Home -> Articoli -> Roma - Magia

The cursed charioteer

by Eugenia Salza Prina RicottiI

The charioteer tabula –
The “Tabulae Maledictoriae” were one of the preferred way that ancient Romans used to curse someone: They trusted the strength of this anathema to bodily harm their enemies. Lead doesn’t rust or decay and this kind of sorcery lasted in the centuries. We still find this wicked tablets in our excavations. One of the longest, best detailed and very amusing one was directed against a Circus charioteer. There is no doubt that the person who either prepared the leaden tablet, or paid some magician for doing it, was either a fan of the races who supported a rival of the unhappy Eukerius – so the target of this witchcraft was named - or just hated him because handsome, strong, brawny as he was and, and what is more, also a star of the flat racing and thus extremely fascinating to women, he had stolen his girl.
“Divine beings and holy deities, I beseech all of you to join with me and improve this curse tying, enchanting, withstanding, hampering, destroying, killing, smashing Eukerius, the charioteer, and all his horses. Make him do a wrong departure, keep him to go slow in the race, condemn him to not overtake other chariots, nor turn well or win any prize: In a contest with another charioteer make him lose. If he his behind some competitor don’t allow him to surpass the other man chariot, on the contrary hit him with an accident, let him be shattered, and both in the morning and the afternoon races brake him by al your might. Now! Now! Quick! Quick!”
This practice with the anathema inscribed on a leaden tablet was called with the Latin word “defixio” derived from the verb “defigere” = to nail, fix or declare. With this special sorcery a person could consecrate to the infernal divinities the ones on whom he wanted to take vengeance. However it was necessary to strictly follow some rules. First of all one had to write clearly the name of the designed victim (just as we do today on our bureaucratic forms who imperiously order us “write in block letters). Then, to avoid any misunderstanding, it was opportune after the name of the cursed person, to write also his mother’s one. Then it was necessary to curse the hated being and to explicitly dedicate him to the gods with all his body, or at least with an important part of it (usually with his tongue, but also hands, nose, ears and brains could do). To all this were added drawings or funerary symbols, magic signs of alphabetic kind, and special senseless and mysterious words (such as “bescu” or “berebescu”, “ararura” “bazagra” and so on). At last the leaden tablet had to be descended in a well or in an hot spring so to put it in communication with the “Inferi”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
M.A LEVI, Roma Antica, U.T.E.T.
ROMOLO STACCIOLI, Quando si rovescia il sale- in Archeo, Nº 45- Novembre 1988, pp. 126- 127