alter the behavior or fortunes of oneself or others. The reason why so much attention
has been devoted to spells cast against others is that just such spells survive from
classical antiquity. They do so since they are written on lead or papyrus or on
fragments of pottery and deposited in graves and wells or in the sanctuaries of certain
deities such as Demeter, a goddess with connections to the underworld; they were
also placed in locations frequented by their intended victims, so they may be hidden
in a house or buried on a race-course.
The spells that have survived from the Greek world of the classical and hellenistic
periods are all written on thin plates of lead that have been folded and rolled up and
then pierced by a nail before being deposited with a body, which had probably been
buried fairly recently, or placed in the sanctuary of a deity. They are generally known
as curse tablets, although there are those who would prefer to call them binding
spells. (‘‘Binding spell’’ is not an entirely satisfactory way of referring to the lead
plates, since the term is too general. Verbs meaning ‘‘to bind’’ are used to character-
ize any sort of spell placed on another person, whether written on something or not.)
The Latin termdefixiois also used. The spell, if it is not just a list of names, as early
ones tend to be, is invariably in the first person singular and declares that the person at
whom it is directed is to be bound down or given over into the possession of the
deities or spirits of the dead. Sometimes the victim is consigned to the power of the
dead person in whose grave the lead tablet is placed. Although the spell is written in
the first person, the identity of the speaker is almost invariably concealed, no doubt
because the persons casting the spell thought it dangerous to reveal their identity.
It should always be kept in mind that there may have been more to putting a spell
on an enemy or on a person whose sexual favors were desired than depositing a rolled-
up lead tablet with a freshly buried body or secreting it in a sanctuary of Demeter.
Rituals may also have been performed. Nor should it be assumed that depositing a
lead tablet was a necessary element in putting a curse on someone. A poem by
Theocritus, who was active in Alexandria in the first quarter of the third century
BC, portrays a young woman, a courtesan trying through magical rituals to win back
the affections of a lover (Idyll2); lead tablets play no part in the binding spell she
places on her erstwhile lover.
There is a quasi-sociological thesis that seeks to explain why some Greeks had
recourse to the use of curse tablets that should be mentioned, since it has won a fair
measure of acceptance. The thesis has it that such magic-working is not particularly
sinister but is rather a reflection of the competitiveness or agonistic spirit that
characterizes classical Greek cities (Faraone 1991a:20). Because few curse tablets
that explicitly speak of killing the person cursed have survived, the conclusion
drawn is that the persons who cast them played by the rules governing the give and
take of competition in the Greek city-state. In fact, there are several spells that are
meant to kill their victim. Maggidis (2000:98) collects instances of curse tablets that
seem to call for the death of the victim, only to dismiss them. To his list should be
added a curse tablet of the first half of the fourth century BC from Pella in Macedonia
(SEG43.434), in which a woman seeks to prevent the union of the man who is the
object of her desires and a rival; she prays that the rival may perish wretchedly. For
further discussion of the tablet, see Voutiras 1998. It is true that one of the striking
features of life in certain Greek cities were the competitions in music, drama, and
athletics that the city or a religious sanctuary connected with it organized. It does not
362 Matthew W. Dickie