Fearing the Gods?

The Self-Presentation of Practitioners in Curse Tablets from Britannia

Authors

  • Celia Sánchez Natalías University of Zaragoza

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.24365

Keywords:

defixiones, curse tablets, Brittania, ancient magic-religion, divine omniscience

Abstract

After some introductory remarks on current approaches to curse tablets, this article focuses on the defixiones from Britannia, analyzing the idiosyncratic features of this corpus to demonstrate how the island’s inhabitants adopted and then adapted this magico-religious technology. In particular, it examines a group of curses in which the name of the practitioner is clearly stated. This specific piece of information has been understood by previous scholarship as a reflection of the fearlessness that these practitioners (who were supposedly asking for something fair) felt towards the gods. Nevertheless, this article interprets the use of names as a reflection of the perception that these practitioners had of the god’s omniscience. Additionally, this research also takes into account the context where these artefacts were deposited and the array of rituals that took place in those spaces. Tellingly, most of the curse tablets from Britannia with this feature (i.e. the name of the practitioner) come from sanctuaries and shrines, a context that could have promoted different ways for practitioners to conceive of the cursing ritual and the types of relationship that it created between the author of the curse and the invoked deity.

Author Biography

  • Celia Sánchez Natalías, University of Zaragoza

    Celia Sánchez Natalías is currently a “Ramón y Cajal” postdoctoral fellow at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Her primary research interest focuses on ancient magic and religion, and more specifically, on the curse tablets (defixiones) from the Roman West. She is working on a new edition of the curses from Roman North Africa (Carthage and Hadrumetum).

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Published

2024-01-30

How to Cite

Sánchez Natalías, C. (2024). Fearing the Gods? The Self-Presentation of Practitioners in Curse Tablets from Britannia. Journal of Cognitive Historiography, 8(1-2), 94-114. https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.24365