Ever wanted to read a Roman Curse?

Actually, I just posted this to a random question asked. I supposed I could also post it here.

Below is an example of a Roman Curse I translated some time ago. I have hidden it in spoilers for anyone who does not wish to read it. The curse tablet was made of lead and found in Minturna, Italy, nailed to the back of a woman's skull. The assumption is this was done to bind the shade of the woman to carry out the curse. If she carried it out, the curser would set her free, if she didn't, she'd be forced to waste away at the site of her burial. It's written in phonetic Latin and it took weeks to translate. I had to cross reference a lot, especially to translate the final corrupted bit. I wrote an article to go with it. Feel free to ask any questions. Here it is!

My Translation (see below for the original Latin and the edition):

!Gods of the Underworld, I commend and 1!<

!hand over to you Tychenen Carisi, if you have !<

!any inviolability, whatever he is doing, that it may !<

!all plunge into adversity. Gods of the underworld, !<

!I commend to you his organs, his complexion, 5!<

!his beauty, his head, his hair, his shade, his brain, !<

!his forehead, his brows, his eyes, his nose,!<

!his chin, his cheeks, his lips, his word, his breath, !<

!his neck, his collarbone, his shoulders, his heart, his lungs, !<

!his intestines, his stomach, his arms, his fingers, 10!<

!his hands, his navel, his bladder, his thighs, !<

!his knees, his shins, his ankles, the soles of his feet,!<

![and] his toes.!<

!Gods of the Underworld, if I will have seen that man wasting away, !<

![and] that offering is pleasing to do for you, 15!<

! on account of the festival to the honoured gods,!<

![illius… ta (the text becomes corrupted here)!<

!peculium] you waste away !<

!(In this last bit here, I theorize that the curser is giving the condition by which the spirit who will enact the curse can be set free. So it should read something like: If you carry out this curse, I set you free. If you do not, remain here and waste away).!<

Original phonetic Latin:

!dii iferi vobis comedo si quicua sa- 1!<

!ctitates hbetes ac tadro Ticene!<

!Carisi ququd acat quod icidat!<

!omnia in adversa dii iferi vobis!<

!comedo ilius . memra colore 5!<

!ficura caput capilla umbra cereb-!<

!ru frute supe…..ia os nasu!<

!metu bucas la….rbu vitu!<

!colu iocur umeros cor fulmo-(nes)!<

!itestina vetre bracia dicit- 10!<

!os manu ublicu visica femen-(a)!<

!cenua crura talos planta!<

!tieidos!<

!dii iferi si elud vider . dabescete!<

!vobis sactu ilud libns ob anu- 15!<

!versariu facere dibus par-!<

!entibus ilius….ta!<

!peculiu tabescas.[1]!<

Corrected Latin:

!Dii i(n)feri, vobis com(m)e(n)do, si qui[q]ua(m) sa(n)- 1!<

!ctitat[i]s h(a)bet[i]s ac t(r)ad{r}o T[y]c(h)ene(n)!<

!Carisi quodqu[o]d a[g]at quod i(n)cida(n)t!<

!omnia in adversa. Dii i(n)feri, vobis!<

!com(m)e(n)do il(l)ius . mem(b)ra, colore(m), 5!<

!fi[g]ura(m), caput, capill[os], umbra(m), cereb-!<

!ru(m), fru(n)te(m), supe[rcil]ia, os, nasu(m),!<

!me(n)tu(m), buc(c)as, la[bra, ve]rbu(m), v[ul?]tu(m),!<

!col(l)u(m), i[e]cur, (h)umeros, cor, (p)ulmones,!<

!i(n)testina{s}, ve(n)tre(m), bra(ch)ia, di[g]it- 10!<

!os, manus, u(m)b(i)licu(m), v[e]sica(m), fem[i]na!<

![g]enua, crura, talos, planta(s),!<

![d]i[g]i[t]os.!<

!Dii i(n)feri, si [illam?] vider[o] [t]abesce(n)te(m),!<

!vobis sa(n)ctu(m) il(l)ud lib(e)ns ob an(n)u- 15!<

!versariu(m) facere dibus par-!<

!entibus il(l)ius… ta!<

!peculiu(m) tabescas.[2]!<

[1] Original, unadapted text. Audollent, 1904, 249.

[2] Audollent’s critical edition, 1904, 249-250. Letters encased in (parentheses) indicate a near certain edition; those in [brackets] are less certain, though likely; and those in {braces} are uncertain.

Week 42

 

Giovanni Amendola was an Italian publicist and politician – an active intellectual already before the war, he is probably better known for his resolute opposition to the growing fascist regime in the mid 1920s and for his eventual death in 1926 a few weeks after one last violent aggression.

During the conflict he had established himself as one of the most trusted collaborators of Luigi Albertini, Chief Editor of the liberal conservative newspaper Corriere della Sera, acting as both a political correspondent and an opinion writer. Together they took part to the battle for the principle of the nationalities and were key figures of the so called “liberal interventionism”, i.e. that fraction of the Italian interventionism that was alternative to both the nationalists and the radical left. After the War Amendola would increase his political commitment becoming one of the leading figures of the last Italian liberal group.

But in the early days of August, he was offered a new job, not a properly political one. But as we'll see, that's a tenuous distinction.

 

Giovanni Amendola to Luigi Albertini Rome, August 7^th 1918

Dear Editor in Chief, yesterday evening Friedländer asked for a meeting in order to discuss a matter of strict confidentiality. - I agreed for one in the morning at 11.00 – and in fact he came at the chosen time. I had never met him in person until this morning. Friedländer told me – as something to be held absolutely private – that he had resolved to retire from the direction of the Stefani, and offered me to take his place. […] to my inquiries about the financial situation of the Agency, he replied that the Agency could be transformed financially by means of the constitution of a [anonymous] society able to ensure its development. The offer caught me unprepared: since such an eventuality had never crossed my mind. - I replied to Friedländer with gratitude, but added that I felt two fundamental obstacles to accepting his offer: that is my active interest towards political life and the close political and personal relation that tie me to you and your Corriere, relations in virtue of which I do not only consider myself a publicist with contractual obligations towards your newspaper, but above that a partner in a political and moral enterprise. I added though, that as a sign of respect […] and to show that I was not oblivious to the importance of the offer made to me […] I felt a duty to think about it for a few days before giving him my definitive reply. Friedländer insisted with various arguments the importance and the possibilities connected to the position he offered me and left in the agreement that he would receive my answer within a week. […] In a week I mean to tell him that, with all taken into account, the two obstacles before the acceptance of his offer are, for me, insuperable. I do nonetheless remit this definitive answer to your judgment and your advice, that I ask you to grant me with the most open frankness […] What's your opinion of this abrupt and sudden offer? You could also consider […] independently from the hypothesis of my direction of the Stefani, the opportunity of taking interest, either directly, or through me, in the creation of a society with the purpose of taking up the handling and development of the Agency. In postponing my definite answer by a few days my intent was to both show respect for the offer laying the ground for a gentle refusal, and at the same time to gain time enough to inform you and give you time to consider if it might be of any interest to you. […]

 

The Italian Agenzia Stefani, established in 1853, had been one of the many minor press agencies created in Europe during the second half of the XIX Century in the shade of the major ones; it followed the French Havas-Bullier (1835), the German Wolff (1849) and the British Reuters (1851) – the American Associated Press had been founded in 1846 but it remained substantially out of the European market until around the time of the Great War. Soon those three groups (or rather the Havas and Reuters) established a monopoly on the European market of news and information, expanding to include advertisement and publishing – the agencies had specific relations with the many newspapers that made use of their new and with the governments that exchanged exclusive information with a measure of control over each “national” market: the British Empire, the French “Empire” and the Prussian Kingdom served as the intitial political counterparts of the three agencies.

The small Italian agency had been founded more or less with the same purpose by Guglielmo Stefani, a Venetian exile who had worked in a small independentist publication, the Caffè Pedrocchi - from the famous meeting point of the Paduan patriots – until after the riots of 1848 he had been forced to leave the Austrian lands and relocate to Piedmont, like many Italian intellectuals did in the years of the unification. There he had received encouragement by Prime Minister Camillo Cavour, who had already supported Stefani's (governative) newspaper La Gazzetta Piemontese to found his own press agency, in the context of the various social and economical modernization plans undertaken by the Count of Cavour during the decade 1850-60.

In 1861 Stefani died and the agency fell progressively into the sphere of influence of the Havas – relations not incidentally paralleled by those between the French Second Empire and the newborn Italian one.

In order to remain operational, the Stefani, not unlike any other private agency at the time, needed to find an agreement with the government for the use of the communication infrastructure – the telegraph and later radiophonic network. Such necessity would be eventually used as a leverage by Prime Minister Francesco Crispi to wrestle the Italian agency out of the Havas grasp – Crispi's foreign politics was markedly anti-French (in 1881 the French III Republic had established a protectorate on the Tunis region – against the Italian ambitions over the area and in opposition to pre existing economical agreements between Italy and the Tunis authorities – an episode generally referred as “the Tunis slap”) and favored an agreement with Bismark's Germany.

The hegemony of the Reuters and Havas companies (the German Continentalen Telegraphen Companie - the evolution of the Wolff – had a much smaller share of the market) was seen as the result of the agreement with “governments that held hegemonic power over the world” - as an official publication from the Italian Foreign Office in 1891 explained – that led those groups to become “formidable bodies, for influence, technical proficiency, abundance of means and advertisement” so that “any effort undertaken [to challenge their position] would have been vain”. The publication further noted how the Italian news spread by the Havas were “almost always false and partial”.

In the eyes of the Italian authorities – already before the age of mass information – the monopoly of the Reuter-Havas cartel over European information was a significant political threat. But Crispi's design for an independent Italian agency, or for a league of the smaller Italian, German and Austrian companies, had – like many other of Crispi's plans – to to face the reality of the much stronger influence of the two companies over the whole European system (at the time the Reuters was already discussing a new agreement with the German company, and most of the political and financial intricacies were a result of the Reuters and Havas splitting their relative markets). Thus in order to escape the Havas the Stefani eventually had to sign a deal with the Reuters.

In the Summer of 1890 the Agenzia Stefani had severed its direct ties with the Havas and established two agreements: one with the German Continental (signed on July 6^th 1890 and notably so by Crispi's personal secretary Edmondo Mayor des Planches, for both the Italian government and the Stefani) for news coming from the “Eastern market”, from Scandinavia to the Balkanic area, with the Italian company paying in exchange a sum of 15,000 Lire per year as well as providing them with news on the internal situation. A second one was signed on July 16^th with the Reuters for the “Western market” and the colonies, including the US, China and Japan (as well as all the news shared between the Havas and the Reuters). The Stefani assumed the obligation to send all its information to the Reuters as well as paying a sum of 35,000 Lire per year (with the Reuters relieving the obligation for 15,000 towards the Austro-German Companies).