The Uley Tablets: Roman Curse Tablets from the Temple of Mercury at Uley

Roger S. O. Tomlin publishes the remarkable corpus of Roman curse tablets from the temple of Mercury at Uley in Gloucestershire. Inscribed on lead, the tablets preserve petitions to the god concerning theft, wrongdoing and desired punishment, giving unusually direct access to the anxieties and religious practices of people in Roman Britain.

The complaints can be strikingly ordinary: a stolen beehive, missing garments, sheep or cattle taken from their owners. Yet the writers hoped for extraordinary help, sometimes calling down illness or death on the person responsible. Tomlin provides transcriptions, translations, images and commentary, while the tablets’ handwriting and spellings preserve traces of how Latin was actually used in the province.