Short Stuff: Curse Tablets

if you think about it. Yeah, I never had heard of these before. Uh. These are what kind of what it sounds like. It's a tablet? Uh. This is generally ancient rome or grease with a curse inscribed upon it. Uh. And you would generally inscribe this curse um after somebody's death, right, not neces necessarily, not necessarily though there's one, a famous one in POMPEII that somebody affixed to a tomb so you could do it after death. And what you were

essentially saying, do you want to read that one? Sure you ready? I'm ready? And this comes to our friends from house stuffworks Dot com in Ancient Roman, ancient Greece. Stranger, stay a short while if it is not too troublesome, and learn what to avoid. This man, who I hoped was a friend of mine, brought prosecutors to me, a k A. Persecutors sort of, I think the literal pink you suit him? Okay, prosecutors to me, and oh yeah sure, and instigated proceedings. I am grateful to the gods and

my innocence, colon. I am free from all trouble. He who deceived us, may he not receive the pennates, which are the household gods, nor the underworld. So what this guy who cursed this this other person's tomb was saying, is this guy's a jerk. I hope that his his soul basically doesn't even make it to the afterlife. That essentially he's just doomed to wander aimlessly for eternity because

he sued me once. That's right. And this is a great example of a sort of a standard issue cursed tablet, also known at times as a uh here we go the fixione. Wow nice, I was gonna say the E on the end and pinch my four finger and thumb together. The fixion. Yeah, I think that's that's it. You might be right, but this was a common practice at various times through the ancient times. And uh, they were not necessarily always written on the same thing. Sometimes it was papyrus.

Sometimes I believe they found lamps and pieces of clay and things like that. It kind of depends on how much money you had. Um, but there was a lot of lead because of the silver mining operations, especially near Athens, and so lead turned out to be a really great sort of permanent thing that you could carve something on

and apparently looks really cool when carved upon. Yeah, there's somebody interviewed in the House Stuff Works article that said, you know when you when you write on it, when you carve it, it has like this kind of like a silvery line that really kind of pops I guess against like the dull the dullness of the oxidized lead. And then also it's just easy to write and let you can carve in it pretty easily. You don't have to be like a silver smith of any sort to

do that. You can just be an average smoke with something sharp. That's right. Uh, there was a historian too. They talked to that said that it kind of came and went throughout history. But it, interestingly, it was like a real fad and then went a way really quickly. Each time that happened. It wasn't like a gradual rise and fall. They described it as sharp spikes and popularity. Yeah,

and I saw that it was. Um, it was a The time that it popped up was somewhere around like five hundred BC too, maybe three fifty BC is when it first starts. And um, if you'll remember Chuck from our bicameralism episode, that's about the time people got their their brain their consciousness in order and started to get the superstitious because the gods had abandoned them. Interesting, I think so too. I wonder if this has anything to do with that. Yeah, I mean sure, it might have

just been part of that time. You know, why not Julian James hypothesis wasn't scientific. I can add to it anyway. I like, all right, so let's it's very smugged the way he said that, I liked it. Uh, You're that always reminds me and somebody hear the word smug when Tom Cruise talked to Matt Lower about being smug. Oh, yeah, no,

I never saw that. Oh, it's one of the great Of course, Matt Lower ended up being a creepy, so I'm not defending him, but I think he was talking about scientology and he just kept I don't know, he's talking about glib Sorry, Yeah, that's right, I have seen that. Yeah, good clip. All right, let's take a break and ponder tom cruisiness and uh, we'll be back to talk about curse tablets right after this. That's y s game that

you should know that we should know that knows. But Josh Clark, so one of the things that people seem to do, and this was like when when they were in fashion, when curse tablets were in fashion, um, everybody was into him. But it seems like one of the things that you would do was like curse your rivals. Um,

sometimes your rival in politics, your rival in business. I think some people cursed the rival chariot teams to their favorite chariot teams, which is really lunkheaded, but it like it just goes to show people have been lungheaded for thousands of years, right, there's always been lucks. Yeah, your neighbors, especially if you have some sort of dispute, anyone who takes you to court. Um. And then also people um,

who are romantic rivals to somebody you like. I saw one that basically said, may I think Helen be bound when she tries to flirt with or have sex with you know, the dude that I like, whatever his name was, I don't remember, um, And that basically she was saying, like, please, God's intervene and keep her from being able to perform in the sack with um, Aristophanes, Let's say, who I'm neverking was a man or Romulus, by the way, smells

bad and has a small pep. Yeah. But the whole thing was, um, The whole thing was that you were basically calling upon the gods. You were invoking the gods to to do something bad to this person that you did not like. Yeah. And uh So, as you would imagine, if you had a lot of money, you were probably more educated. You could probably spell and write these things yourself. But if you were wealthy, you probably paid someone to do it, maybe beautifully. Um, But like you said, all

stripes did it. So if you didn't have a lot of money, that may have been one like on a shard of clay, and you would go to you may not be able to read or write, so you would go to a magician, and these magician how is described in this House of Works article, where like contract attorneys, and they would kind of give you a template and have blanks, and you know, say, fill in the blanks with like who's your grievance? Uh? What's his name? Uh? And what was the grievance? And then they would sort

of fill this thing in and Fred Flintstone style. And apparently there were times even where they found some examples of these square that the name or the grievance was so long that they had to kind of squish it in and on these template forms, which is really funny that if you think about it. Yeah, and also it sounds like an ancient mad lib, but magic mad lib basically, yeah, exactly.

So um, these things got so popular and so widespread that in some of the Cursed tablets they'll find like clauses that say, and if the other person finds out that I've cursed them and they try to reverse curse me, then I am rubber in their glue in that case, and their curse will bounce off of me and stick to them instead, right, And they would say, what is rubber. I mean, let's let's just step back for a second.

Took or essentially talking about the same thing, a cursed tablet and saying I'm rubber in your glue is basically the same thing. I just think we should point that out. Yeah, and it's funny. I do need to poke a little fun in this article because I didn't include it for your I should have included so you could have a laugh. Year deleted it at the end. It was talking about where these things kind of when they fell out of popularity.

It's like, well, some argue that even though they don't do anymore, our society is still very much like this, and just take a look at Twitter, a sort of modern version of a curse stuff. I gotta laugh. Yeah, yeah, I guess I kind of yeah, yeah, I think they

were cursing Twitter. Just then. Another thing too, is there was a person interviewed that said that they were like a magical arms race because there'd be curses counter curses, amulets like the evil Eye, you know, or the eye of Osiris, maybe the very famous like amulet or symbol that was worn to ward off curses. Like I think that was the rubber that you would wear so that the curses would bounce off of you like I'm looking at you, buddy, basically, and then that's it is. Tablets

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