Chariot racing was the best-loved spectacle of the Roman world. Huge crowds gathered in the circuses, support for the teams could break out into brawls and riots, and the most successful charioteers became extremely wealthy celebrities. In this climate of passion and betting a specific genre of magical text arose: agonistic defixiones, curse tablets meant to make a rival charioteer and his horses lose.
The factions
To understand these tablets we need to know how racing was organised. In Rome and then throughout the empire, the teams were grouped into factions distinguished by the colour of their tunics:
- the Greens (Prasina);
- the Blues (Veneta);
- the Whites (Albata);
- the Reds (Russata).
The factions were real organisations, with stables, staff and fierce supporters. A curse tablet therefore struck not just one man, but an entire team with its colours.
Where they were found
The richest finds come from Roman Africa, in particular from Carthage and from Hadrumetum, modern Sousse in Tunisia. Another important group comes from Rome, from a burial ground along the Via Appia, near today's Porta San Sebastiano, where the sheets were discovered in the nineteenth century. Other tablets are known from the Near East, for example from Antioch and other cities with a hippodrome.
The deposit sites followed two logics:
- tombs, because the dead, especially those who had died before their time, were considered intermediaries with the underground powers;
- the circus itself, near the starting gates or the turning post around which the chariots wheeled, that is, exactly where a charioteer was most likely to crash.
The formulas: binding the body and the race
The key verb of all defixiones is to bind: in Greek katadein, in Latin defigere and obligare. In circus tablets the binding is applied with almost technical precision to the body of the charioteer and the horses. The texts ask that:
- the horses be unable to run, turn, or leave the gates;
- their legs be bound and their eyes blinded, so that they cannot see the track;
- the charioteer be unable to hold the reins or use the whip;
- at the turn, man and horses fall and be dragged along.
The text often lists the horses by name, one by one. These lists have become a valuable source for historians of ancient sport, because they preserve the names of famous animals that would otherwise have been lost. The names often evoke qualities of speed, beauty or victory.
The powers invoked
The gods and spirits called upon vary. Many Greek tablets address daimones and spirits of the dead, with long strings of incomprehensible divine names, the so-called voces magicae. Others invoke underworld deities such as Hecate or Hermes in his infernal aspect. In the Roman group there are drawings of a figure with an animal head, often interpreted as a depiction of Seth-Typhon, the Egyptian god of chaos, alongside figures wrapped in serpents.
The whole picture shows how syncretic these practices were: a Carthaginian charioteer could be cursed in Greek, with Egyptian and Hebrew divine names, on a tablet made by a specialist working on commission.
Professionals and clients
Circus tablets often show a repeated set of formulas, a sign that they were produced by specialists who adapted a model to the specific case, inserting the names of the charioteer, the faction and the horses. Those who commissioned them might be a rival charioteer, a passionate supporter or a gambler.
The racing world was so closely associated with magic that the historian Ammianus Marcellinus reports the case of a charioteer, Hilarinus, sentenced to death in Rome for having entrusted his son to an expert to be taught secret arts.
A magic of risk
Agonistic defixiones tell us a great deal about the psychology of the ancient world. The race was a place of extreme risk, where the difference between glory and ruin depended on an instant: a wheel that breaks, a horse that shies, a collision at the turn. In such an uncertain setting, the lead tablet was an attempt to control chance, to bend fortune in one's favour.
For the student of traditions, and for the historical research of the Studio Esoterico Cornelio, these texts are direct evidence of how the language of binding, born in judicial and erotic contexts, spread to every area of life in which there were opponents to defeat.
In short
- Agonistic defixiones tried to make the charioteers and horses of rival factions lose.
- The factions were the Greens, Blues, Whites and Reds, real organisations with stables and fans.
- The main finds come from Carthage, Hadrumetum and a burial ground on the Via Appia in Rome.
- The formulas ask for legs, eyes and reins to be bound and for chariots to crash at the turn.
- The lists of horses by name are a valuable source for the history of ancient racing.
