呪われた女美容師たち : オスティア出土呪詛板の研究

Four curse tablets have been so far found in Ostia. I numbered them as TDO (Tabula Defixionis Ostiensis)1-4. Among them TDO.2 and TDO.4 were preliminary reported by Vaglieri in 1912 but left unstudied because of their bad conditions. Their whereabouts are now unknown. TDO.3 was fully studied by Solin in 1968, and there is no hope to improve his study due to the fragmentary condition of the text. Only TDO.1, although the tablet itself has been lost, was accurately sketched and its text is clear enough to study further. Thus I focus on this tablet.
The tablet was discovered in a late republican period grave A2-I in the Porta Romana Necropolis by Vaglieri in 1910. It’s dimention is 10,5cm × 10,5cm. The material is lead. It was found folded vertically like a codex. Opened, nine names of curse targets were found written on every line in the following order with slight irregularity: name of the target, name of her domina, ser(va), ornatrix. There are five holes on the tablet. They have been thought to be holes through which a string was threaded to fasten the tablet. Previous studies on this tablet focused on a distinguished family and on a women’s collegium. But so far there is no study on the motive and mentality of the curser.
This article attempts to listen to a voice of a common person by studying this curse tablet.