Tbilisi State University
Assistant Professor
Doctor of History
Tbilisi, Georgia
Abstract
Epigraphic and narrative materials about women in ancient Colchis and Iberia in Classical Antiquity provide us with quite interesting and important information. Part of this epigraphic material is well-known for scholars, part has become available through the latest technologies, in particular, databases of Greek and Latin inscriptions. Inscriptions found in Georgia and abroad differ from each other in terms of information. If the inscriptions found in Georgia show that women could serve as priestesses in the temple, and goddesses were often worshiped in the temples of Van, which in turn indicates the importance of women in society, the inscriptions found abroad invariably show that women taken from Colchis were slaves or freedwomen. This is natural, as the social status of women living in Colchis would have been much higher than that of women who ended up in Greece and Rome. At the same time, it is also worth considering the fact that in Colchis itself, which is a proto-feudal society, in the absence of slavery, there would be no inscriptions about slave or freedwomen, while in ancient Rome and Greece, where non-Greeks and non-Romans were considered barbarians, the maximum social status they could achieve in such a society was the status of freedwoman. Two inscriptions are known from Athens that tell us about enslaved Colchian women: the inscription of Kephisodorus on a stele from Athens and the inscription of a Colchian woman on a tombstone in Athens. Another manumission is known from Delphi which mentions a Colchian woman. Inscriptions found in Vani from the Hellenistic period tell us about women from Colchis, specifically, the famous decree of Vani and the inscription of a prayer to the goddess of Vani. Five inscriptions are known from ancient Rome that tell of the betrothal of Colchian women, namely, the inscription of Sallustia from Rome, the epitaph of Vireia Colchis, the inscription of Volusia Colchis, the epitaph of a Colchian woman, and the epitaph of a Colchian wife from the province of Caserta.
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