Someone has stolen your gloves.
You do not know who did it. There is no police station to visit, no CCTV to check and little prospect of ever seeing them again.
But you do have a god.
So you take a thin sheet of lead, scratch your complaint into its surface and hand the thief over to Mercury. You ask the god to find whoever took your gloves and extract vengeance from them.
Not metaphorical vengeance, either.
You want their blood and their health.
Roman Britain has left us extraordinary monuments. Forts, villas, temples, mosaics, roads and magnificent public buildings tell us about emperors, soldiers, religion and conquest.
Curse tablets tell us who nicked the bloody gloves.
And sometimes the smallest scraps of history bring the dead closer than any monument ever could.
Today’s card is –
XI – The Curse
They are usually called curse tablets, although that description can make them sound rather grander and more sinister than many actually were.
The Latin term commonly used by scholars is defixio, with the plural defixiones. They were generally thin pieces of lead or lead alloy inscribed with appeals to supernatural powers. Some were rolled or folded after being written and deposited somewhere considered appropriate for delivering the message to the divine.
Across the Roman world, such tablets could concern love, rivalry, lawsuits, sport, business and revenge.
Roman Britain produced something particularly revealing.
A lot of people wanted their stuff back.
At the sacred spring at Bath, worshippers deposited tablets associated with the goddess Sulis Minerva. At Uley in Gloucestershire, almost one hundred inscribed sheets of lead were discovered at the Roman temple of Mercury. Many concern theft and ask the god either to recover the stolen property or punish whoever took it. The British Museum describes them as petitions for divine intervention against wrongdoers and notes their often formulaic, almost legal language. British Museum
That word petition is useful.
These people were not necessarily creeping into the darkness to perform forbidden magic.
Some were effectively filing a complaint.
Only the magistrate was a god.
One Uley tablet was written by a man called Honoratus. He complained to Mercury that somebody had wronged him and asked the god to deny the culprit health and prevent them from lying down, sitting, drinking or eating until his property was returned and reconciliation made.
Honoratus did not know who the culprit was, so he covered the possibilities.
Man or woman.
Boy or girl.
Slave or free.
Whoever you are, Mercury will find you. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
Another petitioner, Docilinus, actually supplied names. Varianus, Peregrina and Sabinianus had apparently done something malicious involving his livestock. Docilinus asked Mercury to drive them towards death and deny them health and sleep until they made amends. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
Then there are the gloves.
A small lead tablet found at Uley in 1978 was folded five times after being inscribed. It dates from the third century and was addressed to Mercury.
The petitioner had lost a pair of gloves and wanted vengeance.
The surviving inscription asks Mercury to exact revenge upon the person responsible and take the culprit’s blood and health. The object is particularly valuable because references to gloves in Roman Britain are extremely rare. The British Museum notes that the tablet provides unusual evidence that they were actually being worn here. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
Think about that for a moment.
A person living roughly eighteen centuries ago lost their gloves.
They were furious.
And because they were furious, we now know something about Roman clothing that might otherwise have disappeared.
This is why curse tablets are wonderful archaeological objects.
They preserve annoyance.
History usually gives us the voices of people important enough for somebody to record them. Curse tablets preserve people complaining about stolen clothing, missing property, livestock disputes and neighbours who have seriously got on their nerves.
Sometimes we even glimpse people who could not identify the culprit.
One Uley tablet concerning a stolen sheep asks Mercury to intervene whether the thief was slave or free, boy or girl. Another surviving inscription concerning a stolen ring similarly attempts to encompass almost anyone who might have taken it. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
There is something almost bureaucratic about it.
Dear Mercury. Someone has stolen my sheep. I don’t know who. Please deal with them accordingly.
The tablets also reveal how religion, justice and what we might now call magic could overlap.
Our modern categories are not necessarily theirs.
A person appealing to Mercury at his temple may not have thought they were doing something fundamentally different from asking a powerful authority to intervene. The repeated formulas and legalistic wording found on tablets suggest that these petitions could imitate the language of formal complaints. The British Museum notes that this quasi-legal phrasing may have been intended to give the petitions authority. British Museum
The victim could even symbolically transfer something to the god.
A petitioner named Mintla Rufus complained about material from a cloak. His damaged tablet repeatedly says that he has “given” the perpetrators to Mercury. The implication is chillingly simple.
If earthly justice cannot reach them, they now belong to the god. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
Lead itself was useful for the purpose. It was relatively easy to scratch with a stylus, could be cut into small sheets and could be folded after inscription. Surviving Uley tablets show precisely that treatment, sometimes folded several times before deposition. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
But there is another reason these objects matter.
They show vulnerability.
The person writing the curse has already lost.
Their property is gone. Somebody has cheated them. Somebody has hurt them. The ordinary mechanisms available to them have either failed or are unavailable.
So they appeal to something more powerful.
That makes the curse tablet more complicated than simple malice.
There is anger in them, certainly. Some ask for punishments wildly disproportionate to the original offence. Losing a pair of gloves is irritating. Asking a god to take the thief’s blood and health is perhaps escalating matters slightly.
But beneath the anger is powerlessness.
Find them.
Make them return it.
Make them confess.
Make this right.
Nearly two thousand years later, we can still recognise the emotion perfectly.
The Romans who lived in Britain did not inhabit some silent archaeological landscape populated entirely by legionaries and mosaic floors.
They argued.
They stole.
They accused one another.
They lost things.
They wanted revenge.
And somewhere in Roman Gloucestershire, one extremely annoyed person decided that whoever had their gloves was going to answer to Mercury.
Frankly, we can only hope the gloves were worth it.
XI – The Curse
The Curse is the card of grievance, consequence and justice sought when ordinary remedies have failed.
It appears when resentment has begun demanding somewhere to go.
Perhaps somebody genuinely wronged you. Perhaps something was taken, whether property, opportunity, trust or dignity. The Curse does not tell you that your anger is unjustified.
It asks what you intend to do with it.
The Roman tablets contain an important lesson. Their writers handed the matter elsewhere. They named the injury, stated what they wanted and transferred responsibility to a power beyond themselves.
There can be freedom in refusing to carry a grievance forever.
But The Curse also warns about disproportionate revenge. Hurt can make punishment feel like justice even when the two have ceased to resemble one another.
When The Curse appears, ask yourself: Do I want this wrong made right, or do I simply want someone to suffer for it?
Know the difference before you scratch anything into lead.
Particularly if it is only your gloves.
Sources
Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Brit. 27.1: the Uley glove tablet. Includes the Latin text, archaeological context, dating and translation of the appeal to Mercury for vengeance against whoever took the gloves. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
The British Museum, 1978,0102.156: the original third-century Uley glove curse tablet, now in the British Museum collection. The museum discusses both its reference to gloves and the wider corpus of Uley curses. British Museum
Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Brit. 23.5: the petition of Honoratus to Mercury, asking that the unknown wrongdoer be denied ordinary bodily comforts until restitution was made. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Brit. 20.3: the curse of Docilinus against Varianus, Peregrina and Sabinianus concerning wrongdoing associated with his livestock. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
Roman Inscriptions of Britain, Brit. 51.12: a Uley tablet concerning the theft of a sheep, illustrating attempts to encompass an unidentified offender regardless of status, age or sex. romaninscriptionsofbritain.org
The British Museum, 1978,0102.131: Uley tablet associated with Mintla Rufus and stolen cloak material. The museum’s discussion is particularly useful for understanding the idea of surrendering the offender to Mercury.
