Oracle is on their most lofty mountains. Of the Satrians those who act as prophets of the temple are the Bessians.” Indeed, the Satrians went down in later historical accounts as Bessians.

Herodotus never himself travelled across Thrace and the geographical references in his account are often vague. He placed the Temple of Dionysus on the ‘most lofty mountains’ held by the Satrians, which were ‘covered with forest of all kinds and with snow’. This led scholars to believe that the Temple was located in the high western part of the Rhodope range. Few had thought of the fact that only the highest ridge of the southern Rhodope can be seen from the Aegean coast. Beyond it, are the low, habitable middle and eastern ranges of the mountain which abound in archaeological remains from various ages. Among them, the holy city of Perperikon, the biggest megalith in Europe, is both a geographical and a historical landmark. Naturally, there were many temples of Dionysus as he was a chief god in ancient Thrace. Aristotle speaks of another major temple in the southeast of the Balkans inhabited by the Bisaltians, another Thracian tribe. In his Hecuba, Euripides is quite puzzled: “[...] some say that the Oracle of Dionysus is in Pangaea [the Rhodope] and others say it is in Hemus.” According to later Roman historians, however, the temple in the Rhodope was a principal one.

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Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, a Roman biographer of the late 1st and early 2nd century AD, wrote about a visit to Dionysus’ Oracle in the Holy Mount by the father of the first Roman Emperor Octavian Augustus. The Oracle prophesied the son’s rise to empyreal power. Another Roman historian, Dion Cassius, described in his Romaika the march of Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman General in Augustus’ service, in 29-28 BC, when he captured the famous Temple from the Bessians (Bessoi) and gave it to the Odrysae, a rival Thracian tribe. In 11 BC, a fierce war for the Temple broke out between the two tribes, in which the Bessians were led by the Oracle’s High Priest.

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According to latest historical research, the boundary between the Odrysae and the Bessians lay in the eastern Rhodope range, east of present-day Kurdzhali. And this is exactly where the holy city of Perperikon is located! Moreover, Dion Cassius suggests that the Temple of Dionysus was on the border between the two Thracian Kingdoms. Recent archaeological finds tend to confirm the hypothesis that the Temple was indeed at Perperikon.

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