Private question regarding ownership Elena Martín González Stavroula Konstantopoulou “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. I.Dodone Online 36B

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 n/a

Lead tablet, with two folds, now preserved in four adjoining fragments.

1.9 13.7 0.012 19.70

The tablet is inscribed on both sides. The same tablet also preserves one further inscription on the same side (37B), which is related to the one on side A (35A), the latter containing the summary and the former the question. Since 37B presupposes the existence of 36B, this must have been the tablet's first use. At present, side B is covered by insulating tape used to secure the two fragments together, which hampers legibility.

Doric

Archaic

Letter height: 0.3 cm (l. 1); 0.35-0.4 cm (l. 2). As the editors note, the second line of the inscription is laid out in stoichedon style.

end of 5th century BC

Dodona Dodona, Evangelidis’ excavations 1929-1935. Archaeological Museum of Ioannina inv. M68; AMI 11985

Encoded according to the EpiDoc Guidelines, version 9.

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

36B (, §206; , 59; , §33 n. 106; , 333 and 339 no. 17; 36B [last consulted 16/07/2026]).

θεός· τύχα ἀγαθά· Φιλοτίδος τὰ σιδάρια δικαίς;

God. Good Fortune. Do the iron objects rightfully belong to Philotis?

Dios. Buena Fortuna, ¿pertenecen legítimamente los objetos de hierro a Filótide?

This private enquiry, which does not include the name of the consultant, belongs to the well-attested category of consultations concerning property matters, in this case the rightful ownership of σιδάρια by a woman named Philotis; on legal disputes in the Dodona oracular tablets, see . According to , σιδάρια refers to iron objects and not to the Byzantine coinage σιδάρεοι, as proposed by the editors of . On the role of women in the oracular consultations at Dodona, see and ; on women and property ownership in the epigraphic evidence from Dodona in particular and northwestern Greece more generally, see .

interprets the text as an oracular response. On the controversial issue of the presence of answers on the Dodona tablets, see .

Ithaca predicts Italy, including Magna Graecia, as the most probable geographical origin of this inscription (73.35%), with Epirus ranking second (7.12%). Regarding chronology, the highest probability falls at the beginning of the 4th century BC, specifically in the period 400-390 BC. See the Ithaca results and associated files.