Greek Art in Motion

Studies in honour of Sir John Boardman on the

occasion of his 90th birthday

edited by
Rui Morais, Delfim Leão, Diana Rodríguez Pérez
with
Daniela Ferreira

Archaeopress Archaeology
Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
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 Contents

Preface ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1
John Boardman and Greek Sculpture �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3
Olga Palagia
Sanctuaries and the Hellenistic Polis: An Architectural Approach �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������14
Milena Melfi
‘Even the fragments, however, merit scrutiny’: Ancient Terracottas in the Field and the Museum ��������������������������������23
Lucilla Burn
The Good, the Bad, and the Misleading: A Network of Names on (Mainly) Athenian Vases� ��������������������������������������������31
Thomas Mannack

Studying Gems: Collectors and Scholars ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37

Claudia Wagner

Buildings and History ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������46

P. J. Rhodes

John Boardman at 90: ‘New’ Archaeology or ‘Old’? Confessions of a Crypto-Archaeologist ��������������������������������������������55

Paul Cartledge

Some Recent Developments in the Study of Greeks Overseas ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������59

Gocha R. Tsetskhladze

Sculpture
Godlike Images: Priestesses in Greek Sculpture �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������69
Iphigeneia Leventi

The Nude Constantinople: Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture at Byzantium according to the Greek Anthology ��������������������� 78
Carlos A. Martins de Jesus

Ornaments or Amulets: A Peculiar Jewel on Dedicatory Statues ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������85

Olympia Bobou

Architecture
Greek Emporios in Chios: The Archaeological Data from the Excavations of the Last Decades ����������������������������������������93
Kokona Roungou and Eleni Vouligea

Temples with a Double Cella: New Thoughts on a Little-Known Type of Temple ������������������������������������������������������������ 106
Ugo Fusco

i
Terracotas and Metal
Images of Dionysos, Images for Dionysos: The God’s Terracottas at Cycladic Sanctuaries ��������������������������������������������� 115
Erica Angliker

An Unusual Sympotic Scene on a Silver Cup from Ancient Thrace: Questions of Iconography and Manufacture ��������� 127
Amalia Avramidou

Forgeries in a Museum: A New Approach to Ancient Greek Pottery ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 136

Claudina Romero Mayorga

Beyond Trade: The presence of Archaic and Classical Greek Bronze Vessels in the Northern Black Sea Area �������������� 139
Chiara Tarditi

Greek Pottery
Makron’s Eleusinian Mysteries: Vase-Painting, Myth, and Dress in Late Archaic Greece ���������������������������������������������� 153
Anthony Mangieri

Timagoras: An Athenian Potter to be Rediscovered �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 164

Christine Walter

Revisiting a Plate in the Ashmolean Museum: A New Interpretation ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 174

Marianne Bergeron

The Greek Pottery of the Tagus Estuary ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 185

Ana Margarida Arruda and Elisa de Sousa

Vases on Vases: An Overview of Approaches�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 194

Konstantina Tsonaka

Intriguing Objects of Desire: Collecting Greek Vases, a Short History Unfolded ������������������������������������������������������������ 204
Daniela Freitas Ferreira

Youth in an Enclosed Context: New Notes on the Attic Pottery from the Iberian Tútugi Necropolis (Granada, Galera)���� 212
Carmen Rueda and Ricardo Olmos

An Overview of Brazilian Studies on Greek Pottery: Tradition and Future Perspectives ����������������������������������������������� 226
Carolina Kesser Barcellos Dias and Camila Diogo de Souza

Coins
Sculptures and Coins: A Contextual Case Study from Side ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 239
Alice Landskron

The Romanitas of Mark Antony’s Eastern Coins ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 249

João Paulo Simões Valério

War and Numismatics in Greek Sicily: Two Sides of the Same Coin �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 259
José Miguel Puebla Morón

ii
Iconography of Poseidon in Greek Coinage ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 264
María Rodríguez López

The Silver Akragatine Tetradrachms with Quadriga: A New Catalogue ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 276
Viviana Lo Monaco

Gems and Glass

Why was Actaeon Punished? Reading and Seeing the Evolution of a Myth ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 287
José Malheiro Magalhães

Greek Myth on Magical Gems: Survivals and Revivals ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 299

Paolo Vitellozzi

From Routine to Reconstruction ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������311

Susan Walker

Greek History and Archaeology

The Database of the Iberia Graeca Centre ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 325
Xavier Aquilué, Paloma Cabrera and Pol Carreras

The Greeks Overseas: A Bioarchaeological Approach ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 335

Tasos Zisis and Christina Papageorgopoulou

The Messenian Island of Prote and its Relation to Navigation in Greece and the Mediterranean���������������������������������� 343
Stamatis A. Fritzilas

Naukratis - Yet Again��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������355

Astrid Möller

The Tomb of the Roaring Lions at Veii: Its Relation to Greek Geometric and Early Orientalizing Art ��������������������������� 358
Gabriele Koiner

Perserschutt in Eretria? Pottery from a Pit in the Agora �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 366

Tamara Saggini

Greeks Overseas
A Bridge to Overseas: Insight into the geomorphology, harbourworks and harbour layouts of the Archaic and Classical
Greek harbours �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������377
Chiara Maria Mauro

Gandharan Odalisque: Mounted Nereids on Gandharan Stone Palettes �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 386

SeungJung Kim

The Attic Pottery from the Persephoneion of Locri Epizefiri between Ritual Practices and Worship���������������������������� 396
Elvia Giudice and Giada Giudice

Was Knossos a Home for Phoenician Traders? ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 408

Judith Muñoz Sogas

iii
Greek Divine Cures Overseas: Italian Realisations of the Greek Paradigm����������������������������������������������������������������������417
Lidia Ożarowska

Reception and Collecting

Wine and Blood? Dionysus, Other Gods and Heroes in a Catholic Chapel of Britiande (Lamego, Portugal) �������������������431
Nuno Resende

Pavlovsk Imperial Villa and its Collections: From the First Stage of Antiquities Collecting and Archaeology in Russia ���441
Anastasia Bukina and Anna Petrakova

Art and Myth

Greek Myths Abroad: A Comparative, Iconographic Study of Their Funerary Uses in Ancient Italy������������������������������455
Valeria Riedemann Lorca

Orphica Non Grata? Underworld Palace Scenes on Apulian Red-Figure Pottery Revisited���������������������������������������������465
Karolina Sekita

Geryon in Tatarli���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������475
Malcolm Davies

New Identifications of Heroes and Heroines on the West Pediment of the Parthenon: The Case of P, Q, and R ������������480
Ioannis Mitsios

A New Sicilian Curse Corpus: A Blueprint for a Geographical and Chronological Analysis of Defixiones from Sicily �����489
Thea Sommerschield

Once Again: A Sacrificing Goddess� Demeter - What´s up with her Attribute? ����������������������������������������������������������������502
Maria Christidis and Heinrike Dourdoumas

iv
 A New Sicilian Curse Corpus: A Blueprint for a Geographical and
Chronological Analysis of Defixiones from Sicily

Thea Sommerschield1

Introduction1

In this paper I will offer an analysis of the geographical and

chronological diffusion of the practice of defixio writing,
attested in Sicily between 550 BCE and 200 CE. Sicilian evidence
for cursing has, on one hand, been the subject of largely
linguistically-focussed studies and, on the other hand, never
been collected in a single, updated corpus (despite several
attempts having been made to this end).2 The present work
aims to expand and update this situation, in order to pose
new questions to Sicilian defixiones thanks to the compiling
of a new digital corpus of the Sicilian evidence, which may be
analysed, geographically mapped and chronologically parsed.

I� Figure 1. ISicDef 4 - Inv. nr. 42578. Museo Archeologico Regionale ‘A.

Salinas’ di Palermo. Provenienza: Necropoli di Buffa. Editio princeps
Curse tablets, commonly referred to with the Latin term Brugnone 1976, pp. 68-73. By kind concession of Dr Francesca
defixiones and named κατάδεσμοι in Greek, are texts inscribed Spatafora; photograph by the author.
or scratched on thin sheets of lead (or lead alloys).3 The
tablets were then folded or rolled up and sometimes pierced
by a nail.

The evidence from Sicily at the heart of this discussion

is written exclusively in Greek. Latin does appear in later
defixiones, but will not be discussed here.4 Defixiones were
placed in tombs, sanctuaries, and in later periods in wells
or bodies of water.5 The purpose of curse tablets is to affect
the wellbeing, actions, and fortunes of a person or persons
(or animals!) against their will, by wishing upon them
some adversity or hardship. This is achieved by invoking
a supernatural force, a demon or deity to annihilate or
undermine the adversary in will and sometimes even in bodily
functions. From an anthropological perspective, cursing
has the potential to defuse social tensions by resorting to Figure 2. ISicDef 3 - Inv. nr. 42579. Museo Archeologico Regionale ‘A.
‘extended connective justice’:6 when legal institutions fail (as Salinas’ di Palermo. Provenienza: Necropoli di Buffa. Editio princeps
in the case of covert crimes or improper law enforcement), Brugnone 1976, pp. 73-79. By kind concession of Dr Francesca
metaphysical forces alternative to the existing socio-political Spatafora; photograph by the author.

1 
DPhil candidate, University of Oxford institutions are called upon through a curse to bring about
2 
See Section II for an overview of the most relevant contributions. the punitive consequences of an illicit action.
3 
For a discussion on the possible elective affinity between the
symbolic value of the choice of a cold metal and the malign intentions Written cursing in Greek is first documented is Sicily. The
for cursing guiding its inscription, see Gordon 2015, pp. 154-156.
4 
Mixed language defixiones, ones with the Greek transliteration of a
oldest defixiones hail from Selinunte, Gela and Agrigento, and
Latin term, and ones mentioning Latin names will be considered in date to c. 550 BCE at the earliest.7 Scholars have rarely spared
the present discussion. much attention to this fact and to what factors this survival
5 
Faraone 1991b, p. 3. With regards to the Sicilian material, known record may be ascribed is a troublesome matter. The rising of
find spots the Selinunte necropolis (ISicDef 3, 4, 5, 9, 17); the Kamarina written curses in late sixth-century Sicily has been correlated
necropolis (ISicDef 1, 2, 13, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28); the Messina necropolis
(ISicDef 31); the Lilybaeum necropolis (ISicDef 29, 32, 65, 66); the Gela
to the birth of rhetoric on the island during roughly the
necropolis (ISicDef 18); a total of 13 defixiones were discovered at the same period,8 just as the large number of curses from Attica
Malophoros Sanctuary of Selinunte (ISicDef 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, dating late 5th – 4th century BCE have been associated with
16, 21, 22, 25, 43, 57, 58). It is however impossible to ascertain with
a degree of certainty the original context of many defixiones, for a
considerable number achieved final publication and conservation 7 
The earliest epigraphical documents attested in Sicily date c. 600-
only after long periods in illegal hands. 550 BCE.
6 
Assmann 1992, p. 151; Faraone 1999, p. 102. 8 
Eidinow 2007, p. 142.

489
Greek Art in Motion. Studies in honour of Sir John Boardman on the occasion of his 90th birthday
the Athenian propensity for lawsuits developing in the same
time frame.9 Both explanations should be regarded critically,
for on one hand, such historical correlates remain essentially
speculative; on the other, there remains the question of
unevenness in the survival record (Athens is one of the most
excavated centres of the ancient world, and Selinunte has also
historically been the object of intense formal and clandestine
archaeological attention). The reasons for survival of evidence
in the modern archaeological record and the historical
motivations underlying survival are important considerations
which will be taken into account in the following discussion of
the geographical and chronological survival or extinction of
the defixiones for a site. For the moment, let us simply respect
the current state of the evidence available to us: the earliest
examples of written curses known to us are from Sicily. The
most ancient Sicilian material does indeed demonstrate the
signs of a practice taking its first steps into the written form:
they are simple lists of names (the people cursed).10 Indeed,
Gager and Eidinow have suggested that an oral phase may
have preceded by many centuries the writing of curses in
centres such as Sicily and Attica where the written form first
appeared.11
Having now framed the practice of cursing in the ancient
world, it is time to study more closely the Sicilian evidence
for cursing, by means of an investigation of its distribution in
time and space in Sicily.
II�
The aim of the following paragraphs is firstly, to identify
patterns characterising the curses in both time diffusion
and geographical distribution; secondly, to investigate the
reasons underlying these survival (or extinction) patterns;
and finally, to compare and contrast the Sicilian cursing
culture with the wider Sicilian epigraphic culture in virtue
of such geographical and chronological characteristics. It
will, therefore, become apparent whether an island-wide
phenomenon may be traceable, or whether the overall
picture is fragmented into individual centres of production in
well-defined time periods. This study will not be addressing
potential patterns in the cursing language, as this is the
subject of my forthcoming research.
Any systematic collection of Sicilian defixiones in Greek faces
the risk of being swiftly outdated. Despite this situation being
anything but rare in the study of evidence of the ancient
world, in the case of rolled up lead lamellae of the average size
of a business card, the constant discovery of new material
and the untraceable disappearance of known evidence has
made the creation of an undisputed and comprehensive
reference for Sicilian defixiones a near impossible task.
Furthermore, the majority of studies examining selections of
defixiones have focussed principally on the linguistic features
of the tablets,12 whereas the magical aspects and the social
9 
Faraone 1999b.
10 
21 curses from Sicily are in the list-form.
11 
Gager 1992, p. 7; Eidinow 2007, p. 141. The passage from oral to
written cursing in the early Classical period has been linked to the
broader spread of literacy taking place more broadly in Greek society
at the time, and must have implied conspicuous ideological and
sociological repercussions. See Faraone 1991b, p. 5; Eidinow 2007, p.
154; Gordon 2015, p. 149 for further discussion.
12 
For instance, the Selinunte defixiones have been fundamental as
490
implications of the texts have passed mostly unnoticed. Upon
first engaging with this situation, I concluded that only a
digital corpus of all published Sicilian curse tablets could lead
to a comprehensive study open to continuous updating.13 In
addition to incorporating new material, a digital database can
enable a highly flexible typological study of defixiones so that
further questions may be posed to this class of objects.14 The
result is ISicDef, a corpus which offers both an organic analysis
of the curse tablets for the purpose of identifying specific
patterns in Sicilian defixiones, and is soon to become an open
source tool for the scholarly community to pursue the study
of any aspect of the material.15 The references I will make
throughout this study to specific defixiones and behavioural
patterns visible in the existing harvest of evidence have
emerged through the data plotting from the ISicDef corpus,
and a concordance table is available at the end of this paper.
More than 1,600 curse tablets are currently known from the
entire Graeco-Roman world. A total of 68 curses in Greek from
Sicily have been published over the last fifty years,16 a number
which rivals only Attica in number of finds.17 Wünsch collected
220 curses from Attica in his 1897 DTA, and Audollent’s 1904
DT adds a further 33 to this count. The 55 curses of Jordan’s
1985 SGD and further 24 from Jordan’s 2000 NGTC must then
be added.18 Roughly speaking (no updated corpus of all Attic
defixiones exists), we are dealing with a total number of about
300-350 curses from Attica. To contextualise these numbers,
it would be fruitful to compare the number of defixiones dating
5th - early 4th century BCE discovered in Athens with those
from Selinunte for the same time-period. The choice of cities
is an equitable one, for both have been the particular focus of
archaeological attention, and have both produced the highest
percentage of all discovered curses in their wider territory
in the time frame under consideration.19 For 5th - early 4th
century BCE Selinunte, 38 curses have been discovered. This
number must clearly be correlated to a population estimate:
De Angelis proposes a population size of 14,000-19,000 for
Selinunte in this time span.20 Let us move to the Athenian
documentary evidence for the Megarese dialects. The studies
by Bettarini (2005a), Dubois (1989) and Arena (1989) have
programmatically focussed on the linguistic study of defixiones.
Collections such as Lopez-Jimeno (1991) is a commendable attempt at
an organic corpus of Sicilian curses (but regrettably contains several
erroneous transcriptions).
13 
Such a project had been proposed by Felicetti and Murano (2011).
Their project, however, was never put into effect.
14 
Adding them to the single digital corpus of Sicilian inscriptions
directed by Dr Jonathan R. W. Prag (sicily.classics.ox.ac.uk), and
encoding them in a standard accessible format (TEI-XML mark-up
according to the EpiDoc schema) are the next steps.
15 
I chose to adopt the relational database MySQL built with Cake
PHP, as it most effectively approaches queries by using the Model-
View-Controller pattern. This makes the MySQL relational database
highly adept at exporting its contents into, for instance, XML markup
language, and creating a fully-fledged semantic network based on
linking properties.
16 
Most notably: Jordan - SGD (1985); Dubois - IGDS (1989); Arena -
IGASM (1989); Lopez Jimeno (1991); Curbera (1999); Jordan - NGTC
(2000a); Bettarini (2005); Eidinow – OCR (2007).
17 
Bouffier 2010, p. 89.
18 
Greek curse tablets: DTA counts 220, DT 305 (of which 166 are in
Greek), SGD ‘over 650’. The subtotal is therefore of about 1,100. The
number of Latin curse tablets is over 500. All numbers are from
Ankarloo-Clark 1999.
19 
The continuity of settlement in Athens as opposed to the disruption
affecting post-409 BCE Selinunte must be noted.
20 
De Angelis 2016, p. 197.

curses. The number of defixiones datable with a certain degree
of certainty to 5th – 4th century BCE Athens (problems of
dating persist in the main collections of Athenian curses),
is approximately 103. Alain Bresson suggests a population
estimate for Athens of ‘more than 40,000 citizens in the fifth
century, and perhaps at least 30,000 in the fourth century’.21
Despite the inability to aspire to entirely precise figures,
we find that Athens and Selinunte were cursing in similar
proportions in the 5th - 4th century BCE.
What provisional conclusions may be drawn from this data?
The practice of cursing on lead appears to have peaked in
the Classical age in the two centres under investigation.
What were the social and historical conditions in which we
may contextualise such an ‘enthusiastic’ adoption of written
curses in Selinunte and Athens? As a first general observation,
the role played by the spread of literacy must undoubtedly
be recognised. With ‘literacy’ one must understand both the
capacity to read, and the aptitude at composing a written
text. We also know from Thucydides that Selinunte was an
extremely prosperous city at this time, before the Athenian
expedition against Syracuse.22 The material record similarly
seems to suggest a significant level of material wealth for
Selinunte in this period.23 Selinunte was a city with means,
potential and intention to flourish, and its noteworthy
harvest of curse tablets can indeed be read as a symptom and
a setting of the agonistic competition and discourse (political
contentions, judicial contrasts, commercial competition)
which has been set at the heart of the practice of cursing.24
Then, in 409 BCE, the city was captured by the Carthaginians.
The figures compiled reveal that Selinunte demonstrated a
cursing culture fully parallel in time and commensurate in
number to Athens.
Before moving to the discussion of the geographical and
chronological mapping of the defixiones in Sicily, two caveats
are called for. Firstly, I am fully aware that the sample of
material is not a large one: at the time of writing, 68 defixiones,
raging geographically across the whole of Sicily and
chronologically through almost 700 years, have been recorded.
Extreme caution is therefore fundamental. However, despite
this apparently limited number of total finds, it nevertheless
comprises a sample large enough to make some fruitful
observations on the diffusion in time and space of defixiones
in Sicily, based on both the relative abundance of evidence
and equally on its relative lack, as shall now be demonstrated.
Secondly, both the historical reasons for survival of evidence
and the subsequent factors which affect the survival and
recovery of evidence must be meticulously considered.
Indeed, the legal and illegal excavations carried out on sites
such as necropoleis, the systematic archaeological attention
dedicated to certain centres compared to others (for instance,
the ‘positive bias’ already discussed towards Selinunte),
or the late discoveries due to external circumstances can
significantly distort the ‘survival-landscape’ of curses
from Sicily. For example, I have only recently been made
aware through personal communication with Dr Francesca
Spatafora of the discovery of 40-60 defixiones during present
21 
Bresson 2016, p. 61. Morris suggests that by 430 BCE, Athens must
have had a population of 35,000-40,000 (Morris 2005, p. 15).
22 
Thuc. 6.20.4.
23 
De Angelis 2016, p. 91.
24 
Faraone 1991b.
491
Thea Sommerschield – A New Sicilian Curse Corpus
excavations of the Western necropolis of Himera. On the
other hand, historical reasons have played a central part
in determining the survival record, such as continuous or
interrupted occupation of settlements, forced or voluntary
migrations of peoples, mass enslavements, the movement of
mercenaries, destructions, new foundations, the abandoning
and re-occupations of settlements.25 To return to the Himera
case, it could be inferred with a reasonable degree of certainty
that the freshly discovered harvest of defixiones must pre-date
the destruction of the city in 409 BCE. If this were proven
true by the forthcoming publication of these curses, then the
indication of a peak in defixio writing in production centres
during the late Archaic – early Classical period (which is
attested by the current state of the remaining evidence for
cursing in Sicily, as shall now be discussed in detail) would be
further confirmed based on this historical reason for survival
and discontinuation. These are important considerations
which will be taken into account in the following discussion
of the geographical and chronological survival or extinction
of the defixiones for a site.
By observing the geographical distribution of the curses
across the whole of Sicily, a number of preliminary
observations may be offered. Firstly, defixiones concentrate
in urban contexts. Kamarina and Selinunte appear to be
the most autonomously thriving centres of production.
Apart from Morgantina (whose evidence exclusively dates
to the 1st century BCE) and Centuripae (which has only
yielded a single curse tablet), the phenomenon appears
to be circumscribed to coastal colonisation centres with
a prominent Greek ethnic component. The absence of
defixiones from the eastern and northern coast must be
noted (albeit no foundations pre-400 BCE are to be found
along the northern coast between Himera and Messina): the
phenomenon seems to have been restricted to the southern
coast. One may also remark that sub-colonies engage in
the practice conversely from their mother-colonies (such
is the case of Syracuse and Megara Hyblaea). No defixio
has emerged from Elymian sites such as Entella, Erice and
Segesta, despite their known interaction with both Punic
and Greek cultures. A final noteworthy fact is the exiguity
of curses from Palermo (only one), Motya and Solunto (no
curses discovered), whereas the other main centre for Punic
settlement of the island Lilybaeum has yielded four curses (it
should however be made explicit that Motya was destroyed
in 397 BCE and Lilybaeum was founded by the survivors of
this violent event). This exclusively geographical overview
should now be correlated to the chronological plotting of the
data from the ISicDef corpus, in order to test the existence of
the patterns this paper aims to identify.26 I have divided the
tablets into four chronological ranges, on the basis of the
immediately observable survival patterns in the evidence:
the late Archaic – early Classical peak (550 - 400 BCE), the
4th and 3rd century caesura (400 - 200 BCE), the 2nd century
to ‘Year Zero’ recommencing (200 - 1 BCE), and finally the
gradual extinction of cursing in 2nd century CE (1 - 200 CE).
The dating of the curses is based upon the one attributed to
each defixio by its publishers.
Souza 2014.
25 
26 
Maps created by means of the visualisation and extraction of GIS
data in Google Maps.
Greek Art in Motion. Studies in honour of Sir John Boardman on the occasion of his 90th birthday

Figure 3. The geographical range of defixiones in Sicily between 550 BCE - 200 CE: total numbers of finds per site.

Figure 4. The geographical range of defixiones in Sicily between 550 BCE - 200 CE: bubble chart of total numbers of finds per site.

Cursing begins in Sicily in the late 6th century BCE. Between particular concentration in the southern coast of the island
550 and 400 BCE it can be observed that the practice of cursing in the sub-colonies. As discussed previously, no attestation of
initially spread rapidly across Sicily’s coastal centres, with a defixiones is to be found in the Sicilian hinterland, based on the

492

Figure 5. Defixiones in Sicily 550-400 BCE.
current data. Between 550-400 BCE, Selinunte27 and Kamarina
are the most thriving centres of production of defixiones. It
must be noted that 5th century Kamarina was struck by
major historical vicissitudes: Thucydides recounts how the
city was destroyed soon after its founding by its mother-city
Syracuse in 552 BCE.28 Hippocrates tyrant of Gela refounded it
in 492 BCE,29 but soon after it was depopulated and destroyed
in 485 BCE by Gelon, Hippocrates’ successor.30 The Geloans
however repopulated it and portioned out its territory in a
third foundation (461 BCE).31 The city prospered until 405
BCE, when it was destroyed by the Carthaginians. However,
the existence of curses found at Kamarina throughout this
animated century attests that the city’s life did not freeze
entirely, but instead maintained its social vivacity, traditions,
cults and institutions – among which, the practice of writing
defixiones. It is almost as if the continuous socio-political
discontinuity had nurtured a renovated civic effort to restore
and revive the city’s traditions.
Between 400 and 300 BCE, the situation changes quite
dramatically. The number of curses recovered from the two
main production centres highlighted in the previous time
27 
Which has yielded 38 curses, if 3 curses dating 450-350 BCE are
included in this range, as they are in the following chronological
range as well.
28 
Thuc. 6.5.3.
29 
Hdt. 7.154.3; Thuc. 6.5.3.
30 
Hdt. 7.156.2; Thuc. 6.5.3.
31 
Diod. 11.76.5; Thuc. 6.5.3.
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Thea Sommerschield – A New Sicilian Curse Corpus
range drops to 3 for Selinunte (which have been dated to late
5th – early 4th century, but of which certainly 2 and with
all likelihood also the remaining one possibly predate the
fateful 409 BCE, and therefore should not be considered for
diagnostic purposes within the 4th century time frame), and
1 for Kamarina (4th century BCE). Both cities had witnessed
major conquest and transformation at the end of the 5th
century, with Selinunte being captured by Carthage in 409
BCE and Kamarina destroyed by the Carthaginians in 405 BCE.
A noteworthy gap, therefore, appears in the 4th century, with
both production centres disappearing and total number of
curses decreasing. This slump appears to persist into the 3rd
century BCE: 3 curses have emerged from Selinunte (300-275
BCE), and one from the recently founded Lilybaeum (250-200
BCE).
It was throughout the 4th – 3rd century BCE that Sicily
experienced great social unrest and political upheaval. Randall
Souza has examined how a higher mobility, due to political
hegemony bids by the powers of Syracuse, Carthage, and
Rome, manifested itself in the form of population relocation,
manipulation and even annihilation.32 One could therefore be
tempted into considering the 4th century BCE as a period of
socio-economic recession and warfare reflected in the sudden
decline in defixio (and, as shall soon be discussed, epigraphic)
production. However, correlating epigraphic activity to socio-
economic prosperity is a dangerous method, and a wider lens
32 
Souza 2014.
Greek Art in Motion. Studies in honour of Sir John Boardman on the occasion of his 90th birthday

Figure 6. Defixiones in Sicily 400-200 BCE.

Figure 7. Defixiones in Sicily 200 - 1 BCE.

494

Figure 8. Defixiones in Sicily 1 – 200 CE.
is called for.33 This possibility will be further discussed at the
end of the geographical and chronological analysis.
In the 2nd and 1st century BCE a written cursing revival
takes place in Sicily. New centres of defixio production appear,
whereas the old established ones (such as Selinunte) do not
resurface. Morgantina, a mixed Greek and Sikel inland centre
seized by the Romans in 214 BCE, has produced a batch of
6 curses dating 1st century BCE: the names which appear
on the tablets are indeed Latin (ISicDef 35, 36, 37, 38), as are
terms such as ‘liberta’ (ISicDef 33, 34). Lilybaeum continues
the production of curses which had begun in the previous
century. Its tablets mention not only Greek names, but Latin
ones as well as foreign names such as Agbor Bucius (ISicDef
32, possibly a Punic), and Apithamb.al (ISicDef 65, also Punic).
One curse from Phintias, founded in 282 BCE, lists two Greek
names and nine Latin names (ISicDef 30, 150-50 BCE).
Cursing on lead in Greek disappears in Sicily after the 2nd
century CE, although curiously enough the same does not
apply to the Attic cursing tradition, as the latter increases
exponentially after the 1st – 2nd century CE.34 ISicDef 40
from Messina mentions a Latin name, and one curse from
33 
Prag 2002, pp. 23.
34 
Curbera 1999, p. 159. In the later Roman period, the southeast of
Sicily witnesses a growth in other types of magical document, such as
amulets, Greek magical papyri, and love-magic incantations (Dickie
2001).
495
Thea Sommerschield – A New Sicilian Curse Corpus
Centuripae (ISicDef 39), one of the most important Roman
cities in Sicily,35 has been discovered.
III�
This analysis has revealed that the late 6th - 5th century
BCE is undoubtedly the period in which certain centres
demonstrated the greatest familiarity with defixio writing on
lead in Greek, and that after the caesura of the 4th century
BCE the practice of cursing regained popularity in new
centres of production, spreading inland following the Roman
expansion into Sicily. However, cursing never regained its
former heyday. In the light of the patterns of continuity and
discontinuity so far observed for the evidence for cursing in
Sicily, it would now be worthwhile to compare and contrast
such patterns against the wider Sicilian epigraphic culture.
The aim is to investigate whether similar developments or
disruptions occurred in the wider panorama of epigraphy on
stone in Sicily, whether the historical reasons were similar,
and if therefore Sicilian curses followed the wider patterns of
the Sicilian epigraphic habit or displayed their own patterns
of practice.
To achieve this, we will be moving from considerations made
by Jonathan Prag’s recent and forthcoming work on Sicilian
epigraphy in numbers:36 an analysis of the collected data
35 
Cicero, Verrine II, 4, 50.
36 
Prag 2002; 2013b; forthcoming.
Greek Art in Motion. Studies in honour of Sir John Boardman on the occasion of his 90th birthday
sample from I.Sicily (3240 inscriptions on stone, of which two
thirds are probably Greek and of which the datable texts used
in these analyses never exceed circa 2500) demonstrates a
rapid growth in the Archaic period beginning in the 7th –
5th century BCE (180 inscriptions on stone). The inscriptions
of this early period are prevalently funerary and votive, and
their distribution is concentrated in the southern-eastern
coastal area of the island. Sicily then witnesses an almost
complete slump in the epigraphic production of the 4th
century BCE (which drops to circa 25 texts). A revival in Greek
epigraphic culture takes place during the last three centuries
BCE (minimum 435 inscriptions): a diversity of media and
types of inscription (with an increase in public epigraphy)
and a penetration in the Sicilian hinterland and northern
coast are identified as traits of a developing ‘Hellenistic’
epigraphic culture, born of the increasing Mediterranean
connectivity in every aspect of human interaction.37 Latin
epigraphy is instead prevalent in the 1st – 3rd century CE.
The wider epigraphic practice on stone in Sicily matches
therefore the pattern observed in the chronological and
to some extent even geographical diffusion of defixiones: a
rapid growth in the Archaic period and an initial limitation
to coastal southern areas (with high numbers of inscriptions
concentrated almost exclusively in Selinunte and Motya for
the south-west, and small numbers from a swarm of cities in
the south-east), followed by an apparent gap in the practice
in the 4th century BCE, which then sees a gradual rise in
the production of defixiones starting in the 3rd century
concentrated in the Sicilian eastern interiors and centres of
Roman settlement, until the disappearance of the practice
of defixio writing in Greek in the 2nd century CE (as will be
discussed presently).
In the face of these patterns, it could be suggested that
the 4th century slump in Sicilian epigraphic habit may be
interpreted as a period of gestation rather than of a recession
characterising the Sicilian economic, political and social
situation of this period. Prag has in fact identified a set of
shifting patterns in the limited surviving epigraphy of the 4th
century BCE: the inscriptions aspire to greater monumentality
and higher quality, thus distinguishing themselves from the
previous Archaic production on poor local stone and the
limited numbers of public epigraphy.38 The same examination
must be made for defixiones: an increase in quality and in
complexity may be identified in the defixiones dating post-
37 
Prag 2013b, pp. 343-46.
38 
Prag, forthcoming.
496
4th century BCE. A distinguishing factor of Archaic curses
is the cursing of people’s names in the form of a list, with
no other linguistic, formulaic or graphic embellishment or
expansion. This situation ceases after the 4th century, as
curses become more articulated, direct invocations to the
gods begin to appear, magical symbols and targets alternative
to the traditional ‘binding of the tongue’ begin to emerge.
These observations authorise the inclusion of defixiones
from Sicily within the wider epigraphical habit of the island.
Rather than correlating to historical circumstances. Rather
than correlating the survival in time and place of defixiones
exclusively to socio-economic crisis or prosperity, one could
instead examine the issue in terms of the shifts in contents,
form and linguistic peculiarities and the historical situation
taking place at the time, and examine whether apparent
periods of epigraphic silence may actually be a stage of socio-
historical or religious development and change.
Conclusions
In this paper I have aimed to contextualise defixiones both
geographically and chronologically within the Sicilian cursing
horizon, and secondly within the wider Sicilian epigraphic
culture in virtue of shared shifts in ‘quality’ and quantity.
My analysis so far seems to suggest that we are not dealing
with a unified Sicilian phenomenon, but with a fragmented
panorama within well-defined time periods of individual
production centres, whose number and survival or extinction
varies in parallel with the socio-historical circumstances
affecting the island and its population.
A conclusive word of caution is called for. It has been
noted that 38 curses found in Selinunte between 550-400
BCE represent a large percentage of the total number of
defixiones included in the database. Selinunte has in fact been
intensively excavated in recent years, especially the burial
and sanctuary areas usually associated to the deposition of
curses. Further information regarding the new batch of curses
from Himera (subsequent to its publication), correlated to a
detailed textual analysis of the language of cursing in Sicilian
evidence are now called for. In so doing, clearer light may be
shed on whether we are dealing with a situation of ‘accidents
of survival’, historical reasons for survival, or in truth with
a more extensive phenomenon involving the practice of
cursing in Sicily.
 Thea Sommerschield – A New Sicilian Curse Corpus

497
Greek Art in Motion. Studies in honour of Sir John Boardman on the occasion of his 90th birthday

498

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the organisers of the Conference in Honour of Sir
John Boardman on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday, and especially
Dr Diana Perez Rodriguez. I am indebted to my supervisors in
Oxford, Professor Jonathan Prag and Dr Josephine Crawley
Quinn. Thank you Yannis for helping me <br> new ground
with ISicDef. The errors that are found herein are mine alone -
proofreading is a real curse.
Selected abbreviations for epigraphic catalogues
Bettarini = Bettarini, L. 2005a. Corpus delle defixiones di Selinunte:
edizione e commento (Hellenica; 15). Alessandria: Edizioni
dell’Orso.
Brugnone st. Manni = Brugnone, A. 1976. ‘Defixiones Inedite
Da Selinunte’, In Manni 1976: 67-90).
CTBS = Gager, J. 1992. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the
Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Curbera = Curbera, J. 1999. ‘Defixiones’, In Gulletta, M. 1999.
Sicilia epigraphica: Atti del convegno internazionale Erice, 15-
18 ottobre 1998 (Annali della Scuola normale superiore di
Pisa, Classe di lettere e filosofia. Quaderni; ser. 4, 7-8). Pisa:
Classe di lettere e filosofia. 159–86.
DT = Audollent, A. 1904. Defixionum Tabellae. Paris: Fontemoing
Repr. Frankfurt a. M.: Minerva GmbH, 1967.
DTA = Wünsch, R. 1897. Defixionum Tabellae, IG III iii, Appendix.
Berlin: Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. [Cited
from the reprint, Inscriptiones Atticae, Supplementum
Inscriptionarum Atticarum, I. Chicago: Ares Publishers,
1976].
IGASM = Arena, R. 1989. Iscrizioni greche arcaiche di Sicilia e magna
Grecia: iscrizioni di Sicilia. Milano: Cisalpino-Goliardica.
IGDS = Dubois, L. 1989. Inscriptions grecques dialectales de Sicile:
Contribution à l’étude du vocabulaire grec colonial (Collection
de l’École française de Rome, 119). Roma: Ecole française
de Rome [Cited from the reprint, 2008. Inscriptions grecques
dialectales de Sicile. Tome II (Hautes études du monde gréco-
romain; 40). Genève: Droz].
López Jimeno = López Jimeno, M. 1991. Las tabellae defixionis
de la Sicilia griega (Classical and Byzantine monographs; v.
22). Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.
NGTC = Jordan, D. 2000a. ‘New Greek Curse Tablets 1985-2000’,
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 41 (1): 5-46.
OCR = Eidinow, E. 2007. Oracles, Curses and Risk among the Ancient
Greeks Oxford: Oxford University Press.
SGD = Jordan, D. 1985. ‘A survey of Greek defixiones not
included in the special corpora’, Greek, Roman & Byzantine
Studies 26: 151–97.
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