I.Dodone Online 22A: Enquiry regarding the acquisition of female slave and children
Description: Lead tablet with two folds.
W:
11 cm × H:
1.5-2.2 cm × D:
0.19 cm.
Layout description: The tablet is inscribed on both sides. Originally opisthographic, although the inscriptions on side B are no longer recognizable.
Side A preserves two superimposed inscriptions, 22A and 23A, of which only a small
portion of the latter remains visible along the lower edge of the tablet, below the
third and final line of 22A. As the editors of I.Dodone DVC point out, the cutting lines of the tablet are visible along its upper and lower edges.
Dialect: Doric
Alphabet: Reformed
Letters:
Letter height: ca. 0.3 cm. Interlinear space: 0.1 cm (in the narrower left-hand part
of the tablet) to 0.3 cm (in the wider right-hand part). The lettering is clear and
the layout regular, with the three lines of the inscription occupying almost the entire
surface of the tablet.
Date: 4th century BC.
Findspot: Dodona, Evangelidis’ excavation 1953.
Original location: Dodona
Last recorded location: Archaeological Museum of Ioannina
inv. M45; AMI 12190.
Editor(s): Elena Martín González; Stavroula Konstantopoulou
Edition based on: Facsimile and photograph.
Bibliography: I.Dodone DVC 22A (Vecchio 2019, 111; Laes, 186 n. 22, 193 n. 58; CIOD 22A;) Το μαντείο των ήχων 88 no 78 (I. Katsadima); Dodonaios, 279 no 28 (I. Katsadima).
Cf. Meyer 2017, 152 (on slaves in the oracular tablets); Katsadima 2023, 52 (photograph).
Apparatus
l. 1: Κορυ<δ>ά̣λλας I.Dodone DVC and Katsadima, in Το μαντείο των ήχων; Κορυδά̣λλας Katsadima, in Dodonaios. In the photograph, both the delta in the fold and the horizontal bar of the alpha are visible.English Translation
About Korydallas and the children of Korydalla, would I be successful purchasing them just as a father?
Spanish Translation
Sobre Coridala y los hijos de Coridala, ¿tendría éxito si los comprara, como un padre?
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. Lhôte (CIOD) suggests that this is the same consultant as in I. Dodone Online 19A, but the identification remains speculative.
Ithaca results: The model identifies Epirus as the most likely provenance of the inscription, assigning it a probability of 87.90%. The chronological distribution reaches its maximum in 350-340 BC, with a probability of 16.40%. As for the restoration, καθάπερ (l. 3) is ranked first with overwhelming confidence. The remaining nineteen hypotheses must be rejected, as they are not linguistically valid Greek restorations. See Ithaca results and metadata, and a snapshot of the geographical attribution.
Themes / Keywords: Slaves; Offspring
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 2026-06-05 by Stavroula Konstantopoulou.