Roman Circus · Curse Tablets and Factional Rivalry
The Racing Curses of Hadrumetum
In Roman North Africa, some spectators and interested parties did more than cheer against rival teams. They wrote their opponents' names onto lead, invoked destructive powers, and attempted to bind drivers and horses before a race.
Place, Date and Evidence
Site: Hadrumetum, the ancient city at modern Sousse, Tunisia.
Material: Lead curse tablets, or defixiones, especially from Roman-period burial contexts.
Date: Many published circus tablets are assigned to approximately the second and third centuries CE, although individual inscriptions require their own dating.
Languages: Latin and Greek, sometimes combined with nonlexical magical signs and names.
These are surviving inscribed objects, not literary tales about superstition. Their purpose can be inferred from the names of racing teams, drivers and horses and from verbs asking that they fall, fail or be injured. They are direct evidence of attempted magical interference, not proof that any spell worked.
A Published Inscription: Audollent 275
A particularly useful example is *Auguste Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae 275, catalogued among the Hadrumetum tablets. The inscription contains magical signs, named opponents, and repeated Latin wishes that they fall. The published text includes both Red (russei) and Blue (veneti*) associations.
Selected Original-Language Excerpts
The following are brief excerpts, not a transcription of the entire tablet. The original spelling is often irregular and the inscription includes magical signs that cannot be represented adequately in plain running text.
38th Scroll Translation
Glaucu Argutu veneti — “Glaucus, Argutus, of the Blue faction” (the names and their grammatical relationship depend on how the list is segmented).
cadant — “Let them fall.”
The repeated plural injunction is the important point: these words are not a historical report of a crash. They express the curse writer's desired outcome. For the full epigraphic transcription, including line numbers, variant readings and symbols, consult the PHI Greek Inscriptions record for Audollent 275.
The Green Driver Archelaos
Another published Hadrumetum tablet, summarized by D. R. Jordan in his survey of Greek defixiones (item 144), targets a driver called Archelaos. The scholarly account explicitly identifies him as a charioteer of the Green faction and summarizes a request that he fall during the race along with the four horses he drove.
The curse was written within the outline of a human figure; magical words and signs preceded the request. It came from the necropolis and has been assigned to the second century CE on letter-form grounds. Jordan records it in the Bardo Museum at Tunis.
This is a useful reversal for Prasina. The fictional narrator curses a rival of the Greens; the actual tablet shows that a Green driver could just as readily be the object of such hostility. No claim is made that Archelaos raced against Scorpus or participated in the fictional event depicted in the song.
The Archelaos wording here is a summary of the scholarly description, not an invented transcription of a damaged Greek inscription. A verified complete Greek edition would be needed before presenting a line-by-line original and translation.
Lead, Graves and Binding
The physical medium mattered. Lead sheets could be inscribed, folded or pierced; some were deposited in graves or locations associated with spirits of the dead. In magical practice, naming a target and asking for the impairment of the body, the team or the vehicle brought ordinary racing rivalry into a ritual setting.
Not every Hadrumetum tablet was folded or nailed, and finding a tablet in a grave does not demonstrate the exact ritual steps by which its writer deposited it. The description of a nail driven into the earth in Prasina is therefore a historically informed dramatic detail, not a claim that it occurred on any one of the tablets discussed here.
The Words and the Signs
Some circus tablets combine intelligible commands with repeated syllables, divine or demonic names, and special marks known as charaktêres. Those signs are part of the artifact, not random decoration to be silently removed from a transcription.
György Németh has analyzed repeated sequences across a group of Hadrumetum racing tablets. Shared patterns, including recurring target names, suggest specialized production or a common repertoire of magical writing. A workshop or shared handbook is a scholarly explanation of this evidence, not a securely documented business establishment.
Did People Believe the Curses Worked?
The tablets show that someone spent time and resources to attempt the curse, and that the practice was sufficiently recognizable to generate repeated formulas. They do not tell us which crashes or victories occurred afterward, or whether the targets ever learned that they had been cursed.
A racing curse is best understood as evidence for anxiety, competition and the desire to influence a dangerous event by means beyond ordinary training or skill.
From the Tablets to Prasina
In the song, a Green devotee writes on lead, hides the text among tombs and asks that the Blue driver and his team fail. The historical sources support the general elements: named drivers and horses, factional antagonism, lead inscriptions, cemetery deposits and violent wishes.
The lyric's actual words, its particular Green narrator, its nail and the collision during Scorpus' victory are artistic reconstruction. The tablets give the episode historical texture without converting the fictional race into a documented event.
Texts and Further Reading
- Auguste Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (1904), no. 275; epigraphic record and transcription.
- D. R. Jordan, “A Survey of Greek Defixiones Not Included in the Special Corpora,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 26 (1985), item 144, pp. 151–152 (Archelaos).
- György Németh, “Sequences of charakteres in some circus defixiones in Latin from Hadrumetum,” Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis 47 (2011), 95–111; journal record.
- Hadrumetum, modern Sousse: the specific findspots and inscriptions should be kept distinct rather than treated as one single excavation or curse.
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