L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 www.italoamericano.org 32 L'Italo-Americano W h e n t h e a n c i e n t R o m a n s f e l t wronged, they didn't ask for revenge from the gods, or at least not always. They relied on a small strip of lead instead. Yes: rather than asking J u p i t e r t o h u r l l i g h t n i n g bolts, they scratched their anger into thin sheets, folded them carefully, and buried them in wells, graves, or tem- p l e s , t r u s t i n g t h a t s o m e p o w e r b e n e a t h t h e e a r t h would take care of the rest. T h e s e c u r i o u s o b j e c t s , k n o w n a s d e f i x i o n e s o r curse tablets, have been unearthed by the thousands a c r o s s t h e f o r m e r R o m a n world, and they reveal a side of antiquity far less solemn than marble temples or epic poetry. In these tiny inscrip- tions, we find people com- plaining about stolen cloaks, cheating lovers, courtroom rivals, and bad luck at the chariot races; their tone is sometimes vengeful, some- times pitiful, and occasionally unintentionally funny, which really offers us a glimpse of Romans as they really were: emotional, petty, hopeful, and, well… very human. A d e f i x i o w a s a s i m p l e object, usually, as we said, a thin sheet of lead about the size of a postcard, on which the author scratched a short text. The Latin verb defigere m e a n s " t o f a s t e n " o r " t o bind," and that was the pur- p o s e : t o i m m o b i l i z e a n enemy, lover, or rival. Once the curse was inscribed, the s h e e t w a s o f t e n f o l d e d , p i e r c e d w i t h n a i l s , a n d deposited in a place thought to connect the living with the underworld: a well, a spring, a tomb, or a sanctuary dedi- cated to chthonic deities such as Pluto, Persephone, or Her- mes were the most popular options. Many were accompanied by strange syllables or "mysti- cal words," known as voces m a g i c a e , w h i c h w e r e believed to strengthen the spell, but don't be fooled by it: d e f i x i o n e s w e r e f a r f r o m pieces of high literature, as most of them were written in clumsy Latin or Greek and full of spelling mistakes. This s u g g e s t s t h e y l i k e l y c a m e from ordinary people rather than professional scribes or c u l t u r e d s e n a t o r s , e v e n though it was also common to dictate them to magicians who specialized in preparing t h e m , s o w h o k n o w s h o w many beyond-suspicion peo- ple truly recurred to them on a regular basis. The practice was, just like today's office complaints or o n l i n e r a n t s , r e m a r k a b l y widespread. One of the rich- e s t t r o v e s c o m e s f r o m R o m a n B r i t a i n , m o r e specifically, from the spa town of Bath, ancient Aquae S u l i s , w h e r e m o r e t h a n a hundred thin sheets of lead were thrown into the sacred spring of Sulis Minerva, the local goddess of healing, and r e t r i e v e d c e n t u r i e s l a t e r . Their authors were bathers, merchants, and travelers who used the tablets to complain about stolen clothes, jewelry, or coins. "Docimedis has lost two gloves," reads one, "may he who has stolen them lose his mind and eyes in the tem- p l e w h e r e y o u a p p o i n t . " Another begs the goddess to curse whoever took a cloak until it is returned. The tone is often bureaucratic, and lists of names pointing at potential suspects are com- mon, yet the effect is strange- ly moving, because of how mundane all requests are. Along Hadrian's Wall, at Coventina's Well, similar t a b l e t s h a v e b e e n f o u n d , showing that even soldiers on the empire's edges trusted the same mix of religion, magic, and frustration. Italy, of course, has its own versions and some of the best examples come from Pompeii. There, curse tablets were slipped under door- ways, hidden near theaters, or buried in courtyards, their contents ranging from love to jinxing performances; one tablet, for example, asks the gods to "bind" a woman so that she could love another man; another hoped a rival performer would forget his lines on stage. All show a vivid and colloquial language, f u l l o f e m o t i o n a n d m i s - spellings, a carved version of what you'd likely overhear in the streets back then. Further North, at Isola Sacra, near Ostia, archaeol- ogists found a more ambi- tious example of defixio: a l o n g l i s t o f t w e n t y - n i n e names scratched onto lead, a mix of Latin and Greek, call- ing for the downfall of every single one of them. It was buried in a necropolis close t o R o m e ' s p o r t , a p e r f e c t location to reach the spirits of the dead. I n t e r e s t i n g l y , w h a t Romans chose to curse about t e l l s u s a l o t a b o u t t h e i r world: some tablets were acts o f " p o o r m a n ' s j u s t i c e , " appealing to the gods when formal law failed. At Bath, a man who lost a bronze vessel a s k e d S u l i s M i n e r v a t o ensure that the thief "lose sleep, health, and wealth" until restitution was made. Others were driven by jeal- ousy or passion: dozens of erotic defixiones aimed to bind a lover, prevent infideli- ty, or inflame desire. Some asked the gods to make a rival's hair fall out or to block his voice before a legal trial, so that "his tongue may swell and his arguments be forgot- ten." In the world of enter- tainment and sport, curses were particularly creative: chariot racers asked that the o p p o s i n g t e a m ' s h o r s e s stumble or their drivers be struck dumb. A few tablets f r o m N o r t h A f r i c a a n d G r e e c e e v e n s p e c i f y t h e names of the horses, as if to make the spell more precise. H i s t o r i a n s t e n d t o s e e defixiones not as evidence of a superstition but, rather, of a continuum that included reli- gion, law, and magic, in a world where the boundary between prayer and curse w a s t h i n . A n d t h e r e w a s more, because to the barely literate or the powerless, a defixio might have been the o n l y a v a i l a b l e w a y t o a c t against injustice: when you could not sue your neighbor o r a f f o r d a l a w y e r , y o u appealed to Pluto instead, as it cost nothing and the gods didn't care about your social extraction. That's why some scholars describe the practice as "justice for the poor," an emotional release as much as a supernatural request. Far from being marginal, these tablets occupied a grey zone where official religion, folk practice, and personal psy- chology merged together. In the end, the defixiones remind us that ancient Rome w a s n o t o n l y a w o r l d o f emperors and marble gods, but also of ordinary people trying to make sense of dis- a p p o i n t m e n t , e n v y , a n d desire. Two thousand years later, their anger feels oddly familiar, proof that some frustrations, like some wish- es, never quite disappear. GIULIA FRANCESCHINI Carving bad thoughts: that's what defixiones were (Image created with DALL-E 2) Cursing like a Roman: the ancient art of the defixio HERITAGE HISTORY IDENTITY TRADITIONS PEOPLE

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