OUP (2024) h/b 389pp £160 (ISBN 9780192888624)
The Roman temple and religious complex at Uley, some seven and a half miles south of Stroud in Gloucestershire, was excavated in the 1970s. Among the finds were lead curses tablets which have been waiting some time for publication. In Tomlin’s major publication of the Bath tablets (Tabulae Sulis, 1988) he observes that ‘almost all of the Uley tablets’ are ‘still awaiting examination.’ Some have meanwhile received attention in print, but this is the long-awaited and definitive treatment of 87 tablets from Uley and seven from nearby Tarlton.
The presentation follows the basic format of Tabulae Sulis, with a long introduction and—the kernel of the study—a catalogue of all the inscribed tablets (there are many other tablets not inscribed). In the catalogue each tablet, wherever possible, is given detailed treatment with photographs, drawings, description, transcript, translation and commentary. Not all the tablets can (as yet) be read and several are included as ‘undeciphered’ (e.g. tablet 69 where ‘one face has a few traces of lettering’). The lack of inscription, the folding of the lead, a nail driven through a tablet and even a tablet in Latin, but written in the Greek alphabet, would appear to present no difficulty of comprehension for the god. The tablets without inscriptions may also have been accompanied by a spoken address to the god.
The recovery of stolen items often involves magic or supernatural assistance, especially when there is no police force. Many of the curse tablets found across the empire are concerned with theft and the Uley finds amount to as significant a cache as the group discovered at Bath: T. provides a distribution map of British finds showing other sites with one, two to eight, and—at Uley and Bath—over eighty examples. Items stolen include two pewter plates, a beast of burden (iumentum), 4 cows, sheep, a beehive, a ring, gloves, material of a cloak, 3 coins, silver coins and even the huge sums of (in tablet 21) 35,000 denarii and 100,000 (in tablet 78), both surely exaggerated even given inflation, and T. observes that tablet 78 is an ‘implausibly round sum’. The formulae—from Uley and elsewhere—for addressing or petitioning the god are tabulated on pages 23-36. Tablet 4 is a good example since it is almost entirely formulaic—and incidentally a good example of the nasty things that are sometimes specified, since the author hopes Mercury will visit upon the thief: that he be unable to urinate, defecate, sleep, stay awake (! Or enjoy good health. Mercury or Mercurius Arverius is the god most often called upon, though Mars Mercurius is also named, as T. informs us in his chapter on the god’s name.
The introductory chapters deal with important aspects of interpretation. Chapter 7 for example offers a thorough analysis of the handwriting which ‘can be followed most easily through the medium of line-drawings’. To the inexperienced eye, the handwriting is daunting and T. deserves to be lauded for his detailed analysis and his tabulation of letter forms in all their complexity. Chapter 9 deals with language and spelling. The tablets are a new source of evidence for the spoken Latin of Roman Britain. T. modestly introduces the chapter as an interim report and again tabulates the variant spellings (to be distinguished from simple mis-spellings). Appendix IV lists the divergent spellings and forms.
Who were the people using this method of recouping their losses? Many give no clue, but others are not so shy. Tablet 86 has one word, the name Petronius in the nominative, a rare example of a Latin as opposed to a ‘Celtic’ name—but T points out the possible attachment of the Latin ending -ius to a ‘Celtic’ stem. Census (tablet 1) is another author, one who complains (queritur) about Vitalinus and his son Natalinus stealing a beast of burden. How come the perpetrators are named? Tablet 5 has no names mentioned but the curse is directed at the name of the thief (nomen furis).
This lavish publication is a monument to T.’s outstanding work which will be an important source for students and scholars for a long time. The target audience is clearly the academic community—and for scholars who wish to cite the tablets T. even suggests the form Tab.Uley + the catalogue number in this work. It is not, however, without its more charming moments and those who consult it may well find themselves, like T., thanking the subject-matter ‘for letting me eavesdrop on the distant past in the countryside of Roman Britain’.
Alan Beale