Conversations: Now THAT is What I Call a Curse! Ancient Curse Tablets w/ Dr Charlotte Spence

Happy Spoooooky Season! Today Dr Charlotte Spence joins Liv to talk about the weird, wacky, and deeeeeeeply f---ed up tradition of ancient curse tablets... (Many awkward and icky laughs are had!) AVAILABLE NOW! The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourhttps://www.mythsbaby.com/contactpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributionsmythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/grouptrip.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 2:46Liv Albert?

  Hello, dear listeners. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And I am your host, Liv, here with a quick introduction that I am recording on a terrible microphone because it's what I have in this moment. So apologies, the other audio is going to be considerably better. But right now, I am just here to introduce a conversation episode that I am very excited for you all to hear. Okay, so a little bit of backstory. One of everyone's favorite conversation guests on this show, Ryan Denson, the so-called sea monster guy, who also is utterly amazing at bringing me other podcast guests who have very fun topics.

• 3:27Liv Albert?

  Like, the list goes on of the people that Ryan has sent my way, being like, hey, go talk to Liv, she's fun. And then he sends the people with the coolest topics in the world. It's amazing. And this one, Ryan connected me with Charlotte Spence, who studies curse tablets. And boy, are curse tablets wild. So I won't try to recap what they are, because that's literally what she is a doctor in, and that's why we have Charlotte. But wow, wow. It's just such a fun reminder of like, the real life ways that humans have always

• 4:06Liv Albert?

  just been really weird with each other. I guess the best way to put it. But I also wanted to introduce this episode with just a note that we did record this a few months ago now, and I've been sitting on it for spooky season, because curse tablets are super fucking weird and delightful in that. I mean, weird is probably too simple of a word, but I am going to let Charlotte get into it. I just wanted to give that heads up. This was recorded a couple of months ago. I don't remember if we have anything particularly timely, but if it sounds weird, that's why. But I've been sitting on it because spooky season and curse tablets are so spooky. And so, here we are. Please enjoy this episode

• 4:49Liv Albert?

  with Dr. Charlotte Spence, who, oh my gosh, I mean, we laugh right at the top. I'm keeping in a bit of like, the stuff we just chatted about before we got in, because, because you all know how much I love to mess with the Romans. And it's kind of what we were already doing. So sit back. I mean, I would say you're not going to be able to relax all that well, because curse tablets are super fucked up. But you are going to laugh along the way, because if we don't laugh, then how can we talk about how horrible humans have been to each other, a lot of men, from like, the beginning of time? Seriously, though, we had so much fun. Charlotte is a joy, and I really hope to have her back. And to any

• 5:33Liv Albert?

  guests out there, experts who are listening to this, or what have you, please come on the show. I promise I'm fun. It's so much fun. Just ask Ryan Denson. And Ryan, single-handedly getting the show some incredible guests. So just doing his part all the time. Big thank you to Ryan as well. But this episode is about Dr. Charlotte Spence. Oh, and her curse tablets.

• 6:08Liv Albert?

  Conversations. Now that is what I call a curse. Ancient Curse Tablets with Dr. Charlotte Spence.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  But I was reading this Roman stuff, and I was like, wow, this is messed up.

• 6:38Liv Albert?

  That is always me and the Romans. I also like to joke that like, the Greeks are the only ones I care about, but I'll let other people come on and tell me about the Romans. And that's often why. It's usually just, wow, no, I mean, that's fucked up. Like, you all did some fucked up stuff.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  All of them. All of them are being weird with their curses. Don't worry.

• 6:58Liv Albert?

  Yes, I bet. So really, I'm just kind of diving straight into it now. So, yeah, what, what is a curse tablet? I mean, obviously, why are they so cool as to be called curse tablets? But yeah, I mean, I generally want to know everything, but maybe just beginning with like, literally, what is that?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  What are we talking about here? Because, so, the things I study curse tablets, and that is the term I use, you can call them catadismoi, if you're going for the Greek, you can call them defixionis if you're going for Latin. I go for curse tablet. I work on Greek stuff, I work on Latin stuff, I work on Latin stuff written in Greek letters. Like, curse tablet is easier. So these are-

• 7:37Liv Albert?

  But hold on, can I be a nerd really quickly?

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yes, let's nerd.

• 7:41Liv Albert?

  I, what is the etymology? So it's like, catadismoi, did you say?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  So catadismoi is the plural. Yeah.

• 7:48Liv Albert?

  So under.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's to do with this like, binding and under. What's really interesting is they are not referred to in this way. Like, defixionis is the Latin, like, this idea of kind of fixing something is, that's where kind of one of the roots. It's not used till like, centuries and centuries later. So we don't really have like, the ancient words for these things. And so, I just use curse tablet, because-

• 8:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Why pretend that there's like, this proper ancient way of referring to it? You know, that's just misleading.

• 8:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So it was really just something that they were doing and not talking about, or like, not recording, at least.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's like, no literature on them. You know, ancient Athens, they write down laws about everything. And they have no laws against curse tablets. Like, that's just absolutely insane. So, yeah. So these curse tablets, they are small bits of lead, usually. I mean, they were probably made of other things. We've got lead, we've got papyrus, we've got some that are on wax tablets, some that are on terra, bits, terracotta, some, some made of rock crystal, which is awesome, like, thin sheets of clear rock crystal. I mean, isn't that insane? So, but there were probably lots of more organic things as well. But they don't survive. So most of the ones I work on are lead.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  They are sometimes about the size of like, to use an old fashioned reference, a business card. But some of them can be. So old fashioned, some can be like thirty centimeters long, um, which is just crazy when you think about the tiny writing on them. And the idea behind them is that they are meant to, according to one of the great late scholars. They're meant to influence by supernatural means, humans, animals, just some kind of outcome. And so they can be about curses against thieves. So someone's stolen something from you, like your cloak or your horse or your horse blanket or a whole beehive. I just love that idea. And they can be.

• 9:43Liv Albert?

  Oh, my god, yeah, you would have so many references of things that people have stolen.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Random things. They can be about, so you've got the curse against thieves, you've got legal curses, so trying to stop people talking against you in a legal trial normally. So silencing witnesses.

• 9:56Liv Albert?

  Oh.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  You've got them against charioteers, you've got them against um professional kind of choirs in the ancient Greek world in choruses. You've got them against kind of tavern owners. You have this group that's sometimes called love magic. There is no love involved there.

• 10:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Tend to call them erotic magic, which goes down really well when I do like public events. I'm like, so we're going to talk about aggressive erotic magic. And there's always a guy there that's like, oh, no, what's my wife brought me to? And I'm like, it's great. Don't worry, it'll be fine. It's not fun.

• 10:27Liv Albert?

  Do you use the word aggressive, though? That's so good, because I've heard like little bits and pieces enough to know that like, yeah, I mean, love is certainly wrong. But even erotic implies something not so terrible, so.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, this is definitely aggressive. Oh, yeah. And then just kind of this like miscellaneous group where we're like, oh, you seem cross, but we don't really know what about. But basically, like, anything in life, you can ask the gods, you can ask the restless dead to do something on your behalf. Something horrible normally to another living person, which is just awesome for me to study.

• 11:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I obviously want to ask for like the wildest examples, but maybe we'll like lead up to that, you know, but. So how common was it, I guess? And like, what level, like, how common was it for them for it to be, you know, like violent asks? Or, you know, is it more often that they're just like, this guy stole my donkey, I'm mad at him? Or like, you know, what, what is sort of common?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  So, I mean, what I think is, we don't have that many cursed, so they're made from the end of the sixth century BCE. Um, in Sicily, that's where our earliest ones come from. At the moment, we always find more. Um, and then they keep making them. And I kind of stop eighth century CE. But there are some from the tenth century, so I'm like, oh, maybe I'll include those in a footnote, but they just keep going. So this is like a millennia of making them. And we have maybe, well, I was gonna say four thousand, but we have found a few more. So probably about six thousand now. That is not very many.

• 12:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  So even if we think you could easily double that if they're made on perishable materials that haven't survived in the archaeological record. That's still not loads. So people are probably making one in their lifetime. Unless they're getting like some kind of professional ritual person to make them for them. And then that person probably makes more than one. But even then, we don't have thousands of them found written by the same person. So that's really cool. So it's kind of rare, but people are living in a world where they know it happens. Like Cicero blames the fact he forgets a speech on the fact that someone cursed him. So, you know.

• 12:41Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  So they know it happens. So it's not like some kind of niche activity and everyone's like, oh, no, that's just like a weird thing that doesn't happen very often. Like, people know it happens. And I think that, so although there's not a lot of it going on, the psychological impact is much greater.

• 12:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Cause they are sinister.

• 13:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah, cause it's like, well, yeah, what, you know, what is causing something to curse or you worrying that you've been cursed?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's awesome. Um, Philip Keenan is a really cool academic and he looked at all the examples from one sanctuary in Bath in the UK. And he was like, yeah, most of the outcomes called for, so most of the kind of punishments on the victims would have come about psychosomatically. Like, if you steal something and you live in a world where you know someone might curse you for stealing something. And you start to feel a bit funny, or you have a stomach ache, and then you don't feel like eating, and then you can't sleep. And then according to curse, you have to die. But, you know, you can get yourself into that state really easily.

• 13:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Which is scary.

• 13:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, I, that's delightful. I'm just trying to think of like how to lead, like, you know, there's, there's so many avenues, I suppose. I mean, off mic, we were talking about like the myth side or like connections to myth. Do you have like?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Well, I was thinking about this, and I mean, I find Ovid like horrifying. I just, when I was reading him, as I said to you. I was teaching him and reading him and I was like, what? And then what? And then, and it just kept going. I was like, oh, my gosh, I don't know how to explain to my students who were gonna read this for the first time. To be careful, um, to read it feeling strong. But I think it's really interesting that you've got myths in there. Like, the one that always really horrifies me is Philomela, and she's.

• 14:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  It's just so awful. And it's like, oh, I'm gonna chop your tongue out to stop you talking and all of this. But in a world where those stories are being shared and they're kind of like a form of cultural entertainment. The fact that that is the backdrop, I think it explains why some of these curses are being made, because they are really, really violent. And I think sometimes you read so many that are like, make her burn, make her unable to speak, you know, it's. And and worse, you know, drag her by the hair. So there's one that's from Roman Egypt. And it's kind of second century CE. And basically, this poor woman, the person writing the curse starts with the fact that they know.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  That she's married to someone else, because it says, this woman won't love me, so drag her from her husband by her hair. Make her feel like she's burning in fire, make her unable to sit and eat with her family, make her feel like she's gonna die. Like, this list goes on and on and on of how the way she's gonna suffer and how she shouldn't be able to speak to anybody about her suffering.

• 15:36Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Until she comes to my bed and it says, oh, demon, I, I invite you now and now quickly, quickly. And you're like, what? Like, what kind of like? Insane level of insanity is going on here?

• 15:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Because you get some like that that include bits of the victim's hair.

• 15:57Liv Albert?

  Oh, my god, of course.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  And so there's like physical proximity.

• 16:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Can you imagine living in a world like that? And I think, no, I can't imagine. And then I think, yeah, but Ovid and his like poems and stuff is this like. Amazing figure and his work survives so well because they're reproduced so many times. And I'm like, yeah, you are actually living in a world where people think this is. I don't know what. Do they think it was funny? Did they think it was just like, we're better than this mythical past? Cause you're not.

• 16:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and it's interesting, I mean, what a, what a story to focus on of like, you know, Philomela. Um, but, cause all bits about metamorphoses is one thing, right? Which is of course like where that story comes from. And I actually recently have developed a bit of a fixation on, on that story. Because it also, there was a Sophoc, or a, yeah, Sophocles play about it, which also makes me, so to the listeners, like, I'm. You've probably heard me tell this horrifying, horrifying story, but it's Prochny and Philomela, the two sisters.

• 17:06Liv Albert?

  Where the one married Tereus, this Thracian guy, and then the long story short is he ends up like. Abducting her sister, raping her, cutting out her tongue, and then, oh, my god, anyway, they like, they, yeah, it's, it's fucking horrifying. But not only does Ovid, you know, tell that in the Metamorphoses, but like five hundred, four hundred years later, earlier. Sophocles had written a whole play of it. And we know this because of one fragment where actually a woman talks. Very bluntly about how terrible it is to be a woman um in that world, which is so, it just feels like.

• 17:47Liv Albert?

  So self-aware while also being like so deeply not in this way that is as horrifying as it is fascinating. Like to just be recognizing how objectively bad things are. And then to just be like, well, here we are. Look at this beautiful story recounting how objectively awful things are. But then to also go further on Ovid, like he, you know, you, you mentioned what kind of like incel horror earlier, like. Ovid also wrote like the incel manifesto, the, the like, um, whatever, the pick up artist guide manifesto. Like, he wrote some absolutely wild stuff that you really, I think that we don't have, you know, that kind of.

• 18:29Liv Albert?

  We don't think about the ancient world in that way, and we should more because it perpetuates such a problem that we think like we that it was like this great world. But it's, yeah, it's fascinating. So anyway, sorry, I've got like a full.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I've got like a thread that I'm gonna pull. People see me pulling with my hand, but I am physically pulling this way because you talk about this philosophical ease and this like kind of surprising level of female agency. And I think this is really cool because these cursed tablets, they're often cited as, you know, being people who don't have agency elsewhere are able to act in this religious sphere. Religious slash magical, I'm not falling into that rubber whole sphere. But what's cool is that, so most people, when they're making cursed tablets, don't write their names on the cursed tablets. And I think that's probably richly important. Like if you're fixing someone's name to a tablet in lead, folding it in half, piercing it with a nail, throwing it in someone's grave.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can see why you don't want your name, given that the name is kind of a bit that's representative of the person in that situation. And I think that's probably why. That's kind of the cursing ritual, really. But those that we do have names, which are quite often those that can be called prayers for justice. So the kind of calling on the gods to help them, they're like, oh, I've suffered such wrongdoing. And quite often I'm like, hmm, I think you protest quite a bit too much here. Like, I think you're actually quite sinister. I don't think these witnesses who are gonna talk against you are the problem.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  This is interesting though, because this is a way of having agency. Most of these seem to be written by men, but we have got a significant proportion that are written by women.

• 20:11Liv Albert?

  Okay, that was gonna be a question I asked before I got onto my tangent. So that's great.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  So we've come, we've come to the women. Yeah. And I think that's really cool because most of them that are written by women are kind of in pockets. So there's like certain places where women seem to be making more of them. But it's not like limited chronologically. We've got some amazing tablets. Some of my favorite are from, we think from a thesmaforia festival in Cnidus in ancient Greece. Oh, my gosh, I love them. And there's like this debate about whether they were publicly displayed or not. And I think, you know, it doesn't matter. I think if you're making them in this festival setting, and there's this idea that these women coming together. Yeah. Are making them together. It doesn't matter if they're publicly displayed because you know you're doing it, you're probably you're talking about it.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Or so and so is going, oh, well, this person's cursed the person that's done this. And quite often they don't know the person that's wronged them. And so in ancient legal systems, you bring a case against a person. You can't just be like, oh, someone's stolen something. I don't know who it was. Like, there's no recourse for that. Like, what do you expect to get out of that? So in these cases, the problems they bring up seem, I mean, on first reading, kind of hilarious, like, oh, can the person who is going around telling everyone that I poisoned my husband suffer greatly and be silenced? You think, oh, this is hilarious. Like, okay, there's these rumors about someone going around poisoning their husband, but that is punishable by death.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  And you don't need a lot of evidence. Like, the husband is dead, the wife is accused. Court of public opinion. And I think that's really interesting because is the accusation being leveled at a woman who is taking part in this and therefore the knowledge that the curse has been created should be enough to shut her up? Or is it just a desperate plea for help? Like, my husband is dead, which means she's already lost her, like, legal guardian in this setting. Now I'm faced with like possibly losing my own life. Please, Demeter, help me. Like, which way do we go with that? And they're just such tiny snapshots that you're like, this is, we, we never get to know what happened to this individual.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  But we do know that this individual existed, which is kind of a miracle in the same way. So.

• 22:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, and I, I love to think of the, all the different, the possibilities of something like that where we only know this one little piece. And it, I mean, it's very true to say that, you know, the like majority of what we know about ancient women comes in that form where we just have these like little snapshots of like the echo of a person, you know, more than like an actual person. And so having those kinds of, those kinds of like little bits of someone, even in this way where, you know, yeah, they're, they're asking somebody else to be cursed. But how interesting to think of it that way are, are also like on a slightly darker, but also lighter possibility, like,

• 23:18Liv Albert?

  what if she did kill her husband and she's also just looking for, you know, help stopping the rumors so she can get away with it?

• 23:25Speaker 02

  But why did he deserve to die?

• 23:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  I always think this, like, the ancient world, people go, oh, oh, Charlotte, wouldn't you love to go back to ancient, ancient Greece? I'm like, as a blind, poor woman. Yeah, no, don't think so. Thanks. You know, everybody would be being really violent. It would be so stinky. I mean, I really couldn't see. I've got like thick glasses. You know, it would be so awful. I'm like, actually, no, I really like living in an age where there's penicillin and I can, I can literally teach in a university. Like, this is a miracle.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  And I'm like, not even to be able to fly on the wall, because I think it would be disgusting even as a fly to.

• 24:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And heartbreaking to have modern, imagine having like a modern brain and going back and having to witness the treatment of people overall, like across the spectrum. I'm like, no, I can't.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  I just can't even imagine, you know, like, we don't even know how many enslaved people there were in Athens and Rome and stuff like. It just, these economies couldn't have functioned without a huge amount of human suffering and just enforced human labor. Yeah. I think, God, that is like horrifying. And then, and then you just get them like literally beating the shit out of each other. Like, because what are you doing? You haven't got police force. How is society being managed? By cursing each other. It's not healthy.

• 24:53Liv Albert?

  No.

• 24:56Liv Albert?

  No, I mean, yeah, I also often think about like, oh, you know, would I love to go back? Like, there is things I would like to see, but like mostly no. No, I'm really happy to like, I would like to know things.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:09Liv Albert?

  But like, I don't, yeah, I don't want to live it. I don't. That's fine. But it's, so, okay, the location wise, you were saying that they kind of tend to exist in like pockets or like a lot or in women's?

• 25:22Speaker 02

  So, yeah, the women's ones tend to be kind of in pockets, but cursed tablets themselves. So they're made across this huge chronological scope. But geographically, you can find cursed tablets from all of the modern countries surrounding the Mediterranean, all of the countries up into northern Europe that were Roman provinces. Russia, the Ukraine, they're like really spread geographically. So it's really interesting that they are such uniform rituals as well.

• 25:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Apart from, and this links back to the women, we've got these awesome tablets from the Fountain of Annapurna. So we're in Rome. We're about third to fifth century CE. And these tablets, I've told you that they're flat. They look like business cards. This is all wrong. These are lead cylinders and they're about, hmm, something about 10 centimeters high. And they have a little pointy kind of, I guess, conical lid. And these were just like thought to be kind of weird ritual things until someone opened the cylinder. And inside the cylinder was another cylinder. And inside that cylinder was another cylinder.

• 26:27Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  And in some of them were figurines with bones in the middle of them made out of wax. But on either the middle or the like final inner cylinder curses were written on them. I mean, this is so freaking weird and they look weird.

• 26:42Liv Albert?

  So cool.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  They've got the most beautiful drawings on them of like demons and symbols. They are stunning. Anyone going to Rome, you must go and see them. You must.

• 26:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  You don't have to spend four hours looking at them like I did, but you must go and see them.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  God, I loved it. But they are really weird. And the most awesome thing about this, like, group of tablets is that they are, they were sealed with wax. Awesome. Cool. So they survive really well. The fingerprint of the person that made them survives in the wax. And everyone's like, okay, well, these are all weird. They're all made by the same person. And according to some forensic analysis that's Fati Lev me, a woman's fingerprint.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  So what have you got issue? I don't.

• 27:28Liv Albert?

  She's just running a business.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  She's like the, is she kind of a priestess? Is she like this ritual practitioner that's doing it? Is she a scribe who's got a side hustle? But she is a she. And that is so cool. But yeah, so they are, but they are in Rome and very specifically this phenomenon. Linked to one place in Rome. And then the rest of Rome, we've got other weird things going on. Yeah.

• 27:54Liv Albert?

  Well, I mean, Rome is weird.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:57Liv Albert?

  Um, so, okay, so if they're all being by the same person, like, do, do the curses themselves have a lot of similarities? Or are they kind of varied? Like, does it seem like a business or like one person being like, I'm gonna curse everybody I know?

• 28:09Speaker 02

  So they're weird. They are definitely like doing different things.

• 28:13Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Which is, which is quite cool. So I think it probably is someone making a business out of it.

• 28:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Um, there are similarities. They use like, they have drawings, they have symbols, but always different drawings and symbols. So it's not like, um.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  So it's not like they're copying it. Because there is this issue of handbooks that I think we'll end up talking about. Um, but these are really cool because on one of them, you've got like this demonic figure. Who might be Abraxas, but we're not quite sure. And on his tummy, there are letters inscribed. And it's been quite strongly argued, and I think I agree, that these letters are an acronym for Jesus Christ, the Nazarene Sum. Jesus Christ.

• 29:00Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  So we're in that like kind of weird bit of history where Christianity is, is kind of a thing. But is it actually Christianity as a like monolithic faith or a faith with any kind of?

• 29:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Organization.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I know we've had kind of creeds and things. We've had Constantine the Great. It's starting to become more and more. Kind of uniform as a religion.

• 29:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  But not all of them have this. So also, you know, the creeds we've had kind of suggest that we shouldn't be doing this as Christians. So, you know.

• 29:37Liv Albert?

  Interesting. I was gonna ask how it, how it did mesh with Christianity or if there wa- or if there was overlap. So that's, that's really interesting. I mean, I mean, that only makes sense that there would be, you know, centuries of like. Figuring it out and like, there's this guy and people are talking about him and, you know.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  It's so cool. So yeah, there is the overlap with Christianity. Um, these from Annapurna are really interesting because this is a pagan sanctuary. They are.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they are kind of using this sanctuary in kind of still a pagan way, I guess. Cause they're depositing pine cones, which is really interesting. What's the pine cone got to do with Christianity? Nothing. But they have lamps as well that sometimes they kind of stick the cursed tablets into the way you'd put the wick for the lamp. Um, which is really cool because they must have been made that way because the hole is big enough to wedge a cursed tablet into.

• 30:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  But I digress. So this Christianity thing is really interesting. We do have them from Rome, from Egypt. That do directly invoke Christian figures like Jesus. Satan, I've boldly said before that Satan isn't um called upon. He might be on a bit of papyrus that I've just found out about. But it is like the archangels, you know, these kind of powerful Christian figures. But quite often alongside other powerful figures. So you might get Jesus alongside the Jewish god alongside Seth Typhon. So you've got this kind of mixing of.

• 31:17Liv Albert?

  Wait, what was the last one?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Seth Typhon. So he's like this god that's the Egyptian god Seth and then this weird Greek.

• 31:25Liv Albert?

  Oh, Typhon. Yeah. I did not know that there was that combination and I've, yeah, oh, that's.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  It's a whole new world. It's so exciting, isn't it? So you've got these like supposedly like good, I guess if you can divide. Deities is good or bad. Good figures with these very powerful yet kind of terr- terrible figures. These figures for justice. It's really weird. And I kind of wonder if there is a theological underpinning in that case. Or is it just someone trying to show off their knowledge of all these powerful figures and kind of hedging their bets? But I think if you directly invoke Jesus and only Jesus on his own, then you've got to have a theological underpinning.

• 32:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  But it's weird, isn't it? Because you've got something that very much was a pagan practice because it started way before. It could have been anything else. And then in Bath, you have one tablet that, there's this series of um exclusive dichotomies. On the tablet from Bath and they're not, they're not only found there, they're found across the Mediterranean. But basically, if they don't know who's stolen their thing or who that should be cursed, it goes whether man or woman, whether slave or free. Whether male or female, whether boy or girl, like it's all these kind of things. So it's kind of meant to encompass everything. On Bath, there's a tablet that says um whether pagan or Christian. So you've got Christian spelt slightly weird in the Latin and then the pa- pagan is rendered as gens.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And that is, that's the word that is used for that group. And so this is weird. It's directed to Sulis Minerva. It's deposited in her sanctuary.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Are, is this written by a Christian who is using this ritual space to complete this ritual? Is it used being done by a non-Christian? Who thinks that their god is powerful enough to punish someone that doesn't believe in them? Like, it's so cool, isn't it?

• 33:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and this distinction between.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's gotta be groups, like, there's gotta be an understanding that there are those that are Christian and those that aren't Christian. And those that aren't have a specific like name you can use to reference them.

• 33:35Liv Albert?

  Well, exactly, like, that's, that's what's crazy to me is that that would exist because it's like. Christianity is this brand new thing. Like, when did they get to decide that it was like them and then everyone else? That's such a. If, because it feels to me, I mean, even just the way we, we have to talk about like Christianity as compared to. Pagan religions is always wild because, I mean, uh, just an atheist who's a nerd for historian or for historian for history. Um, but like, it's just like, they're the same thing. One just lasted longer and developed differently. But like, let's be honest, it's all just ancient people figuring stuff out and like developing these religions. Unless you're religious, in which case I'm sorry, but you know, we're all historians as well.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  This is the thing. This is just what ancient people were doing, like.

• 34:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, I get it.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Decrees later that say you shouldn't be doing it. We, you probably shouldn't have been doing it in the Roman world, you know? You're trying to steal other people's wives, let's face it. But like, these are just people peopling, you know?

• 34:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. And like, at some point, we made this distinction that one group of people, you know, that whatever, but like. It, it's just, it makes so much sense that, that it would all be kind of merged together, especially at this, this time. This historical period where like, I mean, but even just having this distinction, it's like, that's, it's, that's so interesting.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  And I think the thing is like, you can't expect people to give up their like previous beliefs. So.

• 35:03Liv Albert?

  No.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  I'm from like the deepest, darkest rural southwest England. People are superstitious here. Like, we're right on the coast. People are dying out of sea all the time. You know, there's famine. It's a whole thing. But it's really interesting. I could not tell you rationally why putting a pair of brand new shoes. That I've just taken out the box on the table would lead to unknown doom. And yet I see someone do it and I'm like, oh dear God, please stop. And they're like, why? And I'm like, my mother says, you know, it's like. And if I was living in a world where there was this new kind of belief, system of beliefs that was trying to tell me. That that didn't matter, that I should do this instead, I'd probably just do both to like cover all bases.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  And I think this is very much what's going on. And that's why we get the development of cursing with Christianity. And it keeps going. Like you can do, if you, if you are able to study the history of Wales, which. Seems very interesting and something I've not been able to do. They have cursing rituals there, like right up into like eighteenth century. Like modern eighteenth century where there's a pin, you throw a pin in a well and you write the name of the person to be cursed in a book. So this is quite a public thing, isn't it? Like, you could go and check if your name is there. But still, the pin is reminiscent of the nail. We have cursed tablets found in wells.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  This is just a whole thing that I think carries on, you know? Humans are gonna human, no matter what.

• 36:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I've, I've been talking about the Odyssey a lot and that is exactly how I've been describing, you know? People ask like, oh, why is it still relevant today? And it's like, yeah, humans are gonna human. And like, the stories we tell will, you know, especially from that period of just like human exploration. Like, they're always gonna be timeless. It's why AI is stupid and shouldn't exist.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  I think the thing is, like, just as an honesty point, Cersei's invoked on cursed tablets, just putting that out there. But the AI thing as well, the AI can only kind of give you. It's mechanically created version of the past. Like, we don't need that. We need imaginative ideas about the future. Imaginative problem solving that requires innovative thinking for the future. And when we study the past as well, you know, when I was, I started teaching again, like for the last academic year. And I was like, do you know what? I'm gonna ask AI the question behind my PhD thesis. And it's still got it wrong. I was like, this is great.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  I was like, this is good. This is good. This is a great example for my students. And then it did the AI synopsis of my book. And I was like, does this sound like something I would write? And they were like, no. And I was like, do you want to read the actual synopsis of my book that is available freely online that you could just Google? And I'm like, wow, that really has like just cherry picked words and obviously somehow giving those words precedence. Or prominence, I guess, but not actually of what the book is about.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  So, yeah.

• 38:14Liv Albert?

  I will never understand it. And I think there's just this enormous divide between the people creating this stuff and the people like us who are like. The ones who understand humanity and study humanity and like, recognize there is this intangible thing that like we. It will never, like, all it is doing is regurgitating what it learned on the internet. And also, like, it's immediately eating itself because, anyway, it's just the dumbest. And um fuck AI. But also, yeah.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  I'm like nodding along and I'm like, no one can see me nodding.

• 38:48Liv Albert?

  They all know. It, but it's, yeah, it's wild. And like, why I love studying this stuff too, because it's like, I mean, I've asked, I've inadvertently ended up asking AI questions and just that I'm trying to still use Google, you know, and then things show up. And I'm like, it's rarely right. Like anytime I know the answer, or also like, these days, all it does is reference Reddit. And I'm like, if your source is Reddit, I don't believe you. What do you mean? Anyway, this is not an AI rant.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Don't follow any advice on my day about cursed tablets. That's all I have to say. Beware.

• 39:24Liv Albert?

  I'll tell you right now, Reddit and mythology are also not in line with like, you don't trust everything you read on Reddit. Oh my gosh, it's wacky.

• 39:47Liv Albert?

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• 40:33Liv Albert?

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• 41:21Liv Albert?

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• 43:35Liv Albert?

  But, okay, so you kind of like, I want to like, just really focus on how, what the physical curse tablet situation was, because I feel like you've kind of said it, but it is, sounds so wild that I, so it's like, it's a piece of lead.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:52Liv Albert?

  And like, and then you'd fold it. So, yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  So it's a piece of lead and some of them are like thin. And you can see, fundamentally, if you're going to make a cursed tablet, this is not a lesson, but if we were going to hypothetically make a cursed tablet, you need a bit of lead. And someone said to me once that lead is like the plastic of the ancient world. It's just everywhere.

• 44:10Liv Albert?

  And it's, it is softish, right?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  It is soft.

• 44:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  And you can either hammer it flat to make it thinner and flatter, if you've stolen it from a cold water pipe or something, you know, the Greek magical papyri, some of them tell you to do that, whereas others don't. But you can get your lead from literally anywhere. And as an interesting aside, I think that's why we have so many cursed tablets from ancient Athens, because lead is a byproduct of the silver mining going on. So I think there's a link there. And we know how important silver is in the ancient world, so no wonder there's so much lead. But yeah, you've got your bit of lead, stolen or legally procured. You can either hammer it flat, or lead melts at a really low point. So you could smelt it and pour it out and then cut it into the size bits you want. So you kind of want it as flat as possible for a writing surface. And then it seems that a bronze stylus is best for inscribing into lead, but lead oxidizes really quickly.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  And so we don't encounter much lead in the, in the modern world. But if you see it on roofs, it's kind of got this like dusty gray look, but it looks almost like it's kind of got white, fine white mold on it, almost like you get on like, I don't know, brie or some kind of softy.

• 45:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  But anyway, so it's like kind of dusty gray. But when you scratch into lead, even with your fingernail, because it's so soft, the letters are like silvery and shiny. And I think that kind of makes it magical in its own right. So quite a lot of these tablets, you've got them flat. Some of them can just be a list of names, if you just are like, I'm short on time. But these lists of names, and this is quite technical, everyone, sorry, the list of names are always in the nominative. Whereas if you were saying, I curse Charlotte, my name would be in the accusative, because I am like the subject rather than the object of the sentence. So that's really interesting, that what's written on the curse doesn't directly replicate what would be said out loud. Because I think there probably was a spoken element to all of this cursing.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  In lots of the recipes, they say, recite this curse as well as doing these ritual actions. So you kind of, you've written your names, or you can go a bit longer and you can kind of write out a more lengthy curse that lists who the victim is, if you know, and importantly, who the mother of the victim is.

• 46:27Liv Albert?

  Oh.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  I think this is about specificity. Because obviously in the ancient world, lots of it's to do with like, who the father is, you've got your like, mechanics and stuff. And some people are like, oh, this is a magical inversion of standard Roman practice. I'm like, well, maybe, or maybe it's just a little bit easier to be specific, because you know exactly who that mother is. You know where the baby has come from.

• 46:52Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, they're always worried about that too. It's like something that one of their biggest insecurities, in particularly ancient Greece and Rome, is, yeah, who's the daddy?

• 47:01Speaker 02

  So I think if you're trying to be specific and you want the exactly right person cursed.

• 47:06Liv Albert?

  It feels kind of like a dig too. Like an extra, yeah.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Who even is your dad?

• 47:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  So there's, that, that's really important, like specificity of victim. And then you've got to decide who is going to carry out the curse for you. Are you invoking a member of the restless dead? So there's four categories of the restless dead. And this is normally something that happens in ancient Greece. So you've got those that have died before marriage, usually women, those that have died before their time, for whatever reason, those that have died by violence, so they could be murdered, they could have died in battle, and those that haven't received proper burial. So sometimes people fall into like multiple groups. But what's really interesting is lots of the cursed tablets from ancient Athens that were in graves, were in graves of people that died quite young. And so this is obviously like an understood part of the ritual. But also, some of them are deposited hundreds of years later. So there's like a cultural memory going on there as well.

• 47:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  So you've kind of got to decide who's going to carry out this curse. Are you invoking gods and goddesses? You can invoke any kind of god and goddess. It doesn't have to be an underworld god. But the most common across the whole history of cursed tablet creation is Hermes in different guises. Yeah.

• 48:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Like Hermes the trickster or Hermes psychobomb. I think because he's kind of like this messenger, it kind of makes sense.

• 48:20Liv Albert?

  And also, I was thinking for if there's a lot about thieving.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, exactly. Like get Hermes involved. And sometimes you've got like very local deities like Silas Minerva and Bath.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  But Persephone comes up quite a lot as well. Again, I think maybe this moving between the two worlds is interesting for people.

• 48:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and for the unmarried. I could see her being relevant.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  And I think as well, this idea of like dying unmarried, I think to us is a bit like, what? But I think if you think about it from an ancient perspective, it, this idea of kind of an incomplete life. I think it's all about that. I think it's this idea that these dead are particularly powerful. Because they haven't expended all of their like life energy or whatever. Which is really interesting if you think about the fact that the fates are meant to determine the length of life. So. How could it have been before their time? Like, it's really interesting, isn't it?

• 49:15Liv Albert?

  Well, I've, two things, cause yes, absolutely. I've always been fascinated by the idea of the fates in. In that like religious setting, because it never really seems. They, they don't actually reference them that much also in like, like say epic or, or um. Or just like myth broadly, you know, like if, you know, if a, if a young person dies or if somebody dies by natural causes, it's usually like. Caused by Apollo or Artemis or, you know, it's, they don't actually reference the fates that much. So it always seems. It's just fascinating because it feels like, yeah, they would control so much or they would be the ones to decide it. So how could it be before someone's time? But at the same time, they're also really struggling with what is someone's time?

• 50:00Liv Albert?

  But in terms of the marriage side or before marriage, I've been doing a ton of research lately into um. Women and girls, but specifically nymphy. Because I learned, yeah, I mean, the day I learned that the word nymph. Simultaneously refers to that subset of goddesses and also to just young bride girls. Is the day I lost my mind um and haven't found it since. But so it just, you know, the more I learn about what an unmarried girl's life was like, or the expectations and things too. It makes so much sense because that was how they defined a woman completely.

• 50:40Liv Albert?

  Like there's so little else that they really were interested in in terms of culture. So, yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  We have some late antique amulets, so they're kind of like. Some of them are like fourth century, one's a little bit later, sixth century from Egypt and.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Beirut. About protecting young girls from like aggressive erotic attacks through magic or physically. So it's like. Yeah, it's a big concern. And this idea of, because we don't have very many counter curses. So you live in a world where you might be cursed, but we don't have people. Saying, oh, whoever's cursed me, I bow to them.

• 51:21Liv Albert?

  Curse them.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  We have a few, but not many, which is weird. So I think amulets and amuletic protection is much more important than we realize. But you've decided that you're gonna invoke these particular powers.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  And then you finish up your curse. You can add symbols if you want, but that kind of is like a later thing really. And then you've got to decide what you're gonna do. You can either roll it up, like, this is also a really odd reference, you know, like rolling a cigarette.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  So you can either roll it, which is handy if you're in Carthage, because lots of them are thrown down libation tubes. So in graves, they have these tubes that go straight down to graves.

• 51:57Liv Albert?

  Oh my gosh, so you could pour libations?

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, or shove a curse tablet down there. And if you get really fed up with this, you could put a grill over the top. Which is hilarious because we have some graves that have the tubes with the grill over the top, but a cursed tablet already went in the tube.

• 52:11Liv Albert?

  They're like, no more.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  You're so annoyed about this. Um, so you can do that. You can roll it up. You could fold it, maybe into half. And then half again quite often, maybe in a concertina fashion, like people get really creative. And I think this is interesting because we're now getting into like the physicality of the ritual. And there is this idea that creating cursed tablet is all about kind of catharsis. Someone's really angry and they're like, I'm gonna do this. And I'm like, but guys, we've just talked about what you're doing, finding your lead, flattening your lead, writing it like, I don't know how angry. Yeah, so then we get to this idea of folding, rolling, maybe tying it up.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  It's, you can kind of mutilate it however you want in that way, but the, they are often in some way. The inscription is kind of concealed.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Then you can pierce it with a nail. That happens quite often as well. Maybe once. Maybe multiple times with different nails, maybe multiple times with one nail and then you just drive it through. Like this seems to be quite important. And I don't know whether it's because nails are associated with the dead and like nailing. Nailing is not the right word, but using nails to fix the restless dead in their graves. So kind of keeping ghosts in their graves. Or a nail is like part of the binding of the curse.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Don't know. But it is amazing that some of them are like stabbed so many times.

• 53:37Liv Albert?

  That's what I'm thinking, like, there, yeah, it just feels so visceral. It feels like such a violent act.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Well, there's one in the Ashmolean, and it's been folded. One, maybe like three or four times, but the actual folded thing must be.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Eight centimeters thick. And then it's got a nail driven all the way through it.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  That is like, and the lead is not thin lead, so the force required is quite something. Um, the nail tip, the bit that you wouldn't nail the point of it. It's like bent underneath. And I don't know whether that happened after deposition, but it's like a thick nail, so it's. I suggest it's gonna be deliberate. So there's quite a lot of, like, an element of force there. There's one tablet from mine's and there's, it's dedicated to the sanctuary of Annaphen. No, it's not. It's dedicated at the sanctuary of Martin, Martin Magna and Isis. And it's written by a woman and she's like, had, basically, her husband seems to be dead.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  And it seems like her guardian has stolen the wealth that she should have had access to. What's she gonna do if her guardian is the problem? This is all a bit of a pickle. And she writes, just as I write these words in a hostile way, may things become hostile. But this writing is all fine. And then there's these gouges around the tablet where she's obviously just stabbed the stylus in and dragged it. So the lead is all rucked up and you're like, I feel this, the hostility, I, I feel it, I see it. So there is like a really physical element to making these curses. But then you've done all that and you've got to decide what you can do with it. Like Germanicus, we, apparently all the cursed tablets that killed him are like found in the vicinity of where he is.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  But we don't find very many cursed tablets in domestic dwellings.

• 55:32Liv Albert?

  Okay, well, sorry, what is this, Germanicus?

• 55:35Speaker 02

  So Germanicus in Tacitus, Germanicus dies, very unfortunately.

• 55:40Liv Albert?

  This is me not knowing enough about Rome.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  So this is like, welcome to Roman history, Charlotte.

• 55:44Liv Albert?

  Thank you.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  So we have Tacitus, he's telling us all about Germanicus. Um, and Germanicus is kind of important politically.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  And, right, there is debate about this, but I'm gonna put everyone right. Apparently, some believe that he dies by poisoning. He does not die by poisoning. He's cursed. It like, we're told that he goes to the color, like the color he goes is gray like curses and things. So he dies in. AD nineteen, he's really important under the reign of Augustus. He's like a general, he's got these ties. Um, and there's this idea of like this big feud between Piso and Germanicus. And Germanicus dies in Antioch, where we have fantastic cursed tablets, I've seen.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  But anyway, so these cursed tablets that were meant to have been made are found near Germanicus. So found near where he was residing. And so this kind of gives everyone the idea that. Cursed tablets should be put near the victim, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Like, as I've said already, you can put them in graves. Quite a lot of them in the ancient Greek world are in graves. Quite a lot of them from the Roman world are in sanctuary settings. But like the archaeological bias here is huge because excavating cemeteries. Kind of not so archaeologically trendy at the moment. And also you might find one in each grave. Whereas if you excavate a temple site, you'll find a cache of them all together.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  But someone said to me that every archaeological excavation that they know that's been done in the last, I think it's about five years. Every single one has produced cursed tablets. So they are, they are there. You might throw them into wells, wells.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  I kind of have thoughts about. So in ancient Athens, we have lots of cursed tablets from wells. But we know that the Romans cleared the Athenian agora and part of the Keramikos to the cemetery. And the rubble was put into like wells. So if you've put them in a grave and the grave is cleared and you end up with rubble in the well. But the idea in scholarship is that you want access to underworld powers, so graves, wells, these things that go down into the ground.

• 58:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  It's really interesting though, isn't it? Because if you're putting it in a grave, unless it's got a like offering tube. How are you getting it in there?

• 58:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah, you're just going to see like what grave is open at a time and you're like, I'll just toss this in like.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but what about the ones that are hundreds of years later?

• 58:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. I was gonna, uh, cause you said there's, uh, there's others, is there multiple? Like cases where we know they were.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:28Liv Albert?

  Put in at different times.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Cause you kind of tend have tend to have to date a cursed tablet by the handwriting, which is not an exact art, which is why I'm like, oh, between the third and the fifth century or from the first century. We can get a little bit more specific if there's like other archaeological things and it's like, oh, well, this layer cannot be from later than this date. But most of them, you're dating by handwriting, which is a dark art.

• 58:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So like in terms of just physically, like what we know about people writing by hand at any given time.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  And like comparing samples of different materials. Yeah.

• 59:02Liv Albert?

  And how they wrote letters that I would imagine and that, wow.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  And letters shapes, letter shapes changing over time and stuff like that, which is really cool.

• 59:10Liv Albert?

  I think that's so fascinating. Like I, I think that about, I mean, I know like, you know, handwriting um, analysis, I think is not super. Uh, well respected in terms of like definitive, but I think about that all the time. Cause like when I, when I was a kid, like in just even like five years of school. The number of times that I like completely changed every single thing about how I wrote every single letter, just because I was like bored and wanted to change my handwriting. Like. I just think it's fascinating to think that we can kind of learn that. I mean, I know obviously the ancient world is a completely different. Stuff like system, uh, situation. I can't speak today.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  But it depends. Like if you're writing it in a rush.

• 59:51Liv Albert?

  Well, exactly. There's just so many different things that would influence like your handwriting and also okay literacy. So. I mean, clearly.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Go and ask me about literacy.

• 1:00:02Liv Albert?

  I mean, like, so I, I mean, people were just able to write that easily. Like, I guess where you could get someone else to write it for you. Like, what do we know?

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Well, I think that cursed tablets prove to us that there is, there are higher levels of literacy than we tend to think. But I also think we in the modern world have this like, well, I guess it's changing a little bit now, but this idea of like, you're either literate or illiterate.

• 1:00:26Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Whereas in the ancient world, I think there's like loads of different types of literacy. Can you read your own name? Can you recognize your own name? Can you write your own name? Can you do your numbers? And if we think about like these massive inscriptions. Are you setting up an inscription that no one's gonna read? Maybe. In the, in the UK, we have like, in every town, village, city, we have war memorials to the people that have died in the first and second world war. Where I'm from, like the nearest city is Plymouth and it's actually like many more wars. But there's these huge, if we talk about like, unfortunately it's called Plymouth Ho, but. Ac- across the seafront, we have this like big military parade ground and we have these like enormous, absolutely enormous monuments to the war dead.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  I can't tell you anybody, well, that's not true. I can tell you the people that go to read them are Americans doing their genealogy and tracing their family history. And they're trying to find somebody's name.

• 1:01:23Liv Albert?

  This is the most American thing.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Yep. Or it's children on a primary school visit who have also gone to like, look at the names. But everybody knows what they are, but are they actually reading them is a really interesting thing. So if we think about these huge inscriptions. Is being able to spot the letters and the words good enough?

• 1:01:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  In Roman times, you've got lots of kind of abbreviations and things, which I think must illustrate that there's much more of that going on. But in archaic Greece, you've got this postaphedon, which is literally as the ox plow. So the letters are going the way we would expect. And then they go back the other way on the next one. And then they go back the way we'd expect, like an ox plowing field. It's insanity.

• 1:02:01Liv Albert?

  And there's no punctuation. There's just letters all next to each other and you gotta hope for the best.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  So it's obviously important that things are written down. And I think probably with curses, they're probably spoken before they're written down and there's like a progression. But I think if we're thinking about literacy, it's quite eye opening because we have those that seem to be made by the same person. But if we take Bath, for example, you've got like a hundred and seventy tablets from there, maybe more. Under two hundred tablets from there and they are all written by someone different. So we're like out in the Roman provinces, the Roman empire's kind of crumbling and yet there's that many people there. Who over very small amounts of money can write a cursed tablet. I don't think they could justify paying someone to produce a cursed tablet for them.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  And there's one that's written on a pewter plate. So it's like literally like, you know, like a paper plate size. It's slightly bigger than a side plate, but not a dinner plate, made of pewter. And it's got this list of names inscribed on it. It's just folded into quarters and thrown into the sacred spring there. Like this is someone doing a ritual.

• 1:03:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And very like just not spur of the moment necessarily, but like very just like, yeah, like a normal person, just you're just doing it.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Got a random plate you're gonna use.

• 1:03:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like I'm really mad. Here's a plate, scribble it down. Yeah.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  But there are others there that kind of look like human writing, but they aren't writing. So they're called like pseudo inscriptions. So these literate people.

• 1:03:31Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God, this is amazing.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Are still enacting the ritual part, the writing part of the ritual.

• 1:03:36Liv Albert?

  Like a child, like, or I mean, I, I don't wanna be insulting, but like it just makes me think of the kid. No, but it just makes me think of like a kid today who's like imitating their parents and like just scribbling.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I think that's really interesting as well. So this, there are clearly very different levels of literacy.

• 1:03:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  There are clearly very different amount, levels of literacy in different groups. But I think we are probably too quick to dismiss literacy as being like. You know, this is not ancient Egypt where literacy seems to be much more tightly controlled.

• 1:04:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Um, so that's an awesome side to this as well. Like you're getting an insight into these sometimes very wealthy, sometimes very ordinary people. And their problems written in their own hand. I mean.

• 1:04:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  And as petty as vindictive as some of them are or gruesome, you're like. Wow, what like a mark to leave on history when we know nothing else about you, like.

• 1:04:31Liv Albert?

  It's just so real, right? Like it is, humans are so human, like petty and ridiculous and. Like, yeah, it's such a fun reminder of just, and I think so important to, just generally, cause we have such a terrible habit. Especially right now of like romanticizing the ancient world and putting it up on this pedestal. And you know, obviously it also has ties to all of so much patriarchal, western supremacist, like terrible bullshit. And so it is so important to remember that like, people were just people always, like we don't, they're, you know, they're. They're always terrible and ridiculous and scribbling out petty curses, like.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  Little freaks, they really. You know?

• 1:05:18Liv Albert?

  And I, yeah, and I mean, we, we already talked about Ovid, but also just like misogynist weirdos.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  That comes up a lot.

• 1:05:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So, okay, I have two very divergent questions and one is just related to the literacy. I'm fascinated now because. Like it makes me wanna know about like the archaic ones, you know? So do we think that those were written by? Like regular people or were like, all to say, like, is there a, you know, a similar indication of like a bigger understanding of literacy as far back as there?

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  So our like earliest, earliest ones from Sicily mostly seem to be more elite people because they're about law cases. And you have to be able to afford to bring your own case to a law court and I'm a patron or whatever. So that's, and they are long and they're quite detailed and you could argue from the names, but. That's not really, you know, I think it's stronger to argue from the law court side of it. So that in those cases, I think this, this is probably more. Well, I think this tells us that these people were members of the elite and they felt that they had more to lose and therefore the ritual needed to become more robust. And that's probably why they start writing the curses down.

• 1:06:34Liv Albert?

  Even that the elite in that way would feel the need to have curses in the same way as regular people is interesting.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then when we get into kind of classical Athens and keep running later and later, it does just become really varied. There's all these different kinds of problems. You've got potters cursing each other, you know, it's just like petty rivalries. And so there's an argument with potters, isn't there? Like, is the person who makes the pot literate, is the person who paints the pot literate? Are the pots with letters added to by scribes, you know, like?

• 1:07:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  But if you're running a business, you need a level of literacy, you know? So.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  I think that this issue of literacy has become oversimplified. And I think, yeah, not everybody is like reproducing tracts of Homer.

• 1:07:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Because they have other things to do. But you know, like even being able to kind of write a list of like a shopping list, you know, that's one level of literacy, isn't it?

• 1:07:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and it's impressive, especially in a time when everything, like even stories and everything are oral, you know? Because there's so much less need for literacy. So it just seems even more interesting that they would, yeah, have it.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so why write this down? Yeah.

• 1:07:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  You could pray to the gods, you could

• 1:07:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  go to an oracle. I mean, some oracles, the questions are written down, you know, like at Dodona. They're on bits of lead, they're hung from the tree. And they're about like travel, about children, they're like normal people questions. Um, but what is it about writing it down? Some of it, some of them say, may this curse be effective until I dig it up, or until this curse rots.

• 1:08:23Liv Albert?

  Like a take back, Sees.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's never gonna happen because you buried this curse in a grave. Or it's never gonna rot because you've written on lead. So the permanence of the curse is represented by the permanence of the materiality of the curse.

• 1:08:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  That's got to be part of it, I think. And like, if we think about the dedicating of objects in sanctuaries, you can have sacrifices, the next step up is something permanent in the sanctuary.

• 1:08:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  So I think there's something there, like, have you prayed? Yes, did it work? No, okay, make a curse tablet. You know, like, I think there's probably levels of escalation before we get to this point. And then probably beyond this point, I think probably as we get into a more Christianized world, you know, then you might go on a pilgrimage or something.

• 1:09:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's so interesting. Okay, let's get to the dark stuff.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

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• 1:11:54Liv Albert?

  Tell me what all the terrible men and all the terrible things that they did and.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Oh, they're so awful. Oh, my gosh, these terrible, terrible men. They are just like, I did a talk for, they must have all been grownups, because I don't tend to bring up like the examples that are like truly terrible in school talks. Amazingly, I have like other things to talk about. But one girl was absolutely horrified and was like, what? This, and they'd been studying ancient history and they thought ancient history was fantastic, and they were like, what is going on here? I was like, yeah, that's fair. And they're like, why are men like this? Girl, I can't ask that question.

• 1:12:40Liv Albert?

  That's the worst part, is just knowing that they've always been like this.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  This is just, it doesn't end sadly. So, I mean, there's one example that I think kind of really nicely sums up just one of the problems. You've got an, it's a figurine with a cursed tablet next to it. And they're all put in a kind of terracotta jar. If anyone wants the visual, she's in the Louvre, and you can look on the website, and there's this nice little terracotta pot, and you think, oh, charming handmade terracotta pot. And then you see this figurine of a woman who's clearly bound with her ankles behind her back and her hands behind her back, and she's clearly naked. Don't worry though, her hair's gray and she's got a necklace on, and she's made of like terracotta again.

• 1:13:24Liv Albert?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  And then you have this fairly large cursed tablet. And so she has been pierced with 13 needles.

• 1:13:33Liv Albert?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so she's been pierced in both eyes, in her solar plexus, in her mouth, in her hands, in her feet, in her anus, in her vagina, through the top of her head. So this is like a really like visceral thing. And so the cursed tablet is inscribed in Greek, but it starts with like, I deposit this binding spell or charm with the cathonic gods and Pluto, Corps, Seaphany, Adonis, and some cathonic Hermes, Toth, these like various magical names, oh, Ananubis, they're all invoked. Um, as well as cathonic, like demons, gods, men who have suffered untimely death, youths, maidens, like all of these people, everybody who could be invoked is invoked.

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  Alongside, and they're kind of invoked to ensure that Antinous, who we think is probably Tadrian's lover, being invoked in this, and his kind of like ghostly, heroic, godly form, whatever.

• 1:14:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  So he is told that he has to rouse himself. And then it gets like about, he says, go into every place, into every quarter, into every house, and bind Ptolemy. So this is the poor woman, whom Aces bore. And this is just, it just gets worse and worse, because then her grandmother's listed, so it's definitely the right person.

• 1:14:53Liv Albert?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  So basically, it's like, so she can't be penetrated vaginally. The most correct translation is fucked. Cannot be penetrated anally, cannot do anything for pleasure with another man, except for Seraphimon, who's the person who's created this curse. So she's not allowed to eat, she's not allowed to drink, she's not allowed to go out, she's not allowed to sleep, unless she is with this man. And then it's just kind of meant to get worse and worse and worse. The powers are invoked again. This Antinous is told not to disobey him.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  And then she's not allowed this experience. She's had to be dragged by the hair, by her inward parts, so she doesn't stand aloof. I mean, come on, what this.

• 1:15:37Liv Albert?

  Jesus.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  So she doesn't stand aloof from Seraphimon. Um, and she has to stay with him for her, the entire time of his life, being fond of him, loving him.

• 1:15:49Liv Albert?

  And how could she not? And with this behavior, how could she not?

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  And telling him exactly what she has in her mind, which I think just sums up the men have no idea what's going on with. But this is like, I'd say fairly, she's, this, I'd say gruesome for this poor woman.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  At least she's not dead by the end of the curse, I would say.

• 1:16:11Liv Albert?

  Sure.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  But isn't it horrendous that like, yeah, not only is she suffering massively until she goes and like lives with this man, but she has to then, but then she's like bound to being fond of him, loving him, and telling her what's in his, what's in her mind, like.

• 1:16:30Liv Albert?

  I really, it's really fascinating to hear stuff like that, because like, it really, I mean, if we're gonna say humans are gonna human, like, the way that is so reminiscent of like, uh, you know, the manosphere bullshit. This idea that like, men really have always overall just considered women as objects. Because.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  But this is the thing, you've got the woman as an object as well.

• 1:17:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, there's so many layers.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Got her in his hand and he is stabbing her.

• 1:17:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  It's so messed up.

• 1:17:09Liv Albert?

  She loves him.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Liv Albert?

  So that she loves him.

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Liv Albert?

  Like I, okay, this is so bad, but I really, I am one of those people who absolutely loves Love Island.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Liv Albert?

  Just, and specifically the UK one.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  I mean, it's wild, it is wild.

• 1:17:28Liv Albert?

  And it's so much better than the American one. Um, but I just, I think that.

• 1:17:35Liv Albert?

  This just feels too, this feels too modern. It feels too, like, obviously, you know, the, the details are very ancient in the, the way that these kinds of things are manifested. But the phrasing of it and the, the like overall desire, this just treatment of women as if they are the property is so, yeah, it's so manosphere. It's so like just, it's too real is what it is. It's too, it sounds too like it could have come out of a, um, you know, an Instagram reel.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  It kind of gets worse.

• 1:18:13Liv Albert?

  Oh, good.

• 1:18:14Speaker 02

  So we have this example that someone has made this figurine. They've made this cursed tablet. But that it's very, very similar to a recipe that we have that's instructing people how to make these kinds of things.

• 1:18:27Liv Albert?

  I'm glad you mentioned that because earlier I had wanted to ask about the recipes and then I forgot, but oh my God, tell me about the fucking recipes.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  You've got P G M four and then it's lines two ninety six onwards. And basically it's an instruction of how you're actually meant to, you're actually in this, you're meant to make two figurines. And one's meant to be the woman bound and kneeling and the other's meant to be kind of like Aries, almost like smiting this woman. But you're all meant to pierce this figurine. And you're told in the recipe that every time you stick one of these like needles into the figurine, that you're meant to say, I pierce and then whatever bit you're piercing.

• 1:19:06Liv Albert?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  The bit, so say, I pierce the vagina of, and then your victim. In order that shows she, in order that she will remember me, and then you're meant to say your own name. So here they're not about like binding her, because quite a lot of cursed tablets are about binding the victim or something. This is like actively about piercing them. And so you've got the ritual and the verb kind of matching.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  But why do you need instructions? That's the question.

• 1:19:35Liv Albert?

  So how common was it if it was, there's instructions like?

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  So there's a really interesting thing. So you've got these, most of our instruction manuals, of course, come from Egypt. The papyrus survives much better there. Um, because it's like dry heat, isn't it? So this is interesting. I think it does skew the data. I wouldn't be surprised if like, instruction manuals in quote marks are kind of circulating a bit more broadly. We know Septimus Severus takes kind of oracle books and stuff back to Rome. So I'm thinking this kind of thing happens. So this is, they are about anything. They could have instructions for like amulets, spells to cast out demons, spells against having a cold. And then curses, how to make your own curses. Um,

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  and there's one really interesting argument put forward by an academic called Christopher Frain. And he says that these might, are more like kind of curiosities and people have collected them to read them rather than being instruction manuals that a scribble would carry around and be like, oh, you'd like a curse. And then leafing through it to find the right recipe. And I kind of think, yeah, maybe the copies that we have that survive, because they're kind of from the fourth century C E onwards.

• 1:20:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but it would.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  But they, they would kind of preserve older stuff. So.

• 1:20:52Liv Albert?

  And why would anything be created in that format?

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:56Liv Albert?

  To then just be like, look, this is just for fun to read, not because it's real.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  It doesn't like, don't, don't take too much notice of the fact that this is almost directly replicating this recipe. That's just a coincidence.

• 1:21:08Liv Albert?

  And that it's explicitly a recipe, like, yeah, I mean, it's giving the same argument that like, the pickup artists are just, you know, harmless or whatever, just like, it's not real. I don't know. That's, yeah.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  It's not real, but like the ancient world and the modern world, both worlds are full of women being assaulted in some way.

• 1:21:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like it is real actually though. It's really real.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Go and find a woman that's lived a life free from fear or suffering in some way, like.

• 1:21:40Liv Albert?

  And I just, I mean, with the news of the past two years, I don't know, I'm getting more rage fueled with every possible minute. And then I read the history and I, anyway, I'm never getting over the nymphs thing. That is, that is, it's turning into a whole book idea. So.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Do it. And then you can talk about how slightly weird men going forward in history describe the ideal women as like nymphs and nymphettes.

• 1:22:07Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's why it's all come about. Yep.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  Like children.

• 1:22:11Liv Albert?

  Thank you Nabokov and Epstein. And yes, no, we all just want girls to look like little girls forever. That's so cool and normal. It's fine. That's so normal. Oh, so, so there was like recipe to, to, to do this, this very specific curse.

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:32Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  It's just so grim.

• 1:22:35Liv Albert?

  It's horrifying. So like in terms of volume,

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:38Liv Albert?

  like how much of it was in this vein? I mean, I'm sure not so extreme, but like in this vein of like men controlling women, I guess. And then I guess to be fair, like how much is it women attempting to control men? And I say attempting because one was in control and the other was not. And so it's not the same.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:22:59Liv Albert?

  A few listeners.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, really. Yes. Everybody listen? Everyone written that down? Good.

• 1:23:04Liv Albert?

  It's not the same.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  It's not the same. I think what's really interesting is that the erotic curses, they do make up like a significant proportion, but there are more legal curses from Athens. But then again, like, think about where in the Mediterranean it's been heavily excavated. Athens. So, I mean, you say not as sinister. These are, the, they're most erotic cursed tablets. You get two types. This is why I should have started. You get attraction spells, so spells, curses to draw people to someone. And then you get separation curses that are to sort of drive two people apart. And in these categories, it seems to me, just on all the ones I've looked at,

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  that women are more likely to write curses separating pairs, which is interesting. Kind of, you know, you are laughing. We know why you're laughing. Yeah. This seems to be more likely to be the case.

• 1:24:02Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  But I think I have a sneaking suspicion that lots of these unnamed, like where we don't know the name of the person that created them are actually made by women. The attraction spells are dominated by these vicious men.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  Who are trying to like steal other people's husbands or steal women that have decided that they don't want to be married and they want to be nuns, you know, this kind of thing. And very much about like dragging them. It's always, there's always some kind of like physical abuse.

• 1:24:34Liv Albert?

  Domination.

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very, very physical before you even get to the actual fact that they are trying to rape them. Both vaginally and anally. How nice.

• 1:24:44Liv Albert?

  Very specific. Yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Very specific.

• 1:24:47Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  And so it's kind of messed up in so many ways. But, but, I mean, I don't think this is a good, but, but there are women cursing other women in these erotic curses. There are men cursing other men. This is not just some like heteronormative men cursing women that they want. Everybody is doing it to each other. But overwhelmingly it's men cursing women. And overwhelmingly the really violent ones are written by men as well.

• 1:25:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  But if we look at cursed tablets from like the broader spectrum of all the different types, the majority are written by men, we think. So, but, but, but as I said right at the beginning, we don't know who wrote most of these. And there's actually just this kind of cultural bias and assumption that they would be written by men.

• 1:25:35Liv Albert?

  I was literally just gonna say, it's almost like the history has developed as if men are the default and we have to be very specific.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  But they are unbelievably violent, like, um, that's so, we have amazing curses against chariot horses and charioteers. And they're really violent and they're kind of call for, it seems to call, they seem to call up the dead person who's invoked. And quite often I kind of think this is kind of like in a ghostly form. But in these, they must be, they must have a physical form because they're meant to drag the charioteer off his chariot so that he gets crunched under the wheels. He's meant to hobble the horses. You know, there was some, they are actually meant to be undertaking physical actions rather than just, um, like being a scary ghost figure.

• 1:26:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  But in Bath, where most of the curses are written by like normal people about normal things and often about coins, lots of coins. So in Bath, there are dedicated at the sanctuary of Seosmenerva, but this is attached to a bath house. And so lots of the things that are lost are like cloaks, jewels.

• 1:26:53Liv Albert?

  Just like a lost and found.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's like all stuff that you would lose in the baths.

• 1:26:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  But they are really, really, really violent, you know. So they have to pay for the theft in their own blood. They have to, uh, they, they all pretty much all end up in death of some kind. But you have to suffer significantly before that point. So you have to have terrible headaches, be unable to eat, unable to. Uh, there's one that's like, may she be unable to eat, or may he and she, because we don't know. May they be unable to eat, may they be unable to sleep, may they be unable to drink, may they have terrible headaches, may they be unable to have a wee, maybe they, may, may they be unable to defecate.

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  And then I want them to die on top, but then I also want them to like have blood pouring from them. And you're like, oh, what order is this happening in? And then you're like, wow, okay. But sometimes.

• 1:27:47Liv Albert?

  And that was because a cloak was stolen?

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  Yes, like, there's not a lot, but like, yeah, you're just like, okay, cool. Um.

• 1:27:56Liv Albert?

  This is like an overreaction.

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  It kind of does. And I'm like, wow, this is really, really, really violent. Over like small, small amounts of money. Is this just a violent society, maybe?

• 1:28:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah, or is it just like that, you know, the theft of something like that means that much? Like, is it an like impoverished or, you know, just, yeah, that it opens up so many questions. Cause that's a, an intense reaction, certainly.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  It really is. And I think, you know, when we said earlier about how it's created in cursed tablet cathartic. I mean, maybe if you watch HBO's Rome, there's some woman that curses someone in that. And she has the right idea. It's like really interesting because it's quite a laborious process, but she is driven by some kind of fury. And I think, hmm, interesting. This is quite good. Um, and I'm pretty sure she curses his penis, which is like very on brand for curses.

• 1:28:54Liv Albert?

  Very Roman.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Very Roman. Um, but we have like weird, weird curses, like there's one that's inscribed onto a human bone. And it might have been written in blood and that kind of seems to call upon the ghost of the person whose bone it is to bind the victim. That's not something you do like in a rage, like you can't rage find a human bone. Very easily, can you? Like, and then try to write on it is not very easy. Um, so, you know, like, it's very weird. But this idea of like paying for your sins through your own blood.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  So like the spilling of blood, the having the blood pour forth from the victim until they return the object. It's really interesting.

• 1:29:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:46Speaker 02

  And like that on one way, there's like violence, uh, out and out violence, almost like kind of magical warfare. But then in these bath curse tablets as well, they're like, you need to die, blood needs to be spilled. You need ill health, whatever that might like, insomnia, the inability to sit, stand, lie down. You need to go mad, you need to lose your memory, you need to go blind. Adverse effects on external limbs in various forms, the failure of the internal organs, but then also the inability to produce children. And I think you're kind of like, yeah, so on the one hand, you've got the violent cruelty of physical harm. But like the psychological harm of some of this as well, like, because we know that stress can have an impact on fertility.

• 1:30:31Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  And so, and we know how important children were in the ancient world and still are to many, many people in the modern world. Um, and to think that someone that could take that away from you is quite scary.

• 1:30:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  And if you're, you know, to go to now rocket from Britain back to ancient Egypt, like to know that even if you're happily married or otherwise. Even if you've got this husband for bigger, who's meant to be protecting you, someone could still steal you away from him by driving you mad until you leave. Like this is, you know, it's almost like these women who are being cursed cannot kind of survive in this world, like the mental strain of that. And I think it kind of, you know, when you read more and more what's being said about women online and how you should trap them into going out with you. Or how you should just avoid being near them because they're so awful, like to hear that kind of rhetoric over and over again.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  It's quite damaging. And I think, you know, I'm like, but old enough to have not grown up kind of with the internet, really.

• 1:31:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  And I think, but yeah, if I had been thirteen, reading all this stuff, it would have like really messed with my brain. And I think that's what I find really illuminating about these cursed tablets is that you live in a world where this is happening around you, you don't know who's making them.

• 1:31:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  And I think that's what's really scary, this like darkness to it. And so although we have some examples of women kind of almost weaponizing this ritual against men, like the patriarchy still wins.

• 1:32:08Liv Albert?

  Well, exactly. They didn't hold any tangible power to like, so fucking what? If they cursed the men, like the men held all of the control and. Yeah, it's, I mean, especially, yeah, with, with the rise of, of the current internet culture. I mean, I also am grateful every day that Facebook didn't exist when I was in high school.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:29Liv Albert?

  Like, and it's, yeah, I can't even imagine now. I don't even want to be online just even for like work things. And I can't imagine being young now. Like it was, yeah, hard enough having social media in my twenties, like, you know, it's. Yeah, it's just, it's wild and it's getting so bad with the, the rise of. And I'm just, the way you said it too, not, not knowing who's creating this, like that's, it's, it's so real. Or what, not knowing which men are, are listening to those like horrifying Manosphere podcasts, like not knowing, walking around who's listening to Andrew Tate.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:10Liv Albert?

  You know?

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  And it's like, you know, so what? You've got some people who have gone online to seek out help. Because we, we don't know, you know, like as a teenager, like, oh, how to get a girlfriend? Harmless request from anybody, kind of the same thing going on here, like, oh, this, but someone's stolen something from you. Oh, what you need to do, instead of asking around, trying to track this person down and getting your cloak back or taking them to a trial. But do you know what? You need to undertake this ritual and you need to channel these really vicious feelings.

• 1:33:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  And so it's kind of like encouraging this extremity of feeling that I think is really weird. And as you say, like in the modern world, ancient history is held up as like this bastion of society. Oh, traditional family values, oh, stoicism, all this other, like crap. And you're like, yeah, but look at what they're doing. And then like, actually, no, don't, because you might get ideas.

• 1:34:10Liv Albert?

  Exactly.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Don't look at the curse others. We don't, we don't need that coming back, like.

• 1:34:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing, right? And it's like, yeah, go read Ovid's Ars Amatoria. You can have like, someone will try to convince you that he was being satirical, but even if he was, it's one of the most dangerous things I've ever read. One of the most like dehumanizing texts, like.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  And then his abortion poems are so awful.

• 1:34:37Liv Albert?

  He has abortion poems?

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  Oh my god, they are so bad. I think there's two of them.

• 1:34:42Liv Albert?

  My god.

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  And they are like, they are horrendous, the way he talks about the women. Um, I just, I'm like, Ovid, what the hell are you doing? And I, and there's kind of an argument that he's doing this to try and get back in Augustus's good books. Cause he's like, oh, you are the most awful woman ever, because you're trying to end your pregnancy. Um, and it, and I'm like, hmm, is that what's going on here? No, I think so.

• 1:35:11Liv Albert?

  I didn't know we had pro-life losers back then too. I mean, I guess I should have, I've just never looked for them.

• 1:35:16Speaker 02

  So it's like, one of them, it is in the, um, Amores, it's two thirteen and it starts with like, for trying to unseat the burden crouched in her swelling womb. I like this, I like this translation, who is this? Diane Arson Silverman, good translation. But he's like, I should be furious to take such a risk, because basically this woman is like at risk of dying because she's tried to have an abortion. And I'm like, so you're angry because she's done it without telling you, but then we've also read your other stuff that's like, how to just get anyone to.

• 1:35:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  You know, it's just like crazy, yeah.

• 1:35:50Liv Albert?

  And like use people. Yeah. No, it's well, I've always really struggled with Ovid because also metamorphosis, like alongside all of that is one of the most. Real texts in terms of like recognizing the trauma of rape in these stories. So it's so hard because he can simultaneously like recognize that trauma. And there's so little other, so few other, you know, mythological texts that do that. But then simultaneously, he wrote shit like this and you're like, what are you as a person though? Because it's very unclear.

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  And this is the thing, isn't it? What are you as a person? I'm now waving my pen at you.

• 1:36:28Liv Albert?

  No.

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

  What are you as a person is the thing, isn't it? And then you think, are you listening to Ovid or are you making curse tablets? Are you trying to steal someone's wife? Are you like making figurines and piercing people so that you can like violate them in a kind of every orifice? Like this is the problem in the modern world. You can hide online, but you can hide out in the open. As you say, what's in your earbuds? Earbuds.

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  Oh, the classic ancient historian, these young people with their earphones. What's in your ears? What are you listening to? And like.

• 1:37:08Liv Albert?

  Or what are you doing online at night? Like now I can't stop thinking about the, the men in the forums, teaching other men and you know, to rape their wives and.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  What's going on at the symposium?

• 1:37:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And we're all just like, oh, this was the news. Like, oh, I guess we're all just continue on like, it's fine. I recently had someone comment on a, cause I, whatever, various posts, I'm an angry feminist. But I had someone comment something like essentially saying that, that the increase of like violence against women and like the general growth in misogyny is bullshit and that it's women who are more violent against men. And I just, those are the wildest things. And you're just like, okay, like, oh, I guess we can't ever exist on the same plane of reality. So like, what are, what do we do with that? When they just refuse to exist on the same plane of reality as the rest of us?

• 1:38:06Speaker 02

  It's so hard. And I talk to my students about this because I think when you're at university, you're learning what kind of adult you want to be. And that means you're like trying things out and you're like, oh no, actually that was terrible. I didn't like that. And sometimes it's like blue eyeliner and sometimes it's more serious. But I try and say to my students, you know, in the real world, you're gonna have to work with people and encounter people who you fundamentally disagree with. Every day at work, I meet someone who I fundamentally disagree with. I say almost on a moral level, but when you're like face to face, having to figure this out, you can find something, anything. You both might, might just like blueberry muffins. And that is enough to appreciate that that person is also a human being.

• 1:38:52Speaker 02

  And maybe they'll feel that way about you. But in an online discourse, you can't have that back and forth. You can't be like, what's your favorite kind of cheese? You just can't like, you can't do that. And therefore you can't find the shared humanity. And that's what I always think about this. The curses are one sided. It's just one, quite often hideous man's take on the situation. So how do you move on from that? You can't, because you can't respond to it, like the online discourse, you can't respond to it. And I think that's what's really scary about all of it, that we've not moved on. Like, as I said, these curse tablets are like over 2000 years old.

• 1:39:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  Like we, it wouldn't be wonderful to be in a society where like laughing about how these men are so outrageous and ridiculous.

• 1:39:42Liv Albert?

  Oh my god, yeah.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  And lots of people are horrified, but.

• 1:39:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but by and large as a culture, yeah, we're not. And no, it's, that is, it's one of the most fascinating and infuriating parts about studying ancient history generally, right? Is, is this realization that we have grown so little and learned so much. And I do think it is primarily the fault of the patriarchy. Because with that underpinning across like the entirety of our history, like no one is able to see the forest for the trees. Because the like, I don't even know, but don't know where the metaphor ends with that. But like, yeah, because the patriarchy holds so much inherent power and like the inherent supremacy of men has not been questioned.

• 1:40:29Liv Albert?

  So we just keep not learning any true lessons. We think we learned a lesson from history, but really end up just repeating it in a slightly different form. Because the underpinning oppressive nature of like, yeah, like specifically Western patriarchy and the like whiteness that comes along with that. Like just has not been fundamentally questioned.

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  And I think the problem is like the, and I kind of think the biggest fundamental problem with patriarchy is that it creates this kind of scarcity mindset. And so you have, you can't have a sensible conversation about challenging the patriarchy. Because there are many groups of young men who feel disenfranchised in the modern world. Yeah, well, they should do. We should all feel disenfranchised in the modern world. Our opportunities are being taken from us. But it's not the illegal immigrants. It's not the women taking your jobs. It's because of the like much higher up.

• 1:41:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:24Speaker 02

  Individuals, powers, systems, whatever one to describe.

• 1:41:27Liv Albert?

  It's the capitalism that the patriarchy is inflicting upon us that is causing this. Like, it's like how, you know, toxic masculinity and patriarchy hurts men. But they can't see that because the, the overarching powers have convinced them to blame immigrants, to blame people who don't look like them, to blame women, to not think of those people as humans in the same form as themselves. And, and yeah, like until we remove that, like it's just gonna keep going in the same, the same way.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  It is though, isn't it? Because it's like, we've been talking about literacy and writing stuff down. That's like the heart of making a curse tablet. But that's the question that I ask, like, why write this down? That's a question that we need to ask about the world generally, like, why is this written down? Why is this being shared? Who is it coming from? What do people want me to take from this?

• 1:42:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and who benefits from the, yeah.

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  It's just, and I think that's the thing. If we, we can't learn how to be decent people from curse tablets because, dear god, nobody comes off well in them. But we could learn, you know, about the idea of writing and permanence of words, like these rape threats online. Why is it that women in online public spheres so often get written rape threats? What are you trying to achieve with actually writing that down? You want it to be seen, but you also want it to be seen by other people because you're writing it in a public space. You've not written a letter.

• 1:42:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:58Speaker 02

  And then there are those that send toxic DMs. I'm like, okay, so you don't want this to be perceived publicly, but you want your, your thought that this person apparently deserves to be raped to have a permanence, like people making curses. But that in itself is really interesting and like, who, you know, there's people making magical handbooks 2000 years ago. Like, why? You're profiting off someone else's misery. That's what these pickup artists are doing.

• 1:43:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:26Speaker 02

  And like, if you genuinely cared about these young men and wanted to help them learn how to talk to women, you'd start with, women are human beings too. Some of them are oblivious and won't realize you're flirting with them. It's not because they're thick and it's not because you're bad at flirting. It's just because some women are too busy reading curse tablets.

• 1:43:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And if a woman doesn't like you, it doesn't mean that you need to like fundamentally, fundamentally upend your entire existence and turn on her. Like, it's okay. Sometimes people just don't like other people and that's fine. It's like, but it, it all comes down to this, the, the underlying like power that comes with being a man because they've been raised to conceptualize as like the world is made for them. And then so when something is not for them, that it causes this reaction that like, like, yeah, it's so hard. Because like, I understand how men ended up like this. It, it, in most cases is not, you know, because they were inherently a bad person in any way,

• 1:44:26Liv Albert?

  but the way that they've been raised to then think that they have power over other people, then like eventually comes into all of these other, you know, issues and, and turns into something so much, so just fucking toxic.

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  I think that's what makes me really, really sad. I like, the internet discourse terrifies me. But it also makes me like deeply sad because I think we have lost all these people to the dark side.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  And actually, you know, there's no need for it apart from greed. And I do think some of these like manifest influences genuinely believe that men are better than women.

• 1:45:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  And I just kind of think it's really hard to hate up close. And so get offline and get out into the world.

• 1:45:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  And you'll realise that A, not all women look the same. Because not everybody uses filters, has plastic surgery, you know, not, and not everybody is chasing this like kind of modern version of the ideal feminine woman. So not everyone looks the same, not everyone likes the same thing. And you'll also undoubtedly see a woman falling over, dropping her ice cream, you know, like women being women in the real world. And then you realise that we don't need to be raped, we're not a threat. We're just existing and it's okay if you drop your ice cream too. Nobody's gonna laugh at you and think, ha ha, that man's not a real man because he's dropped his ice cream. Like, it's okay. So yeah, what is my, what's the takeaway from that?

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Study ancient curses because they're interesting and go outside and buy an ice cream, but try not to drop it.

• 1:46:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And like men, you can have emotions, it's fine and good actually.

• 1:46:07Speaker 02

  Cry about your ice cream being dropped.

• 1:46:08Liv Albert?

  Please cry, cry about a girl, that's fine too. Cry about your friend, hug your friends, my god, men, hug your friends, tell your friends they, that you love them. It's fine and good actually. Those are my favourite, just to bring it back to a bit of lightness and me admitting how much I enjoy the UK Love Island. My favourite moments are when the men like cry to each other and actually have like a real show of emotion and so often are embarrassed by it and then have the women telling them that it's great actually. And it makes them more of a man. It's like, just listen to us when we tell you that because instead they go and listen to the men and it just continues this toxicity and you're like, no, it's fine.

• 1:46:49Liv Albert?

  We're all just human and if you guys let yourselves be human, then we'd all be a lot happier.

• 1:46:55Speaker 02

  We really would, we'd all be like a lot less uptight and a lot happier.

• 1:46:59Liv Albert?

  Honestly.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  As someone that doesn't wanna be touched, maybe, you know, ask your male friends if they wanna hug.

• 1:47:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's so fair, oh my god. No, and I am that person too, yeah.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  People are like, oh, it's so nice to meet you and I see them coming, I'm like, no.

• 1:47:16Liv Albert?

  I am literally that person, so I, I don't, yeah, I shouldn't have needed you to tell me, it's so funny.

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  I'm like a cat with my claws up like, please stop, please.

• 1:47:25Liv Albert?

  No, and that's why I'm like, men, go do that to each other. Because I'm like, I don't think of it for myself, so I didn't think of it at all, but I'm like, no, don't come at me.

• 1:47:34Speaker 02

  But yeah, you know, science says that we need like so many hugs a day and stuff, don't they? Like, it's a thing, just do it.

• 1:47:41Liv Albert?

  And people like, we have, we've gotten far enough in some ways to have this mentality of like teaching consent in partial forms, like I'll, I think of this all the time, just speaking of also being a person who doesn't like to be touched. Like I have a, a relative who was, you know, raising a young kid and who was like teaching them like, oh, do you want to go have like hug? But like only teaching them like their side of the consent and not like to ask if this other person wants a hug and you're just like, eh, it just, we can go both ways, can we just treat each other like we're own, we're just all independent human bodies? I don't know.

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  It's not personal, I just, I don't wanna hug.

• 1:48:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, oh, it's, yeah, oh, the world is, is wacky. I'm thrilled to have learned about these cursed tablets and to have raged against the patriarchy just as expected.

• 1:48:38Speaker 02

  It is important to remember that the ancient world was not great, that we could learn from the ancient world and be better.

• 1:48:46Liv Albert?

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:47Speaker 02

  But we're not doing that at the moment.

• 1:48:48Liv Albert?

  No, but some of us are and at least talking about it and laughing about it in our little circles of giving a shit about other people.

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  I think it was Mary Beard, who the wisest thing she ever said was, the more I learn about the Romans, the more I don't like them. And I'm like, this is how we should feel about the ancient world. The more, because like I go to people, oh, I love cursed tablets. And then I show them some examples and they're like, oh my god, this person is a red flag, danger, danger. I'm like, oh no, what I mean is that I think they're happy, they're like fascinating.

• 1:49:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  But I, de god, does it make me think that the Romans and the Greeks were just really hideous? Yes, it does.

• 1:49:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I love ancient Greece and Greek mythology more than anything. And I wanna learn about it for the rest of my life. Do I think that they were even a little bit good people? No. It's just really interesting, but there is such a mentality of just feeling like if you are interested in something, you have to inherently like co-sign it morally. And that's bizarre and dangerous and weird.

• 1:49:55Liv Albert?

  I'm much more interested in learning of the dark side, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  I think that's the thing, like, human nature is fascinating. Doesn't mean that it's like, good.

• 1:50:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  And that's okay.

• 1:50:06Liv Albert?

  I just wanna learn it and I think, yeah, it's both fascinating and infuriating to just learn it and watch it and just be like, oh, oh, cool though, so we don't, we're not changing anything, we're just doing things in like really minutely different ways. Okay, yeah, cool. The more I learn about history, the more I think humans are just destined for a failure. And by humans, I do mean it, it is ultimately the fault of men. And I'll stand by that.

• 1:50:37Speaker 02

  We do need to shake some things up big time, don't we?

• 1:50:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Shake up.

• 1:50:42Speaker 02

  Well, now we've talked through how you make a cursed tablet.

• 1:50:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  Just leave that there for everyone.

• 1:50:49Liv Albert?

  There's a handful of men that I would be, actually no, not, not would be. There are a handful of men, one in particular, let's be perfectly honest, that have a bottle of champagne sit in my fridge for the moment they die. And I'm perfectly honest with that, for, there are a couple of people who I'm just really looking forward to celebrating their deaths. But thank you so much for doing this, this has been really fascinating and infuriating and also just delightful.

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  It's been so fun to talk about like the weirdness of ancient history.

• 1:51:21Liv Albert?

  I love the weirdness, yes, it's so weird and that is the thing that I think we learn the least about. Especially when you're just like in general, you know, history or the school. Like we don't learn that they're weird and it's so much more fun that they're weird.

• 1:51:34Speaker 02

  And my only warning to people is, don't Google cursed tablets on your work laptop or your school computer. Just putting that out there for you.

• 1:51:43Liv Albert?

  Oh god.

• 1:51:44Speaker 02

  Private, on your own personal browser, have a look.

• 1:51:52Liv Albert?

  And a good warning, I think.

• 1:51:57Liv Albert?

  Uh, is there anything you wanna share with my listeners about where to read more or find you or anything?

• 1:52:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I am on Instagram as Dr. Shirtsbent. Um, and I have my, well, I have a new book coming out that's all about cursed tablets and the dead.

• 1:52:11Liv Albert?

  Oh.

• 1:52:12Speaker 02

  So if you're into.

• 1:52:12Liv Albert?

  Did I know this? I apologize if that was in the emails from months ago that I didn't bring it up earlier, so tell me all about it.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  So it is, it's about the dead, what are the dead doing? Are they actually carrying out the curse? Are they being used as like an analogy for being useless? If the victim will be useless, are they being messengers? They taking the curses to the underworlds, to the gods tonight? So that's what, um, one of my books is all about and that is coming out in September with Bloomsbury. Um, and then, yeah, eh, just come along to the wild ride on Instagram, otherwise, without sounding like one of those people, if you Google me.

• 1:52:47Liv Albert?

  Sometimes it's just the easiest way.

• 1:52:49Speaker 02

  If you Google me, it's all there. If you wanna know about early Christianity and supernatural figures, Dr. Ryan Denson and I have got an edited volume coming out about that towards the end of the summer. So there's lots of exciting new research for people that are really into it. But always, if you Google me, there's always an academic, like email address to get me on. If you want some guidance on where to find stuff to read or access to some stuff to read, always happy to share things with people.

• 1:53:16Liv Albert?

  Oh, well, thank you so much. Is there anything else you wanted to get in here before I?

• 1:53:21Speaker 02

  I don't think so, I think we have covered.

• 1:53:23Liv Albert?

  I know, I'm like.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  A fashionable amount of stuff, yeah.

• 1:53:27Liv Albert?

  I would agree. And also maybe you'll have to come back and talk about more of the dead because that sounds delightful as well.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  Oh, they're so good, they're so interesting in the ancient world.

• 1:53:38Liv Albert?

  Really, they really are. Well, thank you.

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  This has been so fun, thank you so much, it's been awesome.

• 1:53:58Liv Albert?

  Nerds, as always, thank you so damn much for listening. I will admit, there have not been a load of new conversation episodes this year, just because, well, we didn't get a lot scheduled, without over explaining the why. Yeah, I really want to get back into conversation episodes. So if anyone is listening to this, and you're like, "Hey, I'm an expert on this weird topic of various things in the ancient Mediterranean," hey, come on, come on the show. I love a weird topic from ancient Mediterranean history. Maybe wider ancient history, I just have to know enough to be able to not be unable to ask you questions.

• 1:54:42Liv Albert?

  But if you are someone listening, and you think, "Gosh, that sounds fun," it is, I promise. So, go to mythsbaby.com/contact, and I have a form there where you can request to be a guest on any of these episodes. Also, if you're a past guest, listening to this, come back. Do you have another thing? Please. Oh, my god, past guests, like, low-key, no offense to first-timers, but past guests are a bit my favorite, purely because I'm a socially anxious bitch, and if I have already talked to somebody, then I am more comfortable talking to them again. And that's the pure facts of it. So if you have been on the show,

• 1:55:24Liv Albert?

  and you have a fresh topic, or even just new research on the first topic, like Ryan Denson, he's come on to talk about various forms of sea creatures in like, four episodes, and every one is so much fun. So, there's never too much ancient history. If you want to come back on the show, please, reach out. And I also might, in a perfect world, be sending out an email to a lot of past guests, asking if you want to come back on the show. We'll see if that ever happens, but if it does, I don't know, come back on. I'm just rambling now. Let's talk about Myth Baby, it's written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Select music is by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, where we have a load of fun shows, bringing you ancient history. I'm trying

• 1:56:04Liv Albert?

  to figure out a better way of sharing those shows more broadly. But for now, check out Ancient History 101, which is Alexandra Sills' new show, where she has expert guests come on and break down a topic in ancient history in like, full, in like, an hour-long episode. It's very much meant to be like, a crash course in that thing, and it's so much fun. Or check out You Are Odysseus, which is my good friend Laura Jenkinson-Brown's, it is her interactive audiobook of the incredible book that she wrote, that is also called You Are Odysseus, in which it's, it's a choose-your-own-path of the Odyssey, to the point where

• 1:56:48Liv Albert?

  you can do literally anything. Any opportunity, or potential opportunity, that Odysseus had in the Odyssey is mentioned in this book, and you can either flip around and make your own choices, or you can just check out the audiobook, which is what is on the Memory Collective. So check out You Are Odysseus. And also, like, Laura has highly produced these episodes. Oh, my god, they're so much fun. Either soon, or they already have, I've been, I'm going to be sharing some of those in this, this show's feed, to promote the upcoming season. So check out season two of You Are Odysseus, which is coming on October 27. You can also listen to Movies We Dig, those delightful doctors, I think they're all doctors, if not, I've given you an upgrade, doctors of various ancient world things,

• 1:57:33Liv Albert?

  talk about movies and reception of the ancient world in movies and TV, and so much. And I have been on a load of episodes, and we always have so much fun. Check out Movies We Dig. Check out Partial Historians, who are those two incredible Australian women, bringing you ancient Roman history. That's all you need. Women, professors of such things, doctors, teaching you ancient Roman history. It's the best way to learn ancient Roman history, because you're lacking all of the scary dude-bro aspects. And check out, check out Ancient Office Hours, which is by the Ozymandias Project, who are also people doing incredibly cool stuff in the ancient world, and trying to make it more accessible, and really honing in on people who are in academia for that. Check out their work. Check out

• 1:58:18Liv Albert?

  Digital Hamarabi, which is much better, I would say, on the YouTube, so check out that. They do lessons in, in, I don't even want to guess a language, because I'm totally going to be wrong. Is it Sumerian, probably? And like, other ones from Mesopotamia, ancient Iraq, ancient Near East. They're incredible, and they're doing a load of that stuff, just like, accessible. They also teach, like, language lessons, that you can pay like, a ridiculously affordable price, and like, learn Cuneiform? Sorry, what? Anyway, check out the Digital Hamarabi, for all of that, too. And last, but certainly not least, check out Sweet Better, who are not, in the moment, actively creating new episodes, but hope to be in

• 1:59:02Liv Albert?

  the future. But for now, they have two past seasons. The first one was all about Sappho, like, sorry, Sappho? And the second season was all about like, pirates, and queer pirates in, I think, just the ancient world, or beyond. Either way, queer pirates. So check out Sweet Better. All of these are available wherever you are listening to this podcast. And, of course, honorable mention to collaborators of the Collective, but not technically on the Podcast Network, because they were already on a different Podcast Network, my besties in ancient history, fangirl. Check out everything they're doing, because they're also fucking awesome. And if you are a member of the Patreon, you are going to be getting a whole load

• 1:59:43Liv Albert?

  of new Patreon-exclusive content, that I am recording with Jen and Jenny, because prior to this, there really wasn't much bonus content getting out, for, and I'm trying to fix that now. And so, I am teetering up with Jen and Jenny, because we always have so much damn fun, and just talking nonsense about the ancient world. We've done two episodes now on Ovid, one is out now, and one will be coming out very soon. And we just have a ball, we have a ball. This is, the goal of the Memory Collective, is just to be sharing

• 2:00:21Liv Albert?

  the spaces, and sharing the load of being a independent content creator, in the realm of ancient history, and collective liberation, generally caring about the rest of the world, and our impact on it, in our work. That is the goal of the Collective, and these are the shows we have currently, and I would love if you checked them all out. You can learn so much more at collectivemem.com. I didn't intend this to be a whole feature on those shows, it just happened that way, and I'm glad it did. Check out my show, and all the other shows on the Memory Collective, both the Podcast Network, and the collaborators

• 2:01:02Liv Albert?

  of ancient history, fangirl, and hopefully, more, more, more, to come. Thank you all so damn much. I am so thrilled to be doing this with you, and just lots more goodies very soon. I am Liv, and I love this shit, and I love you all for listening to all my shit.

• 2:01:32Speaker 01

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• 2:02:48Speaker 06

  Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel, set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess, with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome.

• 2:03:05Liv Albert?

  The much-awaited sequel, Game of Thieves, comes out December 8. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.

• 2:03:19Speaker 06

  And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favorite spicy scenes from across the series.

• 2:03:32Liv Albert?

  Get this amazing artwork only from Burning Pages at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves. Don't wait. Order your copy from Burning Pages today at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves.