In the ancient Greek world, from the archaic period to late antiquity, cursing was a common way for individuals to express anger and to obtain justice. For women, in particular, who did not have access to legal forms of retribution, cursing provided a means to achieve revenge within socially acceptable roles and practices. Ancient curses can be divided into two types: verbal curses (personal utterances wishing evil to someone without any reference to divine intervention) and cursing-prayers (requests to divine powers). Curses of both sorts functioned as performative utterances, in that the individual ‘is doing something rather than merely saying something’. In the case of the former, the very fact that one states ‘I curse the thief who stole my belongings’ is enough to render the thief as cursed. Cursing-prayers, while less explicit than verbal curses as performative utterances, were also perceived to effect real change. Although when a woman says ‘I hand over the thief who stole my belongings to the goddess so that she may punish him’, this utterance does not punish the thief in and of itself, it nonetheless enlists the goddess to punish the thief for his or her crime. However, in order for a curse-prayer to ‘work’ certain criteria need to be fulfilled: the speaker must utter the curse in the proper way, be in the right setting, and be recognised as possessing the proper authority to make the curse.

The fact that both verbal curses and cursing-prayers are themselves perceived as actions made them especially useful tools for women and those individuals who did not have access to physical or legal forms of revenge. As literary examples and ancient cursing tablets make clear, in certain contexts ancient Greek women used cursing-prayers as their main means of achieving revenge. Scholars have extensively explored Greek and Roman curses and their relationship with prayer, and have tried to highlight the differences between cursing practices attested in inscriptions and papyri versus literary examples. Taking both kinds of documents into account, this chapter explores the relationship between curses and gender in ancient literary texts tablets, demonstrating the ways in which they could provide women with an empowering means of achieving vengeance.