The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging from east and west and commencing with the Ægean Sea or the Gulf of Therma near the fortieth degree of north latitude, is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon until it touches the Adriatic at the Akrokerannian promontory. The country south of this chain comprehended all that in ancient times was regarded as Hellas proper, but it also comprehended something more. Hellas proper (or continuous Hellas, to use the language of Scylax and Dicsearchus) was understood to begin with the town and Gulf of Ambracia: from thence to the Akrokeraunian promontory lay the land called by the Greeks Epirus, occupied by the Chaonians, Molossians, and Thesprotians, who were termed Epirots and were not esteemed to belong to the Hellenic aggregate. This at least was the general understanding, though Ætolians and Akarnanians in their more distant sections seem to have been not less widely removed from the full type of Hellenism than the Epirots were; while Herodotus is inclined to treat even Molossians and Thesprotians as Hellens.

At a point about midway between the Ægean and Ionian seas, Olympus and Lingon are traversed nearly at right angles by the still longer and vaster chain called Pindus, which stretches in a line rather west of north from the northern side of the range of Olympus: the system to which these mountains belong seems to begin with the lofty masses of greenstone comprised under the name of Mount Scardus or Scordus (Schardagh), which is divided only by the narrow valley containing the river Drin from the limestone of the Albanian Alps.