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CHAPTER SEVEN

CURSING A THIEF IN IBERIA AND BRITAIN*

Roger Tomlin

In Britain we recently celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary, not just of the ,1 but the discovery of the fi rst British ‘curse-tablet’. It was found in 1805 at Lydney Park in the Severn val- ley, in the ruins of a Roman temple locally called the Dwarfs’ Chapel because the hypocaust was thought to have been inhabited. It was an inscribed piece of lead: Silvianus to the god . He has lost his ring and has given half to Nodens. Among those who have the name of Senicianus, do not allow them health until he bring it to the temple of Nodens.2 Th e fi rst real editor, Charles William King (1818–1888) in 1879, recog- nised this as a curse against a thief, and astutely compared it with “the leaden scrolls discovered at the ‘Demetrium’ at Cnidus, which similarly invoke the wrath of heaven upon certain obnoxious parties”.3 Th ese are now in the British Museum, and were published in 1862/63; they are Greek texts ‘dedicating’ wrongdoers to Demeter: false accusers,

* I use ‘Iberia’ in the sense of modern Spain and , and ‘Britain’ in the sense of the of . I have seen the British tablets I discuss, but for the Iberian ones I depend upon published drawings and photographs. For invaluable help with bibliography I am grateful to Francisco Marco and Richard Gordon, who invited me to Zaragoza, where a knowledgeable audience helped me by commenting on ideas previously expressed at Santander by kind invitation of Mar Marcos. I am also grateful to Henk Versnel for exchanging draft s with me of our contributions to this volume; to Jürgen Blänsdorf for details of the Mainz tablets; and to Antón Alvar Nuño for sending a copy of Guerra’s article, which was unobtainable in Oxford. Th e key to the brief names I have used for the texts (e.g. ‘Uley’) will be found in the fi rst section of the Bibliography to this paper. Note that a reference to Tomlin 1988 is to a discussion, or set of references, in that publication; ‘Bath’ (but also sometimes Tab. ) + number denotes a specifi c text; see also p. 272 below. 1 Cf. H. Hoock (ed.), History, Commemoration and National Pre-occupation: Tra- falgar 1805–2005 (Oxford 2007). 2 Lydney Park, devo Nodenti Silvianus anilum perdedit demediam partem donavit Nodenti inter quibus nomen Seniciani no(n) (i)llis pe(r)mittas sanitatem donec perfera(t) usque templum [No]dentis. 3 King 1879, 45f. 246 roger tomlin for example, and people who borrowed clothes or money and did not return them, and thieves, or the ‘other woman’ who seduced my hus- band, and those who beat me up.4 Th ese ‘curse-tablets’ are the first items in Audollent’s great collection, but they are not typical of it. Th eir special character has been illuminated by Henk Versnel, who aptly calls them ‘prayers for justice’.5 Th ey are not anonymous spells consigning enemies to demons and the Underworld, but messages written to respectable gods, asking (but not compelling) their inter- vention; the petitioner says that he (or she) has been maltreated, and seeks divine redress. Th e gods are treated like superior Roman offi - cials, Abinnaeus for example, who commanded a late-Roman fort in Egypt. He received statements of the off ence committed followed by this formula: Wherefore I request and beg of your philanthropy to apprehend this man and compel him to restore to me what he has wickedly seized.6 Some British curse-tablets are explicitly ‘pleas’ (pet(it)io, iteratis pre- cibus), or ‘complaints’ (Tomlin 1988, 66) beginning with queror or conqueror, and there is even this commonitorium from Uley: A memorandum to the god Mercury from Saturnina, a woman, concern- ing the linen cloth which she has lost. (She asks) that he who has stolen it should not have rest before, unless, when he brings the aforesaid prop- erty to the aforesaid temple, whether man or woman, slave or free.7 Th e god of Uley was too polite to say so, but he must have felt like Pliny on his Tuscan estate: “I am beset on all sides by the peasants with all their petitions full of complaints”.8

When I started working on British ‘curse-tablets’ twenty years ago, I was struck by similarities in language and formulation in two Spanish tablets from Emerita and Italica, to which can now be added four tab-

4 See e.g. DTAud nos. 1; 2 = Syll. 1179; 3; 4A, 6 and 8; 5; 10; 11; 12; 13. Th ey were re-edited, albeit without commentary, by W. Blümel in I.Knidos nos. 147–59. 5 Versnel 1991, 2002 and his contribution to this volume (p. 278f.). His earlier term was ‘judicial prayers’. 6 Bell, Martin, Turner, van Berchem, 1962 no. 44. Compare nos. 45–57, and see p. 99. 7 Uley 2: commonitorium deo Mercurio a Saturnina muliere, de lintiamine quod amisit, ut ille qui ho[c] circumvenit non ante laxetur nissi quand[o] res s(upra)dictas ad fanum s(upra)d[ic]tum attul[e]rit, si vir si [m]ulier, si servus si liber. 8 Pliny, Ep. 9.15.1: tam multis undique rusticorum libellis et tam querulis inquietor (trans. Radice).