PAST CRIMESdecapitated, their skulls placed between their knees or at their feet. One
was wearing heavy iron shackles on the ankles. All the bodies were of men,
and microscopic examination showed marks of axes or swords on their
bones. One burial had a large hole in the skull, and was buried face down.
It is now believed that these men were murdered as a result of the would
be emperor Caracalla’s vicious endeavours to seize the throne for himself.
He ordered purges across the empire, to rid himself of all possible
opposition, one of which took place inAD211, which would agree with the
dates for these skeletons. A number of prominent men in York were
publicly executed–we even know the names of two of them. One was a
tutor called Euodus, and another was Severus’own chamberlain, a man
called Castor, and it seems these unfortunate men paid the price of
Caracalla’s ambition–but after just five years, Caracalla was killed by one
of his own generals.^18
Black magic
Black magic was a crime that carried the death penalty. Even the imperial
family were at risk from attack by witches. According to the historian Tacitus,
when Augustus’grandson and Tiberius’heir, Germanicus, died inAD19, his
house was searched for evidence of witchcraft that might have caused his death.
The searchers found‘the remains of human bodies, spells, curses, leaden tablets
engraved with the name Germanicus, charred and bloodsmeared ashes, and
others of the implements by which it is believed the living soul can be devoted
to the powers of the grave.’
Ahead of the construction of an underground car park in the Piazza Euclid
in Rome, archaeologists found parts of a fountain dedicated to a minor Roman
goddess, Anna Perenna. Amongst the mud and rubble they found a cache of
‘voodoo’dolls and lead curse tablets that had apparently been hidden there in
the fourth centuryAD. Many of the dolls had been placed in lead canisters; on
one these was a thumbprint, that according to the Italian police fingerprint
laboratory, was probably that of a woman.
A curse found in a grave at Messina was rather specific–it named‘the
evildoer’Valeria Arsinöe, and wished that‘sickness and decay attack the
nymphomaniac!’
The popular impression was that witchcraft was women’s work, like the
use of poisons, although it was also common to implicate some men,
particularly if they came from Egypt or the east, where knowledge of medical
and sorcerous practices was believed to be both common and advanced.
These experimenters were in fact the forerunners of the much later famous