It’s a Kind of Magic

This research will investigate enslaved persons in Roman curse tablets. Curse tablets evidence the agency of enslaved people as integral part of the Roman populace. This project is the first to consider the different ways in which enslaved people are represented in the tablets: as cursers or cursed, as part of the family or property of the intended curse victim, or included in phrases targeting an unknown culprit. To approach the lived experiences of enslaved people, moreover, the novel method of critical fabulation – evidence-based narration developed for global slavery studies – will be applied to case-studies from the tablets.