epigraphy - tablet 186

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:52:17 GMT

by Tess Severt.

For my discussion of the curse tablets I decided to only focus on tablet 186. The reason I decided to focus on this specific tablet is cause the triviality of what prompted the writer to make this curse tablet intrigued me.

The writer/commissioner made this tablet because his bronze bowl was stolen, and they invoke that whoever may have stolen it shall have their own blood put in that bowl. A single bowl being stolen is, while certainly not something nice, regardless a minor and trivial thing. The fact something so trivial prompted someone to make a curse tablet to curse the thief is interesting, and raises the question if it was a regular thing to make a curse tablet even for minor things. After looking into the invoked goddess Sulis I’ve found that this is not the only curse tablet invoking this goddess for small thefts from the bath house in Bath, showing it was a normal thing to do and a part of mundane life.

Regarding the posed question on if this could be interpreted as a form of revenge sacrifice, I believe this could be interpreted as a revenge sacrifice. The writer/commissioner of the tablet namely gives the thief to the temple of Sulis for the god to find. The word “give” implies that the writer offers the thief to the goddess as a sacrifice, and it is done because this person has stolen something from the writer prompting them to take revenge in this way.

Epigraphy Discussion 200

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 09:31:00 GMT

by Kade Nowakowski.

Curse tablet 200: The sexual allure of Zois

I particularly liked this specific tablet due to the fact there is no known creator and that makes the content written quite entertaining from multiple perspectives. It is a curse that shows the want to curse a woman’s sexuality and sensuality, but that wasn’t really what intrigued me by it. There isn’t much more to decipher in the authors meaning behind her “entrance” and “intercourse.” Though I did find it fascinating they named both “Earth” and “Hermes” in this curse. “Earth” is most likely referring to Gaia, a most respectable goddess to use since these were usually buried and thus invoking a goddess who is the definition of Earth makes complete sense. Hermes being the messenger between the mortals and immortals is equally a proper choice.

When I initially read this and the curse on the woman’s sexuality, I immediately thought it was written by someone who was jealous of the woman. Another woman wishing to curse a beautiful, successful, and talented woman is not that farfetched of an idea. However, I realized there are several other angles this can be looked at since there is no defined gender of the author nor true motive from the text provided. I believe there are four plausible angles to view this from: woman jealous of the woman, woman jealous of the man, man jealous of the man, and man jealous of the woman. There could be more, naturally, however those four are a nice general idea of variations I have read this excerpt. Ironically, and sadly, all my angles end in Zois being at fault for another’s temptations.

This author could be a jealous woman that wants Zois’ husband. She could be an unknown lover or just a simple bystander that wants Cabeiras. Either way, if she curses Zois to have her sexuality taken, the husband will have seemingly have nothing. Switch it up and now the author is a jealous woman yet wants Zois instead. Her inability to have this woman may have her wanting to curse Zois entirely so no one can have her. It is like a ‘if I can’t have her, no one can’ situation. Now if we view the author as a man, he could be jealous of the husband for having such an extraordinary wife. He then wants her cursed since she is not his and it isn’t fair. Lastly, we can think of the author wanting her husband. He hates Zois being in the way of the man he wants which makes him curse her to get her out of his way. All four of these takes are of the same theme: jealousy. There may be other themes that fit, however there is a great correlation of jealousy with sexuality and that is why I focused solely on that over anything else.

Defixiones Unit 3

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 21:13:34 GMT

by Avalon Doherty.

St. Hilarion and the Demon

Jerome’s account of St. Hilarion stages a direct collision between two competing systems for coercing human will. The young suitor’s strategy is professional, elite, and technically elaborate: he spends a full year studying in Memphis under the priests of Asclepius—a city famed across the Mediterranean for its magical traditions—before inscribing portenta quaedam verborum, et portentosas figuras ("certain monstrosities of words and monstrous figures") on Cyprian bronze plates and burying them subter limen, directly beneath the maiden's threshold. The psychological and physical result is instantaneous: the girl descends into sudden madness, casting off her veil, wildly spinning her hair, gnashing her teeth, and shouting the young man's name.

The Christian ecclesiastical response to this ritual artifact is far more sophisticated than a simple dismissal of magic as fraud. Instead, Jerome executes a precise three-part intellectual manoeuvre:

First, he ridicules the pagan practitioners and their institutions. The priests of Asclepius are described as agents who "do not cure souls but ruin them" (non remediantis animas, sed perdentis). Their magical knowledge is framed as foreign, corrupt, and monstrous, utilizing the language of portenta to alienate the Christian reader from Graeco-Roman ritual arts.

Second, he concedes the real efficacy of the curse tablet, absorbing it directly into Christian demonology. The tablet genuinely works: the demon explicitly complains that he is ligatus subter limen, physically bound beneath the doorway, unable to leave until the spell-binder releases him. Because early Church authorities could not simply dismiss these popular practices as harmless illusions, they explained them by redefining the mechanics. The tablet does not possess innate power on its own; rather, it functions as a binding contract over a demon, and demons are real entities subject to ritual coercion. This move neatly relocates traditional binding magic (defixiones) into a Christian cosmological structure, turning the pagan magician into a subcontractor to the demonic realm.

Third, he positions Christian exorcism as the supreme counter-technology. Hilarion's authority is immediate, charismatic, and entirely unburdened by material apparatus—he requires no year of study abroad, no expensive metals, and no specialized Memphite priesthood. Where the young suitor depended on external specialists and complex material formulas, the Christian holy man is the power. The narrative thus asserts the complete superiority of monastic charism over inherited pagan expertise.

Jerome’s institutional anxieties emerge most sharply in Hilarion’s deliberate refusal to unearth the bronze tablets or seek out the young man prior to performing the exorcism. He offers two explicit reasons for this tactical restraint:

ne aut solutus incantationibus recessisse daemon videretur — lest the demon be thought to have been "loosed by the incantations," meaning observers might credit the physical removal of the artifact as the true cause of the cure. Digging up the plate risks leaving room for a rival, mechanical explanation rather than attributing the miracle solely to divine power.
aut ipse sermoni ejus accommodasse fidem — lest Hilarion himself be seen as placing trust in the demon’s testimony, given that the spirit is inherently deceitful (fallax) and skilled at pretense (callidus ad simulandum).

Consequently, the Church registers three distinct dangers in this episode. First, causal ambiguity: a material artifact offers a competing physical explanation for recovery, and the Church requires its own ritual authority to claim total ownership of the result. Second, epistemic unreliability: because the demon is a habitual liar, even its first-person confession regarding how the spell works cannot be treated as authoritative truth. Third, institutional competition: the entire pagan apparatus—Memphis, Cyprian bronze, learned priests, and scribal literacy—represents a formidable alternative pathway to supernatural power that directly threatens ecclesiastical authority.

The text also exposes a deeply complex view of coercion and agency. The demon complains of severe physical compulsion: Vim sustinui, invitus abductus sum ("I suffered force, was kidnapped against my will"). Erotic attraction and demonic possession are treated as fundamentally identical; the young man’s initial passion is described as an occupying "love-demon colleague" (collegam meum amoris daemonem). Love-magic is presented not as the creation of affection, but as the redirection of an existing state of demonic possession. In this framework, the young woman's personal consent and human agency are completely bypassed.

Furthermore, the narrative provides a vivid snapshot of late antique social reality. We see a wealthy young man capable of funding a year-long international journey for personal erotic ends; a "virgin of God" whose religious vow turns her into a contested prize; parents who instinctively turn to a local ascetic holy man during a domestic crisis; and the threshold treated as a naturally charged, liminal space. The curse tablet here is not an exotic artifact of fringe religion, but a routine instrument of applied social engineering deployed when standard courtship fails.

The narrative's final detail is especially telling: after restoring the young woman to sanity, Hilarion increpuit virginem, cur fecisset talia, per quae daemon intrare potuisset—he harshly rebukes her for allowing the demon entry in the first place. The victim of the magic is subjected to immediate pastoral discipline. The ascetic ideal demands an unbreachable spiritual fortress, operating on the assumption that a properly guarded Christian virgin should remain impervious to demonic intrusion. Pastoral care and moral culpability arrive hand in hand.

Finally, the demon in this passage is not a distant, shadowy ruler of the underworld, but an active intermediary entity operating within the human domain. His physical confinement beneath the threshold reflects the same logic that drove people to deposit defixiones in tombs, wells, and doorways: these were permeable boundary points connecting human living space with the realm of spirits and the dead. Placing a binding tablet subter limen routes a supernatural agent directly through a household entry point.

The demon's voice is surprisingly bureaucratic and aggrieved rather than terrifying. He complains about being kidnapped, bound, and subjected to tortures (cruces et tormenta), expressing nostalgic regret for the easy targets in Memphis whom he used to deceive with dreams. He acts less like an underworld monarch and more like an overworked, reluctant employee of the supernatural realm—revealing a late antique worldview in which the unseen realm was populated, hierarchical, highly negotiable, and above all, available for practical human use.

Ultimately, Jerome acknowledges that curse tablets achieve tangible results, redefines their mechanism through Christian demonology, and then claims absolute authority over the entities involved. The dangers he highlights are fundamentally jurisdictional: who receives credit for the cure, whose expertise is legitimate, and whether a material object or a holy man possesses true supernatural power. It stands as a text about the Church's annexation of a thriving folk technology within a society where love, status, gender, and literacy all intersected at the threshold of a house.

Folio 166r showing an exorcism, from Très Riches Heures (1412-16), one of the most important illuminated manuscripts of the fifteenth century

——

“Human Sacrifices”

Before I can analyze the passages, it needs to be acknowledged that these three passages are doing very different work, and distinguishing their genres matters enormously for how we evaluate them as historical evidence.

For instance, Cicero’s speech against Vatinius is high-stakes courtroom invective (invective). Vatinius is painted as a moral freak: a sham Pythagorean who hides immania et barbara mores ("monstrous and barbarian customs") behind a facade of learning (hominis doctissimi nomen), who inferorum animas elicere ("drags up the ghosts of the dead"), and who puerorum extis deos manis mactare ("sacrifices to the dead gods with the entrails of boys"). The political thrust comes at the end, where Cicero accuses him of despising the very auspices upon which Rome was founded—asking quae te tanta pravitas mentis tenuerit, qui tantus furor ("what great crookedness of mind possessed you, what frenzy so great?"). The charge of human sacrifice is a rhetorical mechanism used to expel Vatinius from the boundaries of Roman civic religion (religio).

And then there's Philostratus's account of Apollonius of Tyana, written long after the reign of Domitian, which is biographical apologetic. The charge is again paida temonta (παῖδα τεμόντα, "cutting a boy"), but Philostratus plays the ambiguity for quick wit, clarifying that the prosecution alleged paida thysais hyper mantikēs (παῖδα θύσαις ὑπὲρ μαντικῆς, "you sacrificed a boy for divination") based on ta neara tōn splangchnōn (τὰ νεαρὰ τῶν σπλάγχνων, "the fresh guts of the young"). The added detail—that the indictment included accusations about Apollonius's amphechonē (ἀμπεχόνη, "dress") and diaita (δίαιτα, "lifestyle"), alongside the fact that hyph' hōn proskyneisthai (ὑφ' ὧν προσκυνεῖσθαι, "by some you are worshipped")—demonstrates how occult practices were routinely packaged with general social deviance.

Lastly, Dio Cassius offers senatorial history, and he is the most intriguing witness because he is actively adjudicating between accounts. He sets Hadrian’s official explanation—that Antinous simply fell into the Nile (es ton Neilon ekpesōn)—against popular rumor, and then explicitly declares, with the loaded phrase hōs ta alēthē (ὡς τὰ ἀληθῆ, "as the truth is"), that Antinous was sacrificed (iethē). He then supplies both a psychological motive and a ritual mechanism, noting that Hadrian was periergos (περιεργός, "meddlesome") and used manganeiai (μαγγανείαι, "sorceries of all kinds").

Therefore, when lined up chronologically, the recurrence across these texts is striking: a young boy victim (puer or pais), divination performed through his internal organs (viscera / splangchna) or his soul (psychē), a ritual framed with foreign, Egyptian, or Pythagorean associations, and an accusation deployed either as a political smear or a charge to be refuted (sykophantoumetha). Spread across nearly three centuries, this identical narrative shape is the signature of a literary topos rather than a documentary report. Real human actions vary widely; rhetorical tropes repeat. What this specific topos accomplishes is the marking of an absolute moral boundary and taboo. Historians are of the opinion that "proper" Roman religion, in its self-image, strictly rejected human sacrifice. While marginal exceptions existed in archaic history (such as the devotio), accusing a contemporary public figure of human sacrifice was an efficient way to brand him as entirely foreign and dangerous (immanis et barbarus). These texts tell us far more about elite anxieties regarding illicit foreign superstitio and extreme taboos than they do about routine historical practices.

Yet the taboo persists in the ancient imagination because the underlying ritual logic it encodes was real and coherent. In Graeco-Roman magical thought, the untimely dead (aōroi) and those who died by violence or drowning (biaiothanatoi) possessed the most volatile and usable spirits, whose ghosts (inferorum animae) could be commanded by a practitioner. Executing or coercing a youth created precisely such an agent on demand. Reading Dio Cassius against this ritual framework reveals a striking detail: he writes that Hadrian ethelousiou psychēs es ha ebouleto edeeto (ἐθελούσης ψυχῆς ἐς ἃ ἐβούλετο ἐδεῖτο, "needed a willing soul for his project"). This is not random detail, but the precise structure of a devotio—a voluntary substitute-death offered to secure a profound supernatural benefit. This aligns with the later Historia Augusta tradition, which reports that Antinous se devovisse pro Hadriano ("devoted himself on Hadrian’s behalf") in connection with the emperor's magical and astrological interests. The sacrifice narrative is therefore not merely baseless slander; it possesses an internally consistent mechanism that maps directly onto attested ancient beliefs about the dead.

Several historical factors give the Antinous narrative additional weight. Egypt was universally recognized in the Mediterranean as the supreme homeland of magganeiai (μαγγανείαι, "magical arts"). Antinous fit the exact profile of the ideal necromantic agent: young, drowned (a classic biaiothanatos), and in the sacrifice version, ethelousios (ἐθελούσιος, "voluntary"). Furthermore, the aftermath of his death was extraordinary and unprecedented: total heroisation, the founding of Antinoopolis at the site of his drowning, sacred images erected schedon eph' hapasē tē oikoumenē (σχεδὸν ἐφ' ἅπασῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ, "over almost the entirety of the inhabited world"), and his explicit assimilation to Osiris, the drowned and resurrected lord of the underworld. This level of religious devotion goes far beyond standard imperial grief; it resembles the treatment owed to a mortal who has been converted into a powerful supernatural mediator.

However, significant counterweights undermine the "sacrifice" narrative. Chiefly among them, Dio Cassius is openly hostile toward Hadrian, explicitly characterizing him as obsessed with manteiai kai manganeiai (μαντείαι καὶ μαγγανείαι, "divinations and sorceries"), meaning the sacrifice story perfectly serves his hostile characterization. The mundane explanation—an accidental drowning in the Nile—requires no elaborate magical apparatus, making the sacrifice story easily readable as a dramatic rumor constructed after the fact to explain an unseemly imperial tragedy. Furthermore, late sources like the Historia Augusta are notoriously unreliable, frequently elaborating on existing rumors regarding astrology and self-devotion rather than providing independent historical confirmation.

Finally, these texts do not provide enough solid ground to prove that Hadrian sacrificed Antinous, but the internal coherence of the ritual logic keeps the possibility from being dismissed outright as pure nonsense. What the three passages conclusively demonstrate is that a youth sacrificed for divination (puerorum extis deos manis mactare / paida thysais hyper mantikēs) was an off-the-shelf narrative mold into which any suspicious or extraordinary death could easily be poured. In form, the passages function as political and moral invective, but in substance, that invective relies on real, clandestine necromantic practices that haunted the ancient imagination. The primary value of these narratives lies not in establishing the physical facts of Antinous's death, but in revealing how Romans conceptualized power, magic, and the underworld. To accuse Hadrian of sacrificing his favorite was to declare that the emperor himself had crossed a fatal boundary into the occult and foreign world of the dead.

Statue of Antinous as Osiris, 131-138 AD, probably found in the Antinoeion at Hadrian's Villa (a sanctuary dedicated to Antinous), Vatican Museums (21761025491)

*plays I Put a Spell on You*

Unit 3 (Epigraphy) - Forum

epigraphy - tablet 186

Epigraphy Discussion 200

Defixiones Unit 3