“Catianos offers up to the god…”: new Celtic curses from Roman Britain

Curses, written on lead tablets, were an extremely common form of magic across the ancient Mediterranean. Cursing in this way was one of the cultural practices brought to Britain by the Romans, and was enthusiastically adopted: we have large numbers of them, mostly written in Latin. The inhabitants of Roman Britain seem to have been particularly bothered by theft, and also particularly bloodthirsty in the punishments they devised for those they cursed.

The recent publication of the tablets from the temple of Mercury at Uley (in Gloucestershire) include two which are written in British Celtic, which is otherwise attested only in two or three other curses. In this talk we will discuss some of the particular features which are characteristic of Latin curses from Britain, and present our reading and analysis of the Uley tablets in Celtic. We will compare them with the Latin curse texts from Britain and elsewhere, and with evidence for curses written in contemporary Celtic languages in Britain and Gaul.