Passaron

PASSARON(Πασσαοων), the ancient capital of the Molossi in Epeirus. where the kings and assembled people were accustomed to take mutual oaths, the one to govern according to the laws, the other to defend the kingdom. (Plut. Pyrrh. 5.) The town was taken by the Roman praetor L. Anicius Gallus in B.C. 167. (Liv. 45.26, 33, 34.) Its site is uncertain. but it was apparently on the sea-coast, as Anna Comnena mentions (6.5, p. 284, ed. Bonn) a harbour called Passara on the coast of Epeirus. If this place is the same as the older Passaron, the ruins at Dhramisiús, which lie inland in a SSW. direction from Ioánnina, cannot be those of the ancient capital of the Molossi. Those ruins are very considerable, and contain among other things a theatre in a very fine state of preservation. (Leake, Northern Greece, vol. iv.p. 81.)