I.Dodone Online 19A: Enquiry regarding the acquisition of a female slave
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
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 purchase a woman?
Spanish Translation
¿Mejor para él comprar una mujer?
Commentary
On the productive lexical family of πάομαι (Att.-Ion. κτάομαι) in the oracular tablets, see Méndez Dosuna 2007, 302-304 and Méndez Dosuna 2024, § 4.1. 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 (17.46%). See Ithaca results and metadata, and a snapshot of the geographical attribution.
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.