Welcome to the Tuesday Coffee Hour here on Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can hang out and talk about what’s going on in our worlds. I thought I’d start things off today by talking about curses.
First, a note on the word “curse.” It first appeared in late Old English in the early 11th century. It has no known linguistic relatives.
Archaeologists have recently uncovered and deciphered two 1,600-year-old curses from the late Roman Empire. The curses were written in Latin and Greek on thin lead tablets. The inscriptions include drawings of their intended victims and a snake-haired figure thought to be Hekate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft.
One of the tablets targets a Roman Senator called Fistus. The text demands:
“Crush, kill the senator Fistus. May Fistus dilute, languish, sink, and may all his limbs dissolve.”
The other tablet directs the curses toward a veterinarian named Porcello. The text reads:
“Destroy, crush, kill, strangle Porcello and his wife Maurilla.”
Have you ever thought about cursing a Senator, or a veterinarian, or some politician? If you were to write a curse on a lead tablet calling on Hekate, what would it say?
A statue of Hekate is shown above.
If you don’t want to curse, this is an open thread, so feel free to change the subject.