The Sanctuary of Asclepius is one of the landmarks of Butrint, the Graeco-Roman city in south-west Albania. The complex dominated the centre of the lower city and was first built between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century BC, before being expanded under the Romans. Sanctuary structures include a well-preserved theatre and nearby shrine, alongside numerous surrounding buildings linked to the cult of Asclepius, with a temple dedicated to the deity on an upper terrace. Together, they testify to how grand and industrious Butrint once was. Its regional significance, as one of the most important cities in the Hellenistic tribal territory of Chaonia, is now becoming clearer thanks to a new project devoted to a set of exceptional inscriptions found in the Sanctuary.
Finding freedom
The inscriptions, carved in white limestone at various places around the theatre, became visible as soon as the building was unearthed in 1928, by Luigi Maria Ugolini, director of the first Italian Archaeological Mission in Butrint. In 1933, Ugolini summoned Luigi Morricone to become part of his team, with the specific task of studying these new inscriptions, since it was clear how important they were for understanding the history of the city. This posed a considerable challenge, because back then much less was known about not only Butrint, but also the wider region of Epirus in which it lay. Morricone was, then, faced with trying to reconstruct and interpret all the philological and historical problems that the inscriptions unleashed.
Most of the inscriptions appear to be documents in stone concerning the freeing of slaves, many of whom were women. In total, 597 freed slaves are recorded, most of whom were released by using a combination of civil and religious formulae. Many slaves were freed by the same families, which suggests the existence of large landowners controlling the Butrint area. The inscriptions often show entire families numbering between two to eight individuals taking part in the ritual of freeing a slave. A good illustration of this is to be found in an inscription (n.31 in Pierre Cabanes’s Corpus of Butrint Inscriptions) that names three men and five women who granted a certain Stratonika her freedom. Similarly, several of the same individuals appear in another inscription granting Neira her release from slavery.
