Defixiones from Roman Carthage
At the close of the nineteenth century, Père Alfred Louis Delattre oversaw different archaeological campaigns in the necropolis and the amphitheater of Carthage. Among the remains unearthed by his team, an impressive collection of curse tablets (ca. 150) was discovered. The Carthaginian corpus, which was first published as part of Auguste Audollent’s Defixionum Tabellae (1904), has suffered many vicissitudes and is today scattered across three different countries.
These defixiones were written mostly (but not exclusively) by professional practitioners and revealed some of the ways in which magic permeated everyday life in Antiquity: from matters of justice and unrequited love to horse races and gladiatorial games. After giving a biography of this collection, I turn my attention to several of the texts originally published by Audollent, which I have recently restudied. I present some new readings and details about the curses' iconography before concluding with a preview of some of the still unpublished texts of the collection.
Time: 4th April 2024, 16.30
Venue: István Hahn room, Main building, 1st floor, 138.