The Nuclear Option: Love Spells and Curses in the Ancient World by Elisabeth Storrs

Popular culture is rife with examples of humankind’s fascination with magic whether malicious or benevolent. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a world-wide phenomenon which spawned countless TV series with fantastical elements. The Harry Potter books continue to introduce new generations of kids to the realm of wizards. Harry and his friends are schooled in the three unforgiveable curses: the Cruciatus Curse which causes the victim excruciating pain, the Imperius Curse which makes the victim totally obedient to the caster, and the Killing Curse, which instantly kills the victim.

These three dark charms are reminiscent of the types of curses levelled in Greco-Roman times. The practice of ‘Defixio’ involved using a ‘curse tablet’ Tabella Defixionis (Roman) or Katadesmos (Greek) to damn a victim or cast a love spell on a subject of desire. The tablets consisted of thin pieces of lead sheet upon which script was scratched. Often the defixiones were then folded, rolled or pierced with nails to contain the incantation. To empower them, you needed to place them underground. Many were buried in graves and tombs, thrown into wells or cisterns, or nailed to the walls of temples of Chthonic deities such as Demeter and Persephone. The fact so many examples of these tablets exist is due to the fact placing a lead tablet in the ground preserves it.

Defixio is derived from the word for ‘to pierce’ or ‘to bind’. The tablets were used to ask the gods to bind a victim to an act that either condemned them to misfortune or compelled them to do something against their will. These invocations fell into various categories such as hindering a competitor, thwarting an opposing litigant in a court case, or forcing someone to fall passionately in love or punish their unfaithfulness. There was also the extreme option of seeking your enemy’s torture, death and the downfall of their family line!

Here is an example of vicious curse against a competitor. ‘I implore you, spirit, whoever you are, and I command you to torment and kill the horses of the green and white teams from this hour on, from this day on, and to kill Clarus, Felix, Primulus, and Romanus, the charioteers.’ Tunisia C3rd CE

This imprecation is less malevolent, seeking a comedian’s routine to fall flat: ‘Sosio must never do better than the mime Eumolpos. He must not be able to play the role of a married woman in a fit of drunkenness on a young horse.’ Rauranum in western France C3rd CE.

The first examples of defixiones were discovered in the city of Selinus in Sicily. The majority of the twenty-two tablets were concerned with court cases. There are also examples of small effigies, sometimes referred to loosely as Voodoo dolls. Three such dolls were found in Athens at around the end of the C5th BCE. Each figurine lies within a casket with their hands lashed behind their back and their feet tied together. The curse scored into the casket implores the gods to bind the victim so they will perform poorly in court. The elaborate nature of these defixiones suggests the hand of a professional magician (paid by a wealthy client) compared to the more common DIY lead sheets found in their thousands in Athens.

Christopher A. Faraone, professor of classical languages and literature at the University of Chicago, posits there were an extraordinary number of curse tablets found in late Classical Athens because lead was a convenient by-product of the silver mines that contributed to the wealth of that city. As such, lead was a very cheap and reusable medium useful for business communications. After the silver mines were exhausted, however, the stockpile of lead was soon depleted. Curses were then written on wax and papyrus which did not survive burial underground.

Erotic curses could be adjusted for different situations such a ‘separation’ spell (known as a ‘Diakopai’) to drive away rivals by making them hideous to the subject of unrequited affection. An ‘Agogai’ curse sought to bind the person to the caster. Some were passion-inducing while others sought only to encourage affection. One example of a milder spell is ‘Bind Helen, so that she is unsuccessful when she flirts or makes love with Demetrius.’ In comparison, this incantation wishes harm on a rival and implies the lover could have been either male or female: ‘May he who carried off Vilbia from me become as liquid as water. (May) she who obscenely devoured her (become) dumb, whether Velvinna, Exsupereus, Verianus, Severinus, A(u)gustalis, Comitianus, Catus, Minianus, Germanilla (or) Jovina.’ (Aquae Sulis)

The use of magic in Classical Athens does not appear to be illegal. Athenians would most likely have seen it as a chthonic religious ritual connected with those gods who lived in the ground and were very closely connected with ghosts and the dead. The Ancient Romans were not so tolerant. Under the Law of the Twelve Tables (the first codified set of laws established in 451 BCE), the use of incantations to cause dishonour or disgrace attracted capital punishment. However, clearly the threat of death was insufficient to deter the use of defixiones given the number of curse tablets found across the Roman world over the centuries.

Defixiones seeking justice were useful where a crime was senseless and the perpetrator unknown to the victim. A number of curse tablets were discovered in digs in Roman Britain. One trove of 130 defixiones is known as the Bath Curse Tablets found at the site of Aquae Sulis. All bar one sought restitution of goods (evidently theft was rife in bathhouses).

Here’s an example of a bathhouse curse: ‘Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess’s temple.’ Somerset 2nd -4th CE

And here is a nuclear option. ‘The human who stole Verio’s cloak or his things, who deprived him of his property, may he be bereft of his mind and memory, be it a woman or those who deprived Verio of his property, may the worms, cancer, and maggots penetrate his hands, head, feet, as well as his limbs and marrows.’ Frankfurt C1st CE

By the end of the Hellenistic period (circa 323 BCE), magical handbooks began to appear which continued to be used into Roman Imperial times which provide evidence magical practices were done by professionals. Different languages were used, and different gods were implored, including the Jewish Yahweh or the Egyptian gods. The increasing commerciality of the Defixio practice is evident given tablets could be prepared in advance, with a space left for a customer to insert the name of their victim.

'Bind the tongue and the thoughts of ____________, who is about to testify against me.'

Interestingly, the playwrights of Ancient Roman and Greek literature attribute the primary use of magic to women, but archaeological evidence shows men to be the principal practitioners. In a series of over 400 tablets found in Roman Britain, over two-thirds of those inscribing the curse/spell were males.

Learning about curse tablets inspired me to create two of my own as a major plot device in the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. In The Golden Dice, a soldier risks capital punishment by not only damning his rival to a grisly fate but also inscribing an enchantment to entice his lost love to return by ‘hammer [ing] both desire and curse into the brickwork with one long iron nail—to remain there forever potent and terrible, guarded by ghosts.’ If you want to know whether such defixiones were successful, you’ll need to read the trilogy.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. Her latest release, is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel about stolen treasure and the Aryan Myth. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons as follows: 

-Magic curse written on a lead figurine in a lead box, found in the enclosure of Aristion, and dating 420-410 BCE Kerameikos Archaeological Museum (Athens). Photographer Giovanni Dall'Orto.

-Roman Curse Tablet, North Lincolnshire Museum. Photographer Martin Forema.

-Ancient roman lead tablet inscribed with a curse from the Baths of Diocletian in Rome – Photographer Bari' bin Farangi.

-Roman lead curse tablet Kent County Council. Photographer Andrew Richardson.

-Well in which lead scroll fragments were intentionally thrown for magical practices. C4th CE Israel. Photographer Mikey641.

The Gifts of the Greeks: Democracy, Demosthenes and dick jokes? By L.J. Trafford

I have written four novels, three short stories and three nonfiction books about Ancient Rome. It was after completing the last of these, Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors that I was struck by a feeling of fatigue that I had never known. I looked at my bookcase brimming with books on ancient Rome and I could not be arsed to pick a single one off the shelf and have a flick through. This is most unusual behaviour for me, generally I can’t get through a day without picking up Pliny the Elder’s Natural Histories and seeing what Pliny’s take was on whatever the hot topic of the day is (see my previous History Girls article The Curious Roman for Pliny’s views on the hottest of topics). The stark fact was I was all Romaned out.
  

Fate then knocked or my door or rather pinged into my inbox, it was an email from my publisher – did I know of anyone who could write the Greek version of my book Sex & Sexuality in Ancient Rome? I didn’t, but I dutifully posted it on a couple of Facebook groups for historical fiction writers. Not a nibble. Which was when a small voice from deep within me piped up, ‘you could write it.’

My outer voice supposed I could, I had studied ancient Greece alongside ancient Rome so I had a reasonable understanding of ancient Greek society and history. It might actually be fun to revisit the ancient Greeks, to dig a little deeper than I had been able to do as an undergraduate back in the days of Britpop and Alcopops. Maybe I had been wrong to turn my back on them post university and concentrate only on Romans. Here was the chance to find out….



What I found out

Two years and 88k words later what I had found out is that, yeah sorry, I do prefer writing about Romans. Chiefly this is because I get Romans, I get how they think. Not that their culture is anything like ours; it’s not but I understand what underpins those differences. Ancient Greece on the other hand is a very strange place which still mystifies me even after having spent two years immersed in its people, its history and its culture.

 

Four men at a symposium. An 18th century copy of an original Greek vase design, Wellcome Collection.

I suspect that this is because unlike ancient Rome ancient Greece isn’t one homogenous mass with a singular centre of power. Ancient Greece was made up of hundreds of city states who were governed in very different ways, ranging from totalitarian military states, absolute monarchies, oligarchies all the way down to the world’s first democracies. These city states had differing laws, variations on religious beliefs and vast differences in culture. This makes them very hard to pin down and make generalized sweeping statements about what the ancient Greeks thought or did, your average Athenian man in the 5th century BCE is going to be wildly different in his views from the average Spartan man living only 150 miles away. This causes many headaches should you have happened to volunteer yourself to write a general history book on a very general subject, sex and sexuality and what the entirely generalized ancient Greeks thought about it, Ooops.


I don’t mind admitting that Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece was a difficult and cumbersome write. All of which is fitting for a group of city states who between them gave us the twelve labours of Heracles, one of which involved decapitating the Hydra of Lerna. The Hydra not only had nine heads that needed detaching from her neck by Heracles but also, just to make things unnecessarily complicated, for every head slashed off by the hero, the Hydra would grow two new heads. It’s also a collection of cultures from which sprung Odysseus, a man who took ten years to travel from Troy to Ithaca despite it only being a week’s sailing maximum.

Ancient Greece and the ancient Greeks are unnecessarily complicated, tricky and take unexpected routes when you least expect it. That is their charm, their twinkle and if I should never write about them again let me leave you with something that took me completely by surprise about the ancient Greeks. Those clever men with beards who brought us democracy, philosophy, tremendous works of art and the backbone of medicine also handed to us a far greater gift, one that I believe has enriched our culture immeasurably: the knob gag.



Is that a javelin in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

As the person who invented the, then Twitter now X, hashtag #phallusThursday I am not new to images from antiquity of male genitalia. There are very few I haven’t seen, mainly because people still send them to me over social media with the accompanying comment. ‘I saw this and thought of you.’ I am the go-to classical penis woman, which I am fine with.

 

Phallus pillars in front of the Sanctuary of Dionysos, Delos shot by Anna Apostolidou. Wikicomms

However, until I started writing my book I was unaware that the ancient Greeks not only perfected the art of depicting individual penises in very complicated group sex scenes on pots the size of gravy jugs but also the knob gag. As a child of the 70s/80s I grew up watching Carry On films and That’s Life, a magazine style TV show that devoted a whole segment each week to vegetables that had grown into amusingly rude shapes. I had a primordial soup of an upbringing that means I am pre-programmed to enjoy a good knob gag. Ancient Greek comedy is pleasingly bursting, or rather erupting with some tremendous knob gags.

The king of the Greek knob gag is undoubtedly the legend that is Aristophanes. Should anyone be of the misconception that Greek theatre was all heavy weight tales of incestuous marriages, patricide, suicide and gouging out your own eyes (and that’s all in just the one play) I would urge them to pick up a copy of any of Aristophanes’ plays and prepare to have your mind blown and your nipples shoot across the room.

The plot of any Aristophanes play lends itself to at least a dozen decent knob gags, in Lysistrata the women of Greece stage a sex strike to try and end the Peloponnesian War which is the set up for a series of gags revolving around that classic of the knob gag, the embarrassing erection.

‘[Enter the Spartan herald. He, too, has a giant erection, which he is trying to hide under his cloak.]

Spartan Herald: Where’s the Athenian Senate and the Prytanes? I come with fresh dispatches.

Cinesias [looking at the Herald’s erection Are you a man,or some phallic monster?

Spartan Herald: I’m a herald, by the twin gods. And my good man, I come from Sparta with a proposal, arrangements for a truce.

Cinesias: If that’s the case, why do you have a spear concealed in there?

Spartan Herald: I’m not concealing anything, by god.                

Cinesias:  Then why are you turning to one side? What’s that thing there, sticking from your cloak? Has your journey made your groin inflamed?

Spartan Herald: By old Castor, this man’s insane!

Cinesias: You rogue, you’ve got a hard on!

Spartan Herald; No I don’t, I tell you. Let’s have no more nonsense.

 Cinesias: [pointing to the herald’s erection] Then what’s that?

 Spartan Herald: It’s a Spartan herald’s stick.’

 

An assumingly shaped croissant

The Assembly Women sees the women of Athens take over the running of the city (the satirical point being that women couldn’t make any more of a mess of it then the then Athenian council) and institute a law that ’decreed that if a man desires to fuck a young woman, he may do so only after he fucks an old one. Further, should this young man refuse to obey by this statute, the older woman shall be authorised to drag the aforesaid young man by his cock, without any legal ramifications to her person or property!” ‘

In Women at the Festival, Mnesilochus disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate a mass protest by the women of the city. The scene where Mnesilochus’ deceit is uncovered by the women particularly stands out. 

‘Cleisthenes: Stand up straight. What do you keep pushing that thing down for?

First Woman: peering from behind
There's no mistaking it.

Cleisthenes: also peering from behind
Where has it gone to now?

First Woman: To the front.

Cleisthenes: from in front
No.

First Woman: from behind
Ah! it's behind now.


There are perhaps a few things I should mention about Greek comedy at this point, firstly the actors were all male thus all the female characters would have been performed by men. Secondly these male actors all wore costumes, comedy costumes. The images below depict comedic actors, note that thing hanging between their legs. No, your eyes are not deceiving you, it is a costume penis. Generally made from leather these were sewn onto leotard style outfits and they served as a useful prop. Read the scenes above but this time with the floppy, leather costume phallus in your head. You can picture the physical comedy of it better now, can’t you?
 

Comic actors. Terracotta calyx-krater (mixing bowl) attributed to the Dolon Painter, Fletcher Fund 1924, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA 

Terracotta statuette of an actor, Rogers Fund 1913, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. 

The knob gag deserves to be included amongst all those great things ancient Greece bequeathed us. It is in the cradle of civilisation, snuggled somewhere between medicine and art, for without it our society would be very different. Would any of us want to live in a world where an amusingly phallic shaped vegetable or indeed croissant did not elicit a smile? Absolutely not.

L.J. Trafford writes books about Romans and now the Greeks! Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece will be published next year (probably).  You can find details of her other books here

Latin, Greek and the 'Ready Brek glow' by Caroline K. Mackenzie

Some of the best advice I once received was this: find something that gives you that ‘Ready Brek glow’ (do you remember the 1982 advert?), and try to do whatever that may be every day. It will fortify you for life’s ups and downs. Immediately I knew what my Ready Brek equivalent was: time spent teaching Latin and Greek, whether via one-to-one tuition, or in a small group. It is not just the lesson itself which is rewarding, there is genuinely a glow that stays with me for some time afterwards, whatever that particular day has in store.

One of my first textbooks.

 
My tutees range in ages from 8 to 88, and almost every decade in between. Some of them are learning Latin or Greek at school and are working towards a GCSE, IB or A Level examination. Greek, in particular, is often squeezed into the already cramped school timetable so the subject may share the lessons allocated for Latin, or be taught as a lunchtime club. The students who have chosen either or both of these languages have usually had to make a very positive choice to study them, by opting in, rather than there being any curricular requirement (such as there may be for learning a modern foreign language). So the students’ commitment and enthusiasm go a long way in redressing the timetabling challenges their schools may face.

Many teenagers are initially drawn to the Classical languages from their childhood love of Greek mythology and the great stories that are told in both Latin and Greek. Others say they love the logic of the languages, and the challenge of translating a passage, which equates to solving a puzzle. For those who learn Greek, the excitement of a different alphabet can make them feel as if they are in a secret club: the thrill of decoding the symbols into English words is just one of the highlights.

But why do Latin and Greek appeal to so many adults, who have no exams looming, but who wish to master an ancient language just for the sake of it? Much has been written about the benefits of keeping one’s mind active throughout life, using crosswords, number puzzles, etc., so why not learn an ancient language, too? My octogenarian students say it keeps them on their toes and they love translating passages of literature in the original. Another student likened the satisfaction of translating a Latin sentence correctly to having a tidy laundry cupboard. A retiree reported that it felt like a return to childhood and a chance to recapture one’s youth.

 Part of the fun of learning Latin and Greek is discovering connections with English.

Most of all, learning Latin and Greek can be so much fun. Quite apart from the joys of mastering the languages, the stories and accounts that we still have in their original form unlock a whole world from as early as the eighth century BC through Classical Greece and the Roman empire. The poems, historical accounts and even ancient travel guides give an insight into the Greeks’ and Romans’ lives in extraordinary detail, including their hopes and fears: from the food they ate and wine they drank, their homes, families, art, architecture, clothes, pesky politicians, and nosy neighbours, to the big question of mortality and the wish to make one’s life meaningful. These are all human conditions to which we can still relate, sometimes with surprisingly acute similarities. The languages may sometimes be referred to as ‘dead’ but the dialogue started by the people who spoke those languages is very much alive.

Equal to my tutees’ love of learning Latin and Greek is my love of teaching them. My favourite Greek textbook includes (as a nice nod to all the teachers using the book) a practice translation sentence as follows: διδασκω τε και μανθανω (I both teach and learn). The transliteration of the verbs in this sentence are ‘didasko’ (I teach) which gives us ‘didactic’, and ‘manthano’ (I learn) (the root of which is ‘math’) which gives us ‘mathematics’, ‘polymath’, etc.

Without fail, I learn something new in every lesson I teach. I also have the pleasure of witnessing the delight of my students in the moment that they make a connection between Latin and a word or abbreviation which they use daily, e.g. (exempli gratia, for the sake of an example), 7am (ante meridiem, before midday), etc. (et cetera, and the rest). It is also wonderful to experience their animated reaction to a wronged character in Greek tragedy, or to hear their laughter at a joke in an ancient Greek comedy. The jokes still land after all these centuries.

διδασκω τε και μανθανω (I both teach and learn).

Kennedy's Latin primer is one of the first textbooks I ever used when learning Latin and recently one of my students has acquired a second hand copy which has become his vade mecum (literally, 'go with me' - I suppose we might say 'my go-to textbook'). It has a fantastic quote from Cicero, which he pointed out to me just a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing a point of grammar but the quote resonated with me as I think it encapsulates what I have tried to describe in this post:

haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant.
These studies nurture youth, and delight old age.

So back to that ‘Ready Brek glow’. I love porridge and eat it most days - it is full of nostalgia for me as my Dad used to make it overnight and serve it the Scottish way, with a pinch of salt and definitely no sugar. But if I had to choose between my bowl of steaming oats and teaching an hour of Latin and Greek, you can probably conclude which one will give me the greatest glow.


P.S. (post scriptum) If you are interested in having a little taste of Latin, I shall be giving an online illustrated talk for The Hellenic and Roman Societies on Tuesday 4th November at 7pm, and repeated on Saturday 15th November at 11am. Whether you are a complete beginner or wish to brush up on existing knowledge, you will be very welcome! Please contact me for further details via my website: www.carolinetutor.co.uk

Greek courtesans - beautiful and savvy by Elisabeth Storrs

Through the female characters in my ‘A Tale of  Ancient Rome’ series, I explore the lives of women in the ancient world. One of my favourite characters is a Cretan courtesan or hetaira (literally translating as a ‘companion’ in Greek) who teaches my naïve Roman female protagonist to compare the cloistered lives of Greek and Roman wives to those of Etruscan women who were afforded independence, education and sexual freedom (See Ancient Girl Power and Sex, Death and Eternal Love).

Greek women in the ancient world were cloistered in the homes of their fathers or husbands and confined to the roles of mothers and housewives. Roman matrons had a similar fate albeit granted status as second-class citizens ie disenfranchised. Their lives were passive and disempowered as encapsulated by the C5th playwright, Sophocles:

‘But now outside my father's house, I am nothing. Yes, I have often looked on women's nature in this regard, that we are nothing. When we reach puberty and can understand, we are thrust and sold away from our ancestral gods and from our parents. Some go to strange men's homes, others to joyless houses, some to hostile. And all this once the first night has yoked us to our husband. We are forced to praise and say that all is well.’

In comparison, hetairai (Greek) or hetaerae (Latin) were professional courtesans in ancient Greece who cultivated their beauty, intelligence and commercial acumen to gain a degree of independence far beyond that allowed to married women and their daughters. A hetaira was not a prostitute (pornos) who sold sex, but a sophisticated, educated and talented companion who wealthy and middle-class men hired to act as a hostess at parties known as symposia. Many were known for their prowess as artists and performers. 

Hetaira and symposiast Kylix 490-480 BCE

Heteirai were reputed to be educated and expected to participate in political discourse with guests. These courtesans were generally foreigners not born in Athens (metics), slaves or freedwoman but were well compensated and able to run businesses which employed entertainers such as musicians, jugglers, dancers, singers and flute girls (who performed sexual favours) to entertain at symposia. However, the world of a hetaira should not be romanticised. As it was usual for them to be supported by upper class protectors with whom they formed intimate liaisons, withdrawal of patronage could adversely affect their security. Furthermore, due to the sexual aspects of their profession, the companions were subject to religious disapproval and lived in a demi-monde subject to male authority. Nevertheless, compared to the lives of most Greek women whose primary purpose was procreation, and who were considered to be chattels to be bought, sold and inherited, the hetairai enjoyed a rare status in the Attic world.

Among the most famous was Aspasia of Miletus (approx. 470-410 BCE), long-time companion of the Athenian politician Pericles. She was a metic and, accordingly, was not allowed to marry an Athenian and had to pay a tax to live in Athens. She bore Pericles a son out of wedlock known as Pericles the Younger. She is mentioned in the writings of Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plutarch and other ancient writers whose opinions varied between praising her as a talented rhetorician who was the centre of Athenian intellectual life, or deriding her as a brothel-keeper who procured young girls for her lover.

Aspasia surrounded by Greek philosophers, Michele Corneille the Younger 1670s

The name Aspasia means ‘the desired one’ and, as such, may have been a professional name used when working as a hetaira. She operated a salon and a girl’s school which her detractors claimed were brothels. Pericles’ enemies derided him by asserting Aspasia was the true author of his speeches. In comparison, Socrates felt no shame in stating Aspasia had taught him the art of eloquence (which was also mentioned by Plato in his dialogue Menexenus). Socrates marvelled at her persuasiveness, and credited her with composing the funeral oration Pericles delivered after the first casualties of the Peloponnesian War.

Attacks continued on Aspasia by Pericles’ adversaries. A charge of impiety was brought against her for disrespecting the gods. At her trial, Pericles reputedly spoke in her defence before a court of 1500 jurors leading to Aspasia being exonerated. Three years later, in 429 BCE, Pericles died of the plague but, before his death, allowed a change in the citizenship law to make his half-Athenian son, Pericles the Younger, a citizen and his legitimate heir.

After Pericles’ death, Aspasia was said to have become the companion of his friend Lysicles, whom she helped transform into an Athenian political leader. Lysicles was killed in the campaign of Caria in 428/427 BCE and nothing else is known of Aspasia after that with any certainty.

Aspasia - Roman copy of C5th Greek original

Plutarch accepts Aspasia as a significant figure both politically and intellectually and expresses his admiration for a woman who ‘managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state, and afforded the philosophers occasion to discuss her in exalted terms and at great length’ although he also claimed Aspasia held undue influence over Pericles and was ultimately to blame for every mistake he made! Aeschines (a pupil of Socrates) wrote a dialogue ‘Aspasia’ about her, which is now lost save for a few fragments, which seems to have been a favourable portrayal but Aristophanes, the comic poet, generally speaks ill of her. Other later writers, however, such as the rhetorician Quintilian held her in high regard and lectured about her to his students while the satirist, Lucian, called her ‘a woman of wisdom and understanding’.

In modern literature, Aspasia’s reputation has been treated favourably, if not a little too romantically.   In the classical romance, Philothea (1835), Lydia Maria Child, an American abolitionist and novelist, portrays Aspasia a great beauty. Walter Savage Landor’s popular Pericles and Aspasia (1836) presents a work of fictional letters between the two lovers (albeit rife with historical inaccuracies). This work later inspired Gertrude Atherton to publish her equally popular novel The Immortal Marriage (1927), presenting Aspasia as the ‘power behind the throne’ who made Pericles the popular speaker and statesman he was.

Undoubtedly, the range of contradictory portrayals casts a shadow on the historicity of Aspasia's life. Yet what a charismatic and intelligent person she must have been to galvanise so many writers to opine about her over the centuries! Whether she was an intellectual giant or a flagrant companion, no one can dispute Aspasia continues to impress as a woman who gained a foothold in public life denied other women of her time.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. Her latest release, is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel about stolen Trojan treasure and the Aryan Myth. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com. 

Images courtesy of Wikimedia commons and Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Labyrinths and initiations by Elisabeth Storrs

Labyrinths have always been a source of fascination to me. None more so than the famous lair of the Minotaur in ancient Crete. According to Greek myth, this bewildering structure was designed by the inventor Daedalus (father of the doomed Icarus) at the behest of King Minos. The maze was built in the city of Knossos to hold the half man/half bull monster to whom 7 youths and 7 maidens were sacrificed each year as tribute owed by the Athenian King Aegeus to Minos for killing the Cretan king’s son. The minotaur was ultimately slain by Aegeus’ son, Theseus, who was sent as one of the sacrificial youths to Knossos. Minos’ daughter, Ariadne, fell in love with the prince and assisted him to kill the monster and then escape the labyrinth by giving him a ball of thread to enable him to retrace his path.

Classical pattern, medieval pattern, modern walking labyrinth and hedge maze

A seven course single path design known as ‘unicursal’ became associated with the labyrinth on Cretan coins as early as 430 BCE, and became common as a visual depiction of the legendary labyrinth from Roman times onwards. In later religious tradition, large labyrinth designs set into floors were walked and used for private meditation or for therapeutic purposes based on the concept of a pilgrimage from the entrance to the centre where God awaits. In comparison, a maze is a complex pattern with branches and dead ends known as ‘multicursal’ which require a series of choices to be made in order to safely navigate. Medieval garden hedges are a fine example of these.

In the ancient world, the feat of escaping a labyrinth was associated with a triumph of life over death. In some cases, navigating one was seen as a form of initiation where a boy was required to enter as a child and emerge as a man after surviving danger. One such initiation ritual was known as ‘The City of Troy’ in Rome and Etruria.

The City of Troy was a reference to the labyrinth of Crete. Yet what was the connection between the legendary cities of Troy and Knossos? An explanation comes from both archaeological evidence and the poetry of the Roman poet, Vergil.

Tragliatella Vase

In his great epic, The Aeneid, the Roman poet Vergil tells of the wanderings of Aeneas, the son of Anchises and Venus, following the fall of Troy. After fighting to defend the besieged city, Aeneas escaped carrying his father on his shoulders while leading his young son Ascanius (who later came to be called Iulus) to safety. According to Roman tradition, during the funeral games for his grandfather, Ascanius took part in a processional parade or dance called the Game of Troy (Lusus Trojae) while mounted on a horse given to him by the Carthaginian queen Dido. The young prince and his companions performed a complex weaving pattern by riding between and around each other as though threading their way through a labyrinth. Vergil drew a comparison between the tortuous convolutions of the rite to the twisting pathways within the Minotaur’s den at Knossos. He also referred to the manoeuvres of the game as mimicking the ‘Crane Dance’ performed by the youths Theseus saved from the Minotaur. From Vergil’s description it is clear that completing the game involved great skill to avoid injury or death.

The column split apart
As files in the three squadrons all in line
Turned away, cantering left and right; recalled
They wheeled and dipped their lances for a charge.
They entered then on parades and counter-parades,
The two detachments, matched in the arena,
Winding in and out of one another,
And whipped into sham cavalry skirmishes
By baring backs in flight, then whirling round
With leveled points, then patching up a truce
And riding side by side. So intricate
In ancient times on mountainous Crete they say
The Labyrinth, between walls in the dark,
Ran criss-cross a bewildering thousand ways
Devised by guile, a maze insoluable,
Breaking down every clue to the way out.
So intricate the drill of Trojan boys
Who wove the patterns of their prancing horses,
Figured, in sport, retreats and skirmishes                

(Aeneid, V. 5.580–593 Translation by Robert Fitzgerald)

Vergil conjured the image of the Lusus Trojae when writing in the 1st century CE, but there is archaeological evidence of its existence dating from the late C7th BCE. The Tragliatella Vase discovered near the Etruscan city of Caere (modern Cerveteri) depicts two horsemen emerging from a spiral marked with the word ‘Truia’. A line of marching warriors is also displayed on the wine jug which seems to suggest that the vase portrays a military ceremony similar to the one of legend. As the Romans were heavily influenced by the Etruscans, it is plausible that the equestrian ceremony that was later referred to by Vergil was in fact an Etruscan tradition.

Detail Tragliatella Vase City of Troy design

The Game of Troy was ‘revived’ by Julius Caesar who claimed to be a descendant of Iulus (Ascanius) and was performed by the young sons of high ranking families. It was not associated with any particular religious festival and was conducted at funeral games and in military triumphs. Suetonius and Tacitus also wrote of the Lusus Trojae which appears to have become more of a military review by the time of Nero.

With my love of all things Etruscan, I found the etchings on the humble Tragliatella Vase intriguing enough to inspire me to include an episode in my book The Golden Dice: A Tale of Ancient Rome involving the Troy Game. Yet what strikes me most about the Lusus Trojae is how legend, poetry and history are intertwined and held fast by a strong thread from two epic stories that inspired three great civilisations: Etruria, Greece and Rome. 

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. Her latest release, is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel about stolen Trojan treasure and the Aryan Myth. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com. 

Images are courtesy Wikimedia Commons