these diræ inscribed upon leaden and talc tablets which have lately been found near the site of the ancient Amathus in Cyprus. Captain Handcock, through whom they were procured for the British Museum, has kindly furnished me with further details of the discovery, which was made by some villagers in clearing what seemed to be a large disused well. They first found a quantity of squared stones, and then rubble, under which was a great quantity of human bones, among which were some gold earrings. In the lower stratum of the bones, they first found pieces of the lead, and subsequently pieces of the inscribed talc, some pieces of which were attached to the side of the well imbedded in gypsum. Later on, they came to water, at about 40 ft. from the surface. The walls of a disused well would be an admirable place for fastening these "penny curses"; in order to reach the infernal deities one must go below the surface of the ground, just as in early times we noted that a shaft was sunk for the sacrificial wine to reach the shade; such a well, its walls bristling with curses nailed[1] or plastered on, may well have seemed to the awe-struck Cypriot villagers a veritable descensus Averni. In the Greek magic papyri, the publication of which[2] has thrown so much light on these matters, among the other instructions for the amateur in the black art is an injunction
- ↑ The leaden tablets were mostly folded in three and nailed to the wall. In an inscription from Erythræ (Rev. des Ét. Gr., iv, p. 287) the local Sibyl says of herself: "I transfix oracles, chaunting prophecies of the sufferings that will come to mortal men." The word (
Greek characters), here translated "transfix", would suggest that the Sibylline "leaves" were laminæ of metal nailed up like the diræ. In the vi Æneid the utterances of the Sibyl are on folia leaves. Unless this is a poetical allusion to metal laminæ, we may see in it a parallel usage to the Corinthian habit of writing the names of persons proposed for ostracism upon leaves (petala) of olive. The custom was common in India, where the earliest documents were frequently inscribed on leaves of palm or pipal tree.
- ↑ Wessely, Griech. Zauber-papyri; Leemans, Papyri Græci, Mus. Lugd., 1885.
