Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts - Rodney Castleden - Страница 112

Romano-Celtic curses inscribed informally on sheets of lead are known by the Latin name defixiones, because of the form of words often used: somebody’s name followed by defictus est (“is cursed.”) They were deposited with other offerings in shrines. In effect the curse was offered up to the gods just like any other prayer.

In 1930 only four curse tablets were known, but subsequent excavations, at places such as Bath, and Uley in Gloucestershire, have revealed many more of them. They are difficult to read because they have been hastily scratched.

Curse tablets are of interest in their intensely personal character. A fine example was found at the Romano-Celtic sanctuary at Uley. It was written on both sides of a rectangular lead sheet 3.5 inches (9cm) across and then rolled up tightly, presumably so that no one except the god would be able to read it. When it was found, it had to be unrolled very carefully under laboratory conditions, to make sure that it did not break up. The conservation was successful, and this is how the inscription runs:

A reminder to the God Mercury from Saturnina, a woman, concerning the linen cloth she has lost. Let him who has stolen it have no rest until he brings the aforesaid things to the aforesaid temple, whether this is a man or a woman, slave or free. She gives a third part to the aforesaid god on condition that he exacts those things which have been written above. A third part of what has been lost is given to the god Silvanus on condition that he exact this whether [the culprit?] is a man or woman, slave or free.

This curse was left at the shrine, where a fine stone statue of Mercury presided; its head has survived. Where Saturnina wrote the name of the god Mercury, the name of another god, Mars-Silvanus, has been erased. The later reference to Silvanus confirms that the woman was depositing her curse with two gods, not just one, as an insurance. It also looks as if she had left a curse with Mercury before: this is “a reminder.” Whether Saturnina ever got her linen back we shall never know.

Some tablets sound more legalistic. One from Bath reads: “I have given the goddess Sulis six silver pieces which I have lost. It is for the goddess to extract it from the debtors Senicianus, Saturninus, and Anniola. This document has been copied.”

Some are difficult to translate because they have been written informally and ungrammatically, apparently in a rage. One of these, again from Bath, reads: “I curse whoever has stolen, whoever has robbed Deomorix from his house. Whoever is guilty may the god find him. Let him recover it with his blood and his life.” Deomorix was a Celt.

A tablet from Moorgate in London was written in a towering rage: “I curse Tretia Maria and her life and mind and memory and liver and lungs all mixed up together, her words, thoughts and memory, thus may she be unable to speak of things concealed…”

One from Harlow, addressed to Mercury, is not about theft—which most are—but about a love triangle: “I entrust to you my affair with Eterna and her own self, and may Timotneus feel no jealousy of me at risk of his life blood.”