Juxtaposing formats: Studying northwestern Greek women through formal and personal inscriptions

ABSTRACT This article examines the roles and positions of women in ancient northwestern Greece through a comparative analysis of two categories of inscriptions: formal (manumission contracts from Dodona and Bouthrotos) and personal (oracular tablets from Dodona). Manumission inscriptions reveal women’s involvement in property ownership and family decision-making, while also illuminating the complex ties between enslaved and free household members and the potential for social mobility after manumission. Oracular tablets complement this by presenting women as active petitioners in matters of inheritance, marriage, and finance; where enslaved women can be identified, they frequently appear in contexts that expose sexual, reproductive, and quasi-familial ties to those consulting the oracle, underscoring both their vulnerability and their significance within household dynamics. Juxtaposing these corpora reveals broader patterns of female agency, legal capacity, and economic participation, highlighting circumstances in which women conformed to or exceeded traditional constraints of the Greek world between the fourth and second centuries Bce.