Enquiry regarding the acquisition of a female slave 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 19A

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Lead tablet with a single fold.

2.5 7.9 0.15 18.08

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 , 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.

Doric (?)

Reformed

Letter height: 0.3-0.4 cm. The surface is badly damaged, and the letters are not easily legible.

4th century BC

Dodona Dodona, Evangelidis’ excavation 1952. The tablet was recorded in Evangelidis’ excavation diary on 12 September 1952. Archaeological Museum of Ioannina inv. M43; AMI 12204.

Encoded according to the EpiDoc Guidelines, version 9.

 English Ancient Greek Latin French German Modern Greek Spanish Question Slaves Facsimile, photograph, and autopsy conducted by Stavroula Konstantopoulou (2025) Initial encoding by Stavroula Konstantopoulou.

, 306 no 24; 15.396; , 84 no 5; 40); 19A ( 19A[last consulted 10/07/2026]).

Cf. , 303 n. 66

βέλτιον πιπασκόμενωι γυναῖκα;
Evangelidis proposed the following reading, which is also adopted in : βέλτιον ΠΙΠΑΥ..ΓΑΝ.. | .κομένωι γυναῖκα | πράσσοιμι. As noted by the editors of , however, the third line actually belongs to inscription 20A.

Better for him to purchase a woman?

¿Mejor para él comprar una mujer?

On the productive lexical family of πάομαι (Att.-Ion. κτάομαι) in the oracular tablets, see , 302-304 and , § 4.1. Pace , 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.

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.

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