Publication details
Curse or court? Legal terms and context in the texts of curse tablets
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
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| Description | Two genres of Latin curses often contain legal terms or references to juridical language. The first are so-called legal or juridical curses (defixiones iudiciariae), related to court trials, documented on about 50 curse tablets. The authors of these curses attempted to prevent the opposing party from testifying or giving evidence against them in order to influence the future course of an ongoing legal case in their favour. These curses usually attack the opponent’s ability to speak and act rationally, making it difficult for them to win a lawsuit. The second group comprises so-called curses against thieves (defixiones in fures), also labelled as “prayers for justice”, documented on more than 100 curse tablets. The authors of these curses suffered some kind of loss or damage or were the victims of some kind of fraud. They often included their names and requested help and vengeance from local deities. The aim of the writers was sometimes to recover stolen things, but they mostly expressed only the wish to take “proper” revenge on a perpetrator, whose identity is often unknown, through the power of the gods; in other words, they request for the perpetrator to be punished. See nos. All these texts contain a large number of legal terms from Roman law, and their structure often imitates or paraphrases the formulations of the complaints. |
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