How Did Curse Tablets Work?
BrainStuff
iHeartPodcasts
4.0 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2022
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
In ancient Greece and Rome, cursing foes via written tablets was sometimes wildly popular. Learn how curse tablets worked in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/cultural-traditions/curse-tablets.htm
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Transcript
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| 0:32.0 | Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of iHeart radio. |
| 0:36.0 | Hey, Brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. |
| 0:39.0 | There's an inscription attached to the wall of a tomb in the ancient Italian city of Pompeii. |
| 0:45.0 | That's not honoring the deceased, far from it. It reads in translation, |
| 0:51.0 | stranger, stay a short while if it is not too troublesome and learn what to avoid. |
| 0:57.0 | This man who I hoped was a friend of mine brought prosecutors to me and instigated proceedings. |
| 1:03.0 | I'm grateful to the gods and my innocence. I'm free from all trouble. He who deceived us, |
| 1:09.0 | may he not receive the household gods nor the underworld. |
| 1:15.0 | This perhaps petty piece of archaeological graffiti is known as a cursed tablet. |
| 1:21.0 | It was written by an ex friend of the deceased and put on display for the whole city to read after his death. |
| 1:28.0 | Though it might seem strange today, writing cursed tablets was a common practice in ancient Roman Greece. |
| 1:35.0 | But what was the purpose of these objects aside from the obvious and who was writing them? |
| 1:40.0 | Today we're talking all things cursed tablets. |
| 1:44.0 | A cursed tablet essentially did what the name implies. They were objects, usually from ancient Greece and Rome, |
| 1:50.0 | upon which somebody wrote a curse. |
| 1:52.0 | For the article this episode is based on, how stuff works spoke with Dr. Stuart McKee, |
| 1:57.0 | a scholar of Roman history at Durham University in the UK. |
| 2:01.0 | He said, the standard definition is that their intention is to influence by supernatural means, |
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