Private enquiry regarding a judicial issue 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 4

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 n/a

Lead tablet, with three folds.

2.7 10.2 0.12

According to the editors, the tablet is inscribed on both sides, but they publish only the text inscribed on the inner face, enclosed within the folds. Interpuncts occur in the first two lines.

Doric

Archaic; archaic and reformed letter forms coexist.

4th century BC

Dodona Dodona, Evangelidis' excavation 1953 Archaeological Museum of Ioannina inv. M17; AMI 11496

Encoded according to the EpiDoc Guidelines, version 9.

 English Ancient Greek Latin French German Modern Greek Spanish Question Justice Revised edition based on facsimile and photograph Initial encoding by Stavroula Konstantopoulou.

4 (, 56; , 113; , 93 note 58; 4 [last consulted 29/06/2026]); , 65.

Cf. , §206 (on legal matters); , 132 notes 14-15 and 135, note 63 (enquiries by women); , 108 (enquiries by women); (on dialectal classification).

θεός· τύχα : Γνέφας : Ἀνάγυλλα, Σίβυλλα : ἐπερωτο̂ντι τὸν θεὸν αἰ τὰ δίκαια μαστεύοντι ταύταν νικῆν περὶ θἠματίο̅ vac.
γνέφας Γνέφας (apud I.Dodone DVC) Γνεφᾶς σίβυλλα ταῦτα|{ν} νικῆν.

God. Fortune. Gnephas, Anagylla, Sibylla ask the god: in case they pursue legal claims, let this woman win about the garment.

Dios. Fortuna. Gnefas, Anagila, Sibila preguntan al dios: en caso de que tomen medidas legales, que gane esta sobre el manto.

This private enquiry belongs to the well attested category of consultations of the oracle concerning judicial matters, although neither the specific issue-apparently involving a garment-nor the opposing party is mentioned. Both the number of persons involved in the dispute and the syntactical interpretation of the text present difficulties.

The number of enquirers varies according to the different interpretations of ΓΝΕΦΑΣ and ΣΙΒΥΛΛΑ as common or personal names. Following Curbera’s interpretation, there are three enquirers -a man, Gnephas, and two women, Anagylla and Sibylla. According to the editors of I. Dodone DVC, however, there are only two women, Anagylla and Sibylla, with γνέφας understood as a wool product used in handicrafts (cf. ). For the editors of CIOD, by contrast, there are two enquirers -a man, Gnephas, and a woman, Anagylla-while σίβυλλα is interpreted as Anagylla’s religious title. Carbon (personal communication) adduces the lack of interpunctuation between ΑΝΑΓΥΛΛΑ and ΣΙΒΥΛΛΑ as further evidence in support of this hypothesis (for the use of punctuation marks in the Dodona oracular tablets, see Méndez Dosuna forthcoming).

According to , the pronoun ταῦταν (ll. 3–4) refers to the δέλτος, providing clear evidence for the use of a token to be drawn (for cleromancy at Dodona, see ). By contrast, emends ταῦταν to ταῦτα, treating the final nu as spurious. In any case, the infinitive construction remains asyndetic, and the resulting phrasing is closer to a request addressed to the god than to a question submitted to the oracle.

Ithaca attributes the inscription to Epirus with high accuracy (88.70%) and it dates it to the beginning of the 4th century BC (380-370 BC max.). See Ithaca results and metadata, and a snapshot of the geographical attribution.