British and Roman Names from the Sulis-Minerva Temple: Two Solutions to an Old Problem

Abstract

Any personal name found within a charm fits into one of two categories: background name (a name of a deity/saint, referring to the author’s confessional identity) or subject name (the particular name of a person for/against whom the charm is intended). By the ‘subject name’ we understand any proper name in the text of a charm, which transforms a ‘recipe’ (the term of J. G. Gager) of a potentially magical text into a real magical performance. According to the observation of V. N. Toporov, introducing a personal name into a charm is mandatory: “A text of a charm is a mere text and nothing more, until a name is incorporated into its large immutable body. It is only adding the name, uttering it turns a verbal text into a ritual performance, that is, into an actual charm that works as such.” However, in many cases putting a name (subject name) into the charm is impossible, because it is not known either to the charmer or to his/her customer, the charm not being intended against a particular person. This is exactly the case with charms against thieves, which are quite widespread. Charms of this type are generally referred to as ‘Justice Prayers’. Tablets of that type were found in abundance during the excavations at the Bath site of the Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva. This site, with its natural hot spring that has been believed to have healing properties up to now, had already been worshipped in the pre-Roman era and was associated with the goddess Sulis whom the Romans would later identify with Minerva. Among the multiple archaeological findings made at the site (such as coins or votive images of body parts allegedly healed by the goddess), there are 130 lead tablets of diverse contents. Along with name lists and commendations addressed to the goddess, there is a considerable proportion of tablets that can also be categorized as Justice Prayers. Their authors address Sulis in order to return stolen things. The explainable absence of subject names in these texts seems to indicate that they were replaced in the charms (Graeco-Roman defixiones being indeed charms) by the formula identifying the potential victim as ‘the one who has stolen my property’. Therefore, the invariable rule of introducing a personal name into the body of the charm, predicted by Toporov, seems to be fulfilled: we can suggest that the formula the man who took it might be classified as a substitute for the unknown subject name and is functionally aimed at creating the kind of uniqueness a charm needs to be actualized. But it is to note, that Justice Prayers, unlike conventional defixiones, contain, as a rule, the name of the aggrieved party. Conceivably, it is their name that stands for the subject name of the charm. The analysis of the use of verbal tenses in the tablets discovered a strange tendency: people with Roman names use the perfect of the verb involare ‘to steal’ (involavit), but persons with Brittonic names prefer to use the second future of the same verb – involaverit. We could suggest, the Brittons used to write their tablets not post factum, but ante factum and transformed Roman curse tablets into a kind of protective amulets. Their use of Latin letters wasn’t a real ‘writing’, but rather an ‘iconic’ use of symbols characteristic to the stage of epigraphic. In this context, the tablet N 18 (with supposed Brittonic words) deserves a special attention.