Description: Lead tablet with a single fold. W: 12.6 cm × H: 2.1 cm × D: 0.12 cm.
Layout description: The tablet is inscribed on both sides. It preserves only one inscription on side A (15A) and three on side B (16B, 17B, and 18B). Inscriptions 15A and 16B were written by the same hand: 15A records Thelytos’ question, while 16B gives his name. Evangelidis edited 17B together with 16B, and 17B is likewise included under the same lemma in CIOD. However, as the editors of I.Dodone DVC point out, both 17B and 18B are independent inscriptions. Inscription 18B was not identified by Evangelidis.
Dialect: Doric
Alphabet: Archaic (Corinthian).
Letters: Letter height: ca. 0.3 cm. Interlinear space: ca. 0.25 cm. The inscription is executed in regular lettering with a carefully planned layout. The three lines observe word division consistently, and a vacant space is intentionally left at the right end of the tablet.

Date: 5th century BC.

Findspot: Dodona, Evangelidis’ excavation 1952. The tablet was recorded in Evangelidis’ excavation diary on 12 September 1952.
Original location: Dodona
Last recorded location: Archaeological Museum of Ioannina inv. M41.

Editor(s): Elena Martín González; Stavroula Konstantopoulou
Edition based on: Facsimile and photograph. On display at the exhibition.

Bibliography: Evangelidis 1952, 302, no. 8, ph. 32 (BE 1956, 143.8; SEG 15.388); I.Dodone Lhôte 36 (Méndez Dosuna 2008, 67); I.Dodone DVC 15A+16B (CIOD 15A+16B+17B [last consulted 10/07/2026]).
Cf. Parker 2016, 79 n.37 (on ἐFάω); Méndez Dosuna 2024, §4.1 (on ἐFάω).

Apparatus

English Translation

Thelytos whether he should depart, keeping the woman, keeping her in place, just as now, or leaving her.

Thelytos.

Spanish Translation

Télito si debe marchar conservando a la mujer, conservándola en el lugar, como ahora, o dejándola.

Télito.

Commentary

Despite the clear reading of the inscription, its interpretation poses several difficulties, especially at the end of the second line, with the repetition of the participial form ἔχν and the sequence ΚΟΔΟΙ, which Lhôte declines to interpret. Even so, the overall purport of the text is clear: the disjunctive πότερα and the participles indicate that the consultation concerns the alternative between keeping the woman and leaving her. The hypothesis proposed by Méndez Dosuna (κδοῖ = καὶ ὁδοῖ, cf. I.Dodone DVC ad comm.), tentatively adopted here, provides one possible explanation of the problematic sequence, although it is not without difficulties.

Ithaca results: In the geographical output, Epirus ranks first with a high probability according to Ithaca (93.87%), while the chronological distribution peaks at 450-440 BC (44.43%). See Ithaca results and metadata, and a snapshot of the geographical attribution.

Images

Figure 1. Photograph of side A, from Evangelidis 1952. Copyright: Εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογική Εταιρεία.

Project: “Dodona Travels to Ithaca. Artificial Intelligence Applied to the Edition of Greek Inscriptions”, NextGenerationEU, Consolidación Investigadora 2023 (CNS2023-144714).

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License 4.0. All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link to the URL https://dodonaonline.com/ and the filename, as well as the date of consultation.

File history: Created on 2026-06-15 by Stavroula Konstantopoulou.

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