In this chapter, we will expand our prophetic coverage, exploring the books of Jeremiah, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ezekiel, and the second portion of Isaiah. Lengthy books like Jeremiah and Ezekiel are considered “major,” whereas the shorter books, such as the single-chapter Obadiah, are deemed “minor prophets.” Some books include personal details about the prophet, whereas others like Nahum are virtually devoid of such information. However, all of these writing prophets articulated Yahweh’s messages in the seventh century bceand through the crises leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 bceand the ensuing exile.

We will note how the traumatic events of Israel’s changing world impacted the urgency, tone, and even theological emphases of the prophets. For example, Second Isaiah contains one of the most explicit Old Testament statements of monotheism. In Ezekiel, we will observe the first focus on the role of individual responsibility for sin, along with an especially personal tone by means of the first-person voice. Finally, we will encounter the concept of the “Day of the Lord,” which represents Israel’s move toward eschatology.

Contracts awarded to brewers suggest the existence of local beer monopolies. However, the beer industry was a very decentralised sector, involving many brewers, as well as full- and part-time sellers supplying local markets. Such local networks were difficult for the state to penetrate, hence the use of local intermediaries who were themselves active in the industry. The fiscal contracts concerned the administration of state revenues derived from the village beer industry. Their most significant component was the farming of a craft and sales tax. In addition, contractors were involved with the distribution of state-supplied barley. A comparison with bakers shows that these artisans were not supplied with wheat, which could be profitably exported. The motivation for the sale of state barley was thus the conversion of revenue in kind into cash. Royal breweries existed, but their significance is unclear, and private individuals and temples owned breweries as well. Temples were, moreover, frequently the lessors of contracts, underscoring their role in the Ptolemaic economy and fiscal system. Missing variables complicate the assessment of the impact of the institutions on economic performance.

This final chapter on Israel’s writing prophets highlights those whose messages supported postexilic restoration during the Persian period. As in earlier chapters, we will need to consider the conditionality of prophecy as well as its “forthtelling” rather than “foretelling” nature.

In 539 bce, the Persian king Cyrus allowed the first group of Israelite exiles to return to Jerusalem, now part of the administrative province of Yehud. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah serve to inspire this rebuilding process, particularly of the temple. We will observe in Zechariah growing evidence of a messianic hope in a future Davidic king as well as a literary shift from eschatology to apocalyptic forms. Malachi, dated around 470 bce, builds on earlier Old Testament prophetic themes of purity and covenant faithfulness. Much harder to date is Joel, as it contains sections indicative of two entirely different periods of Judah’s history; however, we will note the “day of Yahweh” theme in Joel, portrayed this time as a terrible day of reckoning for the nations. Jonah is unique as a narrative, conveying through rather humorous form the serious concern of Yahweh for all peoples.

This chapter discusses Attic women’s friendships. It takes two contexts of female friendship – the neighbourhood, and female-dominated religious spaces and occasions – and shows how they offered women opportunities to encounter other women, spend time in their company, and construct and define their own spatial and social worlds. It demonstrates the importance of women’s friendships as a source of support, particularly when male relatives failed. It examines two cases in which women were commemorated by friends rather than kin, one of which provided an opportunity for the commemorating woman to discuss her relationship with and feelings about her friend. It concludes with a new examination of the language of female friendship, demonstrating its similarities to the verbal language of male friendship and the behavioural language of kinship. The chapter shows that women’s personal, affective relationships with non-relatives complemented and sometimes supplanted their kin relationships, and constituted a valuable support system.

This chapter’s new analysis of Athenian kinship shows how its multiformity and malleability enabled women to manipulate patriarchal-patrilineal kinship structures and use alternative kinship modes and expressions. The chapter demonstrates the importance of maternal kin as caregivers in a demographic context which left a large minority of children fatherless and without paternal relatives, challenging a patriarchal vision of the household. It considers changes to household composition not from a demographic perspective but from an affective perspective, considering the potential influence of individuals, including women. New readings of forensic speeches and comedies show women persuading husbands to foster children from former marriages and take in vulnerable adults; voluntarily caring for others’ children; and influencing legal inclusion of individuals into the family, nominally a male prerogative. It argues that stories about suppositious children reflect anxieties about female influence on kinship as well as female sexuality.

Beginning from Lysias 1 and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, this chapter looks at how women shaped the institution of slavery on an interpersonal level, using enslaved household members to construct and secure their own positions by establishing and maintaining a hierarchy of labour, sexuality, and dignity. It analyses the cross-generic trope of free women colluding with enslaved women and argues that it ‘refracts’ of a reality of close (though forced) interaction and cooperation in the context of profoundly unequal power relations. Similarly, portrayals of enslaved women in the sepulchral iconography of their enslavers express and reflect a complex interaction between intimacy and hierarchy. Monuments erected for enslaved nurses by their enslavers, however, emphasise inclusion rather than distinction. The chapter argues that free Athenian women’s relationships with women they kept in slavery loomed large on their emotional landscapes and were characterised by an uneasy forced intimacy which was exploited by the enslaving women.

The story of Diognete, a late fifth-century Athenian woman, provides a lens for thinking about how to write the history of women in classical Athens. The introduction considers the value of biographical approaches and other tools which treat women as individual subjects rather than members of categories. It explains the author’s decision to assign names to women whose names are lost or suppressed in the evidence, repositioning them as subjects of their own lives. It argues that the texts on inscribed dedications and gravestones commissioned by women were determined by the women themselves, leaving us with myriad female-authored texts. These texts inform the book’s experiential approach, which focuses on women’s own experiences of their lives.

This chapter draws biographies of women out of sources chiefly concerned with their male relatives, beginning with analysis of the parallel lives of Diognete (Lysias 32) and Nikarete (Demosthenes 57). The diachronic, biographical approach illustrates how factors including age, wealth, and social status shaped these women’s relationships and their experiences of marriage, separation, widowhood, and remarriage. Bringing further women into the picture demonstrates women’s ability to construct, maintain, and make use of networks spanning the households in which they had lived, including the ability to maintain relationships with ex-husbands’ relatives after remarriage and to form help-networks including non-relatives. It shows how out of necessity, women’s social strategies differed from men’s, tending to diversification rather than consolidation. The chapter argues that a woman’s social identity was not exclusively tied to her immediate circumstances or her kyrios, but could be rich and cumulative, reflecting a lifetime of experiences and relationships.

This chapter shows how income-generating work gave women a new axis and language of self-evaluation and enabled them to form relationships beyond their kin and neighbourhoods. It analyses expressions of women’s attitudes to their employment in religious dedications. It examines the social lives and networks of women in the commercial textile economy and considers how women’s remunerated labour affected household dynamics. It highlights the commercial relationships entailed by women’s involvement in supply chains of Attic sanctuaries and considers women’s interactions with clients and colleagues in markets and shops. It uses curse tablets aimed at women retailers and joint dedications made by colleagues as evidence for women acting as workers within commercial networks rather than family members in kinship networks. It concludes with two monuments connected with the doctor Phanostrate which attest to the possibility that relationships arising from work could take on the character of and even displace kin relationships.