Chapter five of the first season of Rome (2005), the hit historical series on HBO. After being slapped and abandoned by Julio César (Ciarán Hinds), Servilia (Lindsay Duncan), her until then favorite lover, is sitting at the table in front of an iron, presumably made of lead, on which she traces letters with a punch. and images while cursing his former love in what seems like a ritual.
At the end, after folding the plate, he hands it over to his most faithful slave, Helena, who places it in a crack in the house where the Roman general lives for the spell to take effect. This is one of the few times, if not the only one, in which the cinema has addressed the rite of the tabellae defixionum (execration tablets), a very common magical procedure in the ancient Greco-Roman world that was used to harm a third, causing him -believed the instigator- any kind of misfortune, including death.
Although the main interested party appears in the scene as the performer of the ritual, it was not the most frequent. Normally a magician or sorcerer was used who had the means or knew how to dominate some being or divinity of the underworld capable of carrying out what was requested in the invocation. For believers, this guaranteed their positive outcome.
The favorite used to be Hecate, goddess of the three faces associated with witchcraft, who used to be found at crossroads. But any other being or chthonic divinity was worth, especially Hades (Pluto) or Persephone (Proserpina). Even the spirit of a deceased could serve.
A review of the works of important writers, such as Horace, Lucanus or Apuleius, reveals how widespread these magical practices were among their contemporaries, although sometimes the authors treat the subject with sarcasm.
According to Livy, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 BC) lifted the siege of Alexandria when the Roman ambassador Gaius Popilius began to draw a circle around him with his staff, a previous step in a well-known magic ritual. black.
In turn, Tacitus and Dion Casio narrate how, among the causes adduced to justify the death in 19 d. C. of Germanicus Caesar, nephew of the Emperor Tiberius, was having been the victim of magical practices, in addition to poisoning, at the hands of Gnaeus Calpurnio Piso and his wife Plancina.
And what exactly were the tabellae defixionum? With remote antecedents in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the closest precedents to execration leads, like so many other things in ancient Rome, must be found in Greece. During the fifth century B.C. C., they used to contain only brief lists of names, but, progressively, due to oriental influence, other texts began to be added that would lead to increasingly strange formulas, to which figures of all kinds and sizes were added, some of them of difficult understanding.
From there, its use spread throughout the Mediterranean basin. There are examples in different alphabets, although Latin and Greek are the most common, not being strange graphics of both in the same text.
Interestingly, regional characteristics have been found. Thus, the most complex and bombastic texts are those found in the eastern regions, which contrast with the sobriety of those from North Africa. There are scholars who consider that some of the leads found with the hitherto indecipherable Iberian writing correspond to those rituals.
Strictly speaking, the Roman tabella defixionis was a smooth lead tablet, more or less rectangular, millimeter thick, which usually did not exceed 20 x 10 centimeters, which does not prevent it from appearing with different shapes and sizes.
With the tablet in hand and a stylus to write, in the midst of all kinds of invocations and chants, the officiant traced on its surface not only the name of the person or persons to be harmed, but also the evils that would befall them. As we have already mentioned, the collaboration of certain evil spirits and beings was essential, in accordance with the belief that, through certain formulas and ritual invocations, they could not avoid complying with what the officiant ordered.
Nothing was left to chance and, as in other enchantment rituals, everything came together for the ultimate goal: the effectiveness of the spell. Hence, some grammatical errors and apparently fortuitous repetitions were not always such, regardless of the low cultural level of some of the officiants, but could be susceptible to interpretation within magical coordinates.
This is better understood if we remember that a cumulative effect used to be sought. The existence of these formulas, as well as a correct execution of the rituals, gave greater guarantees of success to the operation.
Its relationship with hell and death is amply justified both in the materials and in some of the rituals. The support par excellence was lead, due to its properties of heaviness, malleability and coldness, characteristics associated with a lifeless being and, therefore, with death. Hence their relationship with the beings of the underworld invoked in such ceremonies. For the rest, its affordable price and its easy writing contributed to its wide diffusion.
The text could not miss the name of the victim or victims, the spell and the diabolic being to which it was addressed. It was vitally important that the name of the injured party appear clear and clear and that there was no room for doubt, so that it only affected that person and not another person. For this reason, the complete affiliation was usually added and, if possible, the name of the parents.
On the contrary, the name of the promoter almost never appears, which is not surprising when dealing with a criminal action subject to criminal punishment. It must be taken into account that, within the magical mentality that presided over the ceremony, knowledge of someone’s name implied a certain power over it, and its written expression implied the durability of that influence.
In general, the language used tended to be archaic and stereotyped, with constant repetitions that recalled religious and judicial formulations. The lack of literary conditioning makes them, for the philologists of our days, a testimony of the language spoken at all times by the popular classes.
For the rest, indecipherable information used to be added, such as the so-called Ephesian letters (magic formulas formed by a set of unintelligible syllables), which, according to the officiants, formed part of an archaic language incomprehensible to humans, but perfectly recognizable to the divinities and beings of the underworld to which they were addressed.
In extreme cases, the letters appear inverted and a mirror is needed to be able to read them, which implied a change in the order of things in favor of hell. The ritual ended with the folding of the lead tablet, which was tied with a thread and pierced with a nail, symbols of the obligatory compliance of what was indicated there by the spirit or divinity to which it was addressed.
Later it used to be deposited in a tomb taking advantage of the hole for libations. With this, the spirit of the deceased was forced to serve as a vehicle to reach the god, or else to be the one who carried it out in an act of necromancy.
Places where a deceased person had died violently, such as those executed or gladiators, were considered especially effective, since, when they died before their time, they did not rest in peace and were propitious for these matters. Although, as we saw in the scene in Rome, they could also be placed in the victim’s house.
This is the explicit text of a tabella defixionis: “I execre [sacrifice, curse, deliver] you to the demons, Rufa. I execrate her hands, her teeth, her eyes, her arms, her belly, her breasts, her bones, her legs, her mouth, her feet, her forehead, her nails, her teeth, her navel. All the parts of Rufa’s body I execrate on this tablet.” Was the spell successful? You would have to ask Rufa.
Curiously, in those times similar formulas were also used to achieve love or the attention of a loved one, although the divinities referred to were usually different –Aphrodite (Venus) or Apollo–; the materials, papyrus or wood; and the formulas, friendly and propitiatory, because at no time was it intended to harm the loved one. In any case, the mentality of the instigator or officiant of these writings used to be similar to that of those who made execratory tablets.
