Map showing the ancient regions of central, western and northern Greece.
Parauaea (Greek: Παραυαία) was an ancient Greek territory in the region of Epirus.[1] The inhabitants of the area, a Thesprotian Greek tribe, were known as Parauaioi (Greek: Παραυαῖοι; also ParauaeiorParauaeans), which meant "those dwelling beside" the Aous river.[2]
Due to the fact that Greek toponyms that preserve archaic features are very densely found in the wider area (Epirus, western and northern Thessaly and Pieria), it appears that speakers of the Proto-Greek language inhabited a region which included Parauaea before the Late Bronze Age migrations (late 3rd-early 2nd millennium BC).[3]
At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (429 BC), the Parauaei under the leadership of king Oroidos (Greek: Ὄροιδος) joined forced together with the nearby Orestae as allies of Sparta against Acarnania.[4] That time they were more loosely associated with the adjacent tribes of the Molossians and the Atintanes.[4]
^ abFranke 1989, p. 461: "In 294, as the price of his help, Pyrrhus was given the region of Ambracia in southern Epirus, Acarnania, Amphilochia and the regions of Tymphaea and Parauaea in the border country between Epirus and Macedonia."
^Hammond 1967, p. 703: "The Parauaei and the Celaethi held their Thesprotian name from a period which goes back to a time before [...]"
^Georgiev 1973, p. 247: "The region north of this line, which comprises Epirus as far as Aulon, in the north (including Paravaia, Tymphaea, Athamania, Dolopia, Amphilochia and Acarnania), western and northern Thessaly (Hestiaeotis, Perrhaebia, Tripolis) and Pieria, i.e. approximately the whole of northern and north-western Greece, is characterized by the following features. 1. Absence of pre-Hellenic place-names. [...] All the principal names north of the line are of archaic Greek origin. [...] Thus in the region defined just above, roughly northern and northwestern Greece. [...] Since Greek place-names are very dense in that region and they have a very archaic appearance, one may suppose that the proto-Greeks were settled in it during many centuries and even millennia."
^ abHatzopoulos 2020, pp. 43–44, 227: Oroidos king of the Paraeauoi....Taking into consideration that in the passage from Thucydides the Parauaioi are directly coupled with the Orestai and connected more loosely with the Molossoi and the Atintanes...
^Plutarch (ed. Bernadotte Perrin). Pyrrhus, 6: "[...] demanded as a reward for his alliance Stymphaea and Parauaea in Macedonia [...]"
^Dieterle 2007, pp. 8–9: "Epirus gliedert sich in drei Regionen: Nord-, Zentral- und Südepirus. Die Stammesgebiete von Nordepirus (Chaonia, Atintania und Parauaia) liegen in heutigen Albanien, während sich Zentral- und Südepirus in die Stammesgebiete Molossis (um den See von Ioannina), Thesprotia (an der Küste südlich des Thyamis und um den Acheron) und Kassopeia (südwestlicher Teil von Epirus) austeilen lassen."
