Description: Lead tablet with a single fold. W: 7.9 cm × H: 2.5 cm × D: 0.15 cm. Weight: 18.08 g.
Layout description: The tablet is inscribed on both sides. It preserves two superimposed inscriptions on side A: 20A, in a fragmentary state, and, incised over it on the upper left part of the tablet, 19A. According to the editors of I.Dodone DVC , 19A was inscribed after the tablet had been folded, thus occupying the space created by the fold on the left. Side B preserves one inscription (21B) and remnants of other, erased inscriptions.
Dialect: Doric (?)
Alphabet: Reformed
Letters: Letter height: 0.3-0.4 cm. The surface is badly damaged, and the letters are not easily legible.

Date: 4th 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. M43; AMI 12204
Autopsy: autopsied by Stavroula Konstantopoulou in 2025.

Editor(s): Elena Martín González; Stavroula Konstantopoulou
Edition based on: Facsimile, photograph, and autopsy conducted by Stavroula Konstantopoulou (2025).

Bibliography: Evangelidis 1952, 306 no 24 (SEG 15.396; Eidinow 2007, 84 no 5; I.Dodone Lhôte 40); I.Dodone DVC 19A (CIOD 19A[last consulted 10/07/2026]).
Cf. Méndez Dosuna 2007d, 303 n. 66; Crosby 2022, 84 n. 64 (on the use of the optative).

Apparatus

ll. 1-2: Evangelidis proposed the following reading, which is also adopted in I.Dodone Lhôte: βέλτιον ΠΙΠΑΥ..ΓΑΝ.. | .κομένωι γυναῖκα | πράσσοιμι. As noted by the editors of I.Dodone DVC, however, the third line actually belongs to inscription 20A.

English Translation

Better for him to acquire a woman?

Spanish Translation

¿Mejor para él adquirir una mujer?

Commentary

Despite the uncertainty expressed by the editors of I.Dodone DVC, the use of πιπάσκομαι, belonging to the lexical family of πάομαι (Att.-Ion. κτάομαι), suggests that the inquiry concerns the acquisition of a female slave rather than marriage. The same verb is otherwise attested in the Dodona corpus only in 1591A and 3207B, both of which seem to deal with the purchase of slaves. On the productive lexical family of πάομαι (Att.-Ion. κτάομαι) in the oracular tablets, see Méndez Dosuna 2007d, 302-304 and Méndez Dosuna 2024, §4.1. On slavery in the oracular tablets, see Meyer 2017; on female slaves as inquirers at Dodona, see Katsadima 2017a, 135–136, and Frank 2024, 98-102. Pace CIOD, the reference to a female slave does not necessarily imply a prospective marriage. Likewise, the proposal that this is the same consultant as in I. Dodone Online 22A remains speculative.

Ithaca results: In the geographical output, Ithaca assigns the highest probability to Epirus (95.34%), while the chronological distribution peaks at 400-390 BC. See the Ithaca results and associated files.

Themes / Keywords: Slaves

Project: “Dodona Travels to Ithaca. Artificial Intelligence Applied to the Edition of Greek Inscriptions”. Grant CNS2023-144714, funded by MICIU/AEI (10.13039/501100011033) and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.

Copyright: Except where otherwise indicated, the original editorial content of this lemma is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Third-party material incorporated into or linked from this lemma is not covered by this license and remains subject to applicable copyright and to any terms of use specified by the respective rights holders or sources. When citing this lemma, please include its identifier, URL, and date of consultation.

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

Save as PDFShow XML