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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 June 2024
In Part 1 of this book, we have felt the heavy materiality of defixiones, the weight of the lead despite the thinness of the hammered sheets onto which letters were inscribed. These curses may have been nailed or suspended or deposited in gestures and with archival practices that paralleled contemporaneous, official legal modes of display and collection. Justin, a Christian, similarly displayed documents seeking justice by citing or appending them to his Apologies. Sotērianos placed a judicial curse in a shaft or well in Amathous, Cyprus, along with many other such lead and selenite tablets, participating in another materially constituted archival practice. The very substance and location of the curse against Babylas were mechanisms for its successful working: the cool of the lead, the watery chill of the well. Drawing upon the coldness and deadness of lead to chill or thwart the tongue of a speaker was a common strategy of curse tablets. These substantial and sensory elements were essential to the ritual efficacy of the curse.
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