Enquiry regarding marriage Elena Martín González Stavroula Konstantopoulou “Dodona Travels to Ithaca. Artificial Intelligence Applied to the Edition of Greek Inscriptions”, NextGenerationEU, Consolidación Investigadora 2023 (CNS2023-144714). I.Dodone Online 15A+16B

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 n/a

Lead tablet with a single fold.

2.1 12.6 0.12

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 . However, as the editors of point out, both 17B and 18B are independent inscriptions. Inscription 18B was not identified by Evangelidis.

Doric

Archaic (Corinthian).

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.

5th century BC

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

Encoded according to the EpiDoc Guidelines, version 9.

 English Ancient Greek Latin French German Modern Greek Spanish Question Marriage Facsimile and photograph. On display at the exhibition Initial encoding by Stavroula Konstantopoulou.

, 302, no. 8, ph. 32 ( 1956, 143.8; 15.388); 36 (, 67); 15A+16B ( 15A+16B+17B [last consulted 10/07/2026]).

Cf. , 79 n.37 (on ἐFάω); , §4.1 (on ἐFάω).

Θέλυτος πότερά κα κατὰ χραν ἔχν τὰν γυναῖκα ἔχν κδοῖ hάπερ νῦν ἒ καὶ ἔϜν;
Θέλυτος
ἔχ ΝΚΟΔΟΙ , for which the author suggests the interpretation ἔχ ’ν Κδι ΗΟΔΟΙ Tsantsanoglou apud ΕΧΟΝΚΟΔΟΙ ΚΑΠΕΡ Evangelidis, with an incorrect division of words in the first part of the line.

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

Thelytos.

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

Télito.

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. ad comm.), tentatively adopted here, provides one possible explanation of the problematic sequence, although it is not without difficulties.

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.

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